ABSTRACT
Measuring Wheat Consumption British governments during the century in review did not attempt to measure what they did not administer, subsidize, or tax; and since it was not official business, at the national level, to know what amount of bread, at what price, the British consumed, comprehensive data were not collected, nor official statistics published. Such respect for commer cial privacy was criticized as negligent.1 Even when deciding matters of literally vital national interest (such as the level of wheat imports needed to offset wartime dearths) the government had to rely, chiefly, on the roughest guesswork.
