Thirty Years of Milling. 



175 



1875, of Patent No. 561 to Mr. Oscar Oexle, of Augsburg, for a 

 roller mill. There are now 1,100 roller mills in the United 

 Kingdom, and of these 850 have machinery ample for producing 

 sufficient flour to meet our entire needs. 



Porcelain rollers were in vogue from 1875 to 1880, but rollers 

 of chilled iron were introduced about the latter date, and since 

 then they have almost superseded the porcelain, their chief 

 advantages being greater durability and truer surface. Improve- 

 ments may be said with little, if any, exaggeration, to have 

 marked the course of every successive year from 1880 to 1897, 

 and 1898 witnessed the introduction of the automatic mixer. 

 This ingenious appliance secures to the miller completely, 

 regulating control of the rate of delivery from the different hop- 

 pers, so that a blend of, say, 15 per cent. English, 35 per cent. 

 American Northern Spring, 20 per cent, of White Calcutta, and 

 30 per cent, of Argentine having been determined upon, and the 

 revolving disc set to each hopper accordingly, the miller can 

 leave the machine to make his mixture for him. The hoppers 

 converge on a receptacle, through which runs a stirring or 

 incorporating " worm " in rapid motion. 



There is no reason that a comparatively small mill should not 

 be, if not the mill of the future, at all events the most useful type 

 in all but the great cities. Such a mill must, however, have 

 rollers as well as stones,* and steam as well as water power. A 

 small mill which is turning out 300 sacks a week is working 

 well, but many millers will prefer to run day and night in 

 favourable weather to running a level number of hours week 

 after week. Practical men agree as to the dangers and general 

 inadvisability of workmen being over driven at one time and 

 reduced to loafing at another ; but then experience shows that 

 10 per cent, more wheat will be turned out with a given amount 

 of labour, in calm and frosty weather, than in an air saturated 

 with moisture. Dry, still summer weather is about 10 per cent, 

 better in the same respect than a London fog. 



Charles Kains Jackson. 



* As the mills having both will inevitably diminish, and the roller gives the fuller 

 control, the stone mills are likely to go on declining in number. It is, of course, pos- 

 sible to employ rollers with a surface making a somewhat coarser flour than that now 

 used for the so-called best bread. 



