A modern elevator with its scores of separate tanks and conveyors to shift the wheat from on tank to another, is a complicated operation in itself. After the wheat is run over to the mills, cleaned, washed and put through the rolls, sifted and bolted and put through other finer rolls and finer sifting and all the complicated processes of modern milling, it comes into the bins for packing into bags and barrels. This is not so simple as it would seem, because of the various requirements of the trade mean that many kinds of packages, from 2 lbs. Besides there is a great variety of brands, with different names and designs that are wanted by different classes of trade. These packages must then all be loaded into freight cars that have been cleaned and papered.
Buffalo is the grain center of America.
This tonnage of wheat was equivalent to one-fifth of the average annual wheat production of the United States for the past five years. The first elevator was erected in 1842 on the Buffalo River and Evans Slip, the invention of Joseph Dart of this city. It had a storage capacity of 50,000 bushels and 2,000 bushels an hour could be elevated. There are eighteen lake elevators with a total capacity of over 240,000,000 bushels. In addition, there area 16 smaller elevators individually operated with a total capacity of 4,000,000 bushels, giving Buffalo a total of 34 elevators having a storage capacity of nearly 40,000,000 bushels.