Grain Elevators

Chicago Harbor

The designing and construction of grain storage buildings, commonly known as ‘elevators,’ is now undergoing a change as radical as that which created the modern ‘sky-scraper’ a few years ago, and for precisely the same reason, that something more durable and efficient is desired.
—Jas. MacDonald, MWSE. “Fireproof Grain Elevator Construction.” Journal of the Western Society of Engineers, January, 1902.

Chicago Tribune, January 21, 1861

Our Grain Elevators.

To a city of recent growth, like Chicago, belong comparatively few things that invite the attention of mere sight-seers. The stranger and the tourist can “do” in a morning’s ride nearly everything that comes under the class of “lions.” A look from the top of the Court House, a sight at our not numerous, but very creditable public buildings, and all is seen that we had to offer, since Fort Dearborn was palled down and the last of our old original structures fell before the march of business blocks.

There is, however, one especial class of objects of interest, that never fail to elicit from our visitors from abroad, wonder and admiration our—Grain Elevators.

Recently the very ample and complete annual tables of the Tribune, gave an exhibit of the extent of our business as a Grain Market, for the year 1860, and showed that an aggregate of over twenty-eight millions of bushels of cereals were here received and shipped in that period. A glance at our great granaries and their mechanical appliances for fellitating labor answers the question how this immense amount of grain was handled.

Let us first suppose it to be done in the two bushel gunny bags familiar to the levées of our western rivers. The above amount of grain if so bagged and piled and allowing a fair stowage for each bag, would give is a wall sixteen feet high and seven hundred miles long, a very fair Chinese wall against famine in the Northwest, and a very considerable portion of the world’s bulwark, against starvation else where.

But with the economical handling of such an immense bulk of grain, or rather with handling it all, must come into operation vast labor-saving appliances, steam-driven; and between buyer and seller has been created a middle class of operations involving large outlay cf capital, and performing work of receiving and shipping with a speed and method that as we have hinted, have caused our Grain Elevators to be a never failing object of interest to visitors.

We have chosen to couple a detailed reference to these great structures, with the above aggregate footing of what they have done the past year’s business of our grain mart, in the handling of nearly nineteen million dollars worth of the great staples of the Northwest, with a rich reward to the warehousemen themselves in the bountiful year 1860.

From their size, looking large among the lesser structures about them, like the dromedary among the shepherd’s flocks, our grain elevators constitute prominent objects to any one approaching the city from whatever direction. They stand along the river and its branches, each reached by canal boats and lake craft upon the water side, and upon the other by railroad tracks, and while their large proportions, and in the busy season the bustle that pervades their vicinity, constitute a feature peculiar to our city. And one should see and pass through them at such time to fully appreciate their utility.

The vast interior is honey-combed into bins whose capacily is reckoned by thousands of thousands of bushels. A powerfal steam engine drives the machinery by which the grain is elevated, or, to the eye, sucked up from the canal boats, and from the cars, and at will poured into the holds of lake raft, or deposit ed in bins for storage.

Let us look at a list of these great elevators and their capacity.

We reproduce the following table given in our recent Annual Review before referred to,

Besides these, two immense warehouses, of a capacity equal to the largest above mamed, are in process of erection on the South Branch, near the C., B. & Q. R. R. bridge, both to be ready for the next season’s business. One of these is for Messrs. Munger, Armour & Dole, the other for Messrs. Sturgis & Co. On the North branch, at the foot of Illinois street, a first-class warehouse is to be built for Hon. Wm. B. Ogden, It is to be 350 feet long by 80 feet wide, 110 feet high, and is to cost $90,000. It is to be commenced early the coming spring.

The capital invested in these Grain Elevators shows an aggregate outlay of nearly two millions of dollars, exclusive of the valuable real estate occupied by the same.

Chicago Grain Elevator

Land Owner, February, 1873

OUR GREAT GRAIN INTERESTS. – WAREHOUSE LEGISLATION – VINCENT, NELSON & CO.’S NEW NATIONAL ELEVATOR.
(See Frontispiece)
In the January issue of The Land Owner was published a very important article, together with a map, showing the route of the projected Huron and Ontario Ship Canal to tide water, which has created considerable interest throughout the country, and which article has been commented on largely by the press, especially by The Chicago Tribune, which found the subject first agitated by this journal, of sufficient importance to justify the engraving of a facsimilie of our map, and a re-publication of the entire article. We therefore continue the subject this month by presenting, on our first page, an illustration of the new National Elevator, erected since the fire, by Messrs. Vincent, Nelson & Co., and by a resume of the warehousing business in this city, as well as the legislation in relation to the same.

The National Elevator.
This new warehouse is located on the Chicago & Alton Railroad, and the south branch of the Chicago river, at the corner of Archer avenue and Ogden slip, accessible from the city by the Archer avenue horse cars. It is constructed entirely fire-proof, of brick and iron, with all the modern improvements, and has a storage capacity of 1,000,000 bushes with ample facilities for the loading and unloading cars at the same time. It stands alone, with the river on two sides, and the street and vacant ground on the other sides, presenting solid brick walls for the main story, or bin covering, and hollow-tile fire-clay walls, cupolas or upper story, with solid cast-iron cornice. The roof throughout, the window frames and sash are of the same material, and not a particle of wood is used or exposed in the outside walls or covering. The openings are all closed with heavy iron doors or shutters.

This massive and imposing structure is 250 feet in length by 87 feet wide. Its cost, with the ground, was $400,000; without the ground, $300,000; and it is the largest warehouse with which the Chicago & Alton Railroad is connected. The iron elevator legs, scale hoppers, receivers, and canal leg were made by W. A. Case, of Buffalo, N. Y., and are complete and perfect in every particular. The engine, a most marvelous piece of mechanism, was constructed by R. L. Howard & Son, of Buffalo, together with the shafting, which runs smoothly and almost noiselessly. The engine is an upright condenser of three hundred horse power, and stands in a room admirably adapted to its use, and perfectly arranged, so that the monster can be seen in full operation. The ordinary plank bins are used, laid solid for strength; but above these the entire construction, including scales, hoppers, receivers, crane spouts and spouting, are all of iron. This, with the elevator legs (or cases), being iron from top to bottom, starting from iron tanks, on the lower concrete pavement (instead of the usual pine floor), reduces the risk by fire to a nominal one, and enables the holders of grain to insure themselves. In addition, there are all the known resources and means for fighting fire. Water is carried the entire length of each floor in three inch iron pipes, with full sized hose couplings, and hose couplings, and hose attached every fifty feet, through which, with a powerful force pump, water can be thrown to the highest point, or for a block in either direction, and steam for this purpose is carried night and day, with a competent engineer constantly on duty. The supply of water is taken both from the river and the
city mains.

