Charlotte messenger. [volume] (Charlotte, Mecklenburg Co., N.C.) 1882-18??, 1889-01-05
HANDLING A GREAT CROP.
HOW THE GREAT NORTHWEST
ERN WHEAT YIELD Is MOVED.
A Process Which Requires the EN-
ployment of an Army of Men

ployment of an Army of Men
and Much Heavy Machinery.
The handling of the grain crops of the
Northwest is a process which employs
thousands of men, millions of capital,
and vast plants of heavy machinery.
With the building of railroads and the
development of the country the mere
mechanical transferring of the grain from
the producer to the consumer has grown
| to an enormous industry. The elevators
employed in Minnesota and Dakota num-
Der about 1900, and have a combined
storage capacity of 1000, 900 bushels
according to the latest estimates availa-
Bile. Through them passes practically
all the wheat, corn, oats, rye, barley and
faxseed raised in the Northwest.
The first modern grain elevator erected
in st. Paul was the one known as the
Davidson elevator, which stands on the
river front near the Milwaukee freight
houses, unused and dilapida.ed. That
was some twenty years ago. About the
same time what is now known AZ eleva-
tor in Minneapolis was erected. These
are comparatively small Institutions of
the kind, but a ter this start had been
made the elevator system gained rapidly,
railroad station within the grain belt of
the Northwest that is not supplied with
one or more elevators or warehouses,
while at the terminal cities Minneapolis,
Duluth and st. Paul-are enormous struc.
lures capable of handling millions and
millions of bushels of grain in their COM
bined capacity. The Union elevator in
East Minneapolis, owned by the Union
Elevator Company is said to be the
largest in the world, the elevator proper
and It's annex having acombined storage
capacity of 1900, 0OO bushels.
Now, to see how the enormous grain
crop of the Northwest is handled by the
modern elevator system-without which
it is evident it could not be handled
safely and economically at all. The best
way to do this is to visit one of the great
elevators in the cities. All these are
operated upon the same principle, and in
any one of them will be found sub
stantially all there is to be seen in any of
the others.
1t is dusty place-the elevator--but
the dust is of clean kind, having risen
from the grain in process of transfer and
then settled back upon every board and
joist in the building. Really, there is
not M ch to see. One finds himself in
perfect forest of beams and wooden
spouts and hears the quiet hum of the
shaftings, which extend the entire
leugth OF the building and convey power
to The elevating machinery; but unless he
has an experienced guide to explain
things to HIM he will leave the institu-
tion no wiser than when he entered it.
When the modus operandi IS unfolded,
however, it is found to be interesting.
So here is the way of it:
Several railway tracks extend through
the elevator from end 10 end. and the
trainloads of grain find entrance upon
these. Alongside the tracks are plat
forms rising to about the height of
freight car tloer,s and at intervals of a
cars length in these platforms are open
ings' extending into hopper-shaped re-
ceptacles beneath the platform. These
receptacles are called grain pits When
carload of grain is received it is run in
upon the track until the doorway is flush
with the mouth of one of the hoppers.
Then the door is opened, and by means of
wooden shovel, operated by machinery,
but aided also by mems hands, the
grain is scooped into the hopper. 1t
does not take long, you notice, to clean
out carload OF wheat. In about ten
minutes from the time the car door is
thrown open the car is empty. Five or
six hundred bushels of grain have gone
into the pit. AS fast as it has passed
in, however, it has been taken out again,
carried to the top of the building and
deposited in bin. The machinery by
which this operation is conducted con-
sists of an endless belt, attached to
which are long, narrow tin scoops or
buckets. The belt. inclosed in a long
wooden spout called leg, extends down
into the p t and the buckets catch up
the unloaded grain as they pass through
it. A belt in high elevator will take
up fifty bushels of grain on one trip
over the pulleys
The leg terminates at the top in box
called the head of the elevator, and as
each bucket passes over the pulley in
this box and starts on its downward
journey it deposits its contents into a
hopper leading into large square box
constructed of scantl,ng and with scale
standing before it. This box, like all
other reccptacles in the elevator, is hop
per bottomed, and while IN it the grain
is weighed and registration made OF its
weight 1t is then let out through
spout into the bin for which it is des-
tined The entire main body Of the
elevator is dividad into bins-recciving
bins and shipping bins. The receiving
bins are great square wells, fifty feet or
more deep. according to the height of
the building, and having a holding
rapac ty of 5000 or 1000 to 12,OOO
bushels Of grain. The shipping bins are
much smaller. The grain comes into
these by the carload, as it is shipped
out. In shipping the grain passes
through tie elevator a second time. 1t
goes from the receiving bins into the
pit. is taken up through the leg tossed
over the elevator head into the scale
hopper, weighed, spouted into the ship
ping bins, aud from the shipping bins it
/ is spouted into the cars. That's the way
an elevator is run.
The cupola Of the elevator--that part
which looks like little house built
upon the top Of the main bnilding-is
above all the Plus. One object in hav-
/ ing a cupola IL TO gain height. so that