[Footnote 1: A paper read before the meeting of the Pennsylvania State
Millers Association at Pittsburgh, Pa., by Albert Hoppin, Editor of the
_Northwestern Miller_.]

By ALBERT HOPPIN.


To speak of the wonderful strides which the art of milling has taken
during the past decade has become exceedingly trite. This progress,
patent to the most casual observer, is a marked example of the power
inherent in man to overcome natural obstacles. Had the climatic
conditions of the Northwest allowed the raising of as good winter wheat
as that raised in winter wheat sections generally, I doubt if we should
hear so much to-day of new processes and gradual reduction systems. So
long as the great bulk of our supply of breadstuffs came from the winter
wheat fields, progress was very slow; the mills of 1860, and I may even
say of 1870, being but little in advance, so far as processes were
concerned, of those built half a century earlier. The reason for this
lack of progress may be found in the ease with which winter wheat could
be made into good, white, merchantable flour. That this flour was
inferior to the flour turned out by winter wheat mills now is proven by
the old recipe for telling good flour from that which was bad, viz.: To
throw a handful against the side of the barrel, if it stuck there it was
good, the color being of a yellowish cast. What good winter wheat patent
to-day will do this? Still the old time winter wheat flour was the best
there was, and it had no competitor. The settling up of the Northwest
which could not produce winter wheat at all, but which did produce a
most superior article of hard spring wheat, was a new factor in the
milling problem. The first mills built in the spring wheat States tried