636 THE SMALL GRAINS 



The pounder is a heavy wooden weight fixed to a horizontal 

 beam 6 to 8 feet long, which rests on a fulcrum 4 to 5 feet from 

 the former. The pounder rises and falls into a tub made of a short 

 section of a hollow log, where the rice is placed, and is worked by 

 a man stepping on and off the other end of the horizontal beam. 

 With a woman at the fanning mill, it is stated that such an ar- 

 rangement will clean a trifle over 3 barrels of paddy rice (thrashed 

 rice with the hull on) a day, at a cost of 6 cents gold to the barrel. 

 In places, there is an improvement over this method, in which 

 water power (or steam power in the cities) is used to turn a long 

 horizontal shaft, having rounded arms which at each revolution of 

 the shaft, strike projections on the sides of vertical pounders, caus- 

 ing them to rise and then fall into tubs of rice as the arms slip by 

 the projection. By this improved method, with 8 pounders, 96 

 bushels or 26 f barrels of paddy rice may be milled in a day, at a 

 cost of 2 cents a barrel, which is said to be more than paid for by 

 the value of the offal (Knapp, 1899, pp. 33-44). 



719. The modern commercial milling process is some- 

 what complicated : 



After cleaning the paddy rice, the hulls are removed by rapidly 

 revolving milling stones, set at distances apart of about f the length 

 of a rice kernel. The products are separated by passing over hori- 

 zontal screens and blowers. The naked grain (caryopsis) has a 

 mixed yellow and white color. The outer coat (bran) is removed 

 by placing it in large mortars holding 4 to 6 bushels and pounding 

 it with pestles weighing 350 to 400 pounds. In recently erected 

 mills, in place of the mortar and pestle, there is used a huller, a 

 short cast iron horizontal tube, with interior ribs, and a funnel 

 at one end for admitting the rice, similar in form to a sausage grinder. 

 A corresponding shaft with external ribs revolves within the tube. 

 The rice passes out at the end opposite the funnel. There are 6 

 hullers for each set of mill stones. 



The contents from the mortars or the huller consist of flour, 

 fine chaff, and clean rice of a dull, filmy, creamy color. The flour 

 is sifted out through flour screens, and then the fine chaff is blown 

 out with the fine-chaff fan and mixed with the flour. The rice 

 then goes to cooling bins, made necessary by the frictional process 



