The Discovery of the Cause is the Discovery of the Remedy.—BICHAT.
The undoubted antiquity of the poison vice has induced several able
physiologists to assume the hygienic necessity of artificial stimulation.
But the not less undoubted fact that there have been manful, industrious
and intelligent nations of total abstainers would be an almost sufficient
refutation of that inference, which is sometimes qualified by the
assertion that the tonic value of alcoholic drinks is based upon the
abnormal demands upon the vitality of races exposed to the vicissitudes
of a rigorous climate and the manifold overstraining influences of an
artificial civilization. For it can, besides, be proved that the alleged
invigorating action of alcoholic drinks is an absolute delusion, and
the pathological records of contemporary nations establish the fact
that endemic increase of intemperate habits can nearly always be traced
to causes that have no correlation whatever to the increased demands
upon the physical or intellectual energies of the afflicted community.
Potentially those energies have lamentably decreased among numerous races
who once managed to combine nature-abiding habits with a plethora of
vital vigor.
The physiologically unavoidable _progressiveness of all stimulant habits_
is a further argument in favor of the theory that the poison vice has
grown up from very small beginnings, and the genesis of the fatal germ
has probably been supplied in the hypothesis of Fabio Colonna, an Italian
naturalist of the seventeenth century. “Before people used wine,” says
he, “they drank sweet must and preserved it, like oil, in jars or skins.
But in a warm climate a saccharine fluid is apt to ferment, and some
avaricious housekeeper may have drunk that _spoiled_ stuff till she
became fond of it and learned to prefer it to must.”
Avarice, aided perhaps by dietetic prurience, or indifference to the
warnings of instinct, planted the baneful seed, and the laws of evolution
did the rest.
But the tendency of those laws has often been checked, and as certainly
often been accelerated, by less uncontrollable agencies.
The first venders of toxic stimulants (like our quack medicine
philanthropists) had a personal interest in disseminating the poison
habit. Reform attempts were met by appeals to the convivial interests of
the stimulant-dupe, by the seduction of minors, by charges of asceticism;
later by nostrum puffs and opium wars. More than two thousand years ago
the worship of Bacchus was propagated by force of arms. The disciples
of Ibn Hanbal, the Arabian Father Mathew, were stoned in the streets
of Bagdad. The persecutions and repeated expulsions of the Grecian
Pythagoreans had probably a good deal to do with the temperance teachings
of their master. In Palestine, in India, in mediæval Europe, nearly every
apostle of Nature had to contend with a rancorous opposition, inspired by
the most sordid motives of _self-interest_, and our own age can in that
respect not boast of much improvement. In spite of our higher standard
of philanthropic principles and their numerous victories in other
directions, the heartless alliance of Bacchus and Mammon still stands
defiant. In our own country a full hundred thousand men, not half of
them entitled to plead the excuses of poverty or ignorance, unblushingly
invoke the protection of the laws in behalf of an industry involving
the systematic propagation of disease, misery and crime. Wherever the
interests of the poison traffic are at stake the nations of Europe have
not made much progress since the time when the sumptuary laws of Lorenzo
de Medici were defeated by street riots and a shrieking procession of the
Florentine tavern-keepers.
The efforts of such agitators are seconded by the _Instinct of
Imitation_. “In large cities,” says Dr. Schrodt, “one may see _gamins_
under ten years grubbing in rubbish heaps for cigar stumps; soon after
leaning against a board fence, groaning and shuddering as they pay the
repeated penalty of nature, yet, all the same, repeating the experiment
with the resignation of a martyr. The rich, the fashionable, do it; those
whom they envy smoke; smoking, they conclude, must be something enviable.”
Without any intentional arts of persuasion the Chinese business men
of San Francisco have disseminated a new poison vice by smoking poppy
gum in the presence of their Caucasian employes and accustoming them
to associate the sight of an opium debauch with the idea of enjoyment
and recreation. Would the opponents of prohibition attempt to deny that
analogous influences (the custom of “treating” friends at a public bar,
the spectacle of lager beer orgies in public gardens, etc.) have a great
deal to do with the initiation of boy topers?
Ignorance does not lead our dumb fellow-creatures to vicious habits,
and _prejudice_ is therefore, perhaps, the more correct name for
the sad infatuation which tempts so many millions of our young men
to defy the protests of instinct and make themselves the slaves
of a life-destroying poison. Ignorance is nescience. Prejudice is
_mal-science_, _mis-creance_, trust in erroneous teachings. Millions of
children are brought up in the belief that health can be secured only by
abnormal means. A pampered child complains of headache, want of appetite.
Instead of curing the evil by the removal of the cause, in the way so
plainly indicated by the monitions of instinct, the mother sends to the
drug-store. The child must “take something.” Help must come through
anti-natural means. A young rake, getting more fretful and dyspeptic
from day to day, is advised to “try something,” an aloe pill, a bottle
of medicated brandy, any quack “specific,” recommended by its bitterness
or nauseousness. The protests of nature are calmly disregarded in such
cases; a dose of medicine, according to the popular impression, can not
be very effective unless it is very repulsive. Our children thus learn to
mistrust the voice of their natural instincts. They try to rely on the
aid of specious arts, instead of trusting their troubles in the hands of
nature. Boys whose petty ailments have been palliated with stimulants
will afterward be tempted to drown their sorrow in draughts of the same
nepenthe, instead of biding their time, like Henry Thoreau, who preferred
to “face any fate, rather than seek refuge in the mist of intoxication.”
Before the friends of temperance can hope for a radical reform they must
help to eradicate the deep-rooted delusion of the stimulant fallacy; the
popular error which hopes to defy the laws of nature by the magic of
intoxicating drugs and thus secure an access of happiness not attainable
by normal means. Our text-books, our public schools, should teach the
rising generation to realize the fact that the temporary advantage gained
by such means is not only in every case out-weighed by the distress of a
speedy reaction, but that the capacity for enjoyment itself is impaired
by its repeated abuse, till only the most powerful stimulants can restore
a share of that cheerfulness which the spontaneous action of the vital
energies bestows on the children of nature.
We have seen that the milder stimulants often form the stepping-stones
to a passion for stronger poisons. A penchant for any kind of tonic
drugs, nicotine, narcotic infusions, hasheesh, the milder opiates,
etc., may thus initiate a stimulant habit with an unlimited capacity of
development, and there is no doubt that international traffic has relaxed
the vigilance which helped our forefathers to guard their households
against the introduction of foreign poison vices. Hence the curious fact
that drunkenness is not prevalent—not in the most ignorant or despotic
countries (Russia, Austria, and Turkey), nor in southern Italy and Spain,
where alcoholic drinks of the most seductive kind are cheapest—but in
the _most commercial countries_, western France, Great Britain, and
North America. Hence also the fallacy of the brewer’s argument that the
use of lager beer would prevent the dissemination of the opium habit.
No stimulant vice has ever prevented the introduction of worse poisons.
