City had been electrifi ed with streetlights, which means that people
can now shop into the night. Most importantly, electricity came into people’s homes, and almost
immediately, manufacturers came out with a slew of devices that
they claimed would be labor-saving and would free the drudge of
a housewife from her daily chores. In 1910, advertisements for
electric toasters pummel people from every direction. Then, in
1926, they came out with the new and improved pop-up toaster.
Just keeping up with the standard level of material culture
increasingly means more of the average family’s income gets
spent on gadgets, often superfl uous, that change the relationship
to food. In the end, these gadgets wear out and get dumped in a
trash heap. This trend starts out slowly and reaches its apogee in
the mid-20th century, but the push to create more and more so-called
labor-saving devices begins in the late 19th century and is almost
completely contingent upon electricity.
The dishwasher was invented in 1886 in Shelbyville, Illinois, by
Josephine Cochrane. The fi rst people to buy a dishwasher didn’t
do it to save labor (because they had servants); it was supposed
to prevent breakage at the hands of clumsy servants. Eventually,
a small model was produced for middle-class homes and was
advertised as the miracle labor-saving device that could spare the
tired housewife hours of drudgery at the sink every night.
With the advent of gasoline-burning engines, trucking extended the
range of where goods could be delivered and sold—far beyond the
end of a railroad track—and these new engines were also put into
steel-hulled ships that move very quickly and could even get fruits
and vegetables to the Northern Hemisphere from the south out of
season. The types of food people ate completely changed thanks to
international shipping.
In the mid-19th century, after many years of experimentation, the
fi rst commercial refrigerators are invented, so meat no longer has