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Mr. Roos. I do not know.

Mr. FORDNEY. Well, if there is I would like to know of it. I have never heard of any such thing in any pure-food law. Therefore there would be no law in any State that would prevent the mixture of those articles, and their being sold, provided you marked them properly; but there are a dozen ways to get around marking them or labeling them properly; I mean to say particularly as to quantities. Mr. HILL. Excuse my interruptions: I wanted information on that particular point.

Mr. Roos. Well, I wish I could give it to you.

Mr. RAINEY. What you want, then, is to prevent any mixing of the corn products with flour?

Mr. Roos. Or any other products with wheat flour, as far as that is concerned.

Mr. RAINEY. You want a law that prevents it entirely.

Mr. Roos. Certainly; that is what I would be in favor of.

Mr. RAINEY. Do you know what patent flour is?

Mr. Roos. I know what is called patent flour.

Mr. RAINEY. Do your mills make it?

Mr. Roos. Yes, sir.

Mr. RAINEY. What is patent flour?

Mr. Roos. It is the purified middlings of wheat.

Mr. RAINEY. You say the purified middlings of wheat?

Mr. Roos. That is the technical term.,

Mr. FORDNEY. I did not hear what you said.

Mr. Roos. I say it is the purified middlings of wheat.

Mr. RAINEY. What are the middlings of wheat?

Mr. Roos. That part of the wheat that contains the starch, and

the gluten, and the proteins.

Mr. RAINEY. What goes with the rest of it?

Mr. Roos. With the patent flour?

Mr. RAINEY. No; with the rest of the wheat besides the middlings? Mr. Roos. The feed, the brans, the shorts, the lower grades of flour, such as red dog, or low grade.

Mr. RAINEY. How is patent flour different from any other kind of flour?

Mr. Roos. I do not know that it has been defined; of course, I know how it got the name of patent flour-how it was applied. Mr. RAINEY. What part of the wheat grain do you take for the patent flour? You told me, but I have forgotten.

Mr. Roos. The purified middlings.

Mr. RAINEY. Now, in the other flours that are not patent flour, what do you take?

Mr. Roos. They take what we call the break flour; flour that is less granular-that contains the lower qualities of the wheat. In other words, the patent flour is supposed to be the cream of the wheat-the best there is in it.

Mr. RAINEY. What part of the wheat is rejected when you make patent flour?

Mr. Roos. I don't know that I understand that.

Mr. RAINEY. What part of the wheat grain is rejected when you make what you call patent flour?

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Mr. Roos. In making the separation, we separate the clear grades, the second clear, the shorts, and the brans.

Mr. RAINEY. In making the other flour what do you take out?

Mr. Roos. In making the other flour we take out the bran and the shorts, and some of the low grades, a few per cent, whatever is considered not good to go in there. The balance would contain the patent and the clear; that is practically what it would contain.

Mr. RAINEY. Then practically there is no difference between patent flour and any other kind?

Mr. Roos. Certainly there is; there is a difference in quality; a part of the wheat berry contains the better glutens, those more elastic, those more responsive."

Mr. RAINEY. Which contains the most starch?

Mr. Roos. I suppose as far as starch is concerned the percentage would be practically the same; there would not be very much difference. In all probability the patent flour would have a larger percentage of starch than the clears because it has less percentage of gluten.

Mr. RAINEY. The patent flour has less glutens?

Mr. Roos. A less percentage.

Mr. RAINEY. Then it does not contain a large percentage of gluten; a larger percentage of glutens is not required to make the most expensive flour?

Mr. Roos. No; it depends on the quality.

Mr. RAINEY. That is interesting, because that has not been brought out before. Then, in order to make the best flour, you deprive the wheat of some of its gluten?

Mr. Roos. I do not know that I would say that. We do not deprive it of any gluten. The percentage of gluten in various parts of the berry naturally varies, and we take only one

Mr. RAINEY. In making this high grade, the completed grade, you would say it does not contain as much gluten as the lower grades? Mr. Roos. Not as much in quantity.

Mr. RAINEY. Do your mills make more than one grade of flour? Mr. Roos. Yes; we put out three grades.

Mr. RAINEY. Describe the highest grade. What does that contain?

