Yellow Bread 313 



them, some day, with rich chicken gravy. And pork "white 

 meat" gravy well made and served with hot batter-cakes, 

 grits or pones is not to be sniffed at. 



Corn, grits and salt pork are the food of the Piedmont area 

 where pellagra ravages so many lives. But neither corn nor 

 pork causes pellagra. The disease is brought about not by what 

 the poor southern whites eat, but by what they don't eat. It is 

 their sins of omission which have laid them low. 



When the story of the pellagra sufferers in this country 

 broke over the world at large, there was a great hue and cry 

 against corn. The accusation of causing pellagra was brought 

 against our national cereal. All over the country people, who 

 all their lives had eaten corn, suddenly became afraid of it. 

 Being good business men, the wheat flour millers and the 

 manufacturers of wheat foods did not miss this opportunity 

 to push their products. 



The people who raised the loudest outcry apparently over- 

 looked the fact that during the two centuries in which Amer- 

 icans were conquering the wilderness, fighting the Indians, 

 French and English, building towns, roads, universities, cities 

 and a Great Tradition, the cereal which figured largest in their 

 diet was corn. The men who signed the Declaration of Inde- 

 pendence ate corn. I never heard that one of them had pellagra. 

 The Powhatan knew no cereal but maize. He lived to be over 

 eighty; and though enormously fat, was also possessed of a 

 physical vigor which filled the young English settlers with pro- 

 found respect. 



The early American corn-eaters ate, with the corn, wild 

 game, wild fruits, in which this country abounded, and vege- 

 tables of many sorts. They drank milk, and quantities of home- 

 brewed beer. John Cotton said that milk and ministers were 

 the only things cheap in New England. Cider cost only a few 

 shillings a barrel. John Adams advocated temperance reform; 

 but to the end of his life on the same July fourth on which 

 Jefferson died he drank a large tankard of hard cider every 

 morning when he first got out of bed. 



