The Progress of Invention in the Nineteenth Century. by Edward W. Byrn

FOOD AND DRINK. THE NATURE OF FOOD--THE ROLLER MILL--THE MIDDLINGS PURIFIER-- CULINARY UTENSILS--BREAD MACHINERY--DAIRY APPLIANCES--CENTRIFUGAL MILK SKIMMER--THE CANNING INDUSTRY--STERILIZATION--BUTCHERING AND DRESSING MEATS--OLEOMARGARINE--MANUFACTURE OF SUGAR--THE VACUUM PAN--CENTRIFUGAL FILTER--MODERN DIETETICS AND PATENTED FOODS. If called upon to name the most important of all factors of human existence, that which underlies and sustains all others, even to life itself, everyone must agree that it is _food_. A remarkable fact in this connection is that all animal life lives and thrives by eating some other thing that is or has been alive, or is the product of organic growth. The vegetarian may pride himself upon his higher ideals of living, but after all his fruit, vegetables, and cereals belong to the great category of living organisms, and are to a certain extent sentient and conscious, for even the plant will turn to the sun. The beasts of the field and fowls of the air live by preying upon other weaker animals and birds, these upon plants and grasses, and the plants and grasses upon the decaying mosses and organic mould of the soil, and the mosses upon still lower organisms. The big fish of the sea eat the little fish, the little fish the small fry, and these in turn live upon worms and animalcula, and so on all the way down to protoplasm. Omniverous man, in spite of his boasted civilization and enlightment, not only eats them all, flesh, fowl, fish, grain and plants, but lives exclusively upon them. But he can _only_ live on that which has been produced by the mysterious agency of life, and this furnishes a significant suggestion for the philosopher, for it may be that life itself is only an accumulated active power or unitary force regenerated in some metamorphic way from vital force stored up in the bacteria of organic food, and necessarily connected therewith in an endless chain of reproductions, and if this be true, the hope of the scientist as to the synthesis of food from its elements must ever remain a philosophic dream, because the scientist cannot create a bacterium. It has been said that when a man eats meat he thinks meat, and when he eats bread he thinks bread, and when he eats fruit he thinks fruit. It is not clear that the quality or character of man’s food is so closely correlated to his thought, but that it has its influence cannot be doubted. It would be safer to say, however, that when a man eats meat he acts meat, and when he eats bread he acts bread, for the muscular energy and aggressive potentiality appear to be much more closely related to the quality of his food than are his thoughts. May it not be that the powerful achievement of the British Empire was directly related to its roast beef? Is not the listless apathy of the Chinese due to a diet of rice? Is not the dominant and masterful power of the lion or the eagle related to a carniverous diet, and the mild and placid temper of the ox the reflex expression of his vegetable food? It is quite true that our potentialities are largely represented by what we eat, and our food therefore becomes a most interesting topic, not only by virtue of its indispensable quality, but by reason also of the possibilities of development in the betterment and elevation of the human race. From the earliest times even down to the present day man’s food has been the same--flesh, fish, cereals, fruits and vegetables. The development of the present century has not extended this category, but it has been directed to an increase in the supply, an improvement in quality, the preservation against decay and waste, and its intelligent selection and adaptation to the special needs of the body. Progress manifests itself in the great field of agriculture, in improved processes and machines for milling; in butchering, packing and handling meats; in preserving and drying fruits; in the preparation of canned goods, in dairy appliances, in cake and cracker machines; in the manufacture of sugar; in the great advance in cookery; in the science of dietetics, and in thousands of minor industries. In agriculture the raising of grain has extended in the Nineteenth Century to enormous proportions. More than ten thousand patents for plows, as many for reapers, and a proportionate number of planters, cultivators, threshers, and other implements and tools represent the extent to which inventive genius has been directed to the increase of the yield in the harvest field. This yield in the United States for the year 1898 was: Corn 1,924,184,660 bushels Wheat 675,148,705 bushels Oats 730,906,643 bushels Rye 25,657,522 bushels Barley 55,792,257 bushels Buckwheat 11,721,927 bushels Potatoes 192,306,338 bushels [Illustration: FIG. 164.--ROLLER PROCESS OF MAKING FLOUR, WEGMANN’S PATENT.] For converting the grain into flour, the inventors of the Nineteenth Century have made revolutionary changes. Milling processes within the last twenty-five years have been completely transformed by the