OTHER USES OF THE MAIZE CROP 7S9 



European countries were doing with de-natured alcohol began to CHAP, 

 be disseminated in this country, when its big utility for purposes XVIL 

 of heating, lighting, motive power, and commercial manufacture 

 were made known, the Atlas Distillery stopped making whisky. 

 The last gallon of the national stimulant was shipped out from 

 its doors some three years ago, and to-day, instead of contri- 

 buting its thousands upon thousands of barrels of strong 

 drink, its mills are grinding grain, its cookers and vats and 

 stills are seething with the processes that go to the making 

 of de-natured alcohol. 



"The Atlas has ceased to be a drink-maker, and is helping 

 to turn wheels and heat houses by the new cheap agent and 

 assisting the cunning works of commerce and the arts. 



" Last year the establishment used something over 3,000,000 

 bushels of maize, rye, and barley. The long trains, grain- 

 laden, drawn in by the railroads from various sections of the 

 farming country, are taken over its sidings and up to the 

 unloading sheds at the side of one of the tall buildings. 



" From the car doors it is shot down through a grating at 

 the side of the track under the long shed. Underneath this 

 is a hopper from which the flying carriers, whisking up and 

 down on their swiftly moving belting, take it up into the big 

 storage receptacles high in the roof. 



"Thence it is delivered as needed to the groaning mills, 

 and all the air is resonant through the long days with the 

 sound of the grinding. When ground it is transferred to the 

 'cookers' in an adjoining room, vast metal receptacles that 

 themselves look like big boilers. Here in the shape of ' mash ' 

 the grain lies for an hour, and then is forced by vacuum 

 pressure into a vat, where a revolving beam keeps it constantly 

 agitated and through which with only brief delay it is pumped 

 into the fermenting-tubs. 



" These are gigantic wooden affairs, with their tops away . 

 up in the shadows under the roof. Here the grains lie for 

 seventy-two hours. Underneath the iron-grated floor of the 

 gloomy house where these tubs are crowded together there is 

 a huge cistern into which the mash drops from the tubs. From 

 this cistern, after a short period of retention, it is pumped into 

 a beer-still. At this stage of progress the mass is known to 

 the distilleryman as 'beer'. 



"While it lay in the fermenting-tubs the yeast was intro- 

 duced, so that now, when it reaches the beer-still, it is in a 

 lively state of fermentation and vapours are thrown off which 



