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I wish to draw attention to the want of perspective in the way in which meat is dealt with,
and such things as figs, dates, sweets and biscuits, which are eaten raw, are exposed in open shop
fronts, barrows, and on street vendors' trays, on which horse dung and other filth has blown, whereas
meat is cooked before being eaten. The time has come when legislation should be provided to insist
that all such foods should be kept inside, and if possible under cover.
We are an extraordinary people in the way we strain at the gnat and swallow the camel. Some
people do not seem to care in the least what happens to their food. Whilst many are pressing for
the wrapping of bread, others do not seem to mind whether it is tumbled into the manure at the
roadside by the lad that delivers it, or what happens.
Last summer, during the hot weather, day after day I watched bread being delivered by a
girl on a bicycle in a sleeveless dress, with an old fashioned baker's basket slung over her back, cycling
along the road on days which made one feel hot even to stand still, let alone cycle. At least two of
the loaves out of the contents of the basket must have been in fairly intimate contact with her armpits.
Of course, there is no accounting for taste, but if people like their bread delivered in such condition
it is a curious taste.
Whilst the advertising columns of the papers shriek with the illustrated horrors of " body
odour," some people do not seem to mind whether they get it with their breakfast bread or not.
On another occasion, on getting nearer to the office I saw another baker's roundsman with a
hand-barrow, retrieving from among the horse dung and other dust in the gutter, a loaf which
had gone adrift in moving. It was put back with no compunction to be delivered in the ordinary
way apparently.
On other occasions, a lorry from a large wholesale bread firm stopped regularly at a certain
corner, and was surrounded by men with hand carts in which they apparently delivered the bread.
The bread in the lorry was put straight on to the floor of the lorry and built up inside, and in transferring
the loaves to the smaller delivery hand carts, the procedure was much the same as for bricks.
The men frequently jumped straight from the road 011 to the tail board of the lorry along
which the bread was pushed, and deposited in the course of its removal.
A compulsory wrapping of bread immediately after it has been made is surely one of the requirements
which needs expediting.
Although not exactly food, cigarettes are things one puts into one's mouth, and the condition
of one of the factories I was privileged to inspect recently gives one furiously to think how enormous
sums may be spent on producing a product of very high quality, and yet the whole thing from the
point of view of purity rendered absolutely nugatory by one weak link in the chain, the strengthening
of which to perfection would have cost nothing compared with the money which is lavished in otherwise
unimportant directions.
Whilst inspecting the factory in question, whose reputation is world-wide, one found tobacco
lying on the mixing floors, beautiful maple floors apparently spotless, but tramping about amongst
the tobacco and all over the floor were the girls employed on that particular work, wearing the shoes
which looked like those they would have walked to the factory in.
I asked the representative of the firm who was taking us round, whether those shoes were the
same shoes they wore in the street, or did they supply them with special shoes to work in amongst
the tobacco which found its way into their customers' mouths. My question apparently touched
them on the raw. They were rather peeved that the question should be asked, but I elicited the fact
that they were the ordinary shoes in which they tramped the dung-littered streets on their way to
and from work.
Dry horse dung looks very much like some tobacco, but why pay for it, quite apart from the
sanitary and aesthetic side of the question.
The firm in question maintained some 300 clerks simply to deal with their gift coupon scheme.
Part of that colossal sum would surely have been better spent on providing the employees with some
form of footwear which would not make an undesirable present to their customers, in addition to the
gifts for their coupons.
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