Elevator (agriculture)

“ These co-operative lines at elevator points soon were enlarged with much success. In addition to the elevators leased from the Manitoba Government the Grain Growers' Grain Company bought outright, erected or leased sixty elevators of its own.
Those who were watching all this steadily grew more restive. The Farmers' Movement in the West was fast becoming a subject of bitter debate.
"When farmers advance to the last furrow of plowed land on the farm they breast the fence which skirts the Public Highway," argued many Men of Business. "They are climbing over the fence!" ”

“ Many of the elevators belong to the wholesale buyers or to great milling firms. A large number have been built, however, by the railway companies to hold the grain until transport is available to convey it to the markets. So great is the pressure between the harvest and Christmas time that all the freightage rolling stock of the companies is called into service, and all the elevators are crammed to bursting point with the wheat and oats, and even then the farmers complain that wheat has to remain in the fields week after week because the elevator accommodation is insufficient. ”

“ The ordinary buckets used for grain or coal are replaced by other appliances for gripping and holding the object to be raised from a lower to a higher level, but in principle these appliances are essentially elevators.
Another kind of elevator, known as a lift or hoist, is used in mines and quarries and in serving blast furnaces. This is an elevator with one or two buckets. Essentially a heavy load lifter, it is intended for material of too large a bulk to be handled economically by ordinary elevators, and is employed for lifting in either a vertical or, more often, an inclined direction. ”

“ After the farmers thresh their wheat, they take it to an elevator, which is an enormous storage tower close to the railroad tracks. Then, a chute from the elevator loads the wheat into the cars through the space at the top of the grain doors. ”

“ It is stored and weighed and sent on its journey eastward. If this is by canal, the barge 377 waits on the other side, and the grain runs down into it through another trunk; if by railway, the cars are run under or alongside the elevator and quickly filled. Then the lake vessels are laden with coal for the return voyage. While an American gives these elevators scant attention, being used to them, not so the foreigner, who regards them with the greatest curiosity. Thus wrote Anthony Trollope about them: "An elevator is as ugly a monster as has yet been produced. ”

“ This will prevent the material from filling up the elevator well and spare the buckets from dredging through an accumulation of feed. Elevators erected at an incline are best fed at a point several feet above the well into the chain of ascending buckets, as under such conditions little will miss the buckets and drop into the well.
The reason why grain elevators are set vertically, whereas elevators intended to carry heavy bodies such as coal and ore are generally inclined at an angle, is that the former can be run at a much greater velocity than the latter. ”

“ There are not only forty-four elevators in the city itself, but also forty elevator companies that have built more than two thousand elevators in the wheat States of the Northwest. The Jumbo of all elevators is here—a stupendous granary that holds 6,000,000 bushels, as much as may be reaped by two thousand self-binders from seven hundred square miles of land. ”

“ One of the prettiest sights about the ice harvesting is the elevator in operation. When all works well, there is an unbroken procession of the great crystal blocks slowly ascending this incline. [page 175] They go up in couples, arm in arm, as it were, like friends up a stairway, glowing and changing in the sun, and recalling the precious stones that adorned the walls of the celestial city. When they reach the platform where they leave the elevator, they seem to step off like things of life and volition ”

“ We do not feel compelled to shut our eyes to a fact so well known as that elevators have for many years been used for transferring grain from railway cars to vessels lying alongside, and that this method involves the use of a railway track entering a fixed or stationary building, an elevator apparatus, elevator hopper scales for weighing the grain, and a discharge spout for discharging the grain into the vessel. ”

“ To operate a standard elevator at a country point with profit it was considered necessary in the early days to fill it three times in a season unless the owner proposed to deal in grain himself and make a buyer's profit in addition to handling grain for others. The cost of building and operating the class of elevator demanded by the railway company was partly responsible for this. ”

“ One travels through miles on miles of wheat fields, and the most conspicuous building at many a wayside station is a giant “elevator”—if there does not chance, indeed, to be a row of these. Every budding town seems to begin with an agricultural implement “depot”; and near the railway stations in the cities self-binders, gasoline engines, and threshing machines, gaudy with yellow and crimson paint, are drawn up, awaiting their purchasers, by the hundred. ”

“ Indeed, from the statement in the introduction of the specification, through all the description, and in each of these claims, care is taken to emphasize the fact that the invention relates to the combination, with the ordinary harvester elevator, of a butt elevator which operates upon the butts of the grain while the grain is being lifted upon the main belt, so as to hasten the ascent of the butts and move the stalks back upon the harvester elevator. ”

“ But if you ever try to put me on a rush job I'll quit and buy a small farm.' I could make the laziest farmer in twelve states. Well, I've got to go out on the job."
An elevator is simply a big grain warehouse, and of course the bins where the grain is kept occupy most of the building. But for handling the grain more than bin room is necessary. Beneath the bins is what is called the working story, where is the machinery for unloading cars and for lifting the grain. The cupola, which Bannon was about to frame, is a five-story building perched atop the bins. ”

“ There was not enough ground space to work in comfortably, and the proper bestowal of the millions of feet of lumber until time for it to be used in the construction was no mean problem. The elevator was to be a typical "Chicago" house, built to receive grain from cars and to deliver it either to cars or to ships. As has been said, it stood back from the river, and grain for ships was to be carried on belt conveyors running in an inclosed bridge above the railroad tracks to the small spouting house on the wharf. ”

“ Yet an elevator, whether used for the purpose of the carriage of goods, of tenants, of employes, or of visitors to a building, is a common carrier earning a profit, even if indirectly, for it is as much a source of revenue as is the machinery of a factory around which many enforced safeguards have, by legislation, been thrown. ”

