Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 2, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 January 1892 — ONE MILLION A DAY. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

ONE MILLION A DAY.

THAT AMOUNT IN GRAIN COES TO EUROPE. ■ j -■ : From a Kansas Barn Floor tQ a European Steamer’s Hold-The Journey of a Great Crop from file Western Prairie to the 'Seaboard and Thence to Europe. A Kernel of Corn Tells of Its Travels. A kernel of coni was tumbled into a bln of wheat on board a storm-tossed Atlantic York bound for Antwerp. And afrit lay’there it recognized a kernel of wheat near by as one that had lain beside it for a whole weary yeek.oß the floor of old Farmer Brown’s granary, out in Kansas. They were old, friends, so to speak, and had grown up together on the same broad acres Within half a mile of each other. As chance would have it, a farm hand casually swept them up from the floor and tossed one into a bin of corn and the other into a bin of wheat, and soon after each one was shoveled with billions of duplicates upon a wagon and then loaded onto a car for the ride of 1,200 miles to the seaboard. The journey had been eventful, but

the kernel of com had had by far the most eventful time of it. It was not in ■a happy frame of mind, for it had lost several of its cortications and was wan and haggard, compared to the plump, fat specimen it was when it lay in the fanner’s granary. “Why,” said the kernel of corn to the kernel of wheat, “matters went well enough until we reached Buffalo. I did not mind being shoveled into the bottom of a car, with 800 bushels on top of me,

but wben we got to Buffalo we were unceremoniously pitched out of the ear door By* a oouple of men with a steam shovel, and we fell headlong into a big Iron box at the bottom of an elevator. Big buckets on an endless belt picked us up, and before we knew it we had been taken up about sixteen stories, I should think, to the top floor of the elevator, weighed and dusted and started op our way down again through-an iron pipe. We lay for a few days in a huge bin, with about 70,000 bushels of cdrn, and

theft ai'gate was Opened and down we went ihto cars and canalboats through a long i iron > pipe, ealled a leg by the men in charge of it. “Ihe lower, open end of the leg was moved about on the car back and forth, while millions of kernels of com shd};.through it until the oar was packed full. Boards, ytere.ppt up,hy,the door as fast as the ear filled to keep us from spilling out. “There -were many miles of cars in long trains from'Kansas, Nebraska, and Missouri in Buffalo, and long tows, schbbhere, yWd lake'propetters from Dulktfi; Chicfigd; Milwaukee, and other pocfa the great lakes. All of the find jeioaded fin a huhdred trates <-pfWU]kA&d bn' Canalboats for transportat^ ft te jthe seaboard. Some of the York over the New ih»e-aj»d. VVestern Baiiroad; othtitefxyer the Shore; and more tjUhßMther of thesAufeame hy the New Nest.'to the Central the Efiß? —’©ana#- .the largest some of the boats came throughtfttNew Yost fleonrthe lakes “My fMkt great elevator- It great freight yards, cars of grain, of 160,000*.basfMi,(pre arriving there from were a long time in Other cars and •uStnfesji iioul and then on -tjtfiMn jSkgdivided into two ]'•* ~ r, “iflrfna)rsM ifi I then each i-un liWjhNlu* etowatpr Jilling Pft ta'est to end. ijfi ( eire i^as' , room for •Bother tram in ©n b'frack |»aitel , to-tho other ,t«vo, but it ie'.Wd ptTpadmg'ckrs Wtthgnaiii for the t’entral England Bt«teß.- j. < “When the. train was in there the door, •f pitt Var flwW opeHUrfd seen with steam show*ld, wdrtfcd-from the’ crtrtside and attached to a rope which draws them up to ■ifiSfl? dropped to the bottom of the ear and might have remained there had not a boy With a broom swept out the car and sent

me along with the other kernels. It was the gentlest treatment I received on the whole journey and it saved one of my cortications. “I fell through an iron grating Into an iron box under the ground floor of the elevator and dark as a pocket. The box will hold the contents of several cars. The elevator is 160 feet high, and we were carried up to the top floor on a