Among the indirect causes of intemperance we must therefore include our
mistaken _toleration of the minor stimulant habits_. The poison vice
has become a many-headed hydra, defying one-sided attacks, and it is no
paradox to say that we could simplify our work of expurgation by making
it more thorough.
_Polydipsia_ is a derangement of the digestive organs characterized
by a chronic thirst, which forces its victims to swallow enormous
quantities of stimulating fluids. The biographer of Richard Porson, the
great classic scholar, says that his poison thirst was “so outrageous
that he can not be considered a mere willful drunkard; one must believe
that he was driven into his excesses by some unknown disease of his
constitution.” … “He would pour anything down his throat rather than
endure the terrible torture of thirst. Ink, spirits of wine for the
lamp, an embrocation, are among the horrible things he is reported to
have swallowed in his extremity.” Polydipsia is not always due to the
direct or indirect (hereditary) influence of the alcohol habit, and the
origin of the disorder was long considered doubtful; but it has since
been traced to a morbid condition of the kidneys, induced by the use of
narcotic stimulants (tea, coffee, tobacco), but often also by gluttony.
Like certain poison plants, the stimulant habit flourishes best in a
sickly soil. _Whatever tends to undermine the stamina of the physical
or moral constitution_ helps to prepare the way for an inroad of
intemperance, by weakening the resistance of the protective instincts.
Hence the notorious fact that gambling dens and houses of ill-fame are
rank hot-beds of the alcohol vice.
_Asceticism_ has not yet ceased to be an indirect obstacle to the success
of temperance reform. The children of nature need no special holidays;
to them life itself is a festival of manifold sports. Hunting, fishing,
and other pursuits of primitive nations become the pastimes of later
ages. For the abnormal conditions of civilized life imply the necessity
of providing special means of recreation, out-door sports, competitive
gymnastics, etc., in order to satisfy the craving of an importunate
instinct; and too many social reformers have as yet failed to recognize
the truth that _the suppression of that instinct avenges itself by its
perversion_; by driving pleasure-seekers from the play-ground to the
pot-house, as despotism has turned freemen into bandits and outlaws.
“Every one who considers the world as it really exists,” says Lecky,
“must have convinced himself that, in great towns, where multitudes of
men of all classes and all characters are massed together, and where
there are innumerable strangers, separated from all domestic ties and
occupations, public amusements of an exciting order are absolutely
necessary, and that to suppress them is simply to plunge an immense
portion of the population into the lowest depths of vice.”
“I am a great friend to public amusements,” says Boswell’s Johnson,
“for they keep people from vice.” A home missionary in the character of
a promoter of harmless recreations would double the popularity of our
tenets, and by vindicating our people against the charge of joy-hating
bigotry deprive our opponents of their most effective weapon. The free
reading-rooms and gymnasium of the New York Y. M. C. A. have done more
to promote the cause of temperance than the man hunts of Sir Hudibras
and all his disciples. We must change our tactics. While our anchorite
allies have contrived to make virtue repulsive, our opponents have proved
themselves consummate masters of the art of masking the ugliness of vice;
they have strewn their path with roses and left us the thorns. Yet I
hope to show that we can beat them upon their own ground, for it is not
difficult to make health more attractive than disease.
But the most obstinate obstacle to a successful propagation of total
abstinence principles is the _drug fallacy_, a delusion founded on
precisely the same error which leads the dram-drinker to mistake
a process of irritation for a process of invigoration. During the
infancy of the healing art all medical theories were biased by the
idea that sickness is an enemy whose attacks must be repulsed _à main
forte_, by suppressing the symptoms with fire, sword and poison—not
in the figurative but in the literal sense, the keystone dogma of the
primitive Sangrados having been the following heroic maxim: “What
drugs won’t cure must be cured with iron” (the lancet), “if that fails
resort to fire.” (_Quod medicamenta non curant ferrum curat, quod non
curat ferram ignis curat._) But with the progress of the physiological
sciences the conviction gradually gained ground that disease itself
is a reconstructive process, and that the suppression of the symptoms
retards the accomplishment of that reconstruction. And ever since that
truth dawned upon the human mind the use of poison drugs has steadily
decreased. A larger and larger number of intelligent physicians had
begun to suspect that the true healing art consists in the removal of
the cause, and that where diseases have been caused by unnatural habits,
the reform of those habits is a better plan than the old counter-poison
method; when homœopathy proved practically (though not theoretically)
that medication can be entirely dispensed with. The true effect of the
more virulent drugs (opium, tartar emetic, arsenic, etc.) was then
studied from a physiological stand-point, and experiments proved what
the medical philosopher Asclepiades, conjectured eighteen hundred years
ago, namely, that if a drugged patient recovers, the true explanation is
that his constitution was strong enough to overcome both the disease and
the drug. Bichat, Schrodt, Magendie, Alcott, R. T. Trall, Isaac Jennings
and Dio Lewis arrived at the conclusion that every disease is a protest
of Nature against some violation of her laws, and that the suppression
of the symptoms means to silence that protest instead of removing its
cause, so that we might as well try to extinguish a fire by silencing the
fire-bells, or to cure the sleepiness of a weary child by pinching its
eyelids—in short, that drastic drugs, instead of “breaking up” a disease,
merely interrupt it and lessen the chance of a radical cure.
Are there reasons to suppose that alcohol or any other poison, makes an
exception from that general rule? We must reject the idea _in toto_, and
I hope to show that it is refuted:
1. By the testimony of our instincts.
2. By experience.
3. By the direct or indirect concessions of the ablest physiologists.
Our instincts protest against medication. Against ninety-nine of a
hundred “remedial drugs” our sense of taste warns us as urgently as
against rotten eggs, verdigris, or oil of vitriol. Shall we believe
that nature repudiates the means of salvation? Or that our protective
instincts forsake us in the hour of our sorest need—in the hour of our
struggle with a life-endangering disease? And the same instincts that
protest against other poisons warn us against all kinds of alcoholic
drugs. Is it an exception to that rule that the depraved taste of a
drunkard may relish a glass of medicated wine or a bottle of “Hostetter’s
bitters” (rye brandy)? If it is certain beyond all limits of doubt that
the health of the stoutest man is no safeguard against the bane of the
wretched poison, shall we believe that he can encounter it with impunity
when his vital strength is exhausted by disease?
Has the stimulus of alcoholic beverages any remedial or prophylactic
effect? How does alcohol counteract the contagion of climatic fevers?
In precisely the same way as those fevers arrest, or rather suspend,
the progress of other disorders. The vital process can not compromise
with two diseases at the same time. A fit of gastric spasms interrupts
a toothache. A toothache relieves a sick headache. The severest cold in
the head temporarily yields to an attack of small-pox. _Temporarily_, I
say, for the apparent relief is only a postponement of an interrupted
process. During the progress of the alcohol fever (the feverish activity
of the organism in its effort to rid itself of a life-endangering poison)
Nature has to suspend her operations against a less dangerous foe. But
each repetition of that factitious fever is followed by a reaction that
suspends the prophylactic effect of the stimulus, and sooner or later
the total exhaustion of the vital energies not only leaves the system at
the mercy of the original foe, but far less able to resist his attacks.
