NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20218, 1 April 1929, Page 8

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

EATING LESS BREAD.

A curious tendency in the consumption of food that has been puzzling students for some while has just been brought into the open by some figures recently compiled and now emphasised by a correspondent of the Times. The British people are eating less and less bread. Each man of 1928 ate 401b. less than each man of 1835. One of the first statistical studies undertaken at Rothampsted, the oldest of existing agricultural stations, was an inquiry into the consumption of wheat, and if, was proved to l>e rising continuously throughout Victorian years. Just as civilisation in Europe is held to date from grainfarming (about 2000 8.C.), so bread consumption was taken as a symptom of a cultured people. To-day the East is demanding more and more wheat flour, and some think this may mean a steady increase in the price of the grain. But to-day the calculations are not a little disturbed by this comparatively sudden relapse. It began a few years before the war. The consumption was 3511b. a head in 1900 and only 3111b. in 1928, or less than in 1835. Food habits of several sorts arc changing with unprecedented rapidity. Just as that ideal state —as it was once- thought—was being reached when the poorest could enjoy his daily pound or so of meat, fashion begins to reject meat. Science has declared that Boz. a day gives any man as much protein as he needs; and numbers of people prefer to get their protein from other sources. While some people, especially New Zealanders and Australians, eat immense quantities of meat, most people are substituting for it all sorts of other food. Fruit and vegetables especially are rising as meat and bread are sinking. EMPLOYMENT IN BRITAIN. The evidence of persistent unemployment in' Great Britain is not a complete illustration of industrial conditions, since there has been a considerable increase in the number of persons employed. Statistics published recently by the Ministry of Labour show that between the third quarter of 1923 and the fourth quarter of 1928 the number of persons insured under the Unemployment Insurance Acts increased every quarter to the extent in the aggregate of 739,000 —that is to say from 10,922,000 to 11,661,000. The numbers of the unemployed at the two periods were respectively 1,271,000 and 1,351,000, and the difference between the numbers of the insured persons and of the unemployed was approximately 9,651,000 in the third quarter of 1923 and 10,310,000 in the last quarter of 1928. These figures cannot be taken as the numbers of the employed because allowances must be made for sickness, and also of persons involved in trade disputes. The Ministry makes a uniform deduction of 3j, per cent, of the number of insured persons as an allowance for sickness, accident, or other kinds of unrecorded non-employ-ment. The deduction includes, of course, a largo number of persons whose employment has not been terminated but whoso places have been kept open for them. There aro more exact figures of the numbers directly involved in industrial disputes. Allowing for sickness, etc., there were 9,269,000 persons in employment iu tho third quarter of 1923, and 9,902,000 in the last quarter of 1928 —an increase of 633,000. When industrial disputes are also taken into account tho number of the employed in tho 1923 period was 9,245,000, and in tho 1928 period 9,899,000 —an increase of 654,000.

There was in fact a slight fall in the last two quarters of 1928 for the estimated number in employment, allowing for both disability and trade disputes, exceeded 10,000,000 from the second quarter of 1927 till it fell to just below that number in the third and fourth quarters of 1928.