The San Francisco call., 1908-03-10
HOWGRAHAM BREAD
CAME TO BE MADE
Invention of Sylvester Graham,
First Real Vegetarian of
Our Times
lie Was MObbed by the Bakers
and Butchers of Boston
in l847

Men and women of Connecticut have
eaten graham bread for half CEN
tury or more, but few know its origin.
Many there are today who like graham
bread, but it does not have a quarter
of its popularity of a generation ago.
The interesting thing about graham
bread is that IL was the product of
the first real vegetarian crank of our
times, and it was the forerunner Of
the present tendency toward the eat
ing of cereals and fruit, instead of
meat, so to speak, about 1851 by a man
named Sylvester Graham, who came TO
the conclusion that people were eating
altogether too much meat and that
they ought to subsist more largely on
cereal diet. The man made himself
famous as an advocate of bread made
from 'unbolted" -four. and the bread
made in this manner was named gra-
ham bread
The first thing to note about the
story of graham bread is the fact that
ii was the invention of Connecticut
Yankee and, therefore, ought to be
known the world over as a Connecticut
product. That 1t has been benefit
goes without saying. Another thing,
and probably the most important, Is
the fact that graham bread side
from being such enormous consumers
of meat and taught them in scien-
tific way that a diet of cereal and fruit
was more healthful and more satisfac-
tory
The story of Sylvester Graham is
interesting. Like many another bene-
factor, Graham was dubbed crank
all his life He was one of the bright
est men of his day and an orator. His
70 in VA n
didn't leave much to be remembered
by except the bread that was named
after him, a sketch of his life is not
uninteresting.
Graham was born in Suffield in 1894,
and was the son of an English clergy
man, who had been carefully educated
in England and was graduated with
honors from one of the leading Eng
lish universities. The father paid the
utmost attention to his sons education
and at the age of 10 young Graham
had advanced enough to be capable of
teaching the classics He made a sue
cess of the vocation until his health
began to fail and he gave up the work.
The elder Graham was anxious then
that his son study for the ministry, as
he could not teach, and sent the young
man to Amherst college in 1928 with
the intention of making a Clergyman
of him.
Graham lost his degree at Amherst
but he did not lose his courage, for
in 1926 he married and then became a
minister of the Presbyterian church.
He made a good deal of a success in
his work as a preacher, but gave 1t up
and was engaged about 1890 by the
Pennsylvania Temperance society to
lecture throughout the state on the
evils of drinking. Graham went to
Pennsylvania and began his lecturing
tour. His health at that time was
poor and he labored under many ad-
verse circumstances. About the time
he started in on his temperance lee
lures he decided, after a good deal of
study of the human organism, that if
a man would follow certain diet he
would eliminate the craving in large
degree for alcoholic stimulants. He ar
gued that a purely vegetable diet, with
all meat eliminated, would put a man
beyond the power of alcohol.
Graham brought out his theory with
all the eloquence for which he was
noted and attracted attention. He said
that ne followed his own theories with
patience and good results and told in
his lectures of the improvement that
he noted in his own condition. He told
hundreds and thousands of people that
q vegetable diet such as he would sug-
gest would cure their thirst for stimu-
lants, and people began to awaken to
the fact that Graham apparently knew
what he was talking about.
Graham met with great opposition,
however, from butchers and bakers.
They became so angry one day in Bos-
ton IN 1847 over his series of lectures,
in which he advocated people giving
up meat eating, that mob of butchers
and bakers surrounded the hall in
which he was lecturing and threatened
violence. Some of the followers of
Graham. strict vegetarians. thought out
a scheme to disperse the crowd even If
the Boston police couldn't They pro-
cured some slalSed lime and shoveled it
out the windows of the hall where Gra-
ham was lecturing onto the heads of
the mob below. Slaked lime was alto
gether too much for even a Boston
mob to face and they presently left the
neighborhood and let the Grahamites
have their way. Great opposition was
manifested to him in all sections, but
his ideas steadily took hold of the peo-
pie and graham bread came to be the
thing.
Graham died at Northampton. Mass.
in 1851.-New Haven Palladium.