“There is but one appalling conclusion to be deduced from hospital
records, medical statistics and the vast array of facts which bear upon
the subject,” says Professor Youmans, “it is that among no class of
society are the ravages of contagious diseases so wide-spread and deadly
as among those who are addicted to the use of alcoholic beverages.”
Is alcohol a digestive tonic? Can we cure an indigestion by the most
indigestible of all chemical product! If a starving man drops by the
roadside we may get him on his legs by drenching him with a pailful of
vitriol, but after rushing ahead for a few hundred steps he will drop
again, more helpless than before, by just as much as the brutal stimulus
has still further exhausted his little remaining strength. Thus alcohol
excites, and eventually tenfold exhausts, the vigor of the digestive
system. We can not bully Nature. We can not silence her protests by a
fresh provocation. Fevers can be cured by refrigeration; indigestions by
fasting and exercise, and at any rate the possible danger of a relapse
is infinitely preferable to the sure evils of the poison drug. A few
repetitions of the stimulant process may initiate the alcohol vice and
sow the seeds of a life-long crop of woe and misery. A single dose of
alcoholic tonics may revive the fatal passion of half-cured drunkards
and forfeit their hard-earned chance of recovery. That chance, and
life itself, often depend on the hope of guarding the system against a
relapse of the stimulant-fever, and I would as soon snatch a plank from a
drowning man as that last hope from a drunkard.
Alcohol lingers in our hospitals as slavery lingers in South America,
as torture lingers in the courts of eastern Europe. Quacks prescribe
it because it is the cheapest stimulant; routine doctors prescribe it
because its stimulating effect is more infallible than that of other
poisons; empirists prescribe it at the special request of their patients,
or as a temporary prophylactic; others because they find it in the
ready-made formulas of their dispensatories. There is another reason
which I might forbear mentioning, but I hold that a half truth is a half
untruth, and I will name that other reason. Ignorant patients demand an
immediate effect. They send for a doctor, and are to pay his bill; they
expect to get their money’s worth in the form of a prompt and visible
result. Instead of telling the im-patient that he must commit himself
into the hands of Nature, that she will cure him in her own good time,
by a process of her own, and that all art can do for him is to give that
process the best possible chance, and prevent a willful interruption of
it—instead of saying anything of the kind, Sangrado concludes to humor
the popular prejudice and to produce the desired prompt and visible
effect. For that purpose alcohol is, indeed, the most reliable agent. It
will spur the jaded system into a desperate effort to expel the intruder,
though the strength expended in that effort should be ever so urgently
needed for better purposes. The dose is administered; the patient can
not doubt that a “change” of some kind or other has been effected; the
habitual drunkard perhaps feels it to be a (momentary) change for the
better; at all events the doctor has done something and proved that
he can “control the disease.” In some exceptional cases of that sort
the influence of imagination may help to cure a believing patient, or
Nature may be strong enough to overcome the disease and the stimulant
at one effort. And if a doctor can reconcile it with his conscience to
risk such experiments how shall we prevent it? As a first step in the
right direction we can refuse to swallow his prescription. Physicians
have no right to experiment on the health of their patients. They have
no right to expect that we shall stake our lives on the dogmas of the
old stimulant theory till they have answered the objections of the
Naturalistic School.
Drastic drugs are not wholly useless. There are two or three forms of
disease which have (thus far) not proved amenable to any non-medicinal
cure, and can hardly be trusted to the healing power of Nature:—the _lues
venera_, scabies and prurigo, because, as a French physiologist suggests,
“the cause and the symptoms are here, for once, identical, the probable
proximate cause being the agency of microscopic parasites, which oppose
to the action of the vital forces a life-energy of their own.” Antidotes
and certain anodynes will perhaps also hold their own till we find a way
of producing their effects by mechanical means.
But with these rare exceptions it is by far the safer as well as shorter
way to avoid drugs, reform our habits and not interrupt the course of
nature, for, properly speaking, “_disease itself is a healing process_.”
“It is not true,” says Dr. Jennings, “that the human system, when
disturbed and deranged in its natural operations, becomes suicidal in
its action …; such a view presents an anomaly in the universe of God’s
physical government. It is not in accordance with the known operations
and manifestations of other natural laws” (“Medical Reform,” p. 29). “The
idea that the symptoms of disease must be suppressed,” says Wichat, “has
led to innumerable fallacies and blunders.”
Dr. Benjamin Rush said in a public lecture: “I am here incessantly led
to make an apology for the instability of the theories and practice
of physic, and those physicians generally become the most eminent,
who have the soonest emancipated themselves from the tyranny of the
schools of physic. Dissections daily convince us of our ignorance of
disease and cause us to blush at our prescriptions. What mischief have
we done under the belief of false facts and false theories! We have
assisted in multiplying diseases; we have done more, we have increased
their mortality. I will not pause to beg pardon of the faculty, for
acknowledging, in this public manner, the weakness of our profession. I
am pursuing Truth, and am indifferent whither I am led, if she only is my
leader.”
“Our system of therapeutics,” says Jules Virey, “is so shaky
(_vacillant_) that the soundness of the basis itself must be suspected.”
“The success of the homœopathic practice has astonished many discerning
minds,” says Dr. Jennings. “It is unnecessary for my present purpose
to give a particular account of the results of homœopathy; … what I
now claim with respect to it is, that a wise and beneficent Providence
is using it to expose a deep delusion. In the result of homœopathic
practice, we have evidence in amount, and of a character sufficient,
most incontestably to establish the fact that disease is a restorative
process, a renovating operation, and that medicine has deceived us.
The evidence is full and complete. It does not consist merely of a
few isolated cases, whose recovery might be attributed to fortuitous
circumstances, but it is a chain of testimony fortified by every possible
circumstance. All kinds and grades of disease have passed under the
ordeal, and all classes and characters of persons have been concerned
in the experiment as patients or witnesses; … _while the process of
infinitesimally attenuating the drugs was carried to such a ridiculous
extent that no one will, on sober reflection, attribute any portion of
the cure to the medicine_. I claim then, that homœopathy may be regarded
as a providential sealing of the fate of old medical views and practices”
(“Medical Reform,” p. 247).
Since physiology was first studied methodically an overwhelming array of
facts has, indeed, proved that the disorders of the human organism can be
cured more easily without poison drugs; more easily in the very degree
that would suggest the suspicion that our entire system of therapeutics
is founded upon an erroneous view of disease. The homœopathists cure
their patients with milk-sugar, the exponents of the movement cure with
gymnastics, the hydropathists with cold water, the disciples of Dr.
Schrodt with exercise and mountain-air, the primitive Christians with
prayer, Nature cures her children with rest and a partial suspension of
the digestive process (the fasting cure, indicated instinctively by a
loss of appetite). Let all repudiate alcohol and all can record swifter,
more numerous, and more permanent cures than the disciples of the nostrum
school.
