42 FLIGHT FROM THE CITY 



alone sufficient to make the investment in the flour- 

 mill pay us handsome dividends. But the saving on 

 white flour is, I believe, much greater, and consists of 

 other savings than those calculable in terms of money. 



We use no white flour, except occasionally for 

 pastry. White flour, I believe, along with white sugar 

 and white rice, is one of the most harmful products for 

 which we are indebted to the factory system. All 

 these bleached and whitened foodstuffs are made white 

 by the mills which produce them not only for the 

 sake of their appearance, but in order to preserve 

 them during the long period of time which elapses 

 between the time when they are ground in the mill 

 and the time they are consumed by the public. Den- 

 tists will tell you that these white foods soften the 

 teeth; dietitians and doctors that they cause consti- 

 pation. Personally, I hold them suspect for the great 

 white plague of tuberculosis. 



White flour is only one of the three products into 

 which wheat is converted by our mills. The white 

 flour we consume in bread and pastry; the middlings 

 are bleached and sold to us for breakfast food as 

 Wheatena of Cream of Wheat, and the bran is sold 

 to us in neat packages to cure us of the constipation 

 which the white flour causes. Dr. Kellogg, of the Bat- 

 tle Creek Sanitarium, who first hit on the bright idea 

 of marketing bran for this purpose, has made a for- 

 tune out of selling this by-product of modern milling 

 to the deluded American public. Yet as long as they 

 insist upon consuming white flour, the bran is an 



