THE STORY OF BREAD.

Taranaki Daily News, 11 September 1915, Page 8

THE STORY OF BREAD.

Bread —just plain, every-day bread—is the theme of a most interesting and inforamtive 'brochure issued by the International Harvester Co. of N.Z., Ltd. "To know the story of bread is to know of industrial and commercial progress, from the man in the cave to the dweller in the sky-scraper—a story stretching over fifty centuries, so we are told. People of to-day cannot imagine a time wlien there was no bread, because there was no flour 1 and no wheat, but suck a period did exist, just as surely as did the time when people fought for bread, and the world stood still. Who knows where wheat came from 7 It is a matter of pure I speculation, for so long as history takes ' us there was always wheat, and beyond j that time is legend. It has taken ages of civilisation to produce the ine large grains which now go to make our daily bread. In MlO enough of these grains were garnered in the United States to make nearly 700,000,000 bushels, and wheat contains all the fifteen essential elements of nutrition. Without wheat the human race would quickly go to seed, and perhaps that is why the sun never sets upon the harvest field of the world, for during every month of the year harvesting operations are going on in some part of the world. Before a man can work well iie must be well fed; before he can be well fed, large crops must be planted, and there must do a quick way of harvesting. It is here that the enterprise and inventive genius j that has built up the business of the International Harvester Co. comes into play. The reaper drove drudgery from the Xarm, pushed American civilisation westward at the rate of thirty miles a year. The modern farmer with scientific knowledge and the latest machinery can with three months' labor raise as much wheat as could an old Koman had he worked ten hours a day, six days a week, for all the weeks of his three score and ten years. It is a long skip from the primitive method of raising and gathering wheat to the day of the perfected McCormiclc reaper and binder, and, as the story states, the world is no longer waiting to be fed—no longer stand* ing still, yet we are only on the threshold of that knowledge which bears the all-important part in the right preparation of the soil to grow 'the staff of life,' so that the crops shall be large and fine." The story is cleverly written, well illustrated, and should lead all, readers to a better appreciation of the bread that is so cheap—and so good.