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Article: Man-made giants, grain elebators, towered over the Midwest prairie
- Article from:
- The Pantagraph Bloomington, IL
- Article date:
- October 11, 2009
- Author:
CopyrightCopyright 2009 The Pantagraph Bloomington, IL. Provided by ProQuest LLC. (Hide copyright information)
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For more than a century and a half, grain elevators have played a
critical role in the fall harvest.
Before elevators arrived on the scene, farmers scooped shelled
corn or other grain into sacks, loaded them onto wagons or
flatboats, and made the trip to river markets like Peoria or St.
Louis. Ownership of these sacks remained with the farmer or grain
dealer until they reached the final point of sale.
Steam-powered elevators and railroads profoundly altered this
arrangement. Elevators - multistoried warehouses partitioned into
vertical bins - mixed similarly graded grain from one farmer with
that of another. Grading by type and quality was a new concept.
Instead of associating a specific lot ...