Ostrander, since deceased, the founder and for a number of years the editor
of the _North-Western Miller_, a trade newspaper. The new ideas were for a
time vigorously combated by the millers, but their worth was so plain that
they were soon adopted, not only in Minneapolis, but by progressive millers
throughout the country. The truth was the 'new process' in its entirety,
which may be summarized in four steps--first, grinding or, more properly,
granulating the berry; second, bolting or separating the 'chop' or meal
into first flour, middlings, and bran; third, purifying the middlings,
fourth, regrinding and rebolting the middlings to produce the higher grade,
or 'patent' flour. This higher grade flour drove the best winter wheat
flours out of the Eastern markets, and placed milling in Minnesota upon a
firm basis. The development of the 'new process' cannot be claimed by any
one man. Hundreds of millers all over the country have contributed to its
advance, but the millers of Minneapolis have always taken the lead.

"Within the past two or three years what may be distinctively called the
'new process' has, in the mills of Minneapolis and some few other leading
mills in the country, been giving place to a new system, or rather, a
refinement of the processes above described. This latest system is known to
the trade as the 'gradual reduction' or high-grinding system, as the 'new
process' is the medium high-grinding system, and the old way is the low or
close grinding system. In using the gradual reduction in making flour the
millstones are abandoned, except for finishing some of the inferior grades
of flour, and the work is done by means of grooved and plain rollers, made
of chilled iron or porcelain. In some cases disks of chilled iron, suitably
furrowed, are used, and in others concave mills, consisting of a cylinder
running against a concave plate. In Minneapolis the chilled iron rolls take
the precedence of all other means.

"The system of gradual reduction is much more complicated than either of