A BREAD EXPERIMENT.
For a long time it had been the wish of the manager and directors of the Baking Society to introduce a natural working day into the bread trade, and they had done their best some years earlier to have the matter taken up by the societies and the public, but without success. Now, in the autumn of 1905, another attempt was made, a squad of bakers beginning work at 9 a.m.; the bread thus baked being delivered on the following morning. A number of the societies in Glasgow and neighbourhood were induced to take up the sale of this bread, with the result that the sales speedily rose; but after a trial which lasted several months the scheme was abandoned, as the directors found that instead of helping the general work of delivery it was proving a hindrance to that work.
This decision of the committee met with a considerable amount of opposition from delegates to the quarterly meeting, but the directors were not in a position to do other than they had done. The real obstacle was to be found in the fact that the public insisted on having new bread, and with a number of the bakers beginning work late in the day for the production of “natural working day” bread, as it had been named, there was not labour enough in the early morning to meet the demand for new bread by ten o’clock. Thus the second attempt of the Baking Society directors to introduce a natural working day into the baking trade came to naught, through no fault of theirs, but because of a public who would insist on having bread steaming from the ovens.