EMANCIPATION OF WOMAN.

If the study of the natural or elementary food question had for its object no other purpose than giving to the human family their birth-right of health and years, and aiding their mental faculties in reaching a higher development, it would be of sufficient importance to justify the most profound attention of every woman in a civilized state. But when it is considered that its final solution may not only accomplish this, but emancipate her from the slavery of the kitchen and the cook stove, it becomes one of the most important questions that can possibly engage the minds of intelligent people.

We believe that nature has provided a diet that can be selected and eaten without changing its form or chemical properties by the application of either heat or cold, and which will be perfect. We have proven that if correctly used it will in all cases bring natural results, which are always healthful results. We have been led to these conclusions by information gained from the school of observation and experience at our own table, as well as by seeing the most obstinate and chronic diseases gradually disappear from members of our own family and others under the magic effect of proper feeding, until perfect health was the result.

Aside from the effect of a natural food diet upon the health and happiness of people, its most important feature is that it promises to solve for woman another most perplexing question, namely, the struggle with the servant.

When the house is provided, and the woman who has dreamed of a true home is settled therein, it gradually dawns upon her that instead of being a queen, she is an imprisoned vassal. She finds that she must stand over a miniature furnace for an hour in the morning and breathe the poisonous odor of broiling flesh, and spend another hour among the grease and slime of pots and dishes, instead of occupying that time walking in the life-giving sunlight and drinking in nature’s purifying air.

She soon realizes that the fires of the morning are hardly out until those for the noon are kindled and the labors from luncheon often lap over into the evening, and those of evening far into the night. The throne over which she dreamed of wielding the queenly sceptre has been transformed into a fiery furnace, gilded with greasy pots and plates, blood and bones, over which she has unfurled the dish-rag, and by the common custom of her country, it waves over her helpless head as an ensign of her rank and profession, under which she is really a slave.

The home of which she dreamed has laid upon her a confinement and labor but little lighter than that which society puts upon the criminal who has violated its laws, and whom it has deprived of his liberty.

The picture of a husband and wife growing old together, walking hand in hand up to the noon of life, and turning over the hill and marching down toward the evening of old age together is only painted by poets and dreamers, most likely old bachelors and old maids,—it is not true.

The average husband and wife do not grow old together. The wife spends six or seven hours of each day endeavoring to prepare food and create dishes that will appeal to and satisfy the perverted taste and appetite of her husband, and probably the short-notice “friend to dinner.” The anxiety and mental tension that she undergoes from day to day and year to year wear upon her form and face, and like the long dripping of water upon the stone, leave their mark. This mark is nervous exhaustion and premature old age.

It is from this deplorable condition of womankind that the use of uncooked or natural foods will surely bring relief and freedom. In hundreds of cases that have come to our knowledge where this experiment has been honestly tried, it has resulted in a revolution in the household culinary department, and in giving the wife enough mental and physical freedom to allow her to preserve her youthful charms, which is her solemn duty, and to cultivate those higher faculties upon which every woman must depend for attraction and happiness with advancing old age.

It may not free woman wholly from the labors of the kitchen, but it will prove an important factor in lifting her mentally, morally and physically into an entirely different sphere.

It is utterly impossible for a woman to spend six hours out of twelve in the dense and smoky atmosphere of a kitchen over a roasting fire, breathing air laden with the fumes of burning flesh and steaming foods, and give to her progeny those beautiful faculties which are their birth-right, and which have been the dream of her dreams.

It is also impossible for a woman to construct her body, her brain and her heart with all their varied sympathies, desires and emotions out of such material as the flesh of dead animals, fermented fruit (wine), fermented bread and the innumerable narcotics and cooked or devitalized foods with which the average table is laden, and think beautiful thoughts and keep her sympathies and senses of justice and mercy in that beautiful and highly civilized realm where the cultivated and advanced woman, especially the mother, should dwell.

We are thoroughly convinced,—convinced from experience, that great school from which all true knowledge comes,—that the first and most important step in nature toward making a perfect woman lies in the selection of the food material out of which the human body and all the restless flood of emotions that ceaselessly ebb and flow in its strange mechanism, are made.