Mr. Roos. That is what you named patent flour. It goes under that trade name.

Mr. RAINEY. That is the whitest flour?

Mr. Roos. Not necessarily.

Mr. RAINEY. You have two more grades?

Mr. Roos. Yes, sir.

Mr. RAINEY. Now, the grade that is below your patent flour contains a little more gluten than the patent flour?

Mr. Roos. Contains a larger percentage, usually.

Mr. RAINEY. And the third grade contains still more

Mr. Roos. No; that is not the way; we separate the flour in the wheat berry into a patent grade and clear grade, and the patent is the larger portion of this. Then we blend those two grades and put out what we call our straight grade, meaning it contains everything there is in the wheat excepting the low grades. There is a combination of the two. That is the average bread flour and the flour we call our bakers' patent or bread flour.

Mr. RAINEY. You have your patent flour, and then you have the third grade, and then you blend your patent and third grade and make what you call a straight clear?

Mr. Roos. Or we make our straight flour and separate it into patent and clear

Mr. RAINEY. But the highest price is for the patent flour, the next highest price is for the blend, and the next highest for the lower grade?

Mr. Roos. Yes.

Mr. RAINEY. And the lower down you get the more gluten you get?

Mr. Roos. The larger quantity.

Mr. HILL. What is graham flour?

Mr. Roos. Under Dr. Graham's formula, it would be the whole wheat berry crushed and powdered.

Mr. HILL. Hull and all?

Mr. Roos. That is Graham's definition. I think the State of Kansas requires-in our State-that if we make graham flour it has to be the whole wheat berry crushed.

Mr. HILL. Including the hull?

Mr. Roos. Yes; the outer coating.

Mr. HILL. It is healthy, of course, is it?

Mr. Roos. Of course it is. Why should it not be?

Mr. HILL. It is supposed to be more so than the ordinary straight flour?

Mr. Roos. That I do not know. Of course that is subject to a difference of opinion.

Mr. FORDNEY. That is a notion on the part of some people.

Mr. ALLEN. What is known as the middlings is not the heart of the wheat, but it is next to the bran?

Mr. Roos. No; it is the heart of the wheat.

Mr. ALLEN. Is the middlings the heart of the wheat?

Mr. Roos. Certainly; and next to the bran particles you would get some middlings. I could not give you the technical milling definition, that is not a part of my work, I am not a practical miller. Mr. LIND. I will say for the benefit of the committee that we have an expert miller who can explain to you in detail, so far as you want to go, the processes of milling, so that you will virtually see it before

you.

Mr. FORDNEY. I wish to ask the gentleman a question. You usually make three grades of flour out of the same berry?

Mr. Roos. That is what we make.

Mr. FORDNEY. And patent flour is commonly called pastry flour, is it not?

Mr. Roos. Not with us; it is used for that sometimes; it is used as a bread flour and in the family trade.

Mr. FORDNEY. I understand, but is it not commonly called pastry flour?

Mr. Roos. You understand we mill only hard winter wheat. We do not mill any soft wheat, and our flour is used as a bread flour, principally. In fact, I suppose there is very little of it used for anything else except in the home. They make pie crusts out of it,' or do some pastry baking, but it is a bread flour, the bread flour of the family; that is the flour that is sold for domestic use.

Mr. FORDNEY. You can separate it and make the three grades from the one berry, or you can blend the two grades, or you can make a straight flour?

Mr. Roos. The blend would be what I call the straight flour. It would be a combination of the patent and clear. We make only two grades, as a matter of fact; we make patent and clear; and the total of the two is our straight.

Mr. RAINEY. Missouri is in your organization?

Mr. Roos. Yes.

Mr. RAINEY. Is the Ismert-Hincke Milling Co., of Kansas City, a member?

Mr. Roos. They are members.

Mr. RAINEY. With reference to the moisture-absorbing qualities of your flour, do your mills, or any of them, advertise that out of the straight wheat flour bakers can use more water and get more loaves of bread?

Mr. Roos. I presume some of them advertise that fact.

Mr. RAINEY. In other words, they advertise that if you use their particular flour, a straight wheat flour, bakers can weigh out more

water to consumers?

Mr. Roos. No; that is not what they claim.