Considered in connection with the foregoing remarks, these facts admit
only of one conclusion, and after giving the above-mentioned exception
the benefit of a (temporary) doubt, we can assert with perfect confidence
that drastic drugs have no remedial value, and that every drop of
alcohol administered for medicinal purposes, has increased, instead of
decreasing, the weight of human misery.
There is no doubt but these views will awaken the anathemas of the
poison-worshipers; but it is equally certain that before the end of this
century they will become truisms. We should regard the drift of the main
current rather than the incidental fluctuations of scientific theories,
and all the ripple of conflicting opinions can not conceal the progress
of a strong tendency toward total abstinence from all virulent drugs.
STUDIES IN KITCHEN SCIENCE AND ART.
II. WHEAT, RYE AND CORN.
BY BYRON D. HALSTED.
The three grains here treated, viz.: wheat, rye and corn, belong to the
vast order of plants known as the grass family (_Gramineæ_). This large
group of plants, the members of which are so closely related as to be
quickly recognized as such, contains many of the most valuable of all
cultivated plants. It not only furnishes the cereals, namely: wheat, rye,
corn, oats, barley and rice, which supply the world with the larger part
of its starchy food, but clothes the pasture and meadow of the farmer
with the herbage so essential to the sustenance of his live stock. There
is a deep and weighty truth in the familiar expression: “All flesh is
grass.” Blot out the grass family from existence and nearly all forms of
life would suffer, and many kinds would soon perish from the earth.
The grasses are usually low and comparatively small plants—though the
bamboos of the tropics are almost treelike, with jointed stems and
alternate, slender leaves. The flowers are inconspicuous, usually in
spikes or spreading clusters, with three stamens, anthers versatile,
styles two, stigma feathery, ovary one-celled, becoming a grain.
Wheat has probably more intrinsic value than any other plant grown. It
is probably a native of southwestern Asia, but like most grains and
fruits cultivated from remote antiquity, its early history is extremely
uncertain. Many varieties have been produced from the original _Triticum
vulgare_—the scientific name of wheat—but they can all be placed in the
two following groups: Those that are tender called spring wheats, sown
in spring, and the winter sorts that are sown in autumn, remain on the
ground through the winter and are harvested the subsequent summer. The
winter wheats are the more valuable and bring a higher price than the
spring varieties. Some wheats have long awns to the flowers, and are
termed bearded, while other sorts are nearly or entirely awnless, and
are sometimes styled bald. There is a great variation in the size and
color of the grain. In some varieties it is long, others short; some are
white, others brown, red, and amber; some are hard, others are soft.
New sorts are produced yearly, and the varieties have become practically
innumerable.
The area devoted to the growth of wheat in the United States is between
thirty-five and forty million acres, and the yield of the present season
(1884) will not be far from 500,000,000 bushels. The average yield per
acre, take the whole country through, is not far from thirteen bushels
per acre. Nineteen states (and territories) cultivate over a million
acres each; six over two millions, and three over three millions, namely:
Illinois, 3,218,542; Iowa, 3,049,288; and Minnesota, 3,044,670 acres, as
given in the last census. In the order of the number of bushels produced,
the leading states stand thus: Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan,
Minnesota, Iowa, California. New York stands thirteenth, and Rhode Island
last, with seventeen acres and 240 bushels. It will be seen that the
wheat region, strictly speaking, is in the Mississippi Valley, centering
around Illinois, with a secondary area in middle California. According
to the report on the cereal production of the United States by Professor
Wm. H. Brewer, in the statistics of agriculture in the tenth census,
the yield and quality of the wheat crops is stated to depend upon five
conditions: climate, soil, variety cultivated, method of cultivation
and the liability to destruction by insects. The quality of the grain
depends more upon the climate than the soil. A hot, dry and sunny harvest
produces a grain of the highest quality. The ideal climate for wheat
growing is most nearly reached during the best years in California, and
it is then and there that we have records of the greatest yields of the
best of wheat.
A good rich soil is needed for successful wheat growing. This may be
preserved on any farm by a well regulated system of crop rotation. It
must be borne in mind that wheat has a short season for its growth
and needs to have food prepared and close at hand. One of the best
preparatory crops is clover. The clover sod, including the vast amount
of roots, furnishes a most acceptable feeding ground for the wheat. The
soil itself is not one of the items most frequently overlooked in wheat
growing. The importance of good plump seed of the best varieties is
rarely overestimated. There is a vast deal in the sort of wheat grown,
and no one can afford to grow any but the best.
The most common diseases of wheat are rust and smut, both of vegetable
origin. These troubles, which appear so suddenly and are often very
destructive, are minute microscopic plants of the order of fungi, and
therefore related to the moulds and mildews common on various articles
of food, etc. The insect enemies are somewhat numerous, but the Hessian
fly, wheat midge, joint worm, chinch bug, army worms, and Rocky Mountain
locust are the most destructive. There are a few insects that prey upon
the grain after it is in the granary, and these are on the increase.
Among the enemies we should not forget to mention various weeds that
spring up in the fields and endeavor to choke out the legitimate
occupants of the soil.
The nutritive value and chemical composition of wheat grain are important
points worthy of consideration here, because this general article is to
be followed by one upon the culinary aspects of the grain treated. The
market value of a flour largely rests upon its appearance, while the
nutritive value depends upon the results determined by the analytical
chemist. The average of fifty-seven analyses of winter wheat in the
kernel gave:
WATER. ASH. ALBUMINOIDS. FIBER. STARCH, GUM, &C. FAT.
Winter Wheat 11.18 1.70 11.70 1.66 71.81 1.95
Spring Wheat 10.50 1.84 11.97 1.86 70.64 2.19
Wheat Flour 11.56 0.59 11.09 0.17 75.43 1.14
It will be seen that there is very little chemical difference between
winter and spring wheats. The composition of the flour shows a removal of
nearly all the woody fiber, two thirds of the ash, nearly half the fat
and a small reduction of the albuminoids, while the water is somewhat and
the carb-hydrates (starch, gum, etc.) considerably increased. It will be
interesting to here give an analysis of wheat bran and shorts:
WATER. ASH. ALBUMINOIDS. FIBER. STARCH, GUM, &C. FAT.
Bran 11.65 5.63 14.00 9.13 55.56 4.03
Shorts 11.26 3.95 15.13 7.46 57.35 4.85
By a comparison of these tables it will be easy to note the positions
in the kernel occupied by the various substances. The fiber, ash, fat,
and albuminoids are more abundant in the outer portion of the grain,
especially the first three. It must be kept in mind that the albuminoids
are the most expensive elements of food, and are frequently called the
“flesh formers,” because they produce muscles. The starchy compounds are
employed for the production of heat in the animal system. The functions
and comparative importance of these several constituents are already
given at some length in the article on the potato in a previous issue of
THE CHAUTAUQUAN.
