United States, but a machine called a Separator, for telling the age and
state of an egg by means of immersion in water. Perfectly good eggs sank
fast and passed out through one distributor; fairly nice eggs did not
reach the bottom, and were drawn off through another sluice, and so on.
This saved the wages of the egg twirlers, whose method of candling eggs,
as it was called, was far less rapid than the Separator. And when I
learned that one house in St. Louis alone twirled 50,000 eggs in a day,
the possible profits of the Egg Trust became clear to me. But they were
not so clear to Ethel. She said that you could not monopolise hens. That
they would always be laying eggs and putting it in the power of
competitors to hatch them by incubators. Nor did she have confidence in
the Pasteurised Feeder. 'Even if you get the parents to adopt it,' she
said, 'you cannot get the children. If they do not like the taste of the
milk as it comes out of the bottle through the Feeder, they will simply
not take it.'"

"'Well,' I answered, 'old Mrs. Beverly is holding on to hers.'"

"When I said this, Ethel sat with her mouth tight. Then she opened it and
said: 'I hate that woman.'"

"'Hate her? Why, you have never so much as laid eyes on her.'"

"'That is not at all necessary. I consider it indecent for a grey haired
woman with grandchildren to be speculating in the stock market every week
like a regular bull or bear.'"

"Every point in this outburst of Ethel's seemed to me so unwarrantable
that I was quite dazed. I sat looking at her, and her eyes filled with
tears. 'Oh Richard!' she exclaimed, 'she will ruin you, and I hate her!'"