By

N

O more nails substituted for pants buttons; no more potatoes fried in an "everlasting sea of of grease"; no more screenless windows, with the flies carrying disease germs from stable refuse to the baby's lips; no more waste of food; no more indigestion; no more slipshod housekeeping on a thousand. farms. The millennium is about to dawn in Pettis County, Missouri. All this is merely another way of stating that Pettis County has hired a "county woman", whose sole and exclusive business it is to teach the farm women how to keep better homes.

Mildred Henton, the first county "cook", goes about her work in characteristic fashion. When she started her campaign, she decided that there was no better place in which to begin than the country schools. Accordingly, she organized cooking and sewing classes in all the rural schools of the county. Visiting two schools a day she started the

REACHING THE YOUNGER GENERATION

INTRUSTED WITH THE COOKING OF A COUNTY Mildred Henton's profession is that of teaching domestic science to the farm women of Pettis County, Missouri.

rounds. A small oil-stove or a flat-top heater, together with a few bowls, pans and a table covered with oilcloth, constituted the necessary outfit. One day the girls were given lessons in cooking, the next day it was plain sewing, and so on, school after school, until every farm girl in the county was reached with the lesson, and reached at that plastic age when instruction leaves the best impression. Even the boys are permitted to attend the classes and many a Pettis County farm boy now can not only make a passable tomato soup, but can sew on his own buttons and attend to the ordi

nary duties of housekeeping in a really creditable manner. Now Miss Henton is making the rounds of the farm houses a day or two or perhaps even more in each one as the case may be, to teach the mother and the grown-up daughters how to make the home habitable, sanitary and satisfying. The food of the baby, the proper preparation of meals for the grown-ups, precautions against the spread of diseases, tasty preparation of "left-overs" so as to cut

T

HE fast mail comes roaring up the track toward the station; a little door in the swaying mail car opens and a clerk tosses a sack to the platform; an iron hook whisks a pouch from the station pedestal into the car; a cloud of dust, a shattering, clattering roar, and the mail train is gone.

It is a picturesque process; but it is also a dangerous one. Letters, packages and sack are sometimes ground beneath the wheels; occasionally one of the boys on the platform is killed by a flying pouch; now and then an engineman leaning too far out strikes a suspended mail pouch. There were 189 accidents in 1914.

These dangers form the reason for Albert Hupp's invention. It is a device that automatically exchanges as many as twenty-six bags of mail between the car and the station. It catches pouches con

taining eggs, fruit, or letters, at railroad speed, without injuring the pouches or their contents, and does so without possible danger to the mail crew. It is entirely automatic, and cannot make a mistake or fail.

The mechanism of the Hupp device is driven by the revolving axle of the car itself. It is tripped into action by a rocker block set between the rails at a point about one hundred and seventyfive yards from the station. When the train approaches, and the block sets the mechanism in motion, without any attention from the crew the doors of the car open, an iron hand reaches out and seizes the waiting mail, a chute drops the mail to be deposited at the station, both devices are withdrawn, and the car doors are closed. The bags of mail are gently rolled to the floor of the car ready for sorting, and the chute may then be filled with sacks for the next station. The

clerks do not handle the mail except when it is in the car, and there is no danger to any of them; while the clearance of the cranes at the stations is so great that an engineman cannot be struck by one and there is no danger to the loco

each tached to the shaft are three cams, of which performs one of the operations. The first one opens the doors and holds them open as the station is being passed, and then closes them; the other two extend the receiving hand and the delivery chute and when the mail is exchanged, withdraw them. The delivery chute is built as high and wide as the doors of the car, so that it can be filled with mail pouches if desired. The mechanism tilts the bottom and lets the sacks slide out to the station trough. The steel hand collects a sack every four feet and slides it gently to the floor of the mail car. All the operations are figured out in terms of

THE NEW MAIL-CATCHING DEVICE

It snatches up and delivers as many sacks as desired, with perfect safety to all concerned, and by the automatic operation of machinery.

motive crew. No flying sack can strike an occupant of the platform, because the mail is received in a great trough at the station.

Since the mechanism is run by the axle, no matter what the speed of the train may be, the operation always takes place at the proper point to do the work. The mechanism is so arranged that when the car axle makes one hundred and fifteen revolutions, the mechanism of the ex

MECHANISM THAT SUPPLANTS THE MEN

the number of feet the car runs, and hence no mistake can occur. Should it be desired to pass a station without using the device, a lever will throw it out of gear.

The present iron hook is able to handle only one or two sacks. The new system can be built to handle as many as one hundred and twenty, should it be