RYE (_Secale cereale_).—This grain was grown by the Egyptians and other
eastern nations, and its nativity is lost in oblivion. It is of far less
importance than wheat, and does not possess any remarkable tendency to
vary from its normal type. It has a wider range of growth than wheat, and
flourishes in cooler regions than those adapted for most of the other
grains. There are both spring and winter varieties. The preparation of
the soil, the seeding, harvesting, etc., are much the same as for wheat.
It will succeed on a poorer soil and with less attention than wheat. On
this account rye was a more important crop in the earlier centuries of
the development of the human race than to-day. Rye bread was a daily food
among our people in the colonial days, and in some old countries where
the soil has been too much worn out for wheat rye is grown successfully.
The opening up of various parts of our country by railroads has checked
the rye industry, and introduced wheat in its place.
The acreage of rye in the United States in 1880 was 1,842,303 acres,
yielding 19,831,595 bushels. The states producing over a million bushels
are only five, namely, Pennsylvania, Illinois, New York, Wisconsin,
and Iowa. The amount of rye grown in the United States in 1839 was more
than that at ten, twenty, or thirty years later. Its cultivation for
bread has rapidly decreased, but for other purposes there is an apparent
increase. Rye makes an excellent green fodder crop, and is also employed
for plowing under as a green manure. The straw is the primary crop in
many sections, there being a good market for this excellent product.
The chemical composition of rye differs somewhat from that of wheat,
being poorer in albuminoids. The wheat flours average 11.09 per cent. of
albuminoids, while that of rye is 6.65. Rye bran is, on the other hand,
richer in these constituents than wheat. Professor Brewer, to whom we are
indebted for many of our percentages here given, says: “These figures
are so plain that they scarcely require comment, and they illustrate why
fine wheat flour is so much better than fine rye bread, and also why the
difference in nutritious qualities between coarse rye bread and fine rye
bread is so much greater than between coarse wheat bread and fine wheat
bread.” Rye is subject to fungoid attacks, one of which is of special
interest—the “spurred” rye, or ergot. The fungus causes the grains to
increase to several times their normal size, and become purple, hard
and curved, somewhat resembling the spurs of a cock. This ergotted or
“spurred” grain is very poisonous. In some parts of Europe, where rye
is largely grown, there have been extensive epidemics among the people,
caused by eating rye affected with ergot. The insect enemies are nearly
the same as those mentioned with wheat.
CORN.—Indian corn, or maize, is the leading grain crop of the United
States. The area devoted to this grain for the present year is not far
from seventy million acres, and the yield will not fall much short of
two thousand million bushels (2,000,000,000). According to the census of
1880, the six following states produced over a hundred million bushels
each: Illinois, over three hundred and twenty-five millions; Iowa, over
two hundred and seventy-five millions; Missouri, over two hundred and
two millions; Indiana, over one hundred and fifteen millions; Ohio, over
one hundred and eleven millions, and Kansas over one hundred and five
millions. Corn is very generally distributed over the whole country,
but it attains its greatest excellence on the rich lands of the western
prairies.
There is but little doubt that Indian corn is of American origin.
Columbus and other discoverers found it cultivated by the natives of the
New World. Since that time Indian corn has been carried to all parts of
the globe, and in many places it is grown with profit. The corn plant is
botanically _Zea mays_, and is very unlike any of the other cereals in
the arrangement of its flowers. The clusters of male or pollen bearing
flowers are at the upper end of the stalk, forming the tassel, while
the female flowers are crowded upon a spike situated upon one side of
the stalk, midway between the top and the bottom. This separation of
the flowers permits of ready cross fertilization; that is, the grains
of one ear are very likely to be impregnated with flower-dust showered
down from the tassel of a neighboring plant. The truth of this is always
demonstrated when two distinct varieties, as white and yellow sorts,
are planted in adjoining rows. There will be a “mixing” in nearly every
ear along the border line. This ease in crossing permits the farmer to
combine the good qualities of desirable sorts; in other words corn may
be bred and has been bred as successfully as any kind of live stock. The
corn plant also has a very plastic nature, and quickly responds to any
favoring conditions of soil, climate or culture. We should therefore
expect to find the number of varieties of Indian corn without number.
Many attempts have been made to classify the different sorts. A common
grouping is into field, sweet, pop and husk sorts. Another is into flint,
Tuscarora, dent, and sweet varieties. Some of the leading characteristics
in the classification are color of grain, rows on cob, size and form of
grain, etc. The field varieties include dents and flints, and are grown
in large areas. The sweet corns have a large per cent. of sugar, and
are grown for eating in the green condition. The pop corns are small
sorts, with a very hard covering. The stalks of corn vary from two to
twenty feet in length, and the ears from half an ounce to a pound and a
half. The number of rows of grain on the cob is always even, and ranges
from four to forty. The grain varies in color; it may be white, yellow,
violet, purple, blue, slate, black, or variegated.
A good corn ground is rich, warm, deep and mellow. Unlike the other
cereals, the work of culture in the cornfield is only well begun when
the plants appear above the surface. Being in rows there is a fine
opportunity offered for weeds to come in and occupy the soil before the
corn plants make enough growth to defend their rights to the land. The
first enemy to the corn is the cut-worm, and the next is the crow. If it
were not for the cut-worm it is probable that the crow would rarely visit
the corn-field. The crow is the enemy of the cut-worm and many other
injurious farm pests. He may pull some corn for two weeks in the year,
but during the other fifty he is clearly on the farmer’s side. The weeds
are the worst enemies to the corn, and smut comes next. This trouble is,
like the wheat rust and the ergot of the rye, a member of the fungus
group. The smut appears on various parts of the plant, but usually on the
ear. All smutted parts should be cut out and burned, as they are unfit
for food, and this prevents the spread of the disease.
The chemical composition of corn is more variable than that of wheat. The
following table may be compared with that given for wheat. An average of
a large number of analyses is given for each item:
WATER. ASH. ALBUMINOIDS. FIBER. STARCH, GUM, &C. FAT.
Flint 10.85 1.45 10.87 1.61 70.29 4.93
Dent 11.23 1.48 10.49 1.91 70.15 4.74
Sweet 8.81 1.87 12.15 2.31 66.87 7.99
Hominy 13.49 0.38 8.25 0.32 77.12 0.44
Meal 15.97 1.27 8.19 1.61 69.50 3.46
Cob 9.16 1.32 2.22 32.04 54.85 0.43
The most striking difference between wheat and corn is the amount of
oil or fat. In wheat this ranges from 1.26 to 2.67 per cent., while in
corn it averages 5.29, or from two to three times as much. The popular
opinion that corn is a heating and fattening food is therefore supported
by chemical analyses. It will be seen from the table that the sweet
corns contain much more fat and a larger per cent. of albuminoids than
the other varieties. These, therefore, have a higher nutritive value.