Twenty-four smaller bins are also provided for separate small lots of grain to be stored separately and sold on its merits or by sample, if desired, and the firm can at all times furnish special bins for yellow or white corn. With these larger facilities the owners hope to see or hear favorably from their old patrons, and as many new ones as they can make room for, promising to use all their best efforts and energy in the safe keeping and care of all property entrusted to them. For their ability to do this fairly, they refer, with confidence to the business of the old National for five years before the fire, and their associations and connections in grain trade from Chicago to New York since 1856. The firm is composed of B. B. Vincent, Murry Nelson and E. B. Stevens.

The Warehouse Business.
So much for this new warehouse, one of the finest and best constructed of the class in the world. But in this connection it may be well to say a word about the business of warehousing, which has for several years been growing daily into disrepute in the minds of the general public, owing, mainly, to their false knowledge and misunderstanding of the subject, and the mischievous teachings of the provincial newspaper press. Up to the year 1867 the elevator business in this city was run entirely by close corporations, and was in every sense a strong monopoly. In every instance there was a wheel within a wheel, the warehouses being controlled or owned by the railroads, and the business transacted entirely in their inter-ests. Under this state of things, grain was delivered to such an elevator as the railroad men chose to carry it to, without consulting the consignee or consignor. There was no redress whatever from this arbitrary system, and it was submitted to with ill grace by both the grain producer and the commission men. The Board of Trade tried repeatedly, as a body, to remedy the evil and break the monopoly, but it was too strong for them, and their efforts failing only gave the monopolists a stronger grip, until the efforts for relief became a forlorn hope.

At the time when this state of things was in full force, and the public were suffering meekly an evil with which they had never really grappled, Vincent, Nelson & Co. built the old National elevator, which was destroyed in the fire, and connected its tracks with the Chicago and Alton road, requesting them to deliver there grain consigned to them, which the road declined to do. The elevator firm then commenced a suit to enforce such delivery, which was carried to the Supreme Court, and resulted in a verdict against the railroad. This suit attracted great attention at the time, as upon it hinged the whole matter at issue, and it was ably argued on both sides, every effort being used to maintain the old order of things through the courts.

This decision marked a new era in the warehouse business. The grain was delivered
to the old National elevator, since which the grain trade on this important road, tapping, as it does, one of the richest cereal-producing sections of the State, has been open to competition to whoever desired to enter into it.

This decision, coming timely as it did, made it possible for anybody to build an elevator and get grain to it, and competition was opened to all the world. The fact was demonstrated that the then existing warehouse law, and the common law as well, furnished a complete and ample remedy for the grievances complained of, if put in force, and to men who knew their rights and dared maintain them, seemed the requirement of the time, rather than further legislation; and the public who so meekly endured what was so easily cured, might have at least stopped grumbling or cursing, or invoked the remedy so plainly laid down by our Supreme Court.

Warehouse Legislation.
Notwithstanding the fact that the railroads at this time controlled the elevators, with the solitary exception of the National, the public hastened to condemn, not the railroads, but the warehousemen, and the legislature on April 25, 1871, passed the
“Warehouse act,” conceded to be imperfect in some of its details. The end sought by the act was a proper one; but the act as a whole rests too much upon the notion that the only reinedy needed to correct an evil is an act of the legislature. The warehouse act contains many excellent and well matured provisions for the protection of the grain trade; it defines many acts which formerly were classed as frauds, and provides for their punishment as crimes. It generally provides the means by which the respective parties doing business through warehouses may invoke legal protection against frauds, and enforce rights which are denied. To this extent the law is unobjectionable, and is not opposed to any person. But the act goes further, and provides that no person engaged in the warehouse business shall receive anything in store without first obtaining a license therefor. This requirement, if it were provision for revenue, might not be objected to; but this requirement is coupled with another, that before he shall receive such license he must give bond to comply with all the provisions of “the laws of this State in relation thereto.” By the fifteen section of the same law, the charges for storage and handling of grain are estab-lished. As no license can be issued without the filing of the bond, and as the bond is conditioned that the party shall not ask or receive any more for storage than the statute permits, the person taking out a license must bind himself to accept the statutory compensation for his services. The same
law provides that, for any violation of the law, the Court, upon complaint, and by summary proceeding, may revoke the license, and refuse to issue another to the same for one year.

The result involved in the matter of taking out licenses for grain warehouses, there-fore, is, that by so doing the warehousemen must accept the rates fixed by law; and the reason for which these warehousemen have refused to take out such licenses is, that they deny that the legislature of the State can prescribe the compensation which men shall charge and receive for carrying on a legal business that does not concern the public health, or the safety and good order of society, and is in no sense a franchise.

The same act contains special provisions which render it impossible that warehousing shall be either a legal franchise or an actual monopoly. Any person may select a ware-house, and railroads must deliver grain to the warehouse to which it is consigned. Warehousing, then, has no special privileges any more than any other business which is open to any other person. Nor is there any pretence that it is a business in any way affecting the public health, or that it operates to the injury of social order and decorum, or to violations of the peace. It presents no feature, either in its general conduct or special management, which can bring it within the restraining authority of the police power of the State. The police power rests upon the inviolability of the maxim that all the rights of individuals are to be held and enjoyed subject to the condition that they do not invade, impair or destroy the legal rights of others.
It cannot be pretended that, in carrying on the business of warehousing, the charging of a certain rate per week for storage can in the remotest manner be an invasion, destruction, or interference with the legal rights of any citizen. So far as the act of 1871 does exercise the great inherent police power of the State for the protection of individual or public rights, its authority is undisputed.

The great question which at this time is widely diseussed among the people, and is in one form or another before the courts of nearly every State in the Union, as to the authority of the State to dictate to corporations holding charters, in the matter of rates for the transportation of passengers and freight, does not have any bearing upon the controversy between the warehousemen and the State of Illinois. These warehousemen
are not public corporations; they do not derive their right to carry on business from the State any more than does the man who cultivates grain; and while they admit the power and duty of the State to compel them to act honestly in their dealings with other men, they deny that the State can fix the price they shall charge for storing and handling the grain, any more than it can fix the price at which the grain shall be sold by the producer, or the price per barrel at which the flour made from such grain shall be sold.

