to work on mixed hard and soft spring wheat, and which probably will
come much nearer to meeting the conditions under which you have to mill
than any other I have found readily obtainable. I have chosen a mill of
this size, first, because following out the programme of a larger one
would require too much time and too great a repetition of details and
not give you any clearer idea of the main principles involved, and
secondly, because I thought it would come nearer meeting the average
requirements of the members of your association. Your worthy secretary
cautioned me that I must remember that I was going to talk to winter
wheat millers. The main principles and methods of gradual reduction are
the same, whether applied to spring or winter wheat; the details may
have to be varied to suit the varying conditions under which different
mills are operated. For this programme I am indebted to Mr. James Pye,
of Minneapolis, who is rapidly gaining an enviable and well deserved
reputation as a milling engineer, and one who has given much study to
the practical planning and working of gradual reduction mills.

And right here let me say that no miller should undertake to build
a gradual reduction mill, or to change over his mill to the gradual
reduction system, until he has consulted with some good milling engineer
(the term millwright means very little nowadays), and obtained from him
a programme which shall fit the size of the mill, the stock upon which
it has to work, and the grade of flour which it is to make. This
programme is to the miller what a chart is to the sailor. It shows him
the course he must pursue, how the stuff must be handled, and where it
must go. Without it he will be "going it blind," or at best only feeling
his way in the dark. A gradual reduction mill, to be successful, must
have a well-defined system, and to have this system, the miller must
have a definite plan to work by. But to go on with my programme.