THE MILLING OF WHEAT 281 



flour. Budapest was the star milling city of the world until 

 about 1890, when it was eclipsed by Minneapolis. The mills of 

 Hungary have the best equipment obtainable, and the wheat is 

 carefully graded for milling. Hungarian flour of the first qual- 

 ity commands a higher price in the English market than the 

 best Minneapolis flour. Sometimes it sells as much as a dollar 

 per barrel higher than any other flour. The reason for this lies 

 not so much in a superior process of manufacture, as in the 

 fact that this flour is the product of the very best wheat ob- 

 tained by the close system of grading. American millers find it 

 more profitable to make more flour of a slightly lower grade. It 

 may be that the difference in price is also partly accounted 

 for by English prejudice. 



The first roller mills of Great Britain, dating from 

 1878, were said to be unsuccessful. It was not until the 

 middle eighties that a respectable body of roller millers had 

 sprung up. It is estimated that they numbered 400 to 500 in 

 1891. Two years later there were 664 complete roller plants, 

 while at the present time 900 is the estimate. These mills have 

 a daily capacity of about 247,000 barrels of flour, and a yearly 

 capacity of 61,715,000 barrels. This is over ten million barrels 

 more than is annually consumed in the Kingdom, and takes no 

 account of the millstone flour production. In 1878 there were 

 10,000 millstone flour mills in Great Britain. Perhaps 6,000 or 

 7,000 of these still exist, but few of them grind wheat. There 

 has been active competition between American and British mill- 

 ing interests for the milling of the Kingdom, with the advantage 

 slightly on the British side on account of the freight discrimi- 

 nations between wheat and flour. The flour mills are now being 

 built at the quayside instead of inland, as formerly. Liverpool 

 is one of the largest milling centers of the world. 



The modern roller system has been in operation in Russia 

 nearly 30 years. The work of the mills along the Volga and in 

 south Russia compares very favorably with that of mills in the 

 United States or Hungary. Dampening the wheat is an im- 

 portant part of the milling process, for most of the grain is ex- 

 tremely dry, and their softer red wheats are fully as hard as 

 our hard spring wheat from the Red river vally. The flour is of 

 a golden color and highly nutritious. Their product seldom 



