502 



THE FARMER'S MAGAZINE. 



pockets. Alas, that the mauly instinct of sport, which is so 

 strong in all of us Englishmen— which sends Oswell's 

 single-handed against the mightiest beasts that walk the 

 earth, and takes the poor Cockney journeyman out a ten 

 miles' walk almost before daylight on the rare Summer 

 holiday mornings, to angle with rude tackle in reservoir or 

 canal— should be dragged through such mire as this in 

 many an English shire in our day ! If English landlords 

 want to go on shooting game much longer, they must give 



up selling it. For if selling game becomes the rule, and 

 not the exception (as it seems likely to do before long), good- 

 bye to sport in England. Every man who loves his country 

 more than his pleasures or his pocket — and, thank God, that 

 includes the great majority of us yet, however much we may 

 delight in gun and rod, let Mr. Bright and every demagogue 

 in the land say what they please — will cry, " Down with it, 

 and lend a hand to put it down for ever." — Tom Brown, in 

 Macmillan's Magazine for May. 



A NEW SYSTEM OF BREAD-MAKING. 



The manufacture of the " daily bread" for the sup- 

 ply of nearly 3,000,000 people in the metropolis, is no 

 trivial affair ; and the Low and the when and the 

 where it is done, day by day or night by night, are 

 questions of some imiiortance to the general public. 

 The millers, the master-bakers, and their journeymen 

 are also parties interested, and the 2,G00 bakers 

 in London and its suburbs doing their ten, twenty, or 

 thirty sacks a week, could tell a tale of production and 

 consumption, of profit and loss, which would be very in- 

 teresting in a social and statistical point of view to get at. 



The bakers of London, like other traders, have their 

 occasional troubles to contend with. At one time the 

 death-in-the-pot cry of the Analytical Commission 

 frightens the public out of its propriety, by the hor- 

 rible amount of adulteration said to prevail j and the 

 only wonder is how the bread-eating public, young and 

 old, have managed to live and thrive so well for so long 

 a period upon such vile ingredients. Bread, however, 

 keeps up ia consumption, and alum, chalk, and po- 

 tatoes, or whatever else may be the additions to 

 the flour, have no baneful effect, and the nine days' 

 bugbear is soon lost sight of. Then comes the charge of 

 short weight and high prices to be thrown in the bakers' 

 teeth ; to be followed by the strike, or complaints of 

 his workmen. And now another thunderbolt is 

 launched against the fraternity of the miller and 

 his men. Dr. John Dauglish has sought to take 

 the town by storm by publishing before the mem- 

 bers of the Society of Arts the superior advan. 

 tages of his " new system of bread-making ;" which 

 " he issanguine enough to believe possesses many and 

 great advantages over any hitherto practised." Even 

 doctors, however, will disagree ; for many very sci- 

 entific men of the medical profession, fully competent 

 to give an opinion, as well as practical men in the 

 trade, were not disposed to concede all the advantages 

 claimed for unfermented bread. Dr. Dauglish's sys- 

 tem is announced to remove all the evils complained 

 of, viz., "the spoiling of flour, the necessity for using 

 alum, the long hours of labour, and the consequent un- 

 healthiuess of the trade of the baker." 



Verily there is a Daniel come to judgment. If the 

 subject broached had rested merely on the merits of 

 the new system, by which unfermented dough, is got 

 ready in half-an-hour, instead of fermented, which re- 

 qmres many hours, and the chemical questions at 



issue had been the sole points discussed, we should 

 have been content to let the matter stand by the issue 

 raised. But, not content with this, the Doctor tra- 

 velled out of the record into divers allegations as to 

 the character of those engaged in the trade, the mode 

 of conducting the business, and the unhealthiness of 

 the occupation. 



In all trades which supply great articles of consump- 

 tion, whether butchers, bakers, grocers, publicans, or 

 eating-house keepers, there is unfortunately so much 

 rivalry and competition, that there is scarcely a decent 

 living for any one to be obtained, while many who em- 

 bark in it are very soon ruined ; and some few there are 

 who fail, and begin again, time after time, heedless of 

 consequences. Dr. Dauglish told the public that " In 

 the baking trade, as in most trades, there are different 

 grades of respectability and credit ; but there are two 

 great divisions — the high-priced, and the low-priced, or 

 ' cutting,' as they are called. In each of these two 

 divisions there are, of course, many subdivisions. 

 There are some — but these are comparatively very few 

 — who are men of substance, possessing considerable 

 capital of their own, and independent of any system of 

 credit allowed by the millers. They are, consequently, 

 la the most favourable position possible for the pur- 

 chase of their flour, both cheap and good. But by 

 far the greater number of bakers trade almost en- 

 tirely with the capital of the millers, through 

 a most vicious system of credit, which operates most 

 prejudicially on their purchases of flour. It is this sys- 

 tem of credit that has given rise to and perpetuates 

 most of the commercial evils of which the baker has to 

 complain ; and which, whilst it exists, will ever oppose 

 the most effectual obstacle in the way of permanent 

 amendment. In England, where the trade of the 

 baker is not interfered with by legal restriction, any 

 man is at perfect liberty to commence it whenever he 

 pleases ; and as the article bread has not only become 

 the essential want of every individual, but a daily one 

 also, a single addition to the enormous number of 

 bakers engaged in the production of small quantities 

 increases the total of production so imperceptibly, that 

 a new beginner has but comparatively little difficulty 

 in finding, where every man is a consumer, an imme- 

 diate market for his commodity among that large class 

 of persons who are always ready to patronize the last 

 new comer." 



