Rensselaer Republican, Volume 16, Number 44, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 July 1884 — A Minneapolis Flouring Mill. [ARTICLE]

A Minneapolis Flouring Mill.

In the largest mills the appointments and the work accomplished are on a stupenduous scale. The Pillsbury A, to which is accorded the distinction of being the largest flonring-mitl in the world, is a noble building, occupying a conspicuous site on the east side of the Mississippi. The walls are of limestone, of enormous thickness, as they must be to support the heavy machinery. Its capacity is 5,200 barrels of flour and about 180 tons of offal pet day. This is made from 24,000 bushels of wheat. The aggregate quantity of wheat taken to the mill and of flour and offal taken away, when it is running to its utmost capacity, makes 110 car loads daily. Four days’ product would load an ocean steamer. The mere handling of the wheat and product is no small problem, especially as the “roustabout” work and the packing are done in ten hours, though the mill runs day and night. The flour is packed and loaded at the rate of 520 barrels an hour, or more than eight per minute. A great many 280 pound sacks are used for exporting, and shipments are made daily to the principal European ports. The mill employs 200 men, is illuminated by a forty-light electric machine, has a complete fire apparatus, more than fifteen miles of belting, and many other things that excite the. wonder of visit©l? - f Glr the—vast bulk ®f machinery w hich it contains is supplied by two of the largest-sized turbines, each driven by a column of water twelve feet in diameter, falling fifty feet. Each turbine is set in a tube made of heavy plates of boiler-iron, through which the immense body of water plunges with terrific force. The impact is received at the bottom of the pit on a solid flooring made of a number of intersectng layers of twelve-inch timbers firmly bolted together and embedded into the sandstone with hydraulic cement. The two turbines generate three thousand horse-power, and the crown-wheel and pinion at the top of each weigh nine thousand pounds. The great velocity at which they revolve has caused several of these gears to fly into fragments, and they have recently been replaced with steel On the grinding-floor there are two hundred sets of rolls and twenty pair of mill-stones, and the other five floors are filled with machinery to correspond. The structure cost nearly a million of dollars. It is a great span from the mill used by the Israelites to the Pillsbury A mill of to-day. - . Jennie June conclules that two people cannot live in any style in New Fork on $4,000 a year. They might be happy, though, which is vastly more important than style. j 1