| It is not my intention to depreciate the great good that | | | | institutions as free libraries, mechanics' institutes, |
| would be derived from scientific chemistry if properly | | | | &c., they are not available to the ordinary baker, |
| applied to bread making. But who is to study and apply | | | | as his hours are so exceptional. The baker's hours of |
| it? Surely not a man who earns from 20s. to 30s. per | | | | labor, indeed, are shorter in many places than they |
| week, and works twelve, fourteen, and sixteen hours | | | | used to be, and he is no longer called "the white slave." |
| a day in an overheated atmosphere. What hours of | | | | Still, the spirit of competition is so strong that a baker |
| rest he has should be used to recuperate his lost | | | | has to work much harder proportionally than other |
| vitality. Not till scientific chemistry is taught in our Board | | | | working men, and his mind is in no condition, in the little |
| schools and made one of the elements of a scholar's | | | | spare time he has, to study the problems of science; |
| ordinary education, can we hope to see it used | | | | and nobody can expect the baker to know, as it were |
| successfully with bakers in making bread. | | | | by intuition, the whys and the wherefores of chemistry. |
| Chemistry, I believe, is destined to play as important a | | | | However, what he has learnt in the practice of his art, |
| part in the annals of the baking trade as did the | | | | and what the common custom of the trade has |
| substitution of machinery for hand labor. But at the | | | | handed down to him, he may use to more or less |
| present day how many bakers know that the | | | | advantage, according as he has more or less personal |
| decomposition of sugar produces fermentation; that | | | | skill. In the case of fermentation, which may be |
| fermentation destroys sugar and produces alcohol; | | | | described as the very backbone of bread-making, a |
| that maltose assists fermentation; that starch, however | | | | baker will find plenty to study and to think about, from |
| obtained, has always the same characteristics, though | | | | his first "setting the sponge" until his bread is out of the |
| there are different kinds from different sources; that | | | | oven, without perplexing himself over problems about |
| dextrine is soluble in water and insoluble in alcohol; that | | | | which he can understand little or nothing. |
| protoplasm, the basis of all life, consists of protein, | | | | With time and money at his disposal, however, the |
| compounds, mineral salts, nitrogen, etc. And do not the | | | | study of chemistry opens up a wide field to the |
| meaning and use of terms familiar in scientific | | | | studious baker, and would no doubt reward him for his |
| chemistry -- such as diastase, cereslin, gluten, and | | | | pains, and at the same time prove a great gain to his |
| others -- only perplex the ordinary journeyman baker, | | | | trade; and I believe there are not a few earnest |
| and make him think that the less he has to do with | | | | workers laboring at the present time to afford that |
| science, the more easily he will get his life "rubbed | | | | knowledge and help to the journeyman baker which |
| through." It is impossible for working bakers to become | | | | will eventually lead to an easier way of earning his daily |
| acquainted with these things while in the bake house; | | | | bread. |
| and while there are in many towns such valuable | | | | |