[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.]
Sin, –Your article on "The New Bread" sets one thinking. Those of iti who can remember the fine men of fifty and sixty years ago are often struck by the deterioration in physique of the present-day agricultural labourer. One seldom sees now a man of over middle height or of more than medium strength. I knew well a man who, in my time, habitually carried two sacks of wheat (about 500 lbs.) strapped together from the wagon to the mill ; he said it saved time. As a boy I was told that the supreme feat of strength used to be for a man to stand in a bushel measure, and, unaided, lift a sack of wheat on to his own back. I have never seen this done, but I know that it was done, and that men used to meet in rivalry to do it.
In those days there was a mill in every village where there was any water ; they are all gone now, or if there is one left it is merely used for grist purposes, but then the wheat grown in the village was mainly ground in the village, and eaten in the village too. At harvest the cutting by hand left more straws on the ground than the self-binders do, and every household turned out its every member for gleaning or leasing. After harvest a day was set apart for thrashing the leased corn. Each householder's lot was thrashed and dressed separately: it would then be sent to the local mill and would come back as flour to be baked at home, and as offal for the pig. I have known a family send six bushels of wheat to be milled ; this provided bread for many weeks. But the roller mills killed the small village mills and cultivated the taste for white bread, the self-binders and horse-rakes destroyed the leasing, and the deterioration in physique has followed.
It is remarkable that these fine men of two generati6ns ago had passed through the "hungry 'forties" in their youth, and, as one of them told me, had been accustomed to live for weeks on "a lump of barley bread and a wad of swede greens."--4 I am, Sir, &e.,
Previous page
