Grain elevator

“ The elevator was a Persian well wheel—a wheel squashed out thin and cased in a pipe, a wheel driven not by bullocks, but by much horse-power, licking up the grain at the rate of thou-sands of bushels the hour. And the wheat sunk into the fore-hatch while a man looked—sunk till the brown timbers of the bulkheads showed bare, and men leaped down through clouds of golden dust and shovelled the wheat furiously round the nose of the trunk, and got a steam-shovel of glittering steel and made that shovel also, till there remained of the grain not more than a horse leaves in the fold of his nose-bag. ”

“ The storage capacity of the elevator is eight million bushels of wheat, which is more than enough to supply a city the size of Detroit with flour the year round. The elevator can unload six hundred cars of wheat, or about six hundred thousand bushels, in a single day, including the weighing and binning. It has scales that weigh forty-three tons at a time.
The wheat comes to the elevator in cars, each of which holds a thousand or fifteen hundred bushels. By a car-dumping machine the grain is unloaded into the basement of the huge buildings at the sides of the tanks. ”

“ The methods of handling wheat were still quite primitive. During the Civil War thousands of men were employed to unload the grain by hand, every tenth barrel being weighed. Elevators had been used in Chicago for some time but no eastern city had them until 1861. Prior to 1872, when the first grain elevator was set up at Baltimore, the cost of thus unloading grain by hand amounted to four or five cents per bushel. At Boston until 1867, all the export grain was still unloaded back of the city and hauled across to the waterfront. ”

“ Elevator buckets must be varied according to the nature of the material; for instance, shallow buckets will be found best for a soft and clinging material such as flour, moist sugar, sand, small coal, &c., while for a hard or semi-hard body such as wheat, coal, &c., deeper buckets are preferable. On account of their lower speed, elevators for specifically heavy material require much larger buckets and chains than grain elevators of the same bulk capacity. The most economical form of elevator is fitted with a continuous chain of buckets. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ Through the spout of the thresher the grain falls into the box wagon, which carries it to the grain-elevator, or building for storing grain. Here it remains until it is loaded automatically into the cars, which take it to the great elevator centres. The wheat is not touched by hands from the time it passes into the thresher until it reaches private kitchens in the form of flour. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The main delivery floor of the warehouse is at a convenient height above the ground level. Portable automatic weighing machines can be placed under any bin. The whole of the plant is driven by electric motors, one being allotted to each machine.
The transit silos of the London Grain Elevator Company, also at the Victoria docks, consist of four complete and independent installations standing on three tongues of land which project into the water (figs. 2 and 3) . Each silo house is furnished with eight bins, each of which, 12 ft. square by 80 ft. deep, has a capacity of 1000 qrs. of grain. ”

“ Both grain and mineral elevators are usually fitted with tightening gears to keep the belt or chain taut; these are generally placed at the lower or well end so as not to interfere with the position of the upper terminal, which is almost invariably the driven one. The tightening of the band at the bottom terminal in the elevator well necessarily alters the space between the terminal pulley and the bottom of the well. This is of little consequence in grain elevators, but for elevators intended to handle coal or any material of varying size the ordinary tightening gear is unsuitable. ”

“ Owing to its advantageous position Elets has grown rapidly. Its merchants buy large quantities of grain, and numerous flour-mills, many of them driven by steam, prepare flour, which is forwarded to Moscow and Riga. The trade in cattle is very important. Elets has the first grain elevator erected in Russia (1887) , a railway school, and important tanneries, foundries for cast iron and copper, tallow-melting works, limekilns and brickworks. ”

“ The design and construction of the elevator will be varied to suit its purpose. Grain elevators are invariably cased in wooden or iron trunks, and the head and foot are also of wood or iron, iron trunks being particularly used in so-called fire-proof buildings. The trunk of the grain elevator (fig. 14) is almost always vertical whilst the band to which the buckets are attached may consist of leather, cotton, hemp, webbing or other suitable substances. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Illinois, supra, Bacon, the owner of the grain and the taxpayer, had bought it in the South and had secured the right from the railroads transporting it to remove it to his private grain elevator for the purpose of inspecting, weighing, grading, mixing, etc. ”

“ The railroads, which had become active competitors for this carrying trade, did not use sacks, but placed the grain in bulk in cars adapted to the purpose. To facilitate the loading and unloading of grain these railroad companies introduced on their lines, and at the termini of their roads on the rivers, immense buildings called grain elevators. ”

“ One shrewd settler at Regina told me that the C.P.R. has rather “spoiled” the farmers by doing too much for them. There is the matter of grain elevators, for instance. Grain is stored in these huge tin-plate structures until it can be removed by the freight trains. The farmers, said the critic, ought not to depend on a railway for the storing of their grain. They should combine to provide their own elevators. As it is, scores of millions of bushels have to remain in ear on the prairie waiting to be threshed until the elevators are empty, or the freight trains are available in the sidings. ”

“ The banks make a little interest for loaning the money, The farmer begins to buy all sorts of things—clothes and food and furniture, and more farm machines. By and by all the wheat money is flowing into all kinds of businesses.
As the country elevators fill with wheat the grain buyers call on the railroads for cars to carry it away. The cars back up on the side track below the elevator. A long canvas pipe, as squirmy as an elephant's trunk, pokes its nose into a car and the wheat flows through it in a golden stream until a car is full. ”

“ All the storage places inside the city were rapidly filling with grain, which poured in at every gate on tens of thousands of mules. The plenteous crop, already ripening, would have to be housed somewhere, and even if I did not succeed in buying a large store of grain for myself, I knew how to make a storehouse eat up a large portion of the value of the grain it housed. I had seen wheat, stored year after year, finally become the property of the elevator owner, by virtue of his charges. ”

“ The grain is received by an elevator from the railway trucks, and is delivered to a weighing machine from which it is carried by a second elevator to the top storey, where it is fed to a band running the length of the building. A system of pipes runs from floor to floor, and by means of the band conveyor with its movable throw-off carriage grain can be shot to any floor. A second band conveyor is installed in the entresol floor, and serves to convey grain either to the elevator, if it is desired to elevate it to the top floor, or to the loading shed. ”

“ In the Richards device there is never but one lot of grain being transferred at a time, so that there is no possibility of the grain losing its identity; while the ordinary course of business in an elevator is for the grain to be dealt with in large cargoes, so that the identity of a particular lot is lost by its being mixed with others. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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." ”

“ 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!" ”

“ The lower end of the trough is open, and, as the endless band revolves, six or eight men shovel the grain into the ascending cans, which raise it so rapidly that 4000 bushels can be lifted and deposited in the mill in an hour." [16] The drudging and unskilled labourers who would have toiled in carrying up the grain are free to do some skilled labour, of which the amount required is constantly increasing; and the cost saved by the elevator goes towards the great universal fund, out of which more labour and better labour are to find the means of employment. ”

“ Persons and corporations whose business it was to mill grain, to buy and export it, were quick to take advantage of the opportunity; for the protection offered by the railway meant that here was shipping control of the grain handed out on a silver platter, garnished with all the delectable prospects of satisfying the keenest money hunger.
On all sides protests arose from the few owners of ordinary warehouses who found their buildings useless, once the overtopping elevator went up alongside—from small buyers who found themselves being driven out of the market with the flat warehouses. ”