they may make different grades of baker's flour, these mills approaching
much nearer to the Hungarian system, though modifying it to American
methods and machinery. In mills of from three to five hundred barrels
daily capacity, it is hardly possible or profitable to go to this
subdivision of grades, owing to the excessive amount of machinery
necessary to handling the stuff in its different stages of completion.
The Hungarian system has, therefore, been greatly modified by American
millers and milling engineers to adapt it to the requirements of mills
of average capacity. This modified Hungarian system we call gradual
reduction. It can be profitably employed in any mill large enough to run
at all on merchant work. So far it has not been found practicable to use
it in mills of less than one hundred and twenty-five to one hundred and
fifty barrels capacity in twenty-four hours, and it is better to have
the mill of at least double this capacity.

Gradual reduction, as its name implies, consists in reducing the
wheat to flour, shorts, and bran, by several successive operations or
reductions technically called breaks, the process going on gradually,
each break leaving the material a little finer than the preceding one.
Usually five reductions or breaks are made, though six or seven may be
used. The larger the number of breaks the more complicated the system
becomes, and it is preferable to keep it as simple as possible, for even
at its simplest it requires a good, wide-awake thinking miller to handle
it successfully. When it is thoroughly and systematically carried out in
the mill it is without question as much in advance of the new process as
that is ahead of the old style of milling.

In order that I may convey to you as clear an idea of gradual milling
reduction as possible, I will give as fully as possible the programme of
a mill of one hundred and fifty barrels maximum daily capacity designed