> Unfortunately, no one has as yet devised a satisfactory machine for automatically sweeping and scrubbing floors, and it is likely that these labors will be generally performed by hand to the end of the chapter. But the toil has been lightened by improvements in the implements used for such purposes, and there will undoubtedly be further advances in that direction. The number of patented mop wringers, for instance, is very considerable, and rotary floor sweepers, like street sweepers, are already in use.

Sure enough, the modern vacuum cleaner would arrive less than 30 years later, invented by department store janitor James Murray Spangler in 1907, who sold the patent to William Henry Hoover.