Mr. RAINEY. What do they claim?

Mr. Roos. What they would claim is that the gluten contents are such that it will take more water to make a good loaf of bread than flours of less gluten content.

Mr. RAINEY. You think they do not advise the bakers that they can hand out more water with this flour?

Mr. Roos. We do not have to advise them; the baker knows his own business.

Mr. RAINEY. I understand; but let me read what kind of advice this Ismert-Hincke Milling Co. give in their advertisement advertising their "Thunderbolt flour." They say:

No buyer of "Thunderbolt " need pay any attention to gossip about crops and markets. "Thunderbolt" is a word meaning a fixed and definite kind of flour, and a bag marked "Thunderbolt never contains anything but that particular kind of flour. We guarantee it, not only in general terms, but specific statements of gluten and ash content.

Use more water with "Thunderbolt.”

Mr. Roos. Well, that is quite a proper kind of advertisement. It probably takes more water-well, I don't know that I can express myself. To get the best action with the gluten content of the flour, it takes more water than with a softer variety of flour, for instance. Mr. RAINEY. Yes. A baker ought to know that anyway, ought he not, without that kind of advice?

Mr. Roos. I presume they do know it.

Mr. RAINEY. If you mix up the corn flour with wheat flour it is well known among bakers, and millers, too, that they can not use as much water in it. Is not that true; that is, the completed loaf will not contain as much water?

Mr. Roos. I am not prepared to answer that; I don't know. Mr. LIND. What effect has the existence of this law had on the foreign trade? What effect has it had on the foreign market?

Mr. Roos. I take it that the security, the knowledge, that there was no admixture of corn flour with wheat flour gave them the neces

sary safeguards. For instance, in the nineties our correspondents in Europe used to write us and insist that there should be no admixture; they wanted a pure flour. When we advertised as being members of the Antiadulteration League that was sufficient, and they assumed when we shipped them flour that it was ground from wheat and contained nothing but what is in the wheat berry.

Mr. GREEN. They want to do the mixing themselves?

Mr. Roos. I don't know whether they want to do the mixing themselves, but they want to have the assurance that what they buy is a pure wheat product.

Mr. GREEN. Are there some mills in your State that never ship any flour outside of the State?

Mr. Roos. Oh, yes; I suppose we have in the neighborhood of 300 mills in the State of Kansas, maybe more than that, and of those mills there are less than 50 that are mills that ship to other States or for export. Most of them work in a very limited territory, a territory of perhaps from 50 to 100 miles. There are a good many small mills, of perhaps from 25 barrels to 75 barrels per day capacity, that run probably only in the daytime, and most of those mills ship no flour outside of the State.

Mr. GREEN. The reason I asked that question is that I live in a little town, and we have a small mill, but they not infrequently ship flour outside of the State.

Mr. Roos. Some of them do, but not necessarily. It is not profitable for them to go after the outside trade if they have only a small capacity.

Mr. FORDNEY. Is corn flour cornstarch?

Mr. Roos. I suppose corn flour contains cornstarch. I never heard of corn flour until I came here. We call it corn meal.

Mr. FORDNEY. If it is ground fine-and we grind it fine-it is cornstarch in every sense of the word.

Mr. Roos. I presume it contains everything cornstarch contains, with the addition of some other matter-oil or gluten or proteids, or whatever you choose to call them.

Mr. FORDNEY. But mixing it with the flour it has the same effect whether it is called corn flour or cornstarch. Am I right about that? I ask for information.

Mr. Roos. Well, I don't know: I would say it would have practically the same effect.

Mr. HILL. You say you make three grades of flour?

Mr. Roos. Yes.

Mr. HILL. Would you say that it would be for the advantage of the wheat-flour trade if they were taxed 4 cents a barrel and required to keep separate books and brand each grade separately and have Government inspectors protect the public, so that they would not be deceived as to which grade they were getting?

Mr. Roos. I don't know that I would object to having the Government record what I put out. I have no objection to that. I do not see the necessity of it.

Mr. HILL. I do not see the necessity of the other, either. I want to see where the beneficial effect would come to your trade. Would you consider that that would be an advantage to the wheat-flour trade. to have that done?

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