Page:How and Why Library 332.jpg

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Copyright by Brown Bros.
When the wheat is marketed it is stored in immense elevators, some of them holding two or three million bushels. The elevators are provided with long spouts which can be lowered into the hold of a vessel, where buckets carried on a link chain catch up the grain and carry it up into the elevator. A cargo of 200,000 bushels can thus be unloaded in two hours. Spouts on the other side of the elevator can reload the wheat into cars if desired, filling a car in from five to ten minutes.

Copyright by Brown Bros.
Often next to an elevator is a great flouring mill. The wheat in the elevator first passes through a warehouse separator which frees the wheat from any impurities, such as stones, straw, grains of corn, oats or barley. The wheat is then weighed by automatic scales here shown, which weigh a given quantity of wheat at a time. The weighing of each quantity requires about one minute. The scales register the number of bushels. From the scales the wheat passes to the bins.