GAS AND HYGIENE IN THE HOME

Hokitika Guardian, 20 December 1928, Page 2

GAS AND HYGIENE IN THE HOME

CLEANLINESS AND COMFORT WITH FIRE AND RADIATOR. Probably few people, if the truth were told, want to be clean for health’s sake. In primitive days, broadly speaking, the hand that cleaned the roost laid the table, without preliminaries ol soap and water; and yet some people managed to live to a healthy, dirty old age. The first man who washed bis ears probably did so in order to hear lietter, and brooms and dusters were invented, not to keep the bands clean, but to save trouble.

It happens, then, that the average householder, who desires above most things a spotless borne and clean air to live in, does not consider hiniselt directly concerned in their attainment, unless the means of attainment promise greater comfort and convenience. Indifferent to questions winch do not immediately affect his well-being, lie hides his ostrich-head behind his morning bath and refuses to see the smoke from the range which provides the hot water. But show him methods which give him a better supply of hot- water, and he will rejoice that incidentally they are more hygeinic. That is more than a metaphor; it is typically true of the part which laboursaving methods play in the movement towards healthier conditions of living. The pursuit of comfort and economy, the two things which most influence the householder in his choice of a fuel, involves the adandonment of raw coal. The pursuit of cleanliness involves the same thing; so that when we talk of the comfort or economy of coke or gas appliances, we imply their value as hygienic improvements.

Oko and gas are both smokeless products of coal, which are wasted when it is burned raw. How, first of all, do they affect comfort ? The most formidable opposition of their use comes from the man in the armchair who lias not tried them. Most of us like the cheerful glow of an open fire when we come home out of the cold of a winter clay. What the man in the armchair is only just beginning to realise is that the gas fire is an open fire and a very pleasant and comforting open fire giving the best of ventilation and the ideal form of heat—largely radiant heat. A gas fire is not the same as a coal fire, and we cannot like it any better by pretending it is. You cannot teach a child to like porridge by pretending it is Force. It only reminds him of the original without being the same. We only associate the coal fire with romance and comfort liecause we are used to it and will not educate ourselves to something quite as comfortable and certainly more civilised.

The gas has another kind of comfort—the comfort of convenience .It does away with the cleaning of flues, the carrying of coals, the constant attention which means the interruption of other housework. It may even make it possible to dispense with a servant. Gas makes a fire possible in any room at any time; a luxury which is rarely possible in a house of coal fires, on grounds both of cost and of labour. As far as appearances are concerned, there are few people so prejudiced as to contend that a gas fire detracts from the beauty of the room. In actual fact, the modern gas fire, as any showroom will convince, is a thing of beauty; suitably chosen and well installed, it often adds character to a hearth. Beautiful hearts are rarer than beautiful gas fire 9. Gas, of course, is 3 very practical alternative for heating hot water. For cooking it has no equal and needs no praise. In the all-gas kitchen we find many other operations carried out by gas which are less well known though just as practical. Of these the washcopper and the little internally heated iron, 'at opposite extremes of size, are associaed together in making washing simple and unxhausting. All ’these things with the increased leisure they provide and the load of housework which they remove from the housewife make for happier and healthier homes. The cost, which compares very favourably with that of coal, is insignificant in comparison with the relief these methods give and the labour they abolish. So much of housework is the wearisome task of cleaning up wliat need not be there, that modern smokeless appliances might more truly be called 11011-labour creating than laboursaving. Gas and coke replace the out-of-date and dam the scource of dirt and worry.