It has been said that when a man eats meat he thinks meat, and when he eats bread he thinks bread, and when he eats fruit he thinks fruit. It is not clear that the quality or character of man’s food is so closely correlated to his thought, but that it has its influence cannot be doubted. It would be safer to say, however, that when a man eats meat he acts meat, and when he eats bread he acts bread, for the muscular energy and aggressive potentiality appear to be much more closely related to the quality of his food than are his thoughts. May it not be that the powerful achievement of the British Empire was directly related to its roast beef? Is not the listless apathy of the Chinese due to a diet of rice? Is not the dominant and masterful power of the lion or the eagle related to a carniverous diet, and the mild and placid temper of the ox the reflex expression of his vegetable food? It is quite true that our potentialities are largely represented by what we eat, and our food therefore becomes a most interesting topic, not only by virtue of its indispensable quality, but by reason also of the possibilities of development in the betterment and elevation of the human race.
From the earliest times even down to the present day man’s food has been the same—flesh, fish, cereals, fruits and vegetables. The development of the present century has not extended this category, but it has been directed to an increase in the supply, an improvement in quality, the preservation against decay and waste, and its intelligent selection and adaptation to the special needs of the body. Progress manifests itself in the great field of agriculture, in improved processes and machines for milling; in butchering, packing and handling meats; in preserving and drying fruits; in the preparation of canned goods, in dairy appliances, in cake and cracker machines; in the manufacture of sugar; in the great advance in cookery; in the science of dietetics, and in thousands of minor industries.
In agriculture the raising of grain has extended in the Nineteenth Century to enormous proportions. More than ten thousand patents for plows, as many for reapers, and a proportionate number of planters, cultivators, threshers, and other implements and tools represent the extent to which inventive genius has been directed to the increase of the yield in the harvest field.
This yield in the United States for the year 1898 was:
| Corn | 1,924,184,660 | bushels |
| Wheat | 675,148,705 | bushels |
| Oats | 730,906,643 | bushels |
| Rye | 25,657,522 | bushels |
| Barley | 55,792,257 | bushels |
| Buckwheat | 11,721,927 | bushels |
| Potatoes | 192,306,338 | bushels |
FIG. 164.—ROLLER PROCESS OF MAKING FLOUR, WEGMANN’S PATENT.
For converting the grain into flour, the inventors of the Nineteenth Century have made revolutionary changes. Milling processes within the last twenty-five years have been completely transformed by the introduction of the roller mill and middlings purifier. Formerly two horizontal disk-shaped stones or burrs were employed, the lower one stationary and the upper one revolving in a horizontal plane and crudely crushing the grain between them. In all modern mills these have been entirely displaced by porcelain rolls revolving on horizontal axes and crushing the grain between them. The first of these roller mills is shown in pat. No. 182,250, to Wegmann, Sept. 12, 1876. (See [Fig. 164]). The outer rolls d e are pressed against the inner ones a c by a system of weighted levers, and scrapers below remove the crushed grain from the periphery of the rolls. Many subsequent improvements have been made, one type of which employs a succession of rolls which act in pairs on the grain one after the other and reduce it by successive gradations.