is four inches short in one package, and you need a thousand packages a year, it is four times a thousand. You don't want to ever think of yourself, because the merchant, unfortunately, and it is timely to say this to you, has a peculiar way of satisfying his conscience, and you only learn this by coming in contact with them when they are caught. A man goes into a store. We will take a half cent; we shave, as they say, we shave, shave, all the time; they will shave very close and sometimes to the bone, and that is a half cent, to use the smallest shaving that I can think of; but they forget that there are fifteen or twenty other merchants doing the same shaving act on that particular consumer in the grocery store; and that if there are ten, five cents has been taken away from that consumer. Of course, they figure that if they put out a million cases of something or other a year, or million packages, and they shave a half cent a package, look at their income.

To illustrate forcibly how closely they shave: a certain biscuit company in the State of New York used to put up absolutely square little biscuits in packages, and along came some gentleman with both a fianancial brain and an artistic brain, and he said, "Cut the four corners off; it will be very pretty." And it saved them $50,000 a year-shaving pretty close.

In other words, you be as close and shave as close and be ever as guarding as the merchant who sells you and you will be doing your duty and giving full protection to the people entrusted to your care.

I thank you.

Dr. Garvin.- One of the most important questions that the Committee had to discuss in the winter was the commercial value of flours. There was

a great diversity of opinion among the members of the Committee as to the commercial values of flours, and no knowledge at all as to whether or not the values as stated were founded on fact. I detailed at some length this morning my idea of the basis the present commercial value exists upon. We have with us Dr. Hale, who has studied the subject very extensively, and who has performed a very considerable amount of experimental work upon the theoretical digestibility of flours and the relation of bleaching to the theoretical food values.

Dr. Hale has something interesting to tell us.

Dr. Worth Hale. Ladies and Gentlemen: I will speak first about the history of the milling process. Man has used grain or nuts' in various forms since time immemorial. As a matter of fact we cannot go back to the time when he really did begin their use; and we find mills of some sort, indeed, back to the beginning of history. Those mills are of some interest, especially as foreshadowing the development of the present-day milling processes; and as the development of the milling process has something to do with the values of flour at the present time, I will give a brief outline of the more ancient methods of grinding grain.

The first mills were very crude indeed. consisting merely of a rock, sometimes a flat one, sometimes a rock which had been hollowed out into somewhat of a saucer shape; and into this the grain was poured and was then pounded with another rock until it was broken up into somewhat fine particles. With such a substance as wheat it would be impossible to break it up; it would crush but would not crack into fine portions. That is, the wheat berry is too tough; it would stick together. So, in the early days it was necessary to use either boiled or parched corn or wheat, as the case may

have been, and in this way it was possible to break the grain up into a fairly fine meal. This method was extremely crude, and there was not very much improvement for several thousand years. Man, always looking for something a little better, discovered that by a somewhat similar instrument used in about the same way he could get a better product. This was an instrument similar to our modern mortar and pestle such as pharmacists use. However, the grain was not ground, but was simply pounded, and still it needed to be parched or cooked in some way before it could be reduced to a meal.

The disadvantage of using cooked grain was very great, or at least it would so appear to us now, because it did not give any possibility of a leavened product. The product would not raise after this preliminary baking or cooking.

Again. back in the very early stages, and with the beginning of history, another advance was made; and this was a very important one, because it introduced grinding in place of pounding. The first mill again was a rock, and was called, or at the present time is called, the saddle stone, because of its peculiar shape. Such a mill was merely a rock with a plain surface hollowed out into a concave form, and in this concave rock the grain was placed; and then another rock was pushed up and down somewhat as one would rub clothes on an old-fashioned rubbing-board. The rubbing stone was not turned over, but merely pushed back and forth, in this way giving a grinding motion.

It is of a great deal of interest to note that with such a crude instrument a very perfect product could be made; and it is only within the last few years on one of these stones, which had been picked up in old ruins that a very perfect grade of flour has been made. I do not mean by that to say a flour could be made corresponding to our present roller-mill process, but a flour corresponding to the old stone-mill process, which I dare say a good many of us can still remember, as the stone process has only gone out of existence during about the last thirty years.

