Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 22, Number 89, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 July 1901 — GRAIN ELEVATORS. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

GRAIN ELEVATORS.

Important Factors in Handling Crops of the West. } ENORMOUS CAPACITY. How They Are Filled From the Cars and How Emptied Into Boats. Wonderful Feats of Modern Machines —Cleaning and ScreeninK Processes, Separation of the Grains, Removal of DastandSmot, Manufacture of Flour, Ktc. —Some Ficurea That Give the Idea of ‘ the Tremendous Business From the Field to the Bin.

The United States raises about 550,000,000 bushels of wheat annually, which is harvested in the Pacific coast States in June, in the Middle and New England States in July, and in Central and Northern Minnesota and the Da~kotas In August. About one-fifth of our wheat is exported, and as if considerable portion of the crop is.grown in the Middle and Western States, much of it has to be moved either by rail or water to the great market centers. It is impossible in the limits of a short article to trace the progress of wheat from the farm to the elevators, thence to its destination In the flouring mill and to Its final destination as bread on the tables of the people. One-of the most Interesting processes of handling is at the great elevators either at lake ports or at the shipping points on the Atlantic coast The method of handling is worthy a brief description. The elevators are enormously high structures. If they were divided into floors as office buildings are, they would be fifteen or sixteen stories high. Most of them have narrow upper sections only about half as wide as are the main portions. These higher portions Are used for machinery and graintransferring devices, so there is no need for as great width as the lower floors, where the grain is stored in bins. Some of the elevators are large enough to hold 3,000,000 bushels of wheat, or 180,000,000 pounds, equal to 90,000 tons. Yet an elevator full of grain is handled expeditiously and easily, since

nearly everything is done by machinery or by power driven devices. As the movement of graiu in the shipping season is enormously greater than the capacity of the elevators, it follows that the grain is not allowed to remain long in storage. Train are constantly backing into elevators and boats "pulling up to their sides to take on loads of grain and transport them. Chicago is the chief depot of the country for making the transfer from the producing points to those where grains are to be prepared for consumption.

Buffalo is the great transferring point for the lake trade. Most of the elevators are situated where they can be reached by both water and rail, for while the heavy receipts come by rail, the big shipments go by boat. When a trainload of grain arrives at an elevator the cars to be unloaded are backed Into the elevator on « track that runs down the center of the building. At frequent intervals along the floor there are trap doors down which the grain may be emptied. The box car is stopped with Its side door opposite one of these traps. The car Is entered and a man with a steam shovel climbs Inside. A steam shovel is made of boards fastened together, and Is about three feet wide by

four in length. Near the top are two handles by which the workman may pull it about. Ou the opposite side and near the bottom of the shovel are fastened the two ropes, which by means of steam power pull the shovel forward each time after the workman sinks it down into the wheat. As the shovel lowers the wheat in the car the workman removes, one after another, the side boards which are placed one above another in the car door to hold in the fl wheat while it was being transported in the ear.

As the wheat is thus being shoveled out of the car and down into a receiving bin below the floor, the machinery is started which operates a transfer belt that moves through this receiving bin. The belt is fitted with cups which fill themselves as they pass through the grain. Up mount these cups on the belt

until they reach the top floor of the elevator, perhaps IGO or 170 feet above the point where they started. Here, as the belt turns in the descent, the cups empty their loads of grain into bins which are to. hold the cereal but temporarily. With chutes at tlieir bottoms these temporary bins are connected with weighing bins on the floor just below. The weigher, by a system of levers controlling a cut-off, draws into the enclosed weighing bin as much wheat as he pleases. When the yard of the scale rises, indicating that the amount of grain for which he gauges the scales lias poured iuto the bin. ho cuts off the stream and records the amount which has been weighed. By another lever the platform of the scales can be opened and the wheat dropped into a chute which leads to the floor below. Here a unique contrivance carries the grain to any of the storage bins desired. Two wide rubber belts, fully three and a half feet broad, extend from one end of the long building to the other. The chutes from the various weighing bins depend just above one or the other of these belts. The belts are operated on rollers which curve up in such a way at tlieir ends that the belt is majje to curve up in a corresponding way at the edges. On each side of the licit on the surface of the floor is the rail of a track which extends the full length of the belt. At various points along the floor are openings into the bins below. To get the grain which has been dropped from the weighing bin chutes to these flying belts into the lower bins requires the use of stil another unique device which runs on this track. This device is a receiver for the grain, and into this receiver the grain is thrown from the belt. The belt is shortened so that it reaches only as far as the bin which It is desired to fill. The end of the belt is then fastened in this receiver, which is rolled opposite the bin opening. The rlvqr of grain comes flying along, and as the belt turns under for the return trip the grain shoots into a receptacle from which it drops into a chute lending into the storage bin. After the grain is placed in the storage bin it is examined by elevator experts to see If it needs cleaning. If it does It Is carried again to the first floor, where are located the great fan-

