2 Tlie Composition and Food Value of Bread. 



possessed the soft starchy kernel and thick tough skin of the 

 varieties commonly grown in Great Britian, it could pulverise 

 the flour without unduly tearing the skin, and thus render 

 possible such a separation of bran from flour as the more 

 fastidious tastes of the people of the nineteenth century de- 

 manded. But already in 1870 home-grown wheat could 

 supply little more than half the breadstuffs of the population 

 of the United Kingdom. Since that date the population has 

 greatly increased, and the area of land under wheat consider- 

 ably decreased, so that at the present time four-fifths of the 

 wheat consumed in the United Kingdom is imported from 

 abroad. 



Now many of the wheats imported into this country from 

 abroad differ from home-grown wheats in two characters 

 which for the present argument are of the greatest importance. 

 They are much harder, and their skin is much less tough. 

 Consequently, when ground in the stone mills of forty years 

 ago, they yielded a flour which failed to produce bread to suit 

 the public taste. If the stones were set to pulverise sufficiently 

 the hard and horny kernel, then the brittle skin was so severely 

 treated that it could not be efficiently separated as bran, and a 

 dark coloured flour resulted. Such flour was rapidly ousted 

 from the markets by the fine white flours imported from 

 America, where the new process of roller milling had taken 

 root. This process, an entirely new departure in the milling 

 industry, had arisen first in Hungary, as a consequence of the 

 necessity for dealing with the typically hard and thin skinned 

 wheats, produced in that country, in such a manner as to suit 

 the growing fastidiousness in the feeding habits of the people. 

 It was taken up at once by American millers, no doubt for 

 similar reasons, and at once became the prevailing milling 

 process in that country. American millers began to send flour 

 to England which soon proved to be more to the public taste 

 than the darker coloured flours made in stone mills from hard 

 brittle skinned foreign wheats. Under these conditions the 

 imports of flour increased at the expense of the imports of 

 wheat, and this state of things was responsible for two impor- 

 tant results. The importation of flour milled in America 

 retained for the cattle feeders of that country a cheap and 

 plentiful supply of concentrated food in the shape of the offals 

 from the rapidly extending and prosperous roller milling 

 industry, and at the same time deprived English graziers of an 

 equivalent amount of raw material. This was a serious 

 handicap to the cattle raising industry of this country in its 

 competition with imported meat. The home milling industry, 

 too, suffered seriously from American competition, and for a 

 time was in a state of great depression. 



