THE PRICE OF BREAD.
[To Tit H EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR."] SIR,—I should like with your permission to mention a few truths, which are intimately connected with the health and well-being of my countrymen.
In the first place, a gallon of flour makes two 4 lb. loaves. A labouring man can buy a sack of wheat, and take it to the miller (a sack of wheat grinds into a good deal more than a sack of flour), the miller will grind it, and pay himself, either by charging is. 6d. and returning a very full sack of flour, besides the bran ; or, by keeping the bran, and return- ing the flour without charge. Consequently, a gallon of flour costs 6d. with wheat at 32s. the quarter ; and a fraction under 5d., with wheat at the present price, 26s. The baker who charges 5d. for a 4 lb. loaf, makes, therefore, cent. per cent. profit, besides using, as most country bakers do, potatoes, alum, &a., ready prepared by bakers' flour merchants to take up 50 per cent, of water, instead of the legal 30 per cent. If King Cole were alive again, not only the miller would be drowned in his dam, but the baker baked in his oven.—I am,
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