The Birmingham age-herald., 1917-07-13
MEN, WOMEN
 AND THINGS

Take back the bread thou sentest me" says MT, Retail Merchant to Mir. Bakerman. Not on your life" replies the man who owns the oven to the one who runs the store. Its sold for keeps"
 Now, what does it all mean? Simp- ly this and nothing more: The day of returning merchandise is On the toboggan-eyen stale loaf must stay put
 Some years back I heard young married woman boast in a boarding house to a crowd of women that she had been to certain store and bought two yards of ribbon and worn 1t on Sunday and pressed it on Monday and credit for it on her bill at the end of the month. She may just have been bragging. but I overheard her recital.
 Do you wonder the long-suffering merchants. are up in arms and arc proposing reforms along the lines of taking back goods? I dare say some of our department stores could tales un- fold that would be almost beyond be- lief A few have told me incidents but begged me not to report them.
 But this time it isn't the dry goods or clothing or boot and shoe men who are fighting for a square deal. It's the baker who makes his best bow to the retail grocer and says after July 10, just passed, the return of bread was suspended as a war meas ure. It nearly breaks our hearts not to take back bread. but the conner cial economy board, a branch of the national board of defense, will not permit us to do it.
 I dare say that bakers will now hear a lot of the rough stuff directed at newspapers when they notified the agencies that returns would no longer be permitted, but then you know rise in paper and the order had gone out and so many a subscription list that had been inflated like a toy balloon was punctured and the circulation man was afraid to meet his advertisers
 dare say few people realize just how much stale bread bakers have been talk ing back. I got my eyes open a few years back when I had the chicken fever and used to attend the chicken shows in Atlanta. One day Asa Candler. Jr., who had 1t bad, that is, chickenitis, and who had put something like s1oo,O00 into a chicken farm, asked me to go out with him and look it over.
 I thought I was something of a chick en. fancier, but when I saw his outlay I knew I had been "piking." As we went into the room where the incuba tors were set up, and he told me that they had a capacity of 14,00O eggs, lost my nerve and wandered idly by pens with 1000 bullets I went up in the air com pletely when he showed me his card in dexing system with the statement that he kept books against each hen. If she laid an egg she got credit for it. If she was fortunate to be trusted with any biddies they were charged to her. If she let one die it was recorded against her, etc.
 But the thing that flabbergasted me was the sight of hundreds of loaves of stale bread. I am afraid to repeat just how little he gave a loaf for them-I think it was about # cent each-but If tha rhpa D. est foods that he could use. But now all that will be over. I reckon he is glad that he got out of the chicken busi- ness before the bakers got orders not to take back bread.
 I have never been able to get over the bread line in New York city. The re- membrance of certain faces of men who were down and out waiting their turn at charitably inclined bakeries to get a loaf of stale bread haunts me to this day It was monument to the bakers kindness of heart but an indictment of our twen- tieth century Christianity that such thing was necessary in great American city.
 Mrs Mathis warned us that we would have to eat cornbread if we failed to raise our own wheat in Alabama and Wednesday at the Rotary lunch at the Tutwiler no wheat bread was served but strange to say for a hotel, the cornbread was good When well cooked 1t ought not to he deprivation for any south- ern man. woman or child to have to live on cornbread. We are used to 1t and it's healthy and cheaper than wheat bread.
 Now that Alabama has made bumper corn crop we need not fear so much for bread to eat. It will mean that the wheat in the great west can be re- leased for the allies. I never knew until | heard the Honorable Frank S. White explain why meal couldn't be shipped abroad and utilized to feed our American boys in France. Flour is so much easier handled and keeps so much better.
 
 There has been wonderful improve good thing for our housewives to visit some of our up-to-date bakeries. We have some here In Birmingham equipped with the very latest improvements in the bread making art. I have been through many bakeries but recent trip through some of them here opened my eyes. =
 Here is hoping Chairman R. c. Thomp- son will be able to show the merchants that it Is to the interest of the bakers, to their interest and to the interest of the public that bread once bought should etay ho1lght