Abstract

In the Driftway

This article focuses on various social issues in the U.S. "Can nothing be done to stop the offensive, highly costly, and altogether undesirable practice lately adopted by the makers of baker's bread of selling their loaves wrapped up in waxed paper and already sliced?," an unhappy U.S. housewife asks. It is true out that bread sliced before it is sold becomes stale more quickly than bread sold in a whole loaf. Obviously it is a plot on the part of wholesale baking companies to sell more of their second-grade product. Earlier the bread was baked on Wednesdays and on Saturdays. Along about eleven o'clock in the morning it came out of the oven, brown and crisp, smelling sweetly to heaven. The slices were thick and large, and everybody ate a lot of them, with butter or gravy or jam. Incidentally it was made of white flour. Nobody had yet thought of the torture of subjecting the human race to "whole wheat." "Brown bread," in those days, meant something steamed in a round tin and served with baked beans on Saturday nights.