At the present time the Minneapolis mills can produce 76,366 barrels of flour a day, which is the largest daily capacity of any group of mills in the world. The flour export for 1900 was 4,702,485 barrels. Thus the mills of Minneapolis, if grinding steadily, could give a loaf of bread every day to every man, woman, and child in the States of Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine. [Illustration PUBLIC LIBRARY, MINNEAPOLIS.] The conditions in a new and rapidly growing city cannot be properly understood without careful consideration of such material facts as we have been considering. But there is yet another story to tell. It is doubtful whether any cities in the United States of the size contain so many beautiful pictures and fine libraries. The Minneapolis Public Library is well known to all interested in library management by reason of the liberality and novelty of its methods. In the spring of 1859 Bayard Taylor delivered a lecture in the village and gave the proceeds, less than one hundred dollars, to a library association, which took the name of the Minneapolis Atheneum. Later Dr. Kirby Spencer devised to it a fund which now yields about $8000 each year, for the purchase of books of a certain designated class and character. The Atheneum was not a public library, but it was liberally managed by the trustees and the community was enabled to use it under reasonable restrictions. The trustees finally took the lead in the establishment of a public library into which the collection of the Atheneum was merged. The law created a library board with limited powers of taxation. Public-spirited citizens contributed a valuable site on which there was erected a building not surpassed by any structure of its kind in the country for convenience and general efficiency. In addition to the central building, there are two branch buildings, one erected by the city and the other presented to the city by ex-Governor John S. Pillsbury, who had already made his name synonymous with public generosity by his liberal gifts to the State University. The first librarian was Herbert Putnam, afterwards of the Boston Public Library, and now