No. 244. j 341 



The American people in the year eighteen hundred and thirty 

 seven had the experience of a year of scarcity with importations from 

 Europe and the Black Sea ; In the year referred to and the follow- 

 ing year our merchants imported large quantities of cereal grains 

 and flour nearly all if not all of which had passed through the or- 

 deal of imperfect kiln drying: but who can say that during his ex- 

 perience he purchased or knew of the purchase of a barrel or a 

 pound of pure sweet flour or a bushel of sound merchantable grain? 

 The flour was musty or sour, from fermentation, and the grain was 

 equally affected. Mr. Stafford regards his apparatus as capable of 

 overcoming all the difl[iculties that we have named and evenmore. 



The undersigned have suggested that the process of fermentation 

 commences at any point of Fahrenheit's thermometer above forty-five 

 degrees and up to ninety degrees : with our extended sea board and 

 inland seas: by the great lakes and western rivers, there is a trade 

 carried on between state and state which far exceeds the foreign 

 exports of the United States: and where our bread stuffs are requir- 

 ed with an increasing market. 



To prepare the superabundance of the grain fields of the great 

 west, south west, and south for a market whether at home or in 

 Europe, and to prepare the grain or flour with a certainty that either 

 will keep in any climate, Mr. Staflfbrd oflfers his apparatus; he has 

 referred your committee to documents showing that in April eighteen 

 hundred and forty-seven, a large parcel of corn meal was ground at 

 Elyria, (Ohio); and in the month of May following shipped by the 

 way of Lake Erie and the western canal to the city of New-York: 

 The shipper oflfered to guarantee the meal to keep its flavour for five 

 years in any part of Europe: The meal was afterwards shipped 

 from New- York to Liverpool : Remained in store until the month 

 of September, and then sold for more than any other descriotions of 

 meal in the market. It had been three times transhipped before it 

 arrived in New- York; remained in the city during a part of a hot 

 summer, and in a climate the most humid proved superior to any 

 in the market. 



The European wheat and rye, and the Avheat and rye flour which 

 your committee referred to, were prepared by the old process of di- 

 rect action with fire, or by the use of heated air : the process being 

 incomplete the importations of grain and flour were sour and musty, 

 or both repulsive to the taste, and injurious to the health. 



