The daily morning journal and courier., 1897-11-10
MOVING THE WHEAT CROP.
Improved Metbods of Handling It.

Improved Methods of Handling It.
 An ordinary freight car will hold one thousand bushels of wheat. It will re- quire five hundred thousand cars to, move the present crop; coupled together m single train they would reach rom New York almost to San Francisco. A fleet Of ordinary grain carrying vessels will be hardly enough to transport to Europe the part of the crop that Will be exported. If the Erie canal gets only It's usual share of the grain-carrying business, ten thousand canal-boats will De flled with wheat, enough to make tow half as long as the canal itself
 If we put the figures in the form of dollars and cents, the array is even more striking. Half a million bushels or wheat at sixty cents bushel-the average price that the farmer is receiy- lng-neans three hundred million dol lars. Three hundred millions to be ex- pended III lifting mortgages, paying la DOT, buying food and clothing and agri- cultural implements is itself a powerful spur to prosperity But this is not all. TO transport the grain from the fields to the Atlantic seaboard costs about twenty cents bushel. On the portion | of the crop which must be moved half across the continent this will mean tens of millions of dollars for the rail- ways and elevators, lake vessels and canal boats, for the commission man and the laborer. Europe must pay well for all she takes, and that means one hundred and fifty million dollars or more coming across the Atlantic to pay for American wheat. And not to carry the enumeration to wearsome length, it will suffice merely to refer to the share of this golden harvest which will be reaped by the miller, the manufacturer of machinery and others more or less affected.
 This rich bounty, so great and so | widespread, is not won without a vast expenditure of human effort. The way | in which this flood of yellow grain is moved, controlled and directed is highly interesting as an object lesson in mod ern industrial development. It is in-' teresting, too, to note that if the pres ent crop is the largest of recent years the facilities for handling it are also the most perfect. This year. 1897, has | seen the largest harvesting machine, the biggest grain-carrying boats and the most gigantic elevator ever built. Out in Redlands, Cal, they have been cutting grain this season with har- vester that is truly mammoth of its kind. It has a cutting bar over fifty feet in width, cuts the grain, thrashes it, ties it up in sacks and turns out hundreds of these sacks an hour. In going mile this machine reaps nearly ten acres, and does more work than our grandsire, with his cradle, scythe and fail, could in 8 " ole season.
 This is the starting point of the wheat on its journey .aarketward. The sacks that are thrown out by the great harvesters are gathered up in wagons | and driven off to the nearest railway station, where they are dumped into grain cars or small storage warehouses. A grain-car is an ordinary box-car fitted with an inside partition and an extra door of planking that can be let down, making the car perfectly tight. The l cars from the various branch lines are hurried off as soon as loaded to one of the great transfer stations, of which Kansas City and Duluth are perhaps the largest. There it is turned over to | the big trunk lines Or lake vessels for l the next stage of the journey.
 The extraordinary demand for wheat | in the eastern markets has led to an | unusual state of affairs in Kansas City and other western shipping points dur ing the last few weeks. The grain has been required for shipment as fast as 1t came in, so that it has not been allowed | to lie in the elevators at all. It has l Loy hot tba cia aot
 way to transfer it is to run it through the elevators. Accordingly, the cars | from local points are Nfuhsin on one side of the elevator, and cars, or in Duluth the boats, for the east on the other. | One leg of the telescopic chute, with it's endless belt of cups, is let down on the receiving side, and the grain is hoisted up to the lofty roof of the elevator and rushes down on the opposite side with out pausing moment in the transfer. The elevator men have thus been able | to collect their toll of one-half cent a
 bushel for transferring the grain.
 There are two great wheat routes l from the west to the Atlantic seaboard. | One is a water route by the great lakes
 and the Erie canal, and the other is a
 land route via the four great grain-car- rying trunk lines. The former is the
 cheaper and the latter is the more expe-
 ditious. The competition between the
 two prevents the prices of transporta-
 tion from. rising to an exorbitant height. The larger part of the grain
 moved between Duluth and New York
 city travels by combination water and
 land route, in big steel freight boats
 down the lakes to Buffalo, and thence
 by rail to New York. The lake rate
 from Duluth to Buffalo is two and one
 half cents a bushel during the busy
 season, and, as the newer grain ships
 have a carrying capacity of one hun-
 dred and sixty thousand bushels, the
 business is a profitable one for them.
 At present there are nearly seven
 hundred vessels which are engaged, for
 a part of the season at least, in carry
 ing wheat on the lakes. This is more
 than are employed in moving the export
 crop across the Atlantic and, what may . seen more surprising, the largest lake
 vessels are considerably larger than the
 ordinary ocean craft engaged in the