The Birmingham age-herald., 1917-12-09

with a combined capacity of 45,O0O0oo bushels They are chockful of wheat A single one contains 100000 bushels. A steady stream of grain flows out of 1t on endless belt conveyors at the rate of 40,000 bushels per hour or 116,000 per day. The conveyors carry the wheat through tunnels to the mills, and it does not stop until it comes out as flour and is loaded on the cars to be sent to the consumer
 As I walked about through the mills I found men on guard everywhere. All of the buildings are as carefully pro- tected as if they were munitions plants. As soon as we entered the war the gov ernment erected a fence of wire, eight or ten feet high, about the milling district, and it has kept soldiers there day and night The fence is of smooth woven wire of a network so fine that a mouse could not squeeze through it, and it reaches high above your head Along the top run three strands of barbed wire, SO sharp that it would be impossible to climb over them. At all the entrances soldiers march up and down with guns on their shoulders, and they have fn- structions to shoot any one who attempts to get in without a pass. The passes have the photographs of the men to whom they have been issued, and this is so of the officials as we'll as the com
 
 various companies cannot get into their own mills unless they show their passes. The danger of having strangers in the mills or those not thoroughly vouched for is that a fire might be started or an explosion occur which would wreck the great plants The machinery might be ruined by international action, or poison put into the food supply. The millers as we'll as the government are thoroughly alive to the necessity of care and every precaution is taken.
 The largest mill in Minneapolis means the largest mill in the world, and the one visited today belongs to a company which grinds out over 5000 barrels of flour every 24 hours. It takes about half pound of flour to make loaf of bread, so that the output of this company alone would give a loaf Q day to 100000 peo- pie or to more than the inhabitants of New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Bos- ton, Cleveland and Detroit combined. It handles every day in the neighborhood of 175,000 bushels of wheat or, at 25 bush els per acre, as much as you could raise on a 7oG0-acre wheat field. In addition to its flour output, this mill produces thousands of sacks of stock feed and about acO0 barrels of rye and corn meal.
 The mills are exceedingly clean. Be- fore starting on my trip put on duster end a niller's cap, but the dust was not thick, and what there was seemed to be carried away by dust-catching machines scattered here and there throughout the mill. We first went to the top of the building. The wheat from the elevators Is brought here on endless belt convey ors, and it goes through the different processes and departments by gravity. Each individual lot of wheat is examined by experts and it is tested again and again on it's way through the mill.
 The first processes are those of clean Ing the wheat. The grain is passed through machines which take out every bit of straw and remove the oats and other seeds. This is dcne as the wheat Is carried along by flaming and vacuum processes. The grains are secured and cleaned again and again. The kernels are then broken four or five times and the flour removed The wheat is put into great bolters which are shaking cylinders standing upright. Each of these is about eight feet high, and four times as big around as hogshead. The broken grains come into these bolters and pass