FAMINE POSSIBILITIES—CHANGES IN QUALITY OF FLOUR—FOOD CONTROL DEPARTMENT ESTABLISHED—BAKERS’ DIFFICULTIES—THE POSITION OF THE U.C.B.S.—A BIG LAND PURCHASE—ILLNESS OF THE PRESIDENT—A NATURAL WORKING DAY BY ORDER—ITS DIFFICULTIES—ENTERTAINMENTS TO SOLDIERS—BRANCH BAKERIES—IRELAND—LEADHILLS—ROTHESAY—BUTE CO-OPERATIVE SOCIETY FORMED—SUBSIDISED BREAD—AN INDUSTRIAL COUNCIL—DELIVERY DIFFICULTIES—EMPLOYEES ON MILITARY SERVICE—THE END OF THE TASK. The first two years of the war had brought difficulties in their train which the bakers of the country found considerable difficulty in overcoming; but the conditions under which they were called on to produce bread in the following two years were such as had not been experienced for at least a hundred years, and there came a time when the country was faced with the possibility of having to do without bread altogether for a period. Fortunately this possibility did not become reality, but it was the cause of material changes in the quality of the flour used for breadmaking and of the conditions under which the bread was made and sold which would have seemed impossible before the war began. By the early winter of 1916 the possibility of a condition of things obtaining which would prevent the importation of foodstuffs, and particularly of wheat, in sufficient quantities to provide full supplies for the population of the British Isles began to force itself on the Government, so they appointed a gentleman to the position of Food Controller and conferred on him almost despotic powers. One result of this control of food was a drastic interference with the milling of flour. In Scotland the millers produced flour in ordinary times which contained a little more than 70 per cent. of the wheat; the first fruits of the new order of things was a regulation that the extraction from the wheat should be increased, by about 8 per cent.