The law declares these warehouses public, to the extent that they must receive all grain offered them. It is not optional, therefore, for these warehousemen to receive grain or not at the prices fixed by the State; nor can they, by contract with the owner of grain, receive a higher compensation than is fixed by law. They must either do business at the statutory rates, or close their warehouses. This latter resort is not an easy one. The grain warehouse is a costly institution; it cannot be adapted for other purposes; to close it involves a total loss, and to carry on the business at less than paying rates is but adding to the inevitable sacrifice. This business of warehousing was lawful long before the State took cognizance of it; it was regulated by common law, and the rates of compensation were controlled by competition or agreement between the warehouseman and his customers. It stood on the same footing as all other private business where one charged another for labor performed. But this act of 1871 makes this business unlawful unless performed for certain rates prescribed by law. The want of justice in the exercise of any such power is shown in the fact that if the legislature may fix a maximum rate of storage beyond which it is unlawful to re-ceive, even by contract, it may also establish a minimum rate, below which it shall be equally unlawful for warehousemen, even by contract, to store grain. The legislature of 1871 fixed one rate; the legislature of 1873 may prescribe, if the power exist at all, another rate, or a minimum rate for storage, and compel the producers of grain to pay that rate, even though elevators would readily store grain for less. Once admit the power of the State to prescribe the rates of wages for labor; the wages of storing grain; the compensation of lawyers or doctors; the price of bricks or lumber, and then there must follow a scale of prices for corn, oats, wheat, flour and bread; the price of drawing teeth; for making a man’s coat and a woman’s dress; for boots and shoes, and so on, until the reward of labor, industry, and production of the country shall be taken out of the hands of the people, and be regulated by statute. There have been demagogues in all ages and in all countries that have sought temporary applause by laws regulating the prices and compensation of products and labor, but in no instance have such laws survived the panic in which they were enacted, and they stand condemned by the universal judgment of mankind. No one in this State would advocate a general regulation of prices and wages by statute; no one will claim that the State has any power to prescribe such regulation; and no class would more earnestly oppose such a regulation than the producers of grain. It is not surprising; therefore, that the warehousemen object to being singled out from the multitude of private occupations, trades and business, and have their compensation arbitrarily fixed by law, and forbidden, even by contract with their customers, to receive any other price.

There are other considerations upon which this provision of the act of 1871 is opposed, such as that private business or property shall not be injured or damaged; that one man’s property cannot be taken and given to another. But we have stated enough to
show that the refusal to take out licenses by the warehousemen is founded upon strong reasons of justice and private right, which cannot be surrendered until the law is sustained by the highest tribunal of the State.

Vincent, Nelson & Co. comply with all the provisions of this questionable law except one-they dispute the authority of the legislature to fix their tariff of prices.

Looking to a more complete understanding between the warehousemen, the railroads and the people, a commission should be appointed, composed of good men of talent and capacity, capable of coping with railroad presidents, superintendents or attorneys. These men should be paid a salary in accordance with their abilities. This commission should aid the people in securing their rights, and it should be their duty to enforce all laws and regulations to prevent fraud, extortion and all unfair discrimination, all of which could be done through the courts, but not through the legislature, where corruption and bribery long ago subverted the people’s rights. Appropriate means to enable such a commission to employ counsel, and cope on an equal footing with the monied corporations, should be provided. Some such steps should be taken, if the people would maintain their just rights in this all-important matter.

Chicago Tribune July 14, 1895

To the man who looks casually over the floor of the Board of Trade It appears that the business in grain is absurdly out of proportion to the trade in the actual article. He sees the wheat pit filled to overflowing with a struggling, shouting, and gesticulating crowd, the principal evidences of a cash business are a few at one side of the room. He may know in a way that Chicago is the greatest grain market in the world; he may remember that the receipts and shipments annually are calculated in nine-figure totals, and he doubtless has an indefinite idea that the grain trade has to a gloater possibly than anything else to the importance of Chicago as a metropolis. He has no definite conception of the volume of the trade in cereals or of the vast amount of warehouse room for storing and properly caring for the number of of grain received at and distributed from Chicago.

The evolution of the grain trade in Chicago has been as remarkable as that of any other line of business, From the the first shipment of seventy-eight bushels of wheat was made by lake in 1838 from the little trading post at the mouth of the Chicago River the of business has increased until Chicago has become the leading grain mart of the world, and a year’s receipts of corn, wheat, oats, and rye have been over 200,000,000 bushels. The elevator business has developed in direct ratio to the, grain business. The first official record of the capacity of warehouses in Chicago is given in the first annual of the Board of Trade for the year 1858. This was prior to the passage of an act of the Legislature for regular warehouses and all elevators then were private houses, operated by their owners without the interference of the State authorities. The total warehouse capacity of the city was placed at 4,095,000 bushels, or much less than last year’s increase in the grain storage capacity of Chicago. The elevators listed in the report of the board were owned by ten companies, and the largest house on the list had a capacity of only 700,000 bushels, while one house holding only 60,000 was included. Two modern elevators wouid hold all the grain that could have bean loaded into all warehouses in Chicago in 1858 and would still not be crowded. Ten years later the total warehouse capacity of the city was placed at 10,080,000 bushels. Another decade added 50 per cent to this capacity. In 1888 the total capacity was 30,000,000 bushels. The last report of the Board of Trade for 1894 places the total capacity of public warehouses here at 34.000.000 bushels and the private at 12,500,000 bushels, making a total of 4,600,000 bushels, which will be brought well up to the 50,000,000 by the new houses in course of construction or contemplated.

If the long drawn out competition between the proprietors of grain elevators in Chicago and the Board of Trade serves no other purpose than to direct the public attention to the phenomenal development of the grain commission and warehousing business of this city it may not have been entirely in vain. The public has not interested itself to any great extent in the ins and outs of the fight made against the warehousemen by the representatives of local grain receivers. The controversy dates back to the time when the grain trade assumed such proportions that it became practicable to recognize the warehousing of grain as separate and distinct from the business of receiving and shipping. It has been on almost every imaginable point from storage rates to the details of apparatus for elevating and distributing grain in houses. Most of the time it has been in a dormant condition, but on various occasions has broken out with sufficient violence to attract the attention of the general public. One of these violent periods which has been of more than ordinary duration is now being rounded out.

Like most arguments of similar nature the elevator question has two well defined sides. It has been accepted as a safe proposition that the grain trade of the city needed the warehousing facilities furnished by the elevator men as much as the warehousemen needed the support of the grain trade. Neither branch of the business could be carried on to the best advantage without the co-operation, voluntary or involuntary, of the other. So much capital is now represented in the warehousing business that the disciplining of the elevator proprietors has become a difficult task for the Board of Trade to undertake. Under such conditions the only settlement which appears to be in prospect is a compromise in some form is what the general trade looks for. Every year the public warehousemen come before the directory of the Board of Trade, file bonds, and make application to have their licenses to operate public warehouses under the control of the board renewed. This season applications were fled for licenses to operate houses of an aggregate capacity of 35,000,000 bushels.

There is more warehouse room for grain in Chicago in regular houses alone than there is in any other city in the country where regular and irregular storage houses are classed together. Beside this storage room termed regular from the fact that it is operated subject both to the supervision of the State authorities and the Board of Trade, there is a large amount of supplementary storage room in private warehouses of the city. The amount of money invested in buildings alone would run away up into the millions as the cost of building a house is figured at ail the way from nine cents a bushel for ordinary cribroom to $1 a bushel for a finely equipped cleaning-house.

