furrows made smooth, true, and uniform, self-adjusting drivers
introduced, and the driving gear better fitted. Spring wheat patents
rapidly rose to the first place in the market, and winter wheat millers
waked up to find their vantage ground occupied by their hitherto
contemned rivals. To their credit it may be said that they have not
been slow in taking up the gauntlet, and through the competition of the
millers of the two climatically divided sections of this country with
each other and among themselves the onward march of milling progress has
been constantly accelerated. Where it will end no man can tell, and
the chief anxiety of every progressive miller, whether he lives in
Pennsylvania or Minnesota, is not to be left behind in the race.

The millers of the more Eastern winter wheat States have a two-fold
question to solve. First, how to make a flour as good as can be found in
the market, and second, how to meet Western competition, which, through
cheap raw material and discriminating freight rates, is making serious
inroads upon the local markets. Whether the latter trouble can be
remedied by legislature, either State or national, or not, remains to be
proven by actual trial. That you can solve the first part of the problem
satisfactorily to yourselves depends upon your readiness to adopt new
ideas and the means you have at hand to carry them out. It is manifestly
impossible to make as good a flour out of soft starchy wheat as out of
that which is harder and more glutinous. It is equally impossible for
the small mill poorly provided with machinery to cope successfully
with the large merchant mill fully equipped with every appliance that
American ingenuity can suggest and money can buy. I believe, however,
that a mill of moderate size can make flour equally as good as the large
mill, though, perhaps, not as economically in regard to yield and cost
of manufacture.