Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 131, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 June 1917 — A SLICE OF BREAD [ARTICLE]

A SLICE OF BREAD

"Many a Mickle Makes a Muckle." A single slice of bread seems an unimportant thing. In many households one or more slices of bread dally are thrown away and not used for human food. Sometimes stale quarter or half loaves are thrown out. Yet one good-sized slice of bread — such as a child likes to cut—weighs an ounce. It contains almost threequarters of an ounce of flpur. If every one of the country’s 20,000,000 homes wastes on the average only one such slice of bread a day, the country is throwing away daily over 14,000,000 ounces of flour —over 875,000 pounds, or enough flour for over a million one-pound loaves a day. For a full year at this rate there would be a waste of over 319,000,000 pounds of flour—l,soo,ooo barrels of flourenough to make 365,000,000 loaves. As it takes 4% bushels of wheat to make a barrel of ordinary flour, this ■waste would represent* the flour from over 7,000,000 bushels of wheat. ' Fourteen and nine-tenths bushels of ■wheat on the average are raised per acre. It would take the fruit of some 470,000 acres just to provide a single slice of bread to be wasted daily in every home. To produce this much flour calls for an army of farmers, railway men, flour-mill people. To get the flour to the consumer calls for many freight cars and the use of many tons of coal. But, someone says, a full slice of bread is not wasted in every home. Very well —make it a dally slice for every four or even ten or every thirty homes —make It a weekly or monthly slice in every home—or make the wasted slice thinner. The w’aste of flour involved is still appalling. Any waste of bread is declared to be Inexcusable when there are so many ways of using stale bread to cook delicious dishes.