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which led to flowery eloquence, but not to profits in flour. It was at that time that Capt. John T. Ames achieved great celebrity, not only as a miller, but as a brilliant writer of Philippic invective. He always maintained that the Ames mill made larger profits and paid less for wheat after the Grange mill came into the field, than before.

THE FAME OF ARCHIBALD.

On the Cannon river, only three miles from the Ames mill, was the mill of the famous Archibald, the Scotchman who made Cannon river celebrated in eastern markets long before Pillsbury added fame to the upper Mississippi. Long before the new milling process was introduced in 1871, Minneapolis millers used to make trips to Dundas and peek into Archibald's mill, to see if they could fathom the secret of Archibald's flour beating Minneapolis flour $1 or more per barrel in the New York and Boston markets. Charles A. Pillsbury had an idea that the difference in the flour was due to the quality of the wheat. So he managed one day to put in his pocket a handful of the Ames and Archibald wheat; but when he got home he found the Cannon valley wheat no better than that in his own hoppers.

The difference was, that Archibald was his own scientific and practical miller. He dressed his stones with greater care, did better bolting, and used less pressure, and more even, in grinding, so that a whiter and purer flour was produced. He was also progressive, being among the first to use the new middlings purifier in 1871 and the roller process in 1880. A staff correspondent of the Northwestern Miller, March 24, 1876, then published at La Crosse, spoke of Archibald as "the man or firm who takes the leading place among the flour makers of this country or of the world."

THE GARDNER MILL AT HASTINGS.

As a boy, in 1859, I drove over from Janesville, Wisconsin, to St. Paul, and I still distinctly remember stopping at the famous Gardner mill at Hastings, on my trip both ways. This was not only one of the earliest, but one of the best mills of Minnesota. Scientific milling resulted in unusual prices and large profits for

the Hastings flour, because of its fame in eastern markets, at a time when Minneapolis flour yielded neither fame nor profit. The benefits of the middlings purifier process and high grinding with reduced speed and pressure, which were introduced in Minneapolis in 1871, were in great measure anticipated in the Hastings process of years before. By reducing the pressure and increasing the number of grindings, the Hastings mill avoided the undue heat which injured both the color and quality of the flour; and by special pains with both stone-dressing and bolting, the Gardner mill turned out a product which sold in the east at one to two dollars per barrel higher than the Minneapolis, the Wisconsin, or the best Illinois flour.

It is said that the Gardner mill, by its exceptional quality of flour, in the earlier days realized a profit as high as $3 per barrel, which beats all other records for profitable milling in the Northwest. The average mill of today is well satisfied with a net profit of ten cents. Successful, milling in Hastings is by no means at an end. Only the other day Hastings exported to Europe a cargo of fifty cars of flour to fill a single contract.

'HONEST JOHN" KEARCHER.

The ups and downs of milling are well illustrated in the history of John Kearcher, the miller of Isinours on the Root river. The miller is a prey to more of the ills of business life, by fire, by flood, by drouth, by storm, by panic, and by patent sharks, than perhaps any other business man. John Kearcher's career is in point. Born in 1831, in Alsace, then a province of France, he lived successively in Canada, Illinois, Iowa, and Minnesota. He came to Preston, Fillmore county, in 1855, and put up a mill which ran with success until the financial crash of 1857. He lost the mill, and afterward regained it, to lose it again. He then ran mills at Chatfield, Hampton, Fillmore, and Troy, and succumbed to fire, flood, and misfortune, until he landed on his back on the South branch of the Root river, with a debt of $30,000 and no assets except lost faith and confidence in every quarter. He then swore that he would live to pay up every dollar of debt and build one of the finest milling enterprises in the state. He managed to build a little mill with one four-foot stone and a two-foot pony and called it "Clear Grit." And "Clear Grit" won. Inside of ten years

it grew into a large modern structure of fourteen run of stone, one of the largest in southern Minnesota, and marketed 100 barrels or more daily of high-grade flour in the Chicago and Albany markets. "Honest John," as he was known to the trade, earned the unusual editorial tribute from a well-known milling journal, in 1877, of being "the maker of probably the best straight spring flour now manufactured in the United States, if not in the world."

RISE AND FALL OF MINNETONKA MILLS.

The ups and downs of milling are dramatically pictured in the tragic career of the once glorious, but now effete hamlet known as Minnetonka Mills, Hennepin county. As early as 1852, Simon Stevens, brother of Col. John H. Stevens, the founder of Minneapolis, started up Minnehaha creek to find the famous inland sea described by the Indians. He followed the creek until he came to lake Minnetonka, the sea in question. On the way he noted the rapids at the present site of Minnetonka Mills, and the next year he located a claim and built a mill which lived three years. In 1860, T. H. Perkins erected on the same site a threeand-one-half story mill, which afterward fell to the present congressman from Minneapolis, Hon. Loren Fletcher, and his partner, C. M. Loring. On Oct. 20, 1874, they organized the Minnetonka Mills Company. They doubled the size of the mill, put in four run of stone and nine double rolls, turned out 300 barrels of flour daily, which found a ready market in Boston, New York, and Europe, and then sold the plant to two Canadian capitalists for the round sum of $95,000.

