The building is four stories high, including basement, and thirty-two feet square. It would be some better to have it larger, but it is made this small to show how small a space a mill of this size can be made to occupy. No story is less than twelve feet high. The machinery Is very conveniently arranged, and there is plenty of room all around. The system is a modification of the gradual reduction system, the middlings being worked upon millstones. The first break is on one pair of 9 x 18 inch corrugated iron rolls, eight corrugations to the inch, the corrugations running parallel with the axis of the rolls. The second break on rolls having twelve corrugations to the inch, the third sixteen, and the fourth twenty to the inch, while the fifth break, where the bran is finally cleaned, has twenty-four corrugations to the inch. The basement contains the line shaft and pulleys for driving rolls, stones, cockle machine, and separator. The only other machinery in the basement is the cockle machine. The line shaft runs directly through the center of the basement, the power being from engine or water wheel outside the building. The first floor has the roller mills in a line nearly over the line shaft below, the middlings stones, two in number, at one side opposite the entrance to the mill, the receiving bin at one side of the entrance in the corner of the mill, and the two flour packers for the baker's and patent flour in the other corner. This arrangement leaves over half of the floor area for receiving and packing purposes. The bolting chests, one with six reel and the other with three reel begin on the second floor and reach up into the attic. An upright shaft from the line shaft in the basement geared to a horizontal shaft running through the attic parallel with the line shaft below, comprise about all the shafting there is in the mill. There is a short shaft on the second floor from which the two purifiers on this floor and the two in the attic are driven, and another short shaft on the first floor to drive the packers. There are four purifiers, two on the second floor, and two more directly over them in the attic. The elevator heads are all directly upon the attic line shaft, and the bolting chests are driven by uprights dropped from this shaft. The combined smutter and brush machine is on the third floor at one end of the bolting chests and directly over the stock hoppers. This comprises all the machinery in the mill. The programme is about as follows:

The break reels are clothed as follows: First break No. 20, wire cloth, second break No. 22, third break No. 24, and fourth break No. 24. The material passing through these scalping reels, now called chop, goes to a series of reels, the first clothed with Nos. 6, 4, and 0. The material passing over the tail is sent to the germ purifier, that passing through Nos. 4 and 0, to the coarse middlings purifier, and that through the No. 6 goes to the reel below clothed with Nos. 12 and 13. Some nice granular flour is taken off from this reel; the remainder, which passes over the tail and through the cutoffs, goes to the next reel below clothed with Nos. 14, 15, and 9. Some good flour comes from the 14 and 15; that which passes through the 9 goes at once to the stones without purifying, while that which passes over the tail is sent to the fine middlings purifiers.

After the purification, the middlings are ground on stones and bolted on Nos. 13 and 14 cloth, after having been scalped on No 8. The germ middlings are crushed on smooth rolls and bolted on Nos. 12 and 13. What is not crushed fine enough goes with poor tailings to the second germ rolls, and from these to a reel by themselves or to the fifth reduction or bran reel. A mill of this kind could be made much more perfect by an expenditure of two or three thousands dollars more. I have instanced it to show what can be done with gradual reduction in a very small way.

In mills of from three hundred to five hundred barrels capacity and still larger, the programme differs considerably from that I have sketched, the middlings being graded and handled with little, if any, returning, and are sized down on the smooth rolls, a much larger percentage of the work of flouring being done on millstones. For a three hundred barrel roller mill, the following plant is requisite: five double corrugated roller mills, five double smooth roller mills, three pairs of four foot burrs sixteen purifiers, four wire scalping reels, six feet long, one reel for the fifth break, one reel for low grade flour, eight chop reels, seven reels for flour from smooth rolls, three reels for the stone flour, two grading reels, three flour packers, and necessary cleaning machinery. The reels are eighteen feet thirty-two inches. The programme is necessarily more complicated.

When it comes to the machinery to be employed in making the reductions or breaks, the miller has several styles from which to choose. Which is best comes under the head of what I don't know, and moreover, of that which I have found no one else who does know. Each machine has its good points, and the mill owner must make his own decision as to which is best suited to his purpose. The main principles involved are to abrade the bran as little as possible while cleaning it thoroughly, and to make as little break flour, and as many middlings as possible, the latter to be made in such shape as to be the most easily purified. Regarding the difference between spring and winter wheat for gradual reduction milling, it may be stated something after this manner: Spring wheat has a thinner and more tender bran, makes more middlings because it is harder, and for the same reason the flour is more inclined to be coarse and granular. In milling with winter wheat, especially the better varieties, there will be more break flour made, the middlings will be finer with fewer bran specks, and the bran more easily cleaned, because it will stand harsher treatment. Winter wheat, moreover, requires more careful handling in making the breaks, not because of the bran, but to avoid breaking down the middlings, and making too much and too fine and soft break flour. In order to keep the flour sharp and granular, coarser cloths are used in bolting, and because the middlings are finer the bolting is not so free and a larger bolting surface is required. In milling either spring or winter wheat there should be ample purifying capacity, it being very unwise to limit the number of machines, so that any of them will be overtaxed. The day has gone by when one purifier will take care of all the middlings in the mill.

There is one point which is of much interest to mill owners who wish to change their mills over to the gradual reduction process, that is, how far they can utilize their present plan of milling machinery in making the change. Of course the cleaning machinery is the same In both cases, so are the elevators, conveyors, bolting chests, etc. But to use the millstone is a debatable question. After carefully considering the matter I have come to the conclusion that it has its place, and an important one at that, under the new regime, viz., that of reducing the finer purified middlings to flour. The reason for this lies in the peculiar construction of the wheat berry. If the interior of the berry were one solid mass of flour, needing only to be broken up to the requisite fineness, it could be done as well on the rolls. But instead of this, as is well known, the flour part of the berry is made up of a large number of granules or cells, the walls of which are cellular tissue, different from the bran in that it is soft and white instead of hard and dark colored. It is also fibrous to a certain extent, and when the fine middlings are passed between the rolls instead of breaking down and becoming finer, it has a tendency to cake up and flatten out, rendering the flour soft and flaky. It does not hurt the color, but it does hurt the strength. When the millstone is used in place of the roll the flour is of equally good color, and more round and granular. I know that in this the advocates of smooth rolls will differ from my conclusions, but I believe that the final outcome will be the use of millstones on the finer middlings, and in fact on all the middlings that are thoroughly freed from the germ.

It has been said that that which a man gives the most freely and receives with the worst grace is advice. I will, however, close with a little of the article which may not be wholly put of place. If you have a mill do not imagine that the addition of a few pairs of rolls, a purifier or two, and a little overhauling of bolting-chests, is going to make it a full-fledged Hungarian roller mill. If you are going to change an old mill or build a new one, do not take the counsel or follow the plans of every itinerant miller or millwright who claims to know all about gradual reduction. No matter what kind of a mill you want to build, go to some milling engineer who has a reputation for good work, tell him how large a mill you want, show him samples of the wheat it must use and the grades of flour it must make, and have him make a programme for the mill and plan the machinery to fit it. Then have the mill built to fit the machinery. When it starts follow the programme, whether it agrees with your preconceived notions or not, and the mill will, in ninety-nine cases out of one hundred, do good work.