Whatever may have been said in favor of or against either the flint or
dent varieties falls to the ground in the light of the average analyses
of these classes when brought side by side. It will be seen that the
differences are practically nothing. It is only a matter of fancy which
is employed. Much has been said concerning color, but this is little
more than skin deep, and does not affect the quality of the food derived
from the grain. Those families which have become accustomed to yellow
corn prefer it, and those using the white sorts like these best. It is a
matter of taste, in one sense, and not of _taste_ in another.
Chemistry shows no great difference in the percentage of albuminoids
in wheat and corn, but it is a fact that all the differences can not
be set down in figures. The housewife knows very well that a light,
spongy bread is not easily made from corn; in other words, corn bread
is very different in texture from wheat bread, even when the two flours
are equally well prepared. Much may be due to the greater amount of oil
in the corn, but there is little doubt that the gluten of corn is of a
different texture or character than that in wheat. This most important
constituent is subject to great variation in wheat, so much so that this
grain grown in one locality makes a light bread, while that from another,
in the same hands and under the same treatment, yields a heavy bread, and
of poor quality. No one doubts that much improvement may be made in the
milling of corn—as much, perhaps, as has been recently effected in that
of wheat. We may look for a “new process” by which our corn bread may be
vastly improved.
Corn is, however, the great fattening food for swine and other live stock,
and we should be satisfied to take our corn in that transmuted form when
it appears upon our tables as a fragrant spare-rib or a juicy and tender
chop or beefsteak.
Of the three grains herein briefly treated we have seen that wheat
stands at the head as a food for man in our country. In any form it
is prepared it can be a complete and palatable food. The albuminoids
(gluten, etc.) are in such abundance and form that the flour may produce
snowy, spongy and most healthful bread—truly a staff of life on which
all rejoice to lean. Rye is a declining grain, it being replaced by
wheat. It will grow on poorer soil than wheat, but with the many kinds of
commercial fertilizers at our service no one should grow rye because of
an impoverished soil. Corn in all its bearings is a peer of wheat. It is
in one sense our contribution to the world’s list of grains, and in this
we justly take pride. It is more largely grown than any other crop, and
as a source of natural wealth it stands ahead of wheat. As a plant corn
is most interesting, being plastic and quickly responsive to any favoring
conditions. If corn is king, as some claim, wheat is certainly queen in
this royal family of cereals.
BREAD.
BY MRS. EMMA P. EWING.
The first thing to be considered in bread making is the yeast. Without
good yeast it is impossible to make good bread. A great deal depends upon
the quality of flour used for making bread; but unless the yeast is good
the best quality of bread can not be made from the most superior grade of
flour, and much excellent flour is spoiled by conjunction with worthless
yeast in the attempt to make it into bread.
The compressed yeast, so much used in cities, is, in all respects, the
best commercial yeast yet discovered, and when fresh, is perfectly
reliable, but can not be obtained conveniently at all times, and in all
places. And the housewife who is ambitious to supply her family with good
bread should acquaint herself with the best method of making yeast, and
have it prepared at home.
TO MAKE YEAST.—Steep an eighth of an ounce of pressed, or a small handful
of loose hops in a quart of boiling water for about five minutes. Strain
the boiling infusion upon half a pint of flour, stirred to a smooth paste
with a little cold water. Mix well, boil a minute; then add one ounce
of salt and two ounces of white sugar. When lukewarm stir in a gill of
liquid yeast or an ounce cake of compressed yeast dissolved in warm
water. Let stand twenty-four hours, stirring occasionally, then cover
closely, and set in a cool place. Yeast made in this manner will keep
sweet for two weeks in summer, and much longer in winter, and can be used
at any time during that period for starting a fresh supply of yeast, as
well as for making bread.
The first step in bread making is the preparation of the ferment.
Pour gradually, stirring meanwhile, a quart of boiling water upon half a
pint of wheat flour. When the mixture has cooled to about lukewarmness
(80°) add a gill of yeast, stir well, cover closely, and let stand till
thoroughly light and a mass of white foam. Taste it, and it bites like
beer; stir it, and it seems to dance and sparkle with exuberant life,
while the odor it emits is strongly alcoholic. Ferment can be kept for
several hours after it becomes light and foamy without growing sour,
or appearing to deteriorate in any manner. But it is better to use it
as soon as it reaches this stage, as it is then undoubtedly at its very
best estate. The time required for ferment to grow light, varies from two
to six hours, according to the strength of the yeast put in it and the
temperature of the place where it stands. When due attention is given to
these things, the custom of preparing or “setting” ferment in the evening
to be used in bread making the next day is a convenient one; and, as it
usually proves satisfactory, is in no way objectionable.
When the ferment is perfectly light, beat vigorously into it about half
a pint of flour, cover, and leave to rise. By this addition of flour the
ferment is transformed into sponge, which, under favorable conditions,
will rise in from half an hour to an hour. As soon as the sponge rises,
add more flour, and give it another beating; and so repeat each time it
rises, until it gets too stiff to be easily stirred.
The mixture is then dough, and is ready for working or kneading. After
it has been kneaded till flour is no longer required to keep it from
sticking to the molding board, it is of the proper consistency for bread,
and may be divided into four equal parts, molded, or shaped into loaves,
and put in greased bread pans to rise for the last time, preparatory to
baking; or it may be set to rise in a mass before being divided into
loaves.
It is very difficult to decide whether it is better to let the dough rise
in a mass or in separate loaves. Bread which rises in a mass appears to
be a trifle more elastic and spongy than that which rises in separate
loaves; but the latter seems to excel the former in sweetness and
delicacy of flavor. In either case the bread will be good.
Two points in this mode of making bread deserve special attention:
1. The flour is added repeatedly after intervals of fermentation, and as
it contains fresh food for the yeast, these frequent additions of flour
keep the yeast in a vigorous and healthy condition during the entire
period of bread making.
2. The fermentation is always arrested in the sponge and dough before it
arrives at the exhaustive point; for whenever sponge or dough is allowed
to reach its utmost limit of expansion and fall back or “tumble in,” as
it invariably does at this crisis, it loses something of excellence that
no after labor or attention can restore.
Another method of making bread is to mix the yeast with the wetting, and
gradually add flour, working it meanwhile, until the dough is of the
proper consistency, when it should be kneaded upon the molding board till
smooth and elastic, and then put to rise. Dough may be mixed in this
manner late in the evening, and, if not kept in too warm an atmosphere,
will be in proper condition for making into loaves, rolls, etc., at an
early hour the next morning.
Ferment, sponge and dough are all affected by atmospheric changes, and
should be mixed and kept in thick stone or earthen vessels, and covered
closely to exclude the air. And care should be taken to keep them at the
proper temperature, which is about 75° during the entire process of bread
making. Fermentation is arrested at a temperature below 30°, proceeds
slowly at 50°, rapidly at 70°, very rapidly at 90°, and can be hastened
or retarded, if necessary, by increasing or diminishing the temperature.
