5 
just such men as these bright boys will 
make to handle them skillfully. 
Cracking Wheat into Flour. 
Minnesota millers no longer ‘grind’ wheat 
into flour. They “crack'’ it, and the people 
of the Northwest claim that the new pro¬ 
cess makes their hitherto inferior wheat 
the most valuable in the world. Burr 
stones are things of the past and Hungar¬ 
ian steel rollers have taken their place. 
These rollers are about thirty inches long 
and eight inches in diameter. It takes five 
sets of steel rollers to finish the flour. Each 
set of rollers runs closer than the preceding. 
After the wheat passes each set of rollers it 
is bolted or sifted through coarse cloth. 
This cloth lets the disintegrated particles 
of wheat through and passes off the bulky 
and larger pieces, which are run through 
another and a closer set of rollers and 
cracked again. The last rollers have little 
else than wheat hulls and waxy germs of 
wheat, which do not crack up, but smash 
down like a piece of wax. The germ of a 
kernel of wheat is not good food. It makes 
flour black. By the old millstone process 
this waxy germ was ground up with thfe 
starchy portion and bolted through with 
the flour. By the new system of cracking 
the kernel instead of grinding it, this germ 
is not ground, but flattened out and sifted 
or bolted out, while the starchy portions of 
the wheat are crushed into powdered wheat 
or flour. All the big mills of Minneapolis 
now manufacture by the new process. 
Strong Drink. 
Time is never more uselessly wasted, 
money never more wastefully spent, than 
when spent for alcohol. Society has no 
greater abomination to contend against. 
The wrecks it has stranded on this side of 
the grave and on the other, are scattered 
along the banks of life amid all nations, 
from the savage barbarian to the highest 
stages of civilization. The widowed moth¬ 
er, the fatherless children, the grief strick¬ 
en, gray bearded father, the broken hearted 
wife, the disgraced criminal, the abandoned 
outcast, the fiendish murderer, illustrate in 
every class of society the hellish work it 
has done for suffering humanity. The rep¬ 
utations it has ruined, the promising ca¬ 
reers it has destroyed, the families it has 
disgraced, the men it has brought to the 
gallows, the lives it has cost, the diseases 
it has wrought, the beastialities it has bred, 
point to it as the greatest of the world’s 
accursed evils. It.is the ally of the gamb¬ 
ler, the companion of the burglar, the 
friend of the thief, the tool of the perjurer 
the confederate of the assasin. It destroys 
virtue, mocks honesty, encourages crime, 
stimulates misery, excites passion, infuses 
hate, kills friendship, kindles strife, incites 
murder. From the time it leaves its source 
and enters upon its venemous course until 
it reaches and poisons the blood of man, it 
leaves foot prints of crime in its track, and 
covers its way with insanity, suicide, pesti¬ 
lence, destruction, and looks back with 
malicious pleasure at the desolation it has 
wrought. It has stained the escutcheon of 
every nation, befouled the thrones of em¬ 
pires, covered with shame the judicial er¬ 
mine, polluted the jury-box, defiled the 
ballot. It is the sum of all villainies, the 
root of all evil, the spring Of all wicked¬ 
ness. It brings disease, not strength; de¬ 
spair, not hope; death, not life. 
Practical Hints. 
To destroy the vitality of weed seeds in 
soil by baking, will, in a great measure, de¬ 
stroy the fertility of the soil. A better way 
to kill weed seeds is to spread the soil out 
thinly in a warm place and keep it moist. 
In a few days most of the seeds will ger¬ 
minate. after which the soil should be stir¬ 
red and allowed to become dry. In this 
manner weeds may effectually be destroyed. 
To grow geranium cuttings : Take coarse, 
clean sand, about three inches in depth, in¬ 
sert the cutting about one to one and a half 
inches deep therein; press the sand firmly 
around them, and water freely at first; af¬ 
terward use it sparingly. One cause of ger¬ 
anium cuttings turning black is the keeping 
of them too wet. No kind of cuttings are 
better adapted for sending by mail than 
