Electric washing machines were a new wonder? There were washing machines long before the electric ones came out. They were made by Maytag and were gasoline engine driven. I have an antique Maytag two cylinder engine. My dad had several.
But, back to the point of the article, you still had to buy gasoline to run the things.
We can’t escape paying for electricity in today’s world, and other little goodies like food. But we can become more self reliant, independent and above all learn to separate needs and wants when spending our money.
“”I have an antique Maytag two cylinder engine. My dad had several.”” I have a bunch as well as stationaries up to 8 hp. Also have some 32 volt power plants they used for years before electricity came to the farms.
When I was very young my mother did laundry in a Maytag washer with a two-cycle engine. In rural York County, PA we didn’t get electricity until WWII ended. The REA came down our dirt road and hooked us up. We farmed with two teams of horses and a team of mules. Until then our radio was a big floor model Philco with a big battery in it that would last about a year. On that radio we heard Don McNeil’s Breafast Club in the mornings, soap operas like Stella Dallas or Portia Faces Life in the afternoons, and The Lone Ranger or The Great Gildersleeve or Fibber McGee & Molly at night. We also got a water pump and no longer had to carry every drop of water for cooking, bathing and laundry from the spring house 75 yards from the house. We got a refrigerator and a freezer, and a gas range that burned bottled gas; so the big old Columbian cookstove that burned wood or coal went bye-byes. Each room in the house got at least one light fixture with one light bulb, and the beautiful, elegant, ornate old Aladdin and/or Ray-O-Lite gas parlor lamps were discarded. But we got no inside plumbing for bathing or toilet use, and any hot water needed for cooking or bathing had to be heated on the gas range. And the outhouse remained until we moved to town in 1947. From then on, we were part of the modern world. And as children, we moved up from a one-room schoolhouse and brownbagging our lunch; to a consolidated elementary school with a cafeteria and restrooms. And then came a hand crank telephone on the wall, and we were LIVIN’! For whatever all that is worth.