The quantity of flour necessary to make dough of the proper consistency
for bread depends considerably upon its quality, and varies from two and
a half to three measures of flour to one measure of “wetting.” More flour
can, however, be added, and the dough made considerably stiffer, without
perceptible detriment. Dough for fancy bread and rolls should be quite
stiff, so as to retain any desired shape or form. Soft, spongy bread
possesses greater delicacy when freshly baked, but appears to lose its
moisture and grow stale much sooner than that which is more compact.
The length of time required for kneading or working dough is materially
affected by the quality of the flour. Flour exposed to the atmosphere
deteriorates quite rapidly, and the moisture it absorbs so impairs the
tenacity of its gluten, that bread of the best quality can not be made
from it, in spite of all the working and kneading that may be given to
the dough. Much less time is required kneading dough made from choice,
than from inferior brands of flour.
It is an established fact that dough is rendered tough and elastic by
working and kneading; but as the same result can be accomplished sooner
and less laboriously by pulling and stretching, it is advisable, in
making bread, to pull and stretch as well as to work and knead the dough.
Bread dough may perhaps be kneaded a good deal with advantage, but it is
by no means certain that much kneading is absolutely necessary for the
production of the best quality of bread. The fermentation, back of the
kneading, gives life and force to dough. When this is perfect, dough,
in a suitable condition for molding into loaves or rolls, shows a great
deal of resisting force. It seems, in fact, to have a _will of its own_,
and its determination to rise is almost irrepressible. You may knead it
in the most resolute manner and mold it into a compact ball; but in a
short time it will rise, and swell, and spread, until it has doubled in
dimensions. You may thrust your fist fiercely into a batch of good dough,
but the impression you make upon it is by no means a lasting one. Almost
as soon as you draw back your hand it regains elasticity and resumes its
original position. This irrepressible spirit in dough is the surest test
of its goodness, and when perfectly developed you can do as you please
with the dough. You may roll it, or twist it, or plait it, with the
greatest ease. You can mold it into any form without trouble. It does not
stick to the hands or the molding board. It is in its most amiable mood.
It is perfectly docile and obedient except in one respect—it can not be
put down and kept down; and any bread dough that can is poor stuff that
will never rise to distinction or win admiration.
Dough after having perfectly risen should not be kneaded again. If in
pans, it should be immediately baked. If in mass, it should be divided
into loaves or rolls, and gently pulled, rolled or folded into shape,
when it may also be put to bake. These loaves or rolls will, however,
be lighter and more delicate if permitted to rise again before they
are placed in the oven. Much of the superior excellence of the Vienna
imperial roll is due to the peculiar manipulation the light dough is
subjected to just before it is placed in the baking pan.
The final and perhaps most important point in bread making has been
reached when the loaves are put in the pans to rise for the last time.
To decide when dough is just light enough to bake is a very delicate and
important matter. If it is put in the oven a moment too soon, you fail
to obtain the supreme loaf to which you are entitled for your toil; and
if permitted to pass the point of perfect lightness you lose the best
results of your labor. The exact time required for loaves to rise after
they have been placed in the pans can not be given, as it varies in
different temperatures, at different seasons, and with different brands
of flour. But it is seldom less than half an hour, or more than an hour
and a half.
A loaf of bread should nearly double in size after it is put in the pan;
or if a deep gash be cut in the top of it, the incision should disappear
by the time the loaf has perfectly risen. Bread, when light enough for
baking, feels aerated all through; and by lifting and weighing it in the
hand one can generally recognize the condition of lightness quite as
accurately as by sight.
The exercise of a little observation and judgment will soon enable one
to decide when dough has reached its best and most perfect state of
lightness. But where any doubt exists in regard to the matter it is
better to put it in the oven while rising toward perfection than after it
attains the altitude at which it begins to retrograde.
POTATO BREAD.—Potato added to flour is generally supposed to improve
the quality of the bread. That it does is unquestionably true, where the
flour used is of an inferior grade. “Of all starches,” says Dr. Graham,
“the starch found in the potato is best adapted to the growth of yeast,
and in using potato in bread, bakers made practical application of a fact
long before chemists discovered it to be such.” Potatoes when used in
bread should be well boiled and smoothly mashed, and equal portions of
potato and flour be used in making the ferment. The bread is then made in
the same manner as when flour alone is used.
WHOLE WHEAT FLOUR.—It is claimed that bran in Graham flour often proves
an irritant to delicate digestive organs. In whole wheat flour we have
the entire food principle of the grain without the hull. The cold blast
process of milling gives us this flour of a very superior quality.
WHOLE WHEAT FLOUR BREAD should be made in every particular like patent or
new process flour bread, and baked in loaves, twists, or fancy rolls. It
is very delicious baked in the form of muffins and eaten warm.
GRAHAM BREAD.—The ferment for Graham bread should be of white flour, and
prepared in the same manner as the ferment for white flour bread. When
light add sugar and salt to taste, and work in Graham flour until the
dough becomes elastic and clinging and is sufficiently stiff. Let stand
till perfectly risen; then shape into loaves by rolling gently under the
hand on a well floured molding-board, and place in greased baking pans.
Less flour is required in proportion to the “wetting” for Graham than for
white bread. And unless Graham dough is of the proper consistency, the
bread when baked will be moist, sticky and insipid, or dry, rough and
unpalatable. The correct proportions are a little more than two measures
of Graham flour to one measure of “wetting.”
OAT, CORN AND BARLEY BREAD.—Fermented bread can be made of oat, corn, or
barley meal, or flour; care being taken to add wetting in proportion to
the demands of the grain. When corn or oat meal is used, boiling water
should be poured upon it and it be permitted to swell for at least an
hour before the yeast is added. These grains make delicious muffins and
bread to be eaten warm.
Pinhead oat meal, pearled barley, and corn grits, well cooked and made
into bread by adding whole wheat flour, can be baked in muffin pans, or
rolled thin and baked in crisp rolls.
RYE BREAD.—The method of making rye bread is almost identical with that
for making wheat bread—from three to three and a half measures of flour
to one measure of “wetting” being required. More time is necessary for it
to ferment or rise, and it will not become so light, spongy and elastic
as wheat.
BOSTON BROWN BREAD.—Scald a pint of corn meal with a pint of boiling
water. When sufficiently cool add a pint and a half of rye meal, a gill
of yeast, a gill of molasses, and a teaspoonful of salt. Mix well, and
when perfectly risen steam five hours, then put in the oven half an hour
to dry and harden the crust.
VIENNA BREAD.—To a pint of new milk, add a pint of water, an ounce of
compressed yeast, a teaspoonful of salt, and flour sufficient to make
a thin batter. Stir well and let stand for an hour to rise, then work
in flour until the dough is the proper consistency for bread. When very
light, which will be in about three hours, divide and mold into loaves,
and set to rise in the bread pans; or shape into imperial rolls and set
to rise.
