INVENTION OF ROLLER FLOUR MILL.

new process as to be separated from the flour and passed off
into the bran, though in the practice of some mills it is utilized
into a low grade flour and sold to a cheap trade.
In the new process milling the husk or shell containing the
black cells was crushed together and passed over the bolts with
the bran, not pulverized into the mass as in the old process
milling. This made it possible. to use the hard wheat. Wheat
grows only in the temperate zone and far north to a cold line,
where it will not ripen. It is richest in nutritious parts useful
as a food the nearest that northern cold line where it will not
ripen. This wheat is characterized as hard or red spring wheat
and grows best on the barren plains of the Dakotas, and
throughout that almost unknown, but vast region of western
Canada, now fast filling with wheat raising settlers. Under the
buhr stone milling this wheat could not be used, and was sold
for 30 cents less than winter wheat, as explained above. The
roller mill has made it the head of the wheat grains and gives
it the highest price, as it had the highest food value. Some day
this invention of John Stevens will make Canada rival the
United   States in flour production. The introduction of the
roller mills in the Minneapolis mills in  1880 added 100,000
people to the citizenship of that place in five years, and made
it almost at a single bound the flour milling emporium of Amer-
ica, sweeping into its mills annually 33,000,000 bushels of wheat
by 1886, that ten years before was almost worthless; and set-
tling the bleak prairies with several millions of hardy pioneIers,
all raising  wheat. This invention   drove wheat raising from
Wisconsin and the Middle West, which was replaced by the
product of cows and corn, and closed the flour mills of his
own city. 1
Not alone did it affect the activities of vast areas of farm
lands, it made it impossible and unprofitable to mill longer with
the buhr stone. There was no market for the product. The in-

1. That this movement is still going on is illustrated by the last state
census.
"The acreage of wheat has decreased from 417,163 acres in 1895, to 210,010
in 1905, and the value from $4,225,728, to $2,263,701." The tobacco
crop
of Wisconsin is valued at three hundred thousand dollars more than the wheat
crop. During the same period of the last ten census years, the cheese and
butter output has increased in value $20,401,000 in the state. The total
increase in the value of all other farm products is one hundred and six million
dollars, while wheat fell off one-half in product and value. In 1895, accord-
ing to reports made to the Oshkosh "Northwestern," 1,500,650 bushels
of
wheat was raised in Winnebago county. By the census of 1905, on an acreage
of 2,894, there was 35,215 bushels raised in the same county; and by this
year's report made by the assessors to the county clerk, the acreage has
been reduced in two years to 1,272, or less than one-half.


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