ning and screening mills. Here the air is filled with the flying dust which escapes from the machines, rendering the place almost unbearable to the man who isn’t used to it. Afterrthe cleansing process is completed the grain is once more taken by carriers to the storage bins to await transportation. Long chutes lead from these storage bins to the places where cars or boats come to be loaded. Each-chute is movable, and each leads from a bin to the slip where the ship is loading. Minneapolis is the greatest flour-mak-ing center in the United States. It is said that 18,000,000 people could be fed each day with bread made from Minneapolis flour without increasing the present daily output of the mills. In 1599 these mills ground over 60,000,000 bushels of wheat. This represented the product of 22,000 farms of 160 acres

each, the average yield per acre being twenty bushels. The railroads had to provide over 100,000 cars to transport this flour. The Roller Process. Nearly everybody is familiar with the old process of; grinding wheat for flour between upper and nether millstones. The new, or roller, process is now generally used. The process dates in the United States from experiments made at Minneapolis in 1878 and 1879. In this process the millstones are replaced by pairs of small horizontal rollers. the surfaces of parts of which are traversed by small sharp grooves parallel to the axis of the rollers. These pairs of rollers are arranged in sets of three, one above the other, with considerable intervals between, so that the heat produced by the slight crushing will be counteracted as the product passes through the air on its way from

one pair of rollers to the next. These pairs of rollers are adjusted so that the crushing effect of any one pair is slight, and as many as six or seven sets, making from eighteen to twentyone pairs of rollers, are necessary to produce the various grades of flour. The process of separating light grains from heavy, and the foreign seeds, grains and other impurities from wheat is interesting. There are two processes: Tlie one is the process of sifting; the other, that of exposing a thin cascade of falling grain to a current of air. The separation of mustard and cockle and grass seed from the wheat may easily be effected by passing the mixed grains over inclined plates perforated with holes large enough for the smaller seeds to pass through, but not large enough for the wheat. The oat grain is separated by taking advantage of the elongated form. The mixed oat and wheat grains are discharged in a thin sheet upon an inclined thin iron plate perforated with round holes at intervals nicely determined by experiment, abundantly large for tlie passage of both the oat and tlie wheat grains if presented end foremost, perpendicularly to the plate. But as the plate is inclined, each berry must be tipped forward in order to enter a hole. An individual hole is of such diameter that when the wheat grain, sliding forward, carries its center of gravity beyond the support of the upper edge of the hole, the forward end of the grain has not reached the lower edge, find thus the wheat falls through. Tlie oat grain, however, being longer, is supported by the forward edge of the hole until the forward end of the grain reaches the further edge, and thus the oat grain slides down the plate. Fragments of straw and chaff pass on with the oats. The dust, smut and rust which may cling to the berry are separated by discharging the impure grain into the space between what may be regarded as a vertical cylinder, the surface of which Is covered with brushes, and a closely fitting iron case perforated with numerous slits or holes which serve the double purpose of making the surface rough and providing an escape for the. separated dust. Round seeds are separated by taking advantage of the superior velocity they acquire in rolling down an inclined plane as compared with the long grains, which sJide. The former leap an opening into which the latter drop.

By these and kindred processes it Is now practicable to obtain good whefit from a sample of spring wheat of which not more than one-half is fit for making flour.—Williamsport (I*a.) Grit.

LOADING VESSELS AT A GRAIN ELEVATOR.

VIEW OF A GREAT WESTERN WHEAT FARM.

FARMER RECEIVING GRIST.

GRAIN CARRYING BELTS IN AN ELEVATOR.