What Is It?
Subjects
Social Studies, History, Information Technology
Themes
Change, Ways of life
Resources
- Mail-order catalogues on this site
- Photographs of artifacts from Eaton's catalogues (links
below)
- Teacher hints (below)
Description
- Ask students to select an object from the list of photographs below.
Note
its name.
- By using the historical catalogue pages
accessed
from this site, and with the help of the indexes, students must find out
when
it was used, what it was used for, and what it cost.
Objects
- Foot warmer
- Shoe and harness repair kit
- Pair of sad iron handles and bases
- Meat grinder
- Foot-powered sewing machine
- Electric toaster
- Electric washing machine.
Teacher Hints
Foot warmer, ca ?
On a cold winter's night in a home heated by a
woodstove,
a stoneware foot warmer filled with hot water would have been a welcome
addition
to a bed. Foot warmers were also used in carriages and in early
automobiles that
didn't have heaters.
Shoe and harness repair kit, ca 1900
This "Combination Family Cobbler/Tinker &
Harness Mender"
contained the tools required to perform repairs to shoes and horse
harness. Included
in this kit were children- and adult-sized lasts, or shoe forms, a
shoemaker's
hammer, a tack hammer, a leather punch, and a variety of nails.
Pair of sad iron bases and handles, ca 1900-50
Before women used electric irons to press clothes and
linens,
they used sad irons. Sad irons were usually sold as sets with one
detachable
wooden handle and three cast iron bases. Women heated two or three bases
on the
wood stove at a time. They attached the handle to one preheated base, used
it
to iron until it cooled down, and then replaced it with a heated base from
the
stove.
Meat grinder, ca 1910-50
At a time when people raised their own livestock and did
their
own butchering, many people made their own sausages and ground meats by
using
a hand-powered meat grinder. After clamping the grinder to a table, they
would
drop chunks of meat into the funnel-like hopper and turn the handle. An
augur-like
blade inside would grind up the meat and the resulting ground meat would
squeeze
out through the opening on the side into a sausage casing or a bowl.
Foot-powered sewing machine, ca 1910-50
Eaton's offered its own brand of sewing machine in
its
catalogues. This Eatonia sewing machine would have been fastened to a
wooden
cabinet with a foot-pedal underneath. By pumping the pedal with her foot
and
guiding the fabric with her hands, a woman could have sewn clothing that
was
modeled on the latest catalogue fashions.
Electric toaster, ca 1920
This electric "turn-over" toaster was used to
toast
one piece of bread at a time. When one side was toasted, the user flipped
the
bread over so the other side could be toasted too.
Electric washing machine, 1926
"All the old, wearying, back-breaking rubbing and
scrubbing
of wash-tub days done away with for you," boasted the advertisement
for
this electric washing machine in the Eaton's spring-and-summer 1926
catalogue.
However, most Canadian homes did not yet have electricity in 1926 and
women would
continue to do the laundry using washtubs, washboards, and their own
muscle power
for a few more decades.
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