Seriously, lets discuss it. The basics - the first commercially available sliced bread was sold in the late 20s, Wonder bread took off during the 30s (proving that good sales can be head even in the leanest times as long as you are providing a product people want).
So, you have the basics. What if one made an argument that sliced bread could be used to represent a downward trend in America, and considering its timing might even have led the way.
Consider this - before sliced bread you bought, generally speaking, artisan breads. Breads made in the bakery you were buying them from - mostly small "mom and pop" style stores that provided a good living to those who ran them and served a great purpose in the community. You got your bread as what it was, more often than not the same day it was made.
Sliced bread (incidentally the first slicing machine also bagged the bread to help it preserve freshness) changed things. We could go from a handmade, hand cut, hand served product to a product ready to use - in another innovation of the time - toasters. It was simple, it was cheap, and it was readily available.
Bread making went from an artisan process to a factory process. Rather than supporting family businesses where people saw the product from scratch to retail it shifted to "factory" baked bread, which was then delivered to different bakeries and sold. Now the bread you got in New York was the same bread you bought in Chicago. It was cheap, it was consistent, and it was edible. Yet there was no longer an art form to it.
Now, rather than employing a couple people at a single location of reasonable skill and entreupenurial (sp) investment the process employed people to simply follow directions. People who really had not deep investment into the quality of the product they made. They were paid to do a job rather than earning money by selling what they made. The downside becomes further. Its easier to work with and get consistency with highly ground and processed flours. No one really cares that it is far less natural or healthy for you. It was a need of the early bread makers. Process it, then "enrich" it to give it back more nutritional value than sawdust (processed white flour without enrichers is about the nutritional equivalent of saw dust).
Use it as an example - how much better is artisan bread than bagged sliced bread? How much more does the maker of artisan bread make than the bread factory worker following instructions? There is a downfall to looking for the cheapest and the easiest way to have what we want. Bread is bread, until you have tried good bread, and realize what we have lost out on by having to have something put cheaply in front of us, ready to use, with little thought or effort on our part.
/:P I did it, I ranted against sliced bread
So, you have the basics. What if one made an argument that sliced bread could be used to represent a downward trend in America, and considering its timing might even have led the way.
Consider this - before sliced bread you bought, generally speaking, artisan breads. Breads made in the bakery you were buying them from - mostly small "mom and pop" style stores that provided a good living to those who ran them and served a great purpose in the community. You got your bread as what it was, more often than not the same day it was made.
Sliced bread (incidentally the first slicing machine also bagged the bread to help it preserve freshness) changed things. We could go from a handmade, hand cut, hand served product to a product ready to use - in another innovation of the time - toasters. It was simple, it was cheap, and it was readily available.
Bread making went from an artisan process to a factory process. Rather than supporting family businesses where people saw the product from scratch to retail it shifted to "factory" baked bread, which was then delivered to different bakeries and sold. Now the bread you got in New York was the same bread you bought in Chicago. It was cheap, it was consistent, and it was edible. Yet there was no longer an art form to it.
Now, rather than employing a couple people at a single location of reasonable skill and entreupenurial (sp) investment the process employed people to simply follow directions. People who really had not deep investment into the quality of the product they made. They were paid to do a job rather than earning money by selling what they made. The downside becomes further. Its easier to work with and get consistency with highly ground and processed flours. No one really cares that it is far less natural or healthy for you. It was a need of the early bread makers. Process it, then "enrich" it to give it back more nutritional value than sawdust (processed white flour without enrichers is about the nutritional equivalent of saw dust).
Use it as an example - how much better is artisan bread than bagged sliced bread? How much more does the maker of artisan bread make than the bread factory worker following instructions? There is a downfall to looking for the cheapest and the easiest way to have what we want. Bread is bread, until you have tried good bread, and realize what we have lost out on by having to have something put cheaply in front of us, ready to use, with little thought or effort on our part.
/:P I did it, I ranted against sliced bread
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, nor is it to hand them government support. As you noted noone can really blame the industries for trying to do less with more when labor is a major factor in costs.
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