Northern Times.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1859-03-17 00:00:00

THE NORTHERN TIMES THURSDAI, MARCH 17, 1859

thirty millions, can export, as the Americans have
done, some three millions of barrels of flour in a year
—much of it of very superior quality—must of course
be considered as having no ordinary experience in a
manufacture which, of all manufactures, is one of the
most important, from its furnishing the material for
the " staff of life."

It is, however, not this very valuable material,
flour, of which we would speak more particularly at
present, but the still more valuable purpose to which
it is applied,—the preparation of the " staff of life "

itself,—

" Bread that decaying man with strength supplies

As with flour for making bread, .so with the bread
itself, our American cousins are evidently going fast
a-head. of us. Having appropriated machinery
more closely and more extensively than we have
done to the work of their flour-mills, so now they
are doing the same to the operations. of their bake-
houses. There are now in the cities of New York,
Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Boston,—and very
likely others besides these,—bakehouses, or, as they
call them, bakeries, in which, to quote the descrip-
tion given of one of them, there is a process that

" substitutes steam-power for the failing human
muscle,—substitutes scientific precision of heat, for
the guess-so of the cook or the baker,—places the loaf
successively in thirty different parts of the oven to
secure advantages which are impossible while it is
fixed in one point ; and, indeed, in many other ways
secures an article, more nutritious, more 'healthy,

-third

and vastly more palatable, while it is one
cheaper than the best bread which is made by any

other means

one of these machinery-made bread bakeries has
lately been burnt down in Boston,—having been set
on fire, it is believed, by an incendiary, from the old,
but, one had hoped, exploded antipathy to machi-
nery for doing the work of the hand,—and it is
considered a public calamity, on the ground that the
people are thereby, for the present, deprived of the
opportunity of procuring such bread as it supplied
them with. " Any person," says the Boston Adver-
tiser, " who has bought the five cent loaf of the
mechanical bakery in Philadelphia, in Baltimore, or
elsewhere,—knows how ludicrous is the comparison
in quality or in size between that loaf and the
varying brick loaf of this city." So that in point of
quantity, as well as quality, it is bread the supply
of which would seem to be a real blessing to the
people.

The Boston paper we have just mentioned has
taken up the subject in a very spirited manner, as
one of great practical importance, whether on the
score of public health, or domestic economy. It con-
tends that " a very large number of families have
never tasted first-rate bread, and do not know what
it is

The word bread no more stands for the
possible article with them, than, with an old
Bostonian, used to the Old South pump or similar
conduits, the word water stood for the true article.
With these families every ingenious device takes the
place at their meals of the true article. Every form
of buckwheat, Indian or rye-meal, every chemical
invention which secures lightness at the expense of
health, and every combination of sweets are called
upon to take the place from which the unpopular
bread is deservedly driven." So that as respects the
quality of bread, we are all, it would seem, labour-
ing under the greatest disadvantage—American and
English, all alike. " The bread-making of Boston
to-c4ty, public or private, excepting for hard bread,
shows no advance on the system in use 3200 years
ago in Egypt. Indeed, we are told that the paintings
on the tombs of Egypt show some details of refine-
ment not in use here." And the seine remark will
apply with equal truth, no doubt, to Liverpool, as to
Boston—or even to London. As regards Boston
itself, however, the contrast of the supply of bread
as it is, with that as it was, affords the opportunity
of drawing some most important practical conclu-
sions. " Since the mechanical bakery was burnt," it
is observed, " the inhabitants in its neighbourhood,
including probably the man who set fire to it, have
paid nearly twice as much for the bread they have
eaten as they would haveTaid had it been in opera-
tion. So unequal are the prices of bread, as it is now
made, that those who pay the highest prices under
our present system are thus hardly treated. But
these people are used to paying high for everything
they buy. It will require some months of a
mechanical bakery to accustom them to obtaining
their bread almost as cheaply as their water." This,
however, is to be done ; and, when they have suc-
ceeded in restoring the establishment that has been
destroyed, it will no doubt be accomplished.

There are in America, as there are in this country,
as it is further observed, " a few families, very few in

proportion, who retain in their own private service good
bread-makers,—they pay fancy prices for the most
fancy flour, and thus secure on their own private

tables, by the magic of money, a supply, almost
first-rate, of the staff of life.' To these persons, of
course, the introduction of science-made bread, on a
large scale, is not a pressing personal matter." But
the subject is one that addresses itself to the masses.
It is important to all classes of the people, that the
bread they eat should be the best and cheapest that
can be made and furnished to them ; but it is more
especially so to the working classes, both because it
is of the utmost moment that this staple article of
food should be as nutritious that they should be
enabled to obtain it as economically as possible.
All this, however, is quite as applicable to Eng-
land, as it is to America. Our people—our working
classes, in particular —require to be supplied with
bread of the best quality that can be manufactured,
and at the lowest prices at which it can be produced.
The Americans are therefore setting us a valuable
example, and one which will well deserve to b
carefully watched in its issues. The mechanical
bakery system of bread-making which they are in-
troducing with such complete success, is equally
practicable here in this country. And let us not be
ashamed to borrow it from those who have evidently
paid- more attention to this subject than we have,
to provide thereby sources of supply, of superior
bread, on better terms, as well as • of better
quality, than at present it is possible to obtain in th
ordinary way.

MR. MANSFIELD AND THE SOCIETY FOR
THE SUPPRESION OF VICE.

Whatever may be the defects of the stipendiary
magistrate, even his opponents cannot deny
to him such great moral qualifications for his office
as courage and' independence. These virtues he has
eminently displayed on several occasions, and in none
more conspicuously' than when, at the resent meeting
of magistrates, he boldly braved the obloquy of un-
popular opinions upon what is called, in the cant
phraseology of the day, " The Social Evil." Mr.

Mansfield may or may not be right in his
speculations as to the causes of • prostitu-
tion. Tke question, indeed, is too profound
and difficult to be handled satisfactorily
within the space at our disposal. Nor shall we now