The houses vary in size, but if all the storage room of the city were distributed in houses of 2,500,000 bushels capacity, and as little ground occupied by each as is occupied by one of the modern North Side houses, the elevators of Chicago, without allowance for auxiliary structures, would cover a space equal to ten down-town city blocks. When it is remembered that the buildings will rival many of the down-town sky-scrapers in height it can be easily imagined that if the Chicago grain warehouses were massed together they would make an imposing showing. It is safe enough to estimate that the public and private grain elevators with auxiliary power plants and similar buildings cover a ground space equal to that bounded by State street on the east, Lake street on the north, La Salle street on the west, and Jackson street on the south. The warehouse room of the city is not full at the present time, the quantity of the four principal cereals in store, with no allowance for seeds and minor cereals, being figured at 30,000,000 bushels.

On a basis of 700 bushels to a car the contents of a train of grain cars 500 miles long. or extending from Chicago tn Omaha, could be accommodated in store at Chicago.

Warehouse room could be provided in Chicago in regular houses alone for the entire yield of wheat last year in Illinois, or for one-twelfth at the biggest crop the United States ever raised, in public and private houses. Over a quarter of last year’s bumper corn crop raised in Illinois could be stored away in local grain warehouses and enough vacant room left to make the proprietors nervous about storage earnings.

There is no effort made to stamp individuality on elevators as there is, for example, in the construction of office buildings. The groups of houses are on the South Branch of the river at Twenty-second and Sixteenth streets; at the fork of the main river; on Goose island; at the mouth of the Chicago River; and at South Chicago on the Calumet River. There has been no display of imagina. ton in selection of names for the different warehouses. Such titles as “Rock Island B” and “Armour E” do not lend any individuality to the elevators, and are prosaic in the extreme.

A fair idea of the elevator facilities of the city may be gained from an examination of the group of warehouses on Goose Island operated by the Armour Elevator company. There are three elevators, the “Armour A and B,” the “B Annex,” and the Minnesota. The warehouse known as “Armour A and B.” until the erection of the “B Annex” two years ago, had the distinction of being the largest grain elevator under a single roof. The “B Annex” was the house which was built under the stress of the Cudahy wheat corner two years ago in a remarkably short space of forty-two days. These two houses are regular public warehouses, while the Minnesota is by distinction a private warehouse. It contains all sorts of machinery for tho cleaning and improving grades of grain and for clipping oats. Under the laws of this State a public warehouse can contain none of this class of machinery and must not be connected directly with the cleaning house. While the two large public warehouses are connected and are operated together the Minnesota is a separate and distinct house and grain moved by car or vessel from it to the regular houses.

There is a similarity in the construction of all grain warehouses. First comes the ground floor story with tunnels through which run the railroad tracks on which ears of grain are received. Then there is the main portion of the building running up fifty to seventy-five feet, unbroken by windows, and surmounting this is the narrower portion in which from four to five stories are defined by rows of windows. The “Armour A and B house” is termed the active house of the group. It is on the river front and all the loading of regular grain from the “B Annex” as well as from the main house is from it. Although not built so recently as a number of other houses, and possibly scarce. ly so well equipped with modern appliances for fire protection, it is a typical Chicago elevator. So far as the handling of grain is concerned it is a single house 550 feet long, 115 feet wide, and 156 feet high. For insurance purposes it is really two houses, being divided by a fire wall of brick twenty inches thick at the base and with openings protected by fire doors and rolling iron screens. The first floor is twenty feet high, giving head room for cars. Above this extend the bins for sixty-five feet. This part of the building resembles a huge honeycomb. It is built without framing, planks being laid flatwise upon each other and spiked together to form the outer walls and bin divisions.

This form of structure gives immense strength and power to resist lateral pressure. The bins run from top to bottom and are from twelve to sixteen feet long and from sixteen to twenty feet wide. They open above into the cupola portion of the elevator and terminate in hoppers above the first floor. They are simply square wells formed with plank sides and having no interior equipment except an iron ladder extending up one corner. The walls between bins are six inches wide, while the sides of the building are built of 2×8 spruce planks. A modern elevator built in this style with planks laid flat is an immense lumber pile. The main house, for example, contains something over 8,000,000 feet of lumber, whole in the “B Annex” there something like 11,000,000 feet. For fireproofing purposes the houses are either veneered with brick or covered with sheet iron. The cupola of the main house contains five floors. The one immediately over the bins is known as the bin floor, the next the spout floor, the third the scale floor, while the two top floors are called machinery floors. The whole structure is placed on a pile foundation, which on account of the immense weight sustained has to be laid even more carefully than the foundations of the down-town sky-scrapers.

The margin in handling grain has become so small by competition that the problem is to handle the maximum amount of grain with the minimum amount of labor. The man with the scoop shove is scarcely in evidence. The greater part of the grain received here is by car, although there is still considerable received by canal. The cars are received and switched directly into the elevator building. Right from that point the labor-saving machinery begins to get in its work. Two men with what look much like old-fashioned road scrapers, operated by steam winch and cable, go into the cars and drag the grain out into iron hoppers which are below the level of the elevator floor. From these hoppers or tanks the grain is taken up through elevators or legs, as they are termed, to the top floor. These are simply large pipes running up through the building, in which run wide belts with cups twenty inches long and six inches wide. The “Armour A and B” house is equipped with twenty-eight of these elevators or legs, any one of which can handle 7,000 bushels an hour, and a marine leg which ig capable of taking 12,000 bushels an hour out of the hold of a canal boat or lake barge.

The grain which is taken up through the elevators goes directly to the top cupola floor. On the next two floors are the “receivers” and “shippers,” as they are termed. If the grain being run up in the ears is to be at once loaded into vessels it is emptied into what is called a garner on the second machinery floor. This is simply a bin to accumulate the grain to the extent of 1,000 bushels or more over a scale hopper on the next floor below. If the grain is to go into one of the bins of the house for storage it is discharged directly into the scale hopper of une of the receivers. The weighing, done one floor and is all is managed exactly the same whether the grain goes to store or is loaded out into vessels. The house has sixteen shipping bins and garners with sixteen shipping scales and as many spouts leading directly out to the river front. The capacity of the house is such that 400 cars of grain can be unloaded in one day and its equivalent reloaded into vessels. The grain which goes into store runs from the scale hopper into a rather ingenious arrangement on the spout floor by which it can be directed into any one of thirty-five bins. When grain is loaded out of store the process is exactly the same as it is when grain is received directly by rail. The bins open above the first floor and are emptied into the iron receiving tanks, taken up to the top of the building, discharged into the shipping bin and spouted out into the vessel. The grain is all weighed as it comes in and again weighed as it goes out. The arrangements to load cars is similar to the spout used in loading vessels, only that at the outlet is a bifurcated spout which directs grain to the ends of the car and does away with any shoveling. A 700-bushel car car by this means be loaded in a minute and a half.