bucket belt in a jiffy. They had cleaners up there and scales that can weigh 70,000 bushels at once. We fell first into a garner right above the scale bin, and had to wait there while a lot of wheat was being weighed. The garner is not as large as the scale bin, and is so arranged that it can be filled while the scale bin underneath is being weighed and emptied. So there is no interruption in the work of unloading and loading. After a while we heard- a hissing, rustling sound, as if something ’ were giving way beneath us. It Was the scale bin being emptied. When the noise stopped there was a click, and away all the corn in the garner went down into tho scale bin. It was an awful fall and made me dizzy. "I saw a kernel of wheat trembling on a board that projected a little way into the scale bin, for everything shook as we fell. He was seared half to death, and said that he had been shifted from one bin to another for about a week, and had learned that there are about 250 bins — some for shipping and receiving, with a total capacity of 1,500,000 bushels—in the building. As he passed out of one bin into another he was whisked through the cleaner and shaken down into one sieve after another until ho lay half conscious on the floor. Before he recovered from his fright the poor little thing had been picked up and weighed and measured half a dozen times, and hurled headlong down a leg, or tube, nearly one hundred feet into a eanalboat. He thought that his troubles were ended, but they were only begun. Some one inside

the building decided that the boat would have to be unloaded. The agony of this, he said, was excruciating. First, the boat was moved to the south end of the elevator. There was a ‘li-e-o-! h-o-a-v-e!’ and a clanking of ropes and pulleys, when suddenly the long marine leg of the elevator with its endless belt of buckets was ruthlessly thrust into the eanalboat and began its work. Some of the little kernels of wheat were crushed, and all were terrified. The man with the shovel was on hand again gathering them up from the ends of the boat, and before they knew it they were all upon the top floor of the elevator again, ready to be weighed and sent through the bins once more into a train of cars bound for New England. The marine leg was pulled up out of sight when the boat was emptied, and when I saw this little kernel he was heartbroken at having been left behind by his companions. “He was a whole fortnight in that elevator, sometimes on the floor, at others in grain bins, and once he was tossed on to a man's hat brim, where he lay until he was shaken off into a bin of wheat entirely different from the one he started with. What he doesn’t know about the place isn’t worth tho telling. He told me about a big belt in the north end of the building which turns all of the complicated machinery. ! “The belt is 300 feet long and 4i feet ikide. It weighs 2,800 pounds. On the top floor this belt turns a shaft extending the entire length of the building. The shaft is connected with the lofters, which have belt buckets that do not extend to the bottom floor and are used in shifting grain from one bin to another, or sending it through the cleaner into the big hopper above the scales. Beneath the hopper he noticed a leg that turned around, so that when the grain runs out

of the hopper it may be sent into any one of the twenty bins at will. This is done by putting the mouth of the leg into any one of the many shafts all arranged in a circle like the 1 raters of a typewriter about a circular space. Some of the shafts were marked ‘S. 4,’ meaning that it would lead to shipping bin No. 4. Another was marked- ‘A. B. 6,’ receiving bin 6, in another part of the building, and the grain from the hopper could be sent by this simple process into almost any one of them. The wheat kernel also came upon nineteen endless

bucket belts running from the ground floor of the building to the top, and I learned upon inquiry that each one of these belts will raise 5,000 bushels of grain in an hour. On the west side of the elevator, toward the river, are nineteen legs by which canal boats are loaded, and a marine leg, which is kept in the north wing of the building, for unloading canal boats when it is necessary.

, “There are five scales with a capacity for weighing about 70,000 bushels of grain each. And from each of the legs on tho east side 1,400 bushels of grain may be poured into a car in five minutes. Its flow is regulated by a gate and it can bo swung back and forth so as to iili the car eveDly. Between 100,000

and 200,000 bushels of grain go through the place every day. Some of it is cleaned in the building before it is weighed, and the arrangement of shafts and endless- buckets is most convenient for sending it from one end of the building to the other. “The kernel I was talking to told mo that on a man’s hat brim he rode into the scale-room office. “A man keeps track of every kernel of corn that passes through the building. He has aii office on the scale floor and Several assistants. Along one side of the room is a blackboard, having an outline of tho plan of the interior of the building painted on it. The receiving bins and shipping bins aro connected by chalk marks, showing which ones may be immediately connected for the shifting of grain. “Below this are squares numbered after each of the 250 storage bins in the elevator. Rod wheat in red chalk, corn in yellow chalk, green wheat in green chalk, wheat in white chalk, and oats in purple chalk were marked on each square to represent the number of the bin to which it refers. Only two of the bins were empty last week, and the man in charge could tell in a twinkling if an order for a certain number of bushels of any kind of grain should come in just what bins he could go to to And it. And below this was another table that looked like a schoolboy’s formula for finding the least common multiple. By this lie could tell just what legs and belts and machinery he would have to connect in order to get it ready for shipment in the big shipping bin where it is weighed. “While ho was talking the scale bin was emptied again by a man who pulled a gate, and I left tho heartbroken kernel and was whisked down through a dozen bins without stopping except to catch my breath. Early one morning, after I had rested half the night, we had to go again. “This time it was on to a eanalboat or lighter, which was to take us alongside an ocean steamer. Down a long leg—there are nineteen of them on the west side of the elevator—we went. You never saw such a fall, and the grain poured out of the leg just as water flows out of a pipe. The dust was suffocating. I struck the side of the boat and lay on the deck, for a moment partly stunned. One man held the end of the leg down which the corn was falling. He had a ropo about it and pulled ou the rope to guide it. First it filled up one side of the boat and then the other. Another man wallowed in the com on board with a shovel. He wore a muzzle on his face that made his head look like the head of old Farmer Brown’s hogs. The other kernels of corn were frightened. They did not object to being sent to distant Russia, where they could relieve the famine, or go to Ireland either, where they could do much good. But to fall into the trough of a hog after such a journey was beyond their endurtmee. Just then I saw that it was a muzzle the man had put on to keep out cortications from flying into his nostrils. Ho was covered with dust and his hair was gray with it. We were soon pulled out into the river alongside an ocean steamer. A tug came after us and a lot of boats were hitched together. Some of them left beside ‘tramp’ steamships. Others were dropped alongside the big passenger boats. The one I was on was left by

