known prominently in American industry as “the Wards.” 
That business was the nucleus of what is now known as the 
Ward Baking Corporation, with eighteen baking plants from 
Chicago east, the nineteenth being under construction in 
Detroit at the present time and about to be completed at a 
20st of one million dollars. 
It was his vision in Pittsburgh which rose in his mind at 
the same time as the changing character of the American 
housewife’s life. The bread-baking housewife, kneading dough 
and baking bread twice or thrice a week, when required by 
the family’s consumption, is rapidly disappearing, as the dis- 
tributive power of mechanically operated bakeries meets the 
community demand for a wholesome staff of life. Even the 
farmer’s wife waits for the bread to be delivered at her door. 
That necessity for great quantities of reliable foods has grown 
out of the rapid emancipation of the housewife from the cares 
of kitchen drudgery. 
The times were ripe for multiple production. The craving 
for ease in domestic life has made the bakery, among other 
food plants, a community affair depending for its existence, 
its increasing importance, and its financial status upon the 
unvarying quality of its almost continual production of a 
autritious food made from ingredients of correctly analyzed 
and standardized attributes. 
That vision of Robert Boyd Ward has become the basic 
principle in all baking companies whose production has been 
increased because of the conditions which he saw so clearly 
and the inevitably increasing demands of the people. That 
demand, which, throughout the United States was 259, of 
all bread consumed in 1900 is now over 609, of all bread con- 
sumed in 1925. Tt is estimated that the consumption of the 
people of this country is about 20 billion loaves annually, so 
that the annual production by the great baking companies 
is about 12 billion loaves. Of this amount the Ward Baking 
Company produces nearly 400,000,000, the gross poundage 
of bread produced in 1924 being 307,446,764, and of cake 
71,264,614, a total of 378,711,378. 
This business is done on a cash basis, the infinitesimally 
small quantity that is sold on short time credit playing almost