The Stratford Evening Post WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER. MONDAY, JUNE 19, 1911. ABOUT AMERICA.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXIX, Issue 101, 19 June 1911, Page 4

The Stratford Evening Post WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER. MONDAY, JUNE 19, 1911. ABOUT AMERICA.

A well-known writer, Miss A. M. B. Meakin, has just produced a bonk on “What America Is .Doing,” in the course ol which she treats in an interesting and suggestive style of the canning industry ,tho Oil Trust, and other commercial and financial questions. With regard to the first-men-tioned topic, Miss Meakin remarks that it is sometimes supposed by English people that the meat-canning business in Chicago was practically destroyed by a sensational book some years ago. Miss Meakin went over one of the great factories of Packingtown to be told that—as for the scandalous book that bad so much effect on the English public, its fallacies were very soon exposed in America ; the writer was a litbnanian, a bitter socialist, who would have liked to ruin tlie industry. In his book lie represents that lie was one of the employees, hut he never did a stroke ol work there, the factory people alleged. In a neighbouring canning factory the visitor made the discovery “that olives and pimentos come all the way from Italy to Chicago to bo canned, and arc then returned to Europe and Australia for consumption,” Judging by Miss Monkiu’s book, American domestic conditions will seem strange to many people. Nearly eighty per cent, of the American families of to-day live in the cities in steam-heated fiats; this is one consequence of the lack of domestic servants in the country, and the same cause, it is suggested, is “hack of” the decline of the hirthlatc. In some aspects, one discovers, particularly away from the great centres, the life is more like life in these colonics.