About the time of Christ the real predecessor of the stone mill came into existence. In this mill there was a stationary stone for the bottom stone. shaped like a cone, the convex surface up; and over this was fitted a second stone shaped to the stone beneath, in the center of which was a hole into which the grain was poured. The upper stone was then revolved by means of handles. At first these were worked by man-power, later by treadmills. and then by various other machinery as it came to be developed. This was really the immediate predecessor of the stone mill, and continued to be used for many years, until well, as a matter of fact, it is in use at the present time in some portions of the country. An interesting thing is that all of these methods are used by various uncivilized people at the present time

The conical mill, with the hole in the middle of the upper stone, is very, very similar to the stone-milling process which went out of existence about 1870 to 1880. The only change or the great change was in the shape of the stones, in their having grooves by which the grain could be more quickly ground, and by improvements in the motor arrangement. For instance, the first was a hand-power machine. then oxen were used, then water power, water power coming in about the time of Christ. Windmills came in about 1,100 years after Christ; and then steam, about one hundred and fifty years

ago; and more recently, electricity. Electricity, however, was never used for the stone-grinding process.

The first roller mill was introduced about 1830, but the roller-milling process really did not begin to be used commercially until about 1875 to 1880. The first mills were merely experimental, and they did not occupy the attention of people to any great extent. About 1870 or 1880, however, a large number of millers commenced to put rolls into their mills, not only in this country, but abroad; and the difference in the character of the flour, which is the important thing, was so marked that they quickly gained prominence; and at the present time a stone mill is probably not known, at least not in any of the more civilized countries. The roller-milling process has almost completely taken the place of the stone mill.

These processes vary considerably. In the stone process the entire grain is ground, and the usual method was to break up the wheat berry into a meal as quickly as possible. In this way a large amount of the outside coating of the wheat, the bran and the germ, which are not used at the present time for flour, got into the flour, made a coarse flour, a dark flour, and a flour which differed from the flour of the present time chemically in certain regards. For instance, a flour which contains the bran and the embryo or the germ contains a very much larger percentage of protein material and a much larger percentage of fat.

To understand the milling process, perhaps it is worth while going into the structure of a wheat berry just for a moment. The wheat berry consists of several coats. For our purpose it is perhaps only necessary to speak of the external layer as a branny coat which covers the whole outside of the wheat kernel, and then, as you all know, dips into a groove down one surface, dips deeply into this groove; and that is very important from the miller's standpoint. because it is very difficult to get the bran out of the grooves without losing a large part of the starch and the protein material. Just beneath the branny coat there is a very important layer which consists almost entirely of protein material or gluten cells, as they are called. These contain practically no starch, but consist of a thick layer of cells which represent the most important of the constituents of flour, namely, the protein or gluten. Beneath this layer is the starchy portion, made up of starch cells. It is to be noted that in this starchy portion, the endosperm, as it is called. is also gluten material. The gluten material in the central part or the starchy portion of the wheat berry is considerably less than in the external portions, but it differs somewhat in character, as I will explain later. The embryo is especially rich in gluten and in fat.

In grinding grain the first step is to prepare the grain. Usually this is done by various kinds of scouring devices, sometimes by washing the grain. At the present time washing is very seldom resorted to, but scouring machines are used by which means the external dirt is raked off, after which the wheat kernel is put through a tempering bath. as it is called; that is, the outside of the kernel is moistened, sometimes by steam, sometimes by sprinkling water and shoveling the grain about.

Having prepared the grain, the miller may use one of two processes, one called the high milling process. the other the low milling process. The expressions are self-explanatory, if you think of the arrangements of the rolls or stones. In the low milling process the stones are set closely

together. The result is that the grain is quickly ground, ground into a meal very rapidly. In the high milling process the grain is put through the stones or rolls several times. The first time it goes through a roll the outside portion is merely cracked. In this process the miller gets a small amount of flour, technically known as a break flour. In addition he also has the coarse cracked portions, which are separated from the fine flour by sieves and are then further ground by rolls set more closely together.

The rolls which are used first are usually corrugated; that is, they have grooves in them, and these serve in the crushing and breaking process. The roller-milling process is a crushing process I perhaps neglected to state that the stone-milling process was a grinding process. But in the rollermilling process the idea is to crush the grain, not to grind it; and the reason for this is that the branny portion, the outside portion, and the embryo, which are not used for making flour, or if used, make flour very much coarser and darker, are thereby eliminated.

