ingly counterbalanced the deficient palatableness which some allege to be a characteristic of such bread.

The working-classes will be difficult to reform in this particular. So much is certain. Quite apart from any conviction of the desirability of a thing, they are essentially prone to run in grooves and to stick to preferences with a blind dogmatism in all matters affecting the habits of daily life. Experiment, as such, has no interest for them. Mr. Herbert Spencer remarks that, 'on contrasting different classes in the same society, it is observable that the least (socially) developed are the most averse to change. Among [such] an improved method is difficult to introduce; and even a new kind of food is usually disliked.' Taste, however instituted, naturally operates single-handed in the choice of food where there exists no intelligently based desire to alter the habit, and so to educate the taste.

Added to which, the working-classes of England have hitherto had no reason for questioning their own liking for white bread. They see white bread to be eaten by those to whom the price of a loaf is a small concern. They assume that the richer classes, who can eat what they please, eat what is nicest. White bread, though as cheap as brown, is eaten by the eaters of many good things that are not cheap. Something like this constitutes, I suspect, one of the unconscious arguments lying in the white-bread scale of a poor man's preferences.

No one desires wholly to disregard the testimony of the palate. But one need not look far for evidence that it is often worse than a blind guide; prone to vitiation, and easily taught bad habits. To win its plastic co-operation in the cause of a good habit is worth an effort.

Meanwhile, it is by no means universally admitted by persons who have adopted it, that wheat-meal bread is unpalatable. Many prefer it to the most excellent of white bread. Its palatableness depends greatly on its making. Of course, it varies in quality just as other bread does; and one baker's wheat-meal bread is better than another's, just as one baker's white bread is better than another's, just because he is a better baker.1

There remains an argument to be considered which is sometimes carelessly advanced against the appropriation for bread-making purposes of those parts of the grain now used for other purposes. The facts are these: The fine flour required for white bread exists in the wheat to the extent of 70 to 75 per cent; 25 or, far more commonly, 30 per cent. of the strongest nourishment being set aside

• A Winchester farmer, who for years had used and firmly believed in bread made from whole meal, suggested some time since, in a letter to the Standard, that, in order to make the meal thoroughly palatable, the wheat grain should be more carefully selected than is commonly done at present. All'heads' and no 'tails,' he said, should be used; and the faulty grains should be rejected.

for the fattening of pigs and the foddering of cattle. In comment on these facts it is loosely said, 'What does it matter whether we take a given kind of nourishment in the form of wheat, or whether we take it in the form of meat made from animals that have been fed on the wheat?'

The answer to this is twofold. First, to quote the words of Dr. H. C. Bartlett: 'If we saved [that 25 per cent. of nutriment in the grain which we commonly throw to our cattle] not only should we be in pocket ourselves, but we should save sufficient to pay for one-half the staple food consumed by the whole of the paupers of this kingdom.' 'This,' Dr. Bartlett adds, 'is an important socio-economical consideration.' Secondly: From our present point of view-that is, concerning ourselves chiefly with the interests of the poor-this turning of wheat into meat which some economists seem disposed to admire, is further wasteful, because it is a roundabout and costly way of achieving an end near at hand. Meat is expensive, to begin with. It wastes enormously in cooking. It contains a very large percentage of mere water, for which one pays in buying it. Sometimes, too, cattle are a dead loss through disease. And, even setting aside all these considerations, the fact remains that the poorest classes, for whom and for whose children we chiefly desire to see the adoption of wheat-meal bread, are precisely the classes who ultimately derive none of this compensating nourishment from the animals fed on the wheat they lose.

To sum up. The Bread Reform League has been instituted, and its operations are conducted, mainly with a view to providing the classes who live chiefly on bread with a more nutritive kind of food than they can at present obtain. The reformers maintain, and facts of various orders bear them out in maintaining, that such an article of diet as is required to render children of the poor stronger, and better able to cope with the difficulties of their existence, is found in wheat-meal bread made of the decorticated and finely ground whole grain. They declare that such bread contains a larger number of nutrients, and these in wholesomer proportions, than white bread does; and that more hardship can be sustained, and more labour performed, upon wheat-meal bread alone, than upon white bread alone. No denial is forthcoming from any quarter which invalidates the inference drawn from the fact that the working classes of other countries. who live on whole-meal breads, and who require no meat at all, compare favourably with the English bread-feeding class. No one has been able to point out a diseased state of human life corresponding with a whole-meal or wheat-meal-eating section of any community, as the prevalence of rickets and of crumbly teeth corresponds with the white-bread-eating section.