IMPERIAL ROLLS.—Separate one of the Vienna loaves, detached from the mass
of dough, into ten or twelve irregular pieces of the thickness of about
half an inch. Take separately each of these pieces in the left hand, and
slightly stretch with the thumb and forefinger of the right hand one
of the irregular points over the left thumb toward the center of the
roll. Repeat this operation, turning the piece of dough as it proceeds,
each time lifting the thumb and gently pressing it upon the last fold
until all the points have been drawn in, when the roll can be placed to
rise. If the folding has been properly done, the roll when baked will be
composed of a succession of sheets or layers of delicate, tenacious crumb
surrounded with a thin crisp crust. The fingers can be slightly greased
to keep the dough from sticking to them while shaping these rolls; but if
it is of the proper consistency, it will not stick to the hands.
BAKING BREAD.—When bread is ready for baking, it is desirable to fix the
air cells as soon as possible by heat; but it does not follow that to do
this it should be put in a very hot oven and a crust immediately formed
on the loaves.
TEMPERATURE OF THE OVEN.—The heat of the oven should not be greatest when
bread is put to bake; it should slightly increase in intensity for about
ten minutes, and after remaining at a firm, steady temperature for that
length of time should gradually decrease till the baking is finished. The
principal change to be effected by the baking, which is the coagulation
of the albumen of the air cells, takes place at a temperature somewhere
near 212°, and as the temperature within the loaf can not rise above
that point, no changes go on there except those produced by the watery
vapor or steam. Flour, however, is not browned except at a much higher
temperature; hence a greater degree of heat is necessary to properly bake
the outside of the loaf. During the period of baking bread the heat of
the oven should not rise above 570° nor fall below 240°.
An ordinary sized loaf of bread, with the oven at the proper temperature,
will bake thoroughly in an hour; a loaf the size of one of the pans
recommended, in about half an hour. But as there are several hygienic
and philosophical reasons why bread should be well baked, it is better
to err by leaving it in the oven a little too long than not quite long
enough.—_Bread and Bread Making._
_End of Required Reading for November._
HE MAKETH ALL THINGS NEW.
BY MARY LOWE DICKINSON.
Old sorrows that sat at the heart’s sealed gate,
Like sentinels grim and sad,
While, out in the night damp, weary and late,
The King, with a gift divinely great,
Waited to make me glad.
Old fears, that hung like a changing cloud,
Over a sunless day;
Old burdens that kept the spirit bowed,
Old wrongs that rankled and clamored loud—
They have passed like a dream away.
In the world without and the world within,
He maketh the old things new;
The touch of sorrow, the stain of sin,
Have fled from the gate where the King came in,
From the chill night’s damp and dew.
…
Anew in the heavens the sweet stars shine,
On earth new blossoms spring;
The old life lost in the life divine,
“Thy will be mine, my will is thine,”
Is the song which the new hearts sing.
THE PAUPER PROBLEM IN GERMANY.
BY BISHOP JOHN F. HURST.
The poorest Germans one sees are not here in Germany, but on the American
side of the Atlantic, at Castle Garden and other landing places. All
hours of the day and night I have been along the German thoroughfares of
travel, and yet I can not recall that any one has put out his hand for
alms, or that few have presented the appearance of extreme penury. There
is no question that there has been a wonderful coming up of the general
industrial life of Germany since the consolidation of the countries, and
since the leadership of Bismarck has thrust new force into every part of
the national civilization. But what with all the absorption of a million
of men into the national army, and the coming and going from civil into
military life of all the young in the land, there are multitudes to whom
bread is the one supreme thought. There are millions for whom there must
be work to-day for the loaf of to-morrow. There are two questions which
constantly monopolize the thought of the Prussian government—to keep safe
against the French, who do not forget the loss of Alsace and Lorrain,
in 1871, and, then, how to keep the workingmen busy. Why all this talk
about German colonies? Why does Prussia, with only a strip of the North
Sea for its only outlet to the ocean, fill its days of Parliament and its
periodical press, with discussions as to how to get more land, on some
distant coast, where colonies may be planted? It is simply to furnish,
as does India for Britain, an outlet for trade. Why did the old Kaiser
Wilhelm, only the other day, declare that he had spent his reign in
trying to develop the internal policy of the country, but that to his son
and successor, Friedrich Wilhelm, would belong the mission of developing
the German colonist policy? He meant, as does every Hohenzollern, that
his people should be busy in peace, and therefore strong for war. But
while there are few evidences in public of extreme poverty in Germany,
and while there has been a singular elevation of the general cheerfulness
of the lower classes, there is real pauperism, and a plenty of it. But
it is not allowed to come to the light. No shrewder piece of management
has ever been accomplished in Germany than the skillful dealing with the
veritable pauper within the last ten years. It is as nearly a perfect
work as one ever saw performed upon the man in rags. It is as exquisite
an adjustment of legal and voluntary measures, an interlacing of what
people choose to do and what they are compelled to do, as the sun shines
on. But this must be said: the government could not manage the pauper
alone. It was too great a task for even Bismarck and the Emperor.
Christian people have done it, and of their own free will. In 1880 a body
of earnest people, many of them evangelical Christians, formed themselves
into an association for the care of the poor and for beneficiaries.
Scattered societies had already existed, and for a long time. For
example, in 1840, Gustav Werner founded an institution for the relief of
the poor of Wurtemburg, which has grown into a mammoth affair, and now
numbers one hundred and twenty-four houses for labor. Other benevolent
spirits had followed in his footsteps. But here in Germany the watchword
is now consolidation, and so the efforts to solve the pauper problem have
been combined. The association which came into being only four years ago,
to help the poor out of their misery, has held annual sessions, collected
important statistics, presented themes for better methods, and has
rallied to the standard men of the strongest hands and keenest minds in
the Fatherland. They have told the government some things that the census
taker knows nothing about. Each report of their annual meeting is a stout
volume, and a more useful document can hardly be found in the current
literature of even literary Germany.
I have said that there is but little semblance of extreme pauperism—the
actual putting out the hand for the coppers with which to buy bread and
cast off clothes. But this retirement of the pauper from public gaze
is a new thing. What has he been doing? Until very lately, to every
German square mile, which is four times the English mile, there were
ten beggars, who averaged a mark, or twenty-five cents, a day, by the
desperate plying of their craft. Now, the German empire covers just
space enough to make the voluntary gifts to beggars amount to 36,500,000
marks, or $9,125,000. This state of things existed in much grosser forms
when the gifts were simply enormous, until very recently, and since the
beginning of the efforts to solve the question of beggary.
But the one great thing that has come to light, and which is now
presented to the German people with tremendous force, is this: the
cause of the pauperism is intemperance. This revelation has been slow
in coming, but it has come at last, and the statistics show that where
there is most beer there is most beggary. Hence the efforts made to do
away with public pauperism touch upon the still broader and deeper one of
intemperance.
The desperation of the beggar is well known. Here in Germany they have a
proverb:
Es ist und bleibt die alte Geschicht;
Wer betteln kann verhungert nicht.
Which, rendered strictly, runs about thus:
The old story—we have it still;
The beggar’s sure to have his fill.