Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 34, Number 82, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 June 1902 — Babcock & Hopkins Still Improving. [ARTICLE]

Babcock & Hopkins Still Improving.

Babcock & Hopkinsy the grain dealers, have now got the foundations in for their new grain scales and scale house and office. —The scales are Fairbanks largest and best, aud are being put down to stay. The foundations are of big square Bedford rock, and the frame that rests upon them is of solid steel "I’’ beams, and laid in Portland cement. • There is always great jar and wear on ordiuarv wooden scale frames and they last in good order only three- or four years. But with this steel frame, resting on its massive stone foundations, it looks like it ought to last 50 years and then a good while; perhaps even until the junior partner finds a wife to suit him.

The office building to go with the scales, will be a very large and oommodious one, with several rooms, including one where the book-keepers can do their work secure from all interruption. The old blacksmith and wagon shop building that formerly stood where this new building is being erected, has been moved around near the elevator and is utilized for a general storage room. Besides the cleaners, clippers and bleaoher, and other apparatus for a strictly modern grain handling business, tbe firm has also recently got a dryer installed. This will thoroughly dry small grain or shelled corn as fast as it can run through a good sized spout. It is done by means of a strong blast of hot, dry air, heated and dried by passing through a ooil of 1,000 feet of steam pipes, t his dryer will ofter prevent great loss on damp grain, aud is the only one of its kind now in Indiana But for all the things this firm is doing at their elevator here, they do not afford soope for their activities, aud they are continually branching out into other fields. In addition to their branoh elevator at Parr, they now have two others under construction. One of these at Fair Oaks, the other at Rose Lawn They will each be of 25,000 bushels capacity. When these are finished they have still two others in contemplation, at Pleasant Ridge and Lee.