All this was the cause of much worry to bakers. They had been accustomed to the manufacture of bread from flour the quality of which was well known and regulated with almost scientific accuracy, but under the new order of things they found the knowledge which they had acquired laboriously over a long period of years almost useless to them. So long as they were dealing with wheat flour, even if that flour did contain a large proportion of offal which had formerly been used to feed cattle, the position was not quite so bad, for most of them had been in the habit of baking a greater or lesser proportion of what was termed “wheaten” and “wholemeal” bread. But when flour produced from rye, barley, and even maize had to be added their troubles began, for only by chemical analysis was it possible for them to determine the proportions in which the various cereals were used, and these proportions were varied arbitrarily week by week at the whim of the Wheat Commission authorities; while the millers were absolutely prohibited from giving any information on the subject. Thus, when after a series of experiments they had ascertained the method by which they could produce the best loaf from a given flour, they suddenly discovered that the mixture had been altered, and that their experiments had to begin all over again; and this continued to be the position for some time even after the end of the war. THE POSITION OF THE U.C.B.S. While the position of the average private baker was that which has been described above, the baking departments of Co-operative societies found themselves in a very much worse position in direct ratio as they had been loyal hitherto in the use of Co-operatively milled flour. The flour mills of Scotland did not produce more than one half of the flour which was used in the country, with the result that the remainder had to be imported; but the Scottish Co-operative Wholesale Society imported wheat and themselves milled practically all the flour sold by them. The consequence was that as the quality of “Government Regulation” flour deteriorated, the flour which was supplied by the Wholesale Society’s mills, in common with that supplied by the other millers, was of such a nature that bread baked with it was inferior in quality and unpalatable. As, however, bakers were compelled to take flour from the source from which they procured it at the time when the Food Control regulations came into force, those who had formerly used a considerable proportion of imported flour were allowed to mix a good percentage of the flour which was still being imported with the “Regulation” flour, and were thus enabled to produce a comparatively white and palatable loaf; while the Wholesale Society, which had not been in the habit of importing much flour, were now allowed by those responsible for the bread regulations to import only a very small proportion, and their customers suffered accordingly.