In getting grain to and from a house three methods of transmission are used. It is elevated by cups on belts and gravity takes care of its return to the ground floor. The methods in use in transferring it horizontally in the building are rather more interesting. In some cases the old-fashioned screw conveyer, which is an immense endless screw running in an inclosed space, is used to transfer grain from one place to another on the same level. The belt conveyer, however, does most of this work. This is simply a wide belt running over pulleys on which the grain is poured. The arrangement by which the grain is placed On the belt is called a concentrator. It turns up the edges of the belt slightly and deposits the grain on it. The belt flattens out, travels along, at a rapid rate, and still nothing is thrown off the edges. A form of centripetal force keeps the grain in the center and the edges of the belt absolutely clean. On a forty inch belt the grain at the center may be one foot high while there is not a particle of it for four to six inches from each edge. There is an immense system of belts of this kind on the different working floors of all the Goose Island elevators, but the largest conveyors are those which connect the main house with the “B Annex.”

The two houses are operated from the same steam plant by rope transmission of power. The annex is not on the river front, and any unloading from it to the river is done through the main house, while any grain loaded into it from the river has to go back over the same route. There are two belt conveyers between the houses with belts forty inches wide. The grain is placed on these belts by concentrators and taken off by trippers. These concentrators and trippers are movable, and so while the belts are run from end to end of the building, grain can be loaded on to them or taken off from them at any point. The belts between the two houses are so arranged that both the upper and lower portions of each can be used at the same time and have a capacity of 15,000 bushels an hour each way. It is possible to so run them that during a single hour 30,000 bushels of corn can be taken from the “A and B house” to the annex, while on the lower section of the same belt and at the same time 30,000 bushels of wheat are moved back from the annex to the main house. The system of elevators and belt conveyors is such that grain can be taken up through the marine leg at the river front to the top of the main house and moved something like a quarter of a mile to a bin in the annex, every bit of the work being done by machinery.

The work of handling the grain by no means ends with the depositing of it in bins or even with the loading of it out into vessels. It is constantly being turned over and handled. One of the largest elevator concerns in te city makes the boast that it has never had a bushel of contract grain, grain grading as high as No. 2, get out of condition. All winter wheat is supposed to contain a germ of weevil and if allowed to stand and become at all warm this develops with great rapidity. With the first zero weather in the winter the elevator men run over all their wheat, spouting the bins down into the hoppers and running the grain back into other bins. This is done slowly enough to get out what is termed the summer heat and lower the temperature of the grain to freezing point. The ice-house construction of the bins is such that the grain run over will maintain this new temperature and the weevil will be rendered harmless. This is done with grain of high grade received in good condition, but is not a circumstance to the work needed in handling off grades or grain received slightly out of condition. It has to be turned over and over, and even then it is considered almost impossible to prevent weevil making its appearance in some of the numerous bins. Corn in the germinating season of the spring is especially troublesome, and there is corn in some of the elevators now which is being turned over on an average once every three or four days. Oats received in the fall, before they have gone through the sweat properly, also make the warehousemen trouble and keep his fore. man and Superintendent in hot water.

The construction of the annex does not vary materially from that of the other house. It is more of a storage house, however, and the bins are 75 feet deep. The building is 300x 250 feet in dimensions and 140 feet high. The cupola portion, which is only four stories high, is 36 feet wide and extends all along one side of the building. The bin construction is slightly different, the bottoms of the bins terminating on a level with the ground floor instead of at the ceiling of the tirst story. The same method of unloading cars into tanks is employed, but from there on the grain is transported by two systems of twelve belt conveyors, one in tunnels 300 feet long and xtending below the floor, and the second set on the top or bin floor.

The most interesting thing in connection with this elevator are conditions which surrounded its construction. Two years ago the Cudahy wheat corner was engineered and Armour & Co. were caught with wheat bought in the Northwest, but which on account of the congested condition of elevators here could not be delivered. All previous records were broken for rapid construction when it was decided to build the new house. Ground was broken and excavation commenced March 23. The immense pile foundation was put in in thirteen days and in the next twenty-nine days the house, with a capacity of nearly 3,500,000 bushels, was completed ready for the receipt of grain and the May corner failed to corner.

The difliculties in the way of building were multiplied by the fact that the World’s Fair construction in all lines was testing the market for labor and building material. It would have been out of the guestion for any contractor to have even figured on such a contract and the work was taken up and pushed by the elevator company direct. Mr. Armour spent a good share of his time, during the construction of the house, on Goose Island. The work was carried on night and day with the aid of electric lights and when practicable from 700 to 900 men were employed. Ordinary carpenters under the pressure were able in some cases to make $14 and $15 a day. The machinery for loading grain into the house was all put in position during the forty-two days and the only part not completed was the machinery and equipment necessary for unloading grain from the house. All that was necessary, however, to checkmate the corner was to have the grain in store, and the remainder of the work was completed under much less tension. The equipment of the house is such that 300,000 bushels a day can be moved to or from the main house.

The first grain warehouse which had facilities for loading and unloading grain entitling it to the style of an elevator was that built by Newberry & Dole (right) on the north side of the river at a point just east of the present Rush street bridge. Grain was loaded into it by block and tackle operated by hand, and the second shipment of Chicago grain was made from it in 1839. The next advance was in the use of horse power. Bags of grain were drawn up by a rope first, and later a treadmill arrangement working an endless chain with buckets was used. In 1842 the big house of the city was only 40×100 feet in dimensions. The first elevator to be operated by steam was built in 1848 by R. C. Bristol.

In 1855 Sturges & Buckingham, by arrangement with the Illinois Central railroad company, built an 800,000-bushel warehouse, and this was referred to as a mammoth building at the time. At that time it is estimated that there was not to exceed 750,000 bushels of storage room in Chicago.

Some idea of the development of the grain business of Chicago may be gained by comparing the elevator room here with that of other cities. In other cities the proportion of private houses to public is by no means so large as here. The State law of Illinois makes it impracticable to carry on the elevator business without a large number of private houses to supplement the regular storage room. In Duluth and Minneapolis, for example, elevator proprietors are allowed to clean grain in regular houses and to raise its grade, the advance in grade of course giving a profit to the elevator men.

The theory of a public warehouse here is that grain must go in and come out exactly the same grade. Every bushel of grain that is loaded in or out of a public warehouse is done under the supervision of the State authorities, and issuance of receipts against grain in store is under the same supervision. Any cleaning, miring, and grading of grain has to be done in private houses and the grain from them is loaded into cars and if transferred to a public house passes the same inspection as that given grain received directly from the country. The contention of the people who insist that the public warehousemen as custodians of grain placed with them for storage shall not buy and sell grain is that the present system gives the elevator man an opportunity to select grain, and, as it is termed in the trade, “skin” grades.

The elevator men claim, however, that the present system by which they are enabled to go out into the country and force grain which might go to other markets to core here is the only one that is at all practicable and insist that the combination of public and private warehouses is necessary and that the State inspection gives an outside holder of grain all the protection possible or necessary. In other cities the private storage room is so small that it may be all classed with the room in public warehouses. Against the 50,000,000 bushels capacity here, Duluth has elevators with a capacity of 27,000,000 bushels, Minneapolis 26,000,000 bushels, New York 29,000,000 bushels. Buffalo 15,000,000 bushels, St. Louis 13,000,000 bushels, and Toledo but 7,000,000 bushels.

