412 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST 
[November, 
“trim,” and it leaves our shores on its final 
voyage of over 3,000 miles. The cost of this 
voyage depends greatly upon the supply of 
ships. It must not be supposed that this ques¬ 
tion of transportation ends with the arrival of 
the grain at New York, Boston, or any other 
seaport. On the contrary, were the canals and 
Fig. 1. —TRANSFERRING GRAIN AT BUFFAEO. 
elevators belong to the New York Grain Ware¬ 
house Company, and have a total capacity of 
8,000,000 bushels. One of them is seen in fig. 
5, and is a counterpart of all the rest. Here 
the barges are unloaded, and the grain carried 
up by spouts into the top of the building, 
where it is screened and sifted first through a 
Fig. 2. —ON THE ERIE CANAL. 
every cent thus paid in freights reduces the 
price paid to the farmer at his local elevator 
in the West, or adds to the cost of the loaf pur¬ 
chased by the European artisan. It is an abso¬ 
lutely necessary cost, and can not be avoided 
any more than the cost of plowing the soil or 
procuring the seed. In whatever way it may 
railroads or their capacity instantly doubled it 
would not help the matter just now in the 
slightest. There is a scarcity of ships. Europe 
wants 150 million bushels of grain or less or 
more before next harvest. That quantity would 
load 5,000 ships of 1,000 tons each. A very 
little figuring would show that this would re¬ 
quire 16 ships to be loaded and dispatched 
every day for the next ten months. They are 
not in existence just now, or at least are other- 
be reduced, a clear gain is made to the pro¬ 
ducer, and to effect the desirable reduction is 
as legitimate and proper an object for him to 
strive for as the reduction of the cost of his 
farming operations or of his plows and reapers, 
and this item of supply of ships should not be 
lost sight of in considering this question. For 
want of the necessary ships the grain often 
goes to the elevators to be stored for a time. 
These are situated at what is known as the 
fine screen (fig. 6), where it is freed from dust, 
and afterwards through a coarse screen (fig. 7) 
in which it is separated from all larger matters.- 
Here there are recovered various strange arti¬ 
cles which have been lost by farmers in a man¬ 
ner that seemed to them mysterious. Some¬ 
times a watch, a pocket-book, hammers, nails, 
boots, shoes, pencils, or other things the absence 
of which the owners vainly try to account for, 
are here discovered. After being cleaned, the 
Fig. 3. —GATHERING THE TOW. 
wise employed. Therefore, as we understand, 
all the ships capable of carrying grain are en¬ 
gaged up to December, and were so even early 
in September. The freights therefore are high, 
and fourteen pence sterling, or about thirty 
cents per bushel is the cost of transportation 
from New York to Liverpool. Of course, 
Erie Basin on the Brooklyn shore of the East 
River, where the canal barges are gathered 
after their voyage from Buffalo. These eleva¬ 
tors have a capacity of 14 million bushels. 
Many vessels are loaded at the elevators, and a 
vast amount of shipping gathers about them in 
the course of a season. The largest of these 
grain is run into a weighing hopper (figure 8). 
This is connected with a scale which indicates 
by an index the quantity of bushels run into 
the hopper. When the required quantity is 
run in, a cord is pulled by which the stream of 
entering grain is stopped; the bottom of the 
hopper is opened simultaneously, and the grain 
