Picture of essential kitchen utensils from Marion Nicholson’s 1912 Fannie Farmer Cookbook. Jamie Oliver has a video on amazon.co.uk about the same thing for 2011. For his book 30 Minute Meals.
( I still have some utensils belonging to Marion, those enameled kinds popular in the 1910 era. I wonder if they are toxic, or more toxic than today’s utensils?)
This Christmas season my youngest son was over, on and off, and one day he sat in the living room watching ‘a marathon’ of the British reality show Chopped, I think it is called, where professional chefs are put to the test, making 3 course meals out of crazy ingredients.
“Why are there only men chefs?” I naively asked. (Well, there was one woman.)
“Because commerical chefs are almost always men,” he replied.
“How come?” I asked.
“Because women can’t take the heat in a commercial kitchen,” he replied, or something to that affect. (He works part-time as a chef in a commercial kitchen.)
“Why?” I repeated. “When women still do most of the cooking in the home.”
“Because the atmosphere in a kitchen is like a war zone. “
Well, I deferred to this opinion, because it is obvious that commercial chefs are mostly men, and young men, at that, even if plenty of TV chefs are women.
And in this case, the pay’s not great. No, it’s a labour of love.
And I didn’t have any ready answer, anyway, as I would have had, at 20. And I don’t argue with my kids, not any more. What’s the use?
But after reading more of Angels in the Workplace, about women in the garment industry in Canada, and about the 1912 Eaton’s strike of garment workers, I have to wonder.
Women’s work in the factory was under-valued because of just that, because they performed these duties “for free” in the home.
In the sultry month of July, 1912, when many Montreal Garment workers were on strike, Margaret writes in a letter to her husband Norman: “We are not doing much, just some sewing when it is not too hot.”
Margaret cooked and Margaret sewed. She was terrific at it. In the McLeod genealogy I discovered, the words written after Margaret’s name: “won many awards for her baking and crafts.”
But she still couldn’t earn her own living and this frustrated her in 1912 when her family was in dire financial trouble due to her son Herb’s lack of responsibility and she complained as much, in those very words: “If only I could earn my own living.”
(Taking in boarders was the traditional way middle class matrons made extra money, but Margaret did not want to do that and be tied to the stove. She was contemplating at one point going to live as a housekeeper for her daughters in the city.)
I wonder what she felt about the 1912 garment workers strike, if she heard about it. (In my book, Flo in the City, I’ll have Marion explain it to her.)
Did she feel, as many upper-crust social activists felt, that the girls were plain lucky to be getting paid for doing this kind of work? Or did she sympathize with them as downtrodden members of the ‘working class’. In letters, it is clear, she considered her own family working class.
(Remember, some one in the Nicholson clan cut out an article titled “Away from Nature” about the unhealthy nature of factory work, especially for girls.)
Yes, that’s how I’ll write it in Flo in the City. Marion will be for the strikers, Margaret won’t be as sympathetic and Flora will be on the sidelines, listening. She will identify with the young girls her age out on strike (after hearing that some young girls are forced to ‘date’ their bosses) and she will be happy she is going to work as a teacher at the Montreal Board, for 550. a year, even if that salary is 250. less than male graduates earn to start.
She ends up working in Griffintown in William Lunn School. I have a 1913 letter where she says the school is closed on the Jewish Holidays. Therefore she will be teaching the children of these garment workers. Nice symmetry.)
