practical hints as to the various ways in which "economies can be
effected and waste saved;" and yet no saving of the woman's time, nerves
and muscles is referred to from cover to cover. The housewife is told,
for instance, to "insist upon getting the meat trimmings." The fat "can
be rendered." And then follows the process in soap-making. Mother is to
place the scraps of fat on the back of the stove. If she "watches it
carefully" and does not allow it to get hot enough to smoke there will
be no odor. No doubt if she removes her watchful eye and turns to bathe
her baby, her tenement will reek with smoking fat. She is to pursue this
trying of fat and nerves day by day until she has six pounds of grease.
Next, she is to "stir it well," cool it, melt it again; she is then to
pour in the lye, "slowly stirring all the time." Add ammonia. Then
"stir the mixture constantly for twenty minutes or half an hour."

In contrast to all this primeval elaboration is the simple, common-sense
rule: Do not buy the trimmings, make the butcher trim meat before
weighing, insist that soap-making shall not be brought back to defile
the home, but remain where it belongs, a trade in which the workers can
be protected by law, and its malodorousness brought under regulation.

In the same spirit the Adamistic suggestion to Eve to save coal by a
"heatless day" is met by the cold challenge of the riotous extravagance
of cooking in twelve separate tenements, twelve separate potatoes, on
twelve separate fires.

The Adamistic theory, through its emphasis on the relation of food to
Eve, and the almost religious necessity of its manipulation at the altar
of the home cook-stove, has drawn thought away from the nutritive side
of what we eat. While the child in the streets is tossing about such
words as calories and carbohydrates with a glibness that comes of much