In the contention of the elevator men and grain receivers, which has been going on for a number of years, and which really arises out of the question of control of the receiving business, both sides have grounds for claiming the business. Away back when the grain business of the city began to grow the elevator men were about the only commission men, or rather perhaps all the commission-men had elevators. With the development of the agricultural territory tributary to Chicago and the building of railroads the golden age of the grain business began. It grew so rapidly that it naturally divided into two branches, the warehousing business and the commission business. The grain trade simply had nowhere else to go and poured into Chicago. The commission men had all the business they could do and did it at commission percentages which would make the average commission man of today turn green with envy. With all the grain business headed to Chicago the elevator men had no trouble in keeping their warehouses filled and no occasion to encroach on the business of the commission men.

The change came gradually twelve or fifteen years ago, and there has been a gradual re-adjustment of methods ever since. Other grain markets became prominent; Kansas City sprang up; better communications between St. Louis and the gulf were provided, and it became a bidder for Chicago’s grain business. The big warehouses in the Northwest were erected, and by a combination with certain railroads a pull was made for the spring wheat trade. Newport News was opened as a grain port and shipments made to it from St. Louis, Kansas City, and Peoria direct. With the building of new railroads and belt lines the tendency was to ship grain around Chicago. Outside junction points were favored. The system of through billing of grain to Eastern points did as much to change the methods of handling grain in Chicago as anything else. The elevator men found that the grain was going to other points and had difficulty in keeping their houses full and earning storage. The commission men were not inclined to cut their commissions or to make as vigorous a campaign for trade as the elevator men would have liked. Charles Counselman is credited with having made the first move toward the baying of grain in the country.

The new methods necessary were such that many of the old elevator men were inclined to drop out of the business, and there was a general transfer of elevator property. All of the present companies buy grain either directly or indirectly through auxiliary companies. At the time when American securities were readily marketed in England the corporation which has since been reorganized into the Chicago Terminal company with a capital of $2,730,000 was formed. It took over the property operated by P. B. Weare and his associates, originally owned by Munger, Wheeler & Co. The capitalization was so large that only one dividend Las been paid, and that recently. Some of the companies operating elevators in Chicago own their own houses, while others have leases with the railroad companies, which built and own the elevators. The Central Elevator company, operated by Carrington, Hannah & Co., has a lease of the Illinois Central houses, which, it is said, is at a rental scaled to the amount of grain handled through the houses. The Chicago. and Pacific Elevator company, of which W. J. Harper is the manager, owns its houses. George Senverns owns the houses operated by him, as does Murry Nelson, out of whose contentions with the board a great deal of board legislation has grown. The Armour Elevator company owns the North Side houses on Goose Island, located on the Northwestern road, while it leases the South Side houses on the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy railroad.

Methods of handling grain are constantly changing and old time elevator men have worked out of the business. Of the prominent warehouse men of today Murry Nelson, George Seaverns, and P. B. Weare serve as a sort of connecting link between the old system and the new. The Armour Elevator company practically succeeded Dole & Co. The Chicago Elevator company, of which Lloyd Smith is manager, controls houses formerly owned by George Dunlap & Co. Carrington, Hannah & Co. operate the houses formerly controlled by J. & E. Buckingham. The business of Flint, Odel & Co. descended to Charles Counseltan & Co. and A. C. Davis & Co., while the Munger & Wheeler houses were absorbed by the English syndicate and are managed by P. B. Weare.

Elevators have been rebuilt time and agaia and only a few of what might be termed old-time houses are in existence in anything like their original form. The “Rock Island B” elevator was built in 1862, construction hav. ing been under way for nearly three years. This is one of the oldest houses in operation at the present time, and is operated today with the same engine, with the same bins, and same grain scales that were put in when it was constructed. The old Rock Island A house was built in the 50s, but lost its identity in being rebuilt in 1892.

Down at these houses may be seen one of the old carts which was used in unloading grain from the elevator. The old method of handling grain was to elevate it into the warehouse by horse-power, and run it out on an inclined plane to the hold of the vessel in carts. Mr. Thompson of Flint, Thompson & Co. was in the habit of running one of the unloading carts himself, and another of the old-time elevator proprietors tells of carrying bags of grain from his house out to the vessel. The first elevators were along the main part of the Chicago River, many of them extending out on to South Water street. They were operated without any particular inspection or supervision, and later on, after the formation of the Board of Trade, were under its inspection. There was no State law regarding the delivery of warehouse receipts. and there was a great deal of irregularity in the issuance of these receipts.

The Munn & Scott frauds, late in the sixties, were really what led to the enactment of the present State law regarding warehouse inspection. They built false bottoms in the bins of their warehouse and covered these bottoms with a car load or so of grain. They showed to the trade what purported to be full bins, which were not over 10 to 15 per cent full, and on the strength of such a showing made an over issue of receipts. The Board of Trade went to Springfield and asked for legislation on the matter and possibly got more than it expected, as the entire inspection was assumed by the State, and the present system of State supervision of grain and grain receipts adopted. Before this system adopted the methods of recording the receipts and withdrawal of grain from houses was= similar to the checking and depositing on a current bank account. The owner of grain was given a book which showed his deposits and withdrawals of goods from the warehouse. The procedure is now more as it is in the issuance of certificates of deposit by a bank. Grain is inspected in by carlots in the elevator and a record kept of its grade, the weight, and car nurber and initial of the car in which it was received. This is checked over at the office of the elevator company and a receipt issued. If the receipt was issued against several carloads received an indorsement is made on the back of these separate carlots. This receipt is taken to the State Registration Office and registered to see if the grain shown tallies with that shown by the record of the Registrar. In making a shipment the owner of the receipt brings it in, indorses it for shipment, and it he has a portion of the grain remaining, he is given a new receipt.

The insurance of the property represented in warehouses and their contents is of course an immense business, and some of the larger houses are never fully covered, as the underwriting facilities of the city are exhausted before the house is covered. The tendency of late has been to build fire walls to divide large houses into small areas and to devise new means of protection from fire. So far, as fire protection is concerned the model elevator of the city is that recently built at South Chicago by Charles Counselman. Besides the ordinary equipment of sprinklers and fire buckets it has around it several Niagara pumps, which command the entire outside of the building. One of them is arranged to throw a four.inch stream over the highest point on the building.

Murry Nelson is the oldest in the service of all the elevator proprietors. He has also gained the reputation of being the fighting member of the outfit. He has had several tussles with the railways and the Board of Trade, and has usually come out on top of the heap. During the summer of 1894 the board made an amendment to the rules, the elevator concerns all having signed an agreement to abide by the rule when passed. The National Elevator company, of which Mr. Nelson is President, signed by its Secretary, Mr. Nelson being out of town at the time. Afterwards Mr. Nelson made the claim that the Secretary was not authorized to sign the agreement and refused to indorse it. The board judged Mr. Nelson guilty of dishonorable conduct and suspended him indefinitely. Last April by a peremptory writ of the Appellate Court he was restored to privileges of the board.