The branny particles are tough, and thus resist the action of the rolls very materially. The same is true of the germ, which contains a large amount of oil and does not break up into fine pieces. The starchy portion, however, is entirely different, breaking up into fine particles during this rolling process. Thus there is separated a coarse material and a fine material, the coarse material being the bran and the germ, which can be sifted out or blown out. In the roller process then the wheat is first tempered, then run through rolls wide apart, in that way getting flour and coarse material; through other rolls closer together, again getting flour and coarse material; and by the successive grindings and siftings getting various kinds of flour. The coarser particles are grouped together and are called middlings. Now, middlings is a very important expression in the eyes of the miller, because he gets the patent flour from the middlings. The middlings are not the flour which is first formed, but are the coarse particles. By the successive rollings the bran is separated from the inside starchy portions, the middlings, therefore, representing the central part of the wheat kernel. The branny particles which get mixed in with this central portion are separated by a system of blowers or aspirators the branny portions being very much lighter, are either blown out or are sucked out, while the flour itself, being heavier, falls into appropriate bins. This is known as purified middlings flour, a product that did not result in the stone middling process. A patent flour is made from the purified middlings, hence from the inside of the wheat berry. The various flours which are made in the early breaking of the early crushing of the wheat kernel are lower grades of flour, because they contain some of the bran which is broken into as fine particles as the flour itself, and possibly some of the embryo.

Flours are divided into a number of different grades, dependent almost entirely upon the mill in which the product is manufactured; but certain grades have become fairly well established among the milling trade. One of these is the patent flour.

About 70 to 75 per cent. of the wheat kernel can be made into flour; that is, from a 60-pound bushel about forty-two pounds of flour can be made. From this various kinds of patents are made; that is, from the purified middlings various percentages are taken. One miller will take three middlings streams; another will take five, put them together and call them his patent

flour.

But the term " patent" is a very elastic one, and millers use the term a long patent and a short patent. A long patent is one in which he uses a large percentage of all of the streams; so of the amount of flour made from the bushel of wheat he perhaps will put even 80 per cent. into his patent and have 20 per cent. for his low grades. Another miller will put in 65 per cent., using the purified middling streams to make his patent, and his flour will be of a different grade, although made from the same variety and class of wheat. Another miller may only put in 40 or 50 per cent. As a matter of fact, most millers put in from 60 to 80 per cent.; some millers put in 100 per cent.; and, as I will illustrate in a moment, some make longer patents than that and still call the product a patent flour.

A patent flour, as the term is generally understood among millers, however, is not the whole flour from the wheat. There are millers who object to our understanding anything about it, but the general understanding of the term is that it is only a portion of the wheat taken from the purified middlings; and the longest patent that the ordinary miller will say he can make is about 75 per cent. When one gets an 80 per cent. patent, then he has a lower grade of flour and not a strictly patent flour. A shorter patent, 65 or 60 per cent. patent is ordinarily a better flour. Such flour is whiter, containing very little bran. It contains somewhat less gluten, somewhat more starch, and somewhat less fat than the lower grades.

The next grade is known as a straight grade. A straight grade flour is the flour from the whole wheat, after the bran has been separated out. It is not a whole wheat flour; but if the wheat makes 75 per cent. of flour, the straight grade flour is this whole 75 per cent.; it is the entire flour that the wheat will make. Such a flour contains all the essential flour ingredients of the wheat kernel except the bran and the embryo. It is somewhat darker, has a higher percentage of protein material, is more acid, and has a higher amount of ash than a patent flour.

Below a straight flour is the clear grade. If a miller makes a patent, he cannot make a straight flour; at least, he cannot make his whole product into straight flour, because he has taken out the best portion, and straight flour consists of all portions. So if he takes out a part, he has a portion that is of lower grade. This is known as clear grade.

A clear grade of flour is a baker's grade. This consists of about twenty per cent. of the flour, and is the by-product when a patent flour is made. The amount of clear grade varies from 15 to 30 per cent., depending on the closeness of the milling, in other words, on the length of the patent. A cut-straight is an intermediate grade. It is a straight flour to which some of the low or clear grade is added. The usual procedure is for a miller to manufacture a straight flour, go into another mill which manufactures a patent and a clear, and purchase clear flour and mix this with the straight product of his own mill, thus giving what is known as a cut-straight.

It is rather of an interesting thing that we have so long called millers honest people; they were the only honest people really in the world. A definite example of their honesty is afforded in New Orleans, where a flour was sold as a fancy patent, made from first quality wheat, but which was shown to be a cut-straight flour. It was therefore a lower grade than the second grade or straight flour, and certainly not a patent.