this ship and it was not long before we were oil board. But we had to go aboard , another boat first—an elevator boat. And it was the seventh time I was transshipped sinca I left old Brown’s form. “At last a tugboat with an elevator built tight on it reaching way up higher than the sidQ of a ship came along and began to wedge its way in between us and the ocean vessel. It had an air of business and bustle and there was a corresponding bustle on the steamship when it arrived. Soon after I was swept

int* the hold of the eanalboat, the elevator boat ran a long leg down Into the eanalboat. Then the powerful machinery that is used to move the tug was applied to the machinery in the elevator and the buckets on the belt began to pick up the kernels of corn in the canalboat at a terrific rate. “On the elevator floor below the top cne there was a brief wait, while we were weighed again, and then we went spinning down into the bottom of the ship’s hold. Above the scales was a cleaner, but our lot did not have to go through that, as wo were cleaned at the elevator, and it is used chiefly for grain that comes ofi from Buffalo all the way by boat and is not cleaned in one of the great railroad elevators. “The elevator on board the boat has all the appliances of the railroad elevator, but the ship’s hold is the bin into which the corn is sent. When I got down here with another cortication partly gone I found the steamer’s hold divided into bins, some for wheat and some for corn. “Tho elevator leg was swung to and fro. First ,one bin was filled, then another, just as the freight cars had been at Buffalo, and men with shovels evened it off. In tramp steamships, where there are no bins, men have a harder time to trim tho hold with Hieir shovels. When the top is dressed as evevriy as it can be boards are laid on it and on them heavy flour barrels are placed so'that the grain will not' shift from side to Side and perhaps not Shift back again when tho vessel heaves. Tramp steamships aro in great peril sometimes when this happens iq rough weather. ”

“And are wo going to be haqled out,of here tho same way?" asked the wheat kernel, deeply interested in his fate. “Yes; I guess in about the same way when we reach the other side,” answered the corn. “You have no conception of the amount of grain shipped from tho United States in ono year,’’the kernel of corn went on. “Why, I heard two men giving figures as to the value of cereals exported as follows: From New Fork, during November, 1 891 ---- $10,833,2-23 From New York, during November, 1890........ 2,£37,189 From New York, eleven months to November 30, 1891 50,358,048 From New York, eleven months to November 39, 1890 14,595,703 From United States, eleven months to November 3), 1891 194,000,000 From-United States, eleven months to November 30, 1890 128,900,000 Each of the kernels wanted to go where he could do some good in alleviating the wants of humanity, and in this generous missionary spirit they both fell asleep. As “breadstuffs” is the largest single item in value in our exports the figures of total exports for November, 1891— $110,100,220 —are interesting, as they are the largest on record. For the year ending Dec, 1, 1891, our total exports reached the enormous sum of $949,022,185, and the United States sold to other nations $129,649,696 of product more than they took from all othor nations. For the current fiscal year the exports from the United States will exceed one billion dollars.

BOTTOM OF HOPPER WITH SPOUT LEADING TO BINS.

GRAIN POURING THROUGH THE ELEVATOR “LEG” INTO THE VESSEL'S HOLD.

WEIGHING GRAIN IN THE ELEVATOR “HOPPER.”

OUTGOING STEAMSHIP LOADING FOR EUROPE.

THE ELEVATOR MEN’S DUST MUZZLE.

GRAIN UNLOADED FROM CARS AND CARRIED TO THE TOP OF THE ELEVATOR BY STEAM.