Speaking of his experience in the elevator business Mr. Nelson said:

Right there the trouble began. The Board of Trade sympathized with me, but had no disposition to fight the railroads. I accepted that burden and began suit against the Alton to get the grain delivered where it was con-signed. That case became a leading case known as the Vincent case, Mr. Vincent being my partner. The Supreme Court decided that the contracts between the railways and the elevators were void. I had little trouble on that score after that, although recently I had a little tussle with the Illinois Central with a similar victory.

In the ’60s I had a drying-house in connection with my elevator and used to kiln-dry corn, bringing it up to contract grade by so doing, so as to sell it for future delivery. The board broke in upon me by changing its rules, making kiln-dried corn a grade by itself, not deliverable on contracts. I insisted that the corn was deliverable on contracts made before the passage of the rule, and the board made an attempt to suspend me. I enjoined them from suspending me, and the injunction was never disturbed.

One of the prominent pioneers in the elevator business is Ebenezer Buckingham. He became gray and incidentally rich in the service, retiring in 1891 to devote his entire time to the Presidency of the Northwestern National Bank. Mr. Buckingham said:

There have been great changes in the system of business since 1856. We used to think that we were making up a big. cargo when we put 15,000 or 18,000 bushels of grain into a boat. I remember well when the schooner Great West first came here to load. It was capable of holding a cargo of 32,000 bushels of oats and was considered a veritable famine producer to elevators.. We used to send out all grain by vessels and had no facilities for loading to cars from the store-houses. Chicago from the first was a natural market for grain and we heard nothing in the early days of warehousemen buying grain in the country. ‘The elevators were full all the time.

To show how guileless the primitive days were it may be said that the elevator proprietors were allowed to issue receipts at pleasure, and sometimes more receipts were put out for a given elevator than there was grain in the house, when there happened to bea rise in the market, the receipts being passed just as if the grain was there and bought back when the market declined.

To use the slang of the street, it was a great snap for the elevator people, and business-men might be inclined to smile at such loose methods nowadays. Some earnest spirits finally became imbued with the idea that it was a baneful practice, and the Legislature was called upon to make some laws on the subject.

Chicago Tribune, December 5, 1897

CHICAGO’S SEVEN WONDERS OF THE CITY
Wonder The Third-The Great Grain Elevators.
Chicago handles the bulk of the grain trade of the United States—everybody knows that. Naturally and necessarily, its elevators are the largest and most wonderful in the world. One of these. Armour Annex B, has a capacity of 3,500.000 bushels of wheat, which—barring Armour’s Elevator D and annex, 3,000,000 bushels capacity, and Armour’s Elevator A and B, 2,500,000 bushels-will hold twice as much grain as any other two elevators in the world.

There stand in Chicago today a chain of elevators capable of storing 41,350,000 bushels of grain. These are the public elevators known as class “A.” under the inspection of the State Railroad and Warehouse commission. Aside there are many smaller elevators that are outside the jurisdiction of the commission.

But all grain coming into the open market and bought and sold upon the floor of the Board of Trade must be housed in one of the great “A” class elevators, where it is inspected and from which it is delivered.

An idea of the vast volume of the grain trade of Chicago may be conveyed by citing the fact that last year 120,449 carloads of grain were received at the public warehouses of Chicago. There were in addition 306,445 carloads inspected on track, which did not go into the elevators.

Last year the amount of wheat handled by the warehouses was 100,116,207 bushels. Of this 92,572,153 bushels was reshipped, the difference going into home consumption. Last year more grain was handled In Chicago than during any preceding year except 1892, when about 9,000,000 more bushels came here. This year will beat the record.

There are thirty-two great class “A’ elevators in this city, counting annexes as separate elevators.

Chicago has developed the highest type of grain elevator, a type adopted by the Russian government. As the best example of its class, it may be interesting to know that in spite of the mammoth proportions of Armour “Annex B,’ it was constructed in forty days, is practically fireproof, and can take in grain at the rate of 58,000 bushels an hour.

1901 Sanborn Fire Insurance Elevators Maps

②-Gen. View of Goose Island Elevators.

③-Armour’s “A,” “B” and “B” Annex.

④-Minnesota & Annex, Armour Elevator Co.

⑤-St. Paul and Fulton Annex, Armour Elevator Co.

⑥-Galena Elevators.

⑩—McReynold’s “B” (Wisconsin).

⑪—Gen. View of South Branch, Between 12th and 16th Streets.

⑫—City, The Chicago Ry. Ter, Elev. Co.

⑬-Iowa Elevator, The Chicago Ry. Ter, Elev. Co.

⑭-Union Elevator, The Chicago Ry. Ter, Elev. Co.

⑮-Armour’s “E,” The Chicago Ry. Ter, Elev. Co.

⑯-Armour’s “F,” The Chicago Ry. Ter, Elev. Co.

⑰-Rock Island “A,” C. Counselman & Co.

⑱-Rock Island “B,” C. Counselman & Co.

⑲-Gen. View of South Branch, Between 18th & Wallace Sts.

⑳-Indiana, The American Cereal Co.

㉑-Alton “A,” Geo. A. Seaverns.

㉒-Alton “B,” Geo. A. Seaverns.

㉓-Nebraska City Pack. Co.’s Elevators.

㉔-Gen. View of South Branch, West of Halsted, Between 22nd St. and Archer Ave.

㉕-Chicago & St. Louis Elevator & Annex.

㉖-Armour’s “C.”.

㉗-Armour’s “D.”.

㉚-Danville, Carrington, Hannah & Co.

㉛-Santa Fe, D. Richardson & Co.

㉜-Mabbatt “A” & “B,” Geo. A. Seaverns.

㉝-Wabash.

㊳-H. Mueller & Co.

Inter Ocean, July 21, 1906

Santa Fe Elevator.
The new Santa Fe elevator being erected by the Santa Fe road at Robey and Twenty-Seventh streets will be a model up to date house, with a brick and frame working house, having a capacity of 400,000 bu., with a car shed and marine tower and a re-enforced concrete storage capacity of 1,000,000 bu. Drying, cleaning, bleaching, and clipping machinery will be put into the house, and it will be operated by the Santa Fe road, so that its cars of grain can be unloaded as fast as they arrive. The house will have five shipping and five receiving legs, and is 225 feet long and 56 feet wide. The storage annex has thirty-five cylindrical concrete bins, each twenty-three feet deep, inside diameter, and twenty-four interspace bins. It can unload eighty cars at a time, having four raised tracks, the grain going into hopper scales. The yards are so arranged that the cars leave the elevator by a gravity track. For loading boats there are eight spouts. It is the intention of the Santa Fe management to do a transfer, cleaning. and general elevator business, but not to deal in grain. It has not been decided whether free storage for ten days will be granted when the house is opened, although the Santa Fe railroad at its houses at Kansas City gives free storage on grain that originates on its system, but charges ¾ c per bushel for transferring and storing and handling the grain sent there that originates on other lines. The Great Western road does the same thing at Kansas City, and a majority of the railroads do. The grain trade here will be benefited by the granting of free storage for ten days, and the question is being agitated by other roads.

