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| Mechanization took butter-making
out of the hands of women and
put it into commercial creameries
that employed men. Not all women
protested the loss of personal
income and prestige, however,
because churning by hand one,
two, or three times a week was
hard work. Even so, changes in
butter-making were neither even
in pace nor uniform in application,
and the old ways persisted here
and there. |
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Main Street, Charlestown,
Massachusetts, 1900 Photograph by the Boston Elevated Railway Company
Courtesy of the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities |
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Though wrapped in parchment paper and packed in round
boxes, butter made for sale in the city had often gone
rancid by the time it arrived on the dinner table. Such
butter often came from old or poorly cooled cream and,
like these round boxes stacked in the unrefrigerated store
window, received uneven or no cooling in transit. Some
butter-makers added extra salt and sugar to mask the taste
and forestall spoilage.
Butter-making at the H.P. Hood
Creamery, Derry, New Hampshire,
circa 1910
Courtesy of the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities
Hired men worked the machinery that made it possible to
produce butter in factory-like settings. |
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