In the Dark Ages of the sickle and the flail, two flat stones did well enough for a flour-mill. Even the bread that was found in the ruins of Pompeii had been made of wheat that was merely crushed. Later came the mill run by horse-power or by the energy of a little stream. Such were the first American mills. The mill that was operated by George Washington at Mount Vernon, for instance, was run by water-power and produced flour that sold for thirteen dollars a barrel. Rochester, N. Y., was the first American "Flour City"; but the modern flour-mill did not come until it was compelled to come by the deluge of Reaper wheat that flooded the markets in 1870. As usually happens in the case of inventions, it came where it was not expected. It made its arrival in the Hungarian city of Budapest in 1874. The "new process," as it was called, was based upon the use of steel rolls instead of stones. It was as superior to the old-fashioned way as the Reaper had been to the sickle or as the thresher was to the flail. It was amazingly quick and produced a better flour. By reason of these new mills, Budapest became at a bound the foremost "Flour City" of the world, and held its place against all comers until 1890. Then the prestige passed to Minneapolis--a young city on the head-waters of the Mississippi, the recent home of the prairie-dog and the buffalo. Shortly before the Civil War, a youthful lawyer named William D. Washburn drifted westwards from Maine until he came to Minneapolis, at that time a tiny village on the frontier. He found no clients here, and no law; but he did find a ledge of limestone rock jutting across the Mississippi and making the only large water-fall in all that region. So he threw aside his legal education and became the organizer of a water-power company and the owner of a little flour-mill. Soon the long line of Reapers reached Minneapolis and swept on westwards into the richest wheat lands that had ever been known. The wheat overwhelmed the slow old-fashioned mills, so the ex-lawyer in 1878 adopted the Budapest system and built a roller-mill that was the quickest and most automatic of its kind. Other millers had by this time come to Minneapolis--Pillsbury, Crosby, Christian, and Dunwoody; and all together they pushed the flour business until in twelve years they had become the main millers of the world. [Illustration: INDIANS REAPING THEIR HARVEST, WHITE EARTH, MINNESOTA]