“ Besides large mine capacity, their mine elevators were a striking feature. The very first thing considered in the plans had been how to get the lower deck mines up to the launching deck, so that a ship’s entire load might be planted in one unbroken string. The Otis Elevator Company’s representatives had been called in at the outset and, after several alternatives had been examined, their standard platform type was decided upon, each elevator lifting two mines every 20 seconds. Six elevators in the four largest ships, four in two others, were in use 9 months in all kinds of weather at sea. ”

“ The hay or straw elevator is one of the greatest helps, saving much heavy overhand labour in rick-building. An old labourer, pointing to one, with great appreciation, on a farm I was visiting, said: "That's a machine as will be always kept in the dry and took care on." He spoke from experience of the arduous work of unloading and the passing of heavy weights, sometimes from the bed of the waggon to the summit of the rick; for, as my bailiff often said, "Nobody knows so well where the shoe pinches as the man who has to wear it." ”

“ It depends on the men who ship the grain. If they support the combine by giving the elevators (or the commission houses that work for the elevators under a different name) their cars, they may soon expect to find themselves in a worse position than they have ever been before.
"As a prominent commission man said the other day, 'The elevator companies are asking the farmers to help at their own funeral.' It is an anxious time for our own company. We have shown that with anything like fair play it may succeed. We have been growing stronger and, we believe, doing some good. ”

“ While the farmers' company was not openly attacked, influences nevertheless were constantly at work to undermine in roundabout ways. The elevator men were in a strong position to fight hard and they pressed every advantage. At practically every shipping point they had agents whose business it was to secure shipments of grain in car lots as well as buying on street. Many of these men were very popular locally and as individuals were good fellows, well liked by their farmer friends. ”

“ For elevating materials, such as large coal, iron ore, limestone, &c., which are too large to be fed into ordinary elevators, and must therefore be handled intermittently, the single bucket elevator or hoist may be used with advantage. ”

“ The elevator owner, in fact, retains the grain in his custody for an appreciable period of time, because he receives it into his custody, weighs it, and then discharges it, and his employment is thus analogous to that of a warehouseman. In the actual state of the business the passage of the grain to the city of New York and other places on the seaboard would, without the use of elevators, be practically impossible. ”

“ These elevators are maintained and operated by the buyers as facilities for receiving the grain from the farmers' wagons and loading it into railroad cars. The loading usually proceeds as rapidly as grain of any grade is accumulated in carload lots and cars can be obtained. When a car is loaded it is sent promptly to a terminal market and the grain is there sold. This is the usual and recognized course of buying and shipment. Occasionally a farmer has his grain stored in the country elevator, or shipped to a terminal elevator for storage, and awaits a possible increase in price ”

“ Such elevators may be constructed to carry either grain or minerals. The advantages are greater capacity than an ordinary elevator of the same dimensions and a more uniform delivery; moreover, smoother running is secured, since the buckets being close together need not plunge intermittently through the contents of the elevator-well. ”

“ No conveyors serve the silo bins, as the elevators which rise above the tops of the silos can feed any one of them by gravity. There are three delivery elevators to each granary, one with a capacity of 120 tons and the other two of 100 tons each an hour. Each silo house is served by a large elevator with a capacity of 120 tons per hour, which discharges into the elevator well inside the house. The delivery elevators discharge into a receiving shed in which there is a large hopper feeding six automatic weighing machines. ”

“ Operators of hotels and stores gradually became aware of the commercial advantages to be gained by elevating their patrons even one or two floors above the ground, by machinery. The steam engine formed the foundation of the early elevator industry, but as building heights increased it was gradually replaced by hydraulic, and ultimately by electrical, systems. ”

“ Neither are there any elevators of any importance in Paris, Berlin, or Antwerp. Whatever wheat arrives at these cities is either hurried to the mill or re-shipped. Wheat is too precious in Europe to be stored for a year or for two years, as may happen in Minnesota. Rotterdam has one elevator only and of moderate size. Neither Odessa nor Sulina have any of the large proportions, for the reasons that in Odessa the labor unions have an unconquerable prejudice against elevators, and in Sulina the grain is held only a short time and then forwarded elsewhere. ”

“ The world's great wheat fields almost lie within his sight, so well does he know the conditions that prevail in them. Ten days are allowed for delivery, so that he can usually ship the wheat after it is sold. In the early days of wheat-farming the bonanza farmer often speculated, but experience has taught him that he had better leave this to the men in the cities, and content himself with the profit from the business under his eye. The great elevator centres are in Duluth, St Paul, Minneapolis, Chicago and Buffalo. These elevators have a storage capacity of from 100,000 to 2,500,000 bushels. ”

“ J. C. Stewart, the grain elevator builder, after careful inspection of the grain elevators and their contents, said the damage to the grain elevators was not over two per cent. The wheat will be loaded into vessels just as rapidly as they come to the elevator to take it. Ships are needed here at once. Mr. Stewart said he would put a large force of men to work clearing up each of the wharves, and the company will be ready for business within the next eight days. ”

“ Some elevators are arranged to take grain slowly from under the tailboard of a wagon box. The tailrod is removed and the tailboard raised half an inch or an inch, according to the capacity of the machinery. The load pays out through the opening as the front of the wagon is gradually raised, so the last grain will discharge into the pit or elevator hopper of its own weight. Technical building knowledge and skill is required to properly connect the building and elevating machinery so that the two will work smoothly together. ”