Knoxville weekly chronicle. [volume] (Knoxville, Tenn.) 1870-1875, 1872-06-26
Grind Your Wheat.


MEssRs. EDITORS: AS the remarks /
made in the late Farmers Convention, in
reference to wheat, have been favorably
referred to by one of your correspondents,
L enclose you the substance of what then
said. Yours respectfully,
JOHN II. CRozIER.
M. Chairman and Gentlemen :. The sub
ject allotted to me by your committee up
on which / am to address you is, the
Small Economies OF East Tennessee
AS my time is restricted to twenty-seven
minutes, / shall only be able to say some
thing TO you about the economy of your
wheat crops.
Small economies sometimes assume gil
gantic proportions, and such, | will en-
deavor to show, may be the case with
your wheat. If | shall be able to dem
onstrate to you that when you sell your
wheat for dollar and half per bushel,
by proper economy and management you
| ought to realize from a dollar and eighty
cents to two dollars per bushel, / shall
believe L have achieved something worthy
of your attention and consideration for
the aggregate saving would be to East
Tennessee between five hundred thousand
| and million dollars.
When the price of wheat is one dollar
and a half per bushel, the price of flour
is almost invariably nine dollars per bar
rel. This year, when wheat was sold at
one dollar and Il half per bushel, flour, at
etail, generally brought five dollars and
| r quarter per bag or ten dollars and II
half per barrel. Sometimes it sold as
| high as five dollars and half or even six
per bag.
The miller generally takes five bushels
of wheat to make barrel of first-rate fam
lily -four, though itseems it should be made
from less quantity. Five bushels Of
wheat weighs three hundred pounds. If
from this we deduct the toll (one-eighth
which would be thirty-seven and a-half
pounds, it would leave two hundred and
siXty-tXo and a-half pounds. Out of this
| the owner of the wheat would receive one
hundred and ninety-siX pounds of flour
and sixty-siX and one-half pounds of offal.
Wheat is now cleaned much better than
formerly and there is seldom anything
lost by foreign substances in it. But we
will take Off the odd six pounds and one
half for dust, &C., which is liberal allow
lowancc for marketable wheat and this
would leave sixty pounds of shorts and
bran worth at least two cents and a-half
per pound, or one dollar and a-half. The
| five bushels of wheat at one dollar and fif-
ty cents per bushel, would be seven dollars
and fifty cents, the flour selling at nine
dollars per barrel. The person buying the
wheat and having it ground would make
through the flour alone one dollar and
fifty cents, and from the offal another dol
lar and fifty cents, aggrCgating three dol
lars which the farmer loses on five bushels
of wheat; or in other words, his five bush-
els of wheat for which he gets seven dol
lars and a-half brings into the pockets of
the speculator or miller who has it ground
ten dollars and fifty cents, or upwards of
two dollars per bushel.
If our farmers could save the ofial of
their wheat by having it ground and sell
the flour, it would be II great piece of econ
Omy that would be sensibly felt. There il
no better feed for stock than the straw of
wheat cut and mixed with the offal. But
besides this direct profit there would be an
indirect one, which is worthy Of suggestion
and consideration. The farmers wheat
straw will not bear transportation far from
home; by feeding it and the oflal of his
wheat from the mill, he would be able to
sell that much more corn and hay from his
farm, both of which will bear transporta-
ton to our neighboring States and sell for
n good price. But our farmers in East Ten
nessee at this time can not have the sur
plus of their wheat crops manufactured
into flour because there are not mills
enough TO do the work. This is a strange
and remarkable fact in country celebrat-
ed for its immense water power and in
Vulnerable mill sites conveniently situated
close to our railroads and navigable
streams
From oil the information we can obtain
there is but one county in East Tennessee
(Ihe county of Washington that has mills
enough to grind its surplus wheat. Knox
county, 1 am informed, has but twelve
mills that grind wheat and some of these
are not respectable enough to be called
flour mills. This is not enough to manu-
facture the flour that il consumed in the
county consequently we get large guam
, titles of flour from Washington county.
have shown you that the usual profit
on five bushels OF wheat at dollar and q
half per bushel is three dollars, when
: turned into -four and oflal. This large
profit is the reason why hepeople of Geor-
gia, where thev grow but little wheat COM
pared to us, build mills and buy our sur
plus wheat and turn il into -four. Those
not having the water power that we have
t in some instances. use steam. One
q of these mills, I am informed. made prOti
last year of one hundred and forty thou
sand dollars and this was principally Oft o
; East Tennessee wheat.
4 ha1 first n A Ynilla aud Sutli pipn /