1. As to the feebly uttered objections from the laboratory: In the hitherto almost entire absence of consistent dietetic experiment,

chemists are obliged to speak in the potential or the subjunctive mood. They consider the question at worst an open one. Meanwhile, no reason is put forward, even by chemists, that fairly favours the eating of unreformed starchy white bread by persons who can get little or nothing but bread to eat. Nor are chemists even agreed among themselves in looking coldly upon the especial line reform has taken in the recent efforts at bread reformation; while physiologists are unanimous in their approval alike of those efforts and their direction. Against the few scientific voices raised in hypothetical dissent, are heard the firmer tones of our most eminent chemists and physiologists cordially advocating the introduction of wheat-meal bread made as the reformers aim at making it. Professor Huxley has lately given his assent to the principles of the League. Professor Frankland, Professor Ray Lankester, Dr. W. B. Carpenter, Professor Church, Sir Thomas Watson, Professor Erasmus Wilson, and Dr. Pavey may also be named as among its warm supporters.

2. We have seen that, in order to prevail upon the needy classes to make experiment of this bread even when brought within easy and general reach, a prejudice has to be overcome, founded partly on the actual objections to common brown bread, and on the practical identification in the public mind of wheat-meal bread with other breads of a similar colour. There being no sound dietetic reasons for the popularity of white bread, example may be brought to bear in the overcoming of this prejudice. One thing is certain. No such forces were at work in the original adoption of white bread as a general article of food among English poor as are now at work to get rid of it as such. Neither a scientific nor a philanthropic impulse caused the crowding out of the old-fashioned meal by white flour. People liked the look and taste' of white bread; if they could get plenty of milk, meat, and eggs, they missed nothing by its adoption; and be it remembered that milk and meat were much less expensive then than they are now. Such people as did miss anything of health or vitality through being unable, even then, to afford meat and milk, were yet ignorant as to what it was they missed, and as to how cheaply to supply the need. In our day, not only has the use of white bread become among all classes a rooted habit to which the palate gives allegiance, but there is the argument of laziness: We like very well what we have got, and it saves trouble to go on as we are.' A present preference always coaxes the judgment to find it in the right. Taste and habit, however, appear in this case to be alike in the wrong, and the duty is urged upon us of acquiring a new preference and of creating a new fashion by the persevering trial of a new kind of bread.

3. Lastly, as to the economists' argument, that by giving our rejected bran to cattle it is elaborated into a superior human food, we have seen, first, that meat is dear, and is subject to disease, and so

that not all the food thus elaborated reaches human eaters after all; whilst next to none of it reaches the class for whom specially we here concern ourselves. Secondly, that so to argue is like telling a rich man to pay money in travelling fare, in order to go fifty miles round instead of five miles across; which proceeding, though on various accounts it may be worth the rich man's while, does not help the poor man to reach his destination at all, but, on the contrary, condemns him to stay where he is.

The whole matter discussed in this paper is a practical and perhaps a very prosy one. Yet, for those who believe in health as one of the chiefest props both of virtue and of gladness, the putting of as stout a staff of health in the hand of the poor man as may be, seems no trifling object to aim at. Were the children of the English poor a healthier set of little mortals than those of others, we might let their food alone. But observation refutes the supposition. Sanitary arrangements in general are better in English cities than elsewhere, yet the poor of our alleys are sicklier than those of cities where, with even less regard paid to the purification of air and water, richer breads are in common use.

Argument alone will not settle a practical point of this kind. There must be an array of facts derived from persevering and intelligent experiment, and it is maintained that as yet the bread experiment has not been, in England, sufficiently tried.

I have refrained from giving any of the detailed chemical analyses of wheat; and this on two accounts. The results of analysis are very variously given. Added to which, being myself no chemist, my selection of an authority would be without significance. One point seems, nevertheless, beyond question. The whole meal of the wheat contains 119 grains in the pound of the mineral matters valuable as nourishment, while a pound of white flour contains only 49 grains. The testimony of chemical analysis must, however, not be taken by itself, apart from the observed physiological results in the cases of populations respectively fed on bread of this kind, or of that. If the personal testimony of a social unit' be of any value whatever, I may say that I find wheat-meal bread both wholesome and palatable, and that since I have taken it I find it possible comfortably to dispense with meat more than once in the day. I began the use of the bread on the mere ground of giving a struggling reform fair personal trial; and I continue it on grounds of acquired preference.

6

The present organised attempt at bread-reformation must, like all other agitation movements, prove its fitness to meet an existing requirement, by survival until its task be completed. If rapid growth be any test of vigour and vitality, we may augur well for the future of its cause; for, one year ago it had no existence except in the consciousness and conscience of Miss Yates and a few of her friends;

whereas now it is a busy and recognised body of activity, having secured the adherence of numerous leading millers and bakers, who are willing to forward its aim by grinding the meal and by selling the bread it recommends.

A writer in the Corn Trade Journal remarks that it was not by mere agitation, by conferences and article-writing, that white bread obtained its firm footing in the public favour, but that commercial enterprise mainly effected its adoption; and he suggests that to the same agency the reformers should look for the general introduction of the rival bread. This may be true enough; yet, since the office of the league is purely uncommercial, it devolves upon all who sympathise with its object to endeavour, by use of influence and example, to create that demand which shall direct trade interests into the desired channel.

L. S. BEVINGTON.