John S. Metcalf, Elevator for the Santa Fe Railroad

Chicago Tribune, October 23, 2023

If the Damen Avenue Silos are demolished, they will take with them some of the final remains of Carl Sandburg’s poetic salute to Chicago: “Hog Butcher for the World, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat.”

The stockyards closed more than a half-century ago. About the only trace of Chicago’s manufacturing glory is the forest of balconies tacked onto repurposed factories. Now the Silos owner, Michael Tadin Jr., wants to level the massive industrial complex in the 2800 block of South Damen Avenue.

Tadin bought them from the state of Illinois in 2022. Reportedly, he wants to replace them with a trucking facility, a corporate headquarters or both. The demolition plans are on hold pending a review by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

When the Santa Fe Railroad built the Damen Silos in 1906, Chicago ruled the wheat market, having transformed American agriculture.

“Let the golden grain come. We can take care of it all, a Chicago newspaper proclaimed half a century earlier. The Chicago Board of Trade was nicknamed “the Altar of Ceres,” the ancient goddess of grain.

That history is lost in the vague misnomer “silos.”

Inland Architect magazine in (October) 1896 called the towering silos the first skyscrapers. One of the silos is 15 stories tall. It dwarfs buildings of the time with their human occupants. In fact, it and its companions are parts of a grain elevator.

The other components are a mechanism that lifts grain to a platform where it would be routed to one or another ofits vertical storage bins. Those are the silos, and each has a spigot toward the bottom. When it was opened, gravity would send the wheat down to whatever vehicle would take it away.

Noting that Chicago’s grain elevators stood between the West—where wheat was grown—and Eastern cities that needed it, the Illinois Supreme Court, writing in a rate regulation case, said they “take toll of all who pass.”

Invented elsewhere, the grain elevator was perfected in Chicago. Its ungainly progeny can be seen in the towns and hamlets of Middle America and beyond.

“An elevator is as ugly a monster as has yet been produced,” said the British author Anthony Trollope while touring America in 1861. “In uncouthness of form it out does those obsolete old brutes that used to roam the semi-aqueous world, and live a most uncomfortable life with their great hungering stomachs and unsatisfied maws.”

The Tribune seconded Trollope’s judgment “Immensely ponderous, high-towering, dreary-look-ing structures, whose vast sides are scarce ever found pierced by windows, and whose general monotony of outline is seldom relieved by so much as the slightest ornamentation,” the paper observed of Chicago’s massive grain elevators in 1892.

Today the Damen Avenue Silos, out of use since the late 1970s except for occasional movie shoots, look even sorrier.

But then grain elevators were never intended to be attractive. They were an engineer’s response to an accountant’s innovation.

In 1857, the Tribune reported that the Board of Trade had established a system for grading wheat, while noting some quibbling over the details. Those disputes continued for years, but from its inception, the wheat grading system was a game-changer.

Formerly, a farmer had to shovel his harvest into individual gunnysacks, a laborious job. Now he could pitchfork it into a wagon or truck and get it to a public warehouse, as a grain elevator is legally defined.

“The theory of a public warehouse here is that grain must go in and out at the same grade, the Tribune noted in an 1895 explanation of the wheat trade.

To grasp how the theory works in practice, consider the analogue of a bank. The dollar bills someone gets when making a withdrawal are not the same ones he deposited. But they have the exact same value.

Similarly, the grain a farmer withdraws from an elevator isn’t the grain he brought there. It couldn’t be. His harvest has merged with that of other farmers who brought the same grade of wheat to the elevator. What a farmer has is a receipt showing the amount of wheat he is entitled to withdraw.

The Damen Silos complex on Chicago’s Lower West Side is shown Aug. 22. When the Santa Fe Railroad built the Damen Silos in 1906, Chicago ruled the wheat market.

That is the hidden beauty of those dreary elevators. A farmer doesn’t have to hustle to bring his grain to market when wheat commands the price he wants. He just sends the elevator operator a sell order.

Collectively, all the wheat in various elevators enables the market to respond to changes in demand, yet those who play it see only the tip of an iceberg.

“There is many a member of the Board of Trade who makes and loses a dozen small fortunes a month in grain deals who couldn’t describe the general plan of the average grain elevator to do so,” the Tribune observed in 1892.

On the trading floor, a visitor would be befuddled by what novelist Frank Norris called “the trampling and shoutings in the Pit.”

Norris’ novel “The Pit” (as the trading floor was called) is the story of a millionaire trader bankrupted by a failed attempt to corner the wheat market.

Much the same happened in real life. The thought of all the wheat in grain elevators tempted some traders to dream of controlling so much flour that merchants would have to pay a trader’s jacked-up price or forgo filling bakers’ orders.

Among them was Ira Munn, who pioneered the grain elevator in Chicago. He became fabulously rich and president of the Board of Trade. Then he tried cornering the market. As the Tribune reported, a rumor spread that “all was not right with Munn and Scotts elevator receipts.’ More wheat had been sold than the firm owned. In 1872, Munn was expelled from the Board of Trade. He ended up running a boardinghouse in a Colorado gold-mining town.

In addition to being subject to unscrupulous speculators, Chicago’s 100 or so grain elevators were vulnerable to fire. Wheat isn’t usually very combustible. But a grain elevator houses a flammable mixture poised to explode: large amounts of grain dust in a confined space and suspended in air; the oxygen of that air; and heat supplied by static electric-ity. Other factors might include a sticking conveyor belt or even a carelessly discarded cigarette.

Grain explosions regularly occurred on the site of the Damen Silos. Operators of fallen elevators didn’t move on because of Chicago’s topography.

Ideally an elevator should be bordered by water on one side, railroad tracks on the other. To accommodate that, Chicago held an advantage over St. Louis, where the broad and shallow expanse of the Mississippi River was unsuitable for such a setup. The slow-moving and steady
Chicago River, along with its solid banks, proved more amenable, and the Damen Silos were built between the water’s edge and railroad tracks.

Much of that accompanying infrastructure disappeared after the Damen Silos were abandoned in 1977 following a massive explosion. But the Silos 15-story centerpiece still visually testifies to wheat’s role in Chicago’s growth from a frontier settlement to a metropolis.

The tower is disfigured by generations of graffiti. Bruised and battered, it has the look of a boxer still on his feet at the final bell, anxiously awaiting the judges’ decision.

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1901 Sanborn Fire Insurance Elevators Maps

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