The mill wheels at Minnetonka Mills never turned again. First, the new partners had their partnership tangle to settle. Then, the property owners at lake Minnetonka brought suits without end against the county for damage to property by reason of the dam raising the water level, and the county in turn laid violent hands upon the dam. Next came the owners of damaged property along Minnehaha creek. The result was fifteen years of lawsuits at a cost of $30,000 to Hennepin county taxpayers, and death and decay to the once blooming hamlet of Minnetonka Mills.

- STATISTICS OF 1859-60.

The first report of the Minnesota commissioner of statistics,

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Joseph A. Wheelock, on page 121, reviewing the flour industry of Minnesota for 1859-60, says:

Two years ago Minnesota imported flour to supply the deficiencies in her own product. She has now probably 140 grist mills, 122 being the sum of those actually reported to this office. Some of these mills are very large and fine, and the quality of flour produced rivals the best eastern brands.

This earliest estimate of the statistics of Minnesota milling was apparently too large; for in the following year's report detailed figures, quoted from the government census, are given, placing the number of flour mills at 85, instead of 140. Of the 85 mills, 63 were run by water, and 22 by steam. The wheat ground amounted to 1,273;509 bushels, and the flour produced reached 254,702 barrels. The value of the entire mill product was $1,310,431, as compared with $500 in 1850. The 1861 report estimated the daily output at Minneapolis to be 4,000 barrels, which is about one-third of the present output of the "Pillsbury A" mill.

The leading states in volume of flour production in 1860 were in order, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Virginia. The largest mill, 300,000 barrels per annum, was in Oswego, New York; the next two, 190,000 and 160,000, respectively, were in Richmond, Virginia; and the fourth, 140,000 barrels, in New York city. The value of the annual product of these mills was around $1,000,000 each. The so-called big mills of New York and Virginia in 1860 were about the same in capacity, but greatly inferior in mechanical perfection, to the mills of such Minnesota towns as St. Cloud, Mankato, New Ulm, Faribault, Northfield, Hastings, Red Wing, Wabasha, and Waseca, today.

MILLING IN 1870.

By the census of 1870, the 85 Minnesota mills of 1860 had multiplied to 216, requiring 281 water wheels and 38 steam engines, and representing 507 run of stone with a daily capacity of 61,314 barrels. The capital invested had grown from $587,000 in 1860 to $2,900,000; and the value of the milling product had increased from $1,300,000 to over $7,500,000. The output of the 216 mills represented about a million barrels of flour and half a million bushels of corn meal and feed. The milling industry had therefore more than trebled in the decade; although the aggregate flour output of 1870 is today very nearly equalled by one of

several Minnesota counties, even outside of Hennepin and St. Louis, while either one of two milling companies in Minneapolis ground last year five times more flour than the total amount credited to the state by the census of 1870.

The leading milling counties of 1870 by number of mills were: Hennepin, fourteen; Winona, thirteen; Rice and Goodhue, with eight each; and Houston, Le Sueur, and Stearns, with six mills apiece. In value of milling product, there were fourteen counties that made a showing of over $100,000: Hennepin, leading with $1,125,000; Rice and Winona, following close with about $800,000 each; Goodhue, the fourth, with $600,000; then Dakota, with close to $400,000; followed by Olmsted and Fillmore, with $200,000 to $250,000 each; and then, in order, Stearns, Le Sueur, Mower, Scott, Blue Earth, M'eeker, and Houston, with a product of $100,000 to $160,000 each.

Flour manufacturing had not yet obtained a foothold in Duluth or the Red River valley. St. Paul was holding her own with a total of two mills and a product valued at $51,748. And speaking of St. Paul, permit me to say that however sensitive or seemingly hostile that city may have been as regards her sister town up the river in the matter of population figures and real estate bargains, St. Paul has never refused to eat Minneapolis flour. The fact will go down the corridors of history and stand as a monument of self-abnegation and sisterly affection, that for over twenty-five years the good and devout people of St. Paul, whenever they asked blessing upon the morning, noon, or evening meal, invoked the blessing of Providence upon bread made from Minneapolis flour.

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The year 1870 stands as a landmark in the history of milling, because that was the year when Edmund N. La Croix of Faribault went to Minneapolis and introduced the middlings purifier into the "Washburn B" mill, thereby increasing the value of Minnesota flour $1 to $2 per barrel and the value of Minnesota spring wheat ten to forty cents per bushel.

For nearly three generations American millers had made little advance on the milling system invented by Oliver Evans. It was he who invented the American automatic mill. He made it possible, by the use of the elevator and conveyer and other appli

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