Early in 1916 the societies gave tangible form to their recognition of the strenuous work which was being imposed on the directors by circumstances brought about by the war; this tangible recognition taking the form of an all-round increase in salaries and allowances for committee work.
Yet strenuous as had been their work during those first two years of the war, and great as had been their difficulties, the two years on which they were about to enter were to provide even more strenuous work and to produce difficulties which were so great as to prove almost insurmountable. They were to provide conditions of bread baking which were to change loaf bread from being one of the most palatable forms of food into for the time being one of the most detestable and detested.
While the Congress was meeting at Leicester in 1915, the news arrived that Mr Duncan M‘Culloch, who had done so much to build up the Baking Society, had passed away, and fitting reference was made to his decease at the quarterly meeting in June, and also at the annual meeting with the representatives of the Irish societies in July. His death removed a man to whom the shareholders of the Baking Society, and particularly the shareholders in Ireland, owed much, and many were the expressions of regret when the news became generally known.
CHAPTER XIX.
BREAD BAKING UNDER CONTROL.
FAMINE POSSIBILITIES—CHANGES IN QUALITY OF FLOUR—FOOD CONTROL DEPARTMENT ESTABLISHED—BAKERS’ DIFFICULTIES—THE POSITION OF THE U.C.B.S.—A BIG LAND PURCHASE—ILLNESS OF THE PRESIDENT—A NATURAL WORKING DAY BY ORDER—ITS DIFFICULTIES—ENTERTAINMENTS TO SOLDIERS—BRANCH BAKERIES—IRELAND—LEADHILLS—ROTHESAY—BUTE CO-OPERATIVE SOCIETY FORMED—SUBSIDISED BREAD—AN INDUSTRIAL COUNCIL—DELIVERY DIFFICULTIES—EMPLOYEES ON MILITARY SERVICE—THE END OF THE TASK.
The first two years of the war had brought difficulties in their train which the bakers of the country found considerable difficulty in overcoming; but the conditions under which they were called on to produce bread in the following two years were such as had not been experienced for at least a hundred years, and there came a time when the country was faced with the possibility of having to do without bread altogether for a period. Fortunately this possibility did not become reality, but it was the cause of material changes in the quality of the flour used for breadmaking and of the conditions under which the bread was made and sold which would have seemed impossible before the war began. By the early winter of 1916 the possibility of a condition of things obtaining which would prevent the importation of foodstuffs, and particularly of wheat, in sufficient quantities to provide full supplies for the population of the British Isles began to force itself on the Government, so they appointed a gentleman to the position of Food Controller and conferred on him almost despotic powers. One result of this control of food was a drastic interference with the milling of flour. In Scotland the millers produced flour in ordinary times which contained a little more than 70 per cent. of the wheat; the first fruits of the new order of things was a regulation that the extraction from the wheat should be increased, by about 8 per cent.
There can be no doubt that under the circumstances this regulation was necessary. There was a time in the history of these islands when practically all the food consumed by the people was grown in the country; but during the lifetime of the last generation this position had gradually altered until Britain was dependent on wheat imported from abroad for four-fifths of the bread supply of her people. There had always been pessimists who foresaw, as a result of a war with a maritime power, a danger of interruption to the steady supply of seaborne food which was necessary if the people were to be saved from starvation, and who uttered warnings which passed more or less unheeded; but the time had arrived when these warnings seemed likely to become justified. Towards the end of 1916 it was becoming apparent that there was likely to be a world shortage of foodstuffs, and particularly of wheat, and doubts were being expressed in well-informed circles as to whether there would be supplies sufficient to enable the people to carry on until the 1917 crop was ready. While this world shortage was due in a measure to the war, because of the number of men who usually devoted themselves to agricultural pursuits who were then engaged in war work of one form or another or serving with the Forces, it was also due in large measure to a world shortage for which Nature, through the medium of a bad summer and a wet autumn, was responsible.
The result was that in this country the regulations affecting flour extraction became more and more rigorous, until not only were millers extracting a proportion approaching 25 per cent. additional from the wheat, rejecting practically nothing but the outer husk, but many other varieties of cereal, even including a considerable proportion of maize, were pressed into service and mixed with the flour from which bread had to be baked. In some cases potato flour was also used for this purpose. Fortunately, the famine which had threatened in the summer of 1917 was staved off, but the inveterate submarine campaign waged by the Germans during the whole of that year was responsible for the destruction of many food-carrying ships and of many thousands of tons of wheat and flour which were being conveyed to this country from America as well as of many other varieties of food.
BAKERS’ DIFFICULTIES.
All this was the cause of much worry to bakers. They had been accustomed to the manufacture of bread from flour the quality of which was well known and regulated with almost scientific accuracy, but under the new order of things they found the knowledge which they had acquired laboriously over a long period of years almost useless to them. So long as they were dealing with wheat flour, even if that flour did contain a large proportion of offal which had formerly been used to feed cattle, the position was not quite so bad, for most of them had been in the habit of baking a greater or lesser proportion of what was termed “wheaten” and “wholemeal” bread. But when flour produced from rye, barley, and even maize had to be added their troubles began, for only by chemical analysis was it possible for them to determine the proportions in which the various cereals were used, and these proportions were varied arbitrarily week by week at the whim of the Wheat Commission authorities; while the millers were absolutely prohibited from giving any information on the subject. Thus, when after a series of experiments they had ascertained the method by which they could produce the best loaf from a given flour, they suddenly discovered that the mixture had been altered, and that their experiments had to begin all over again; and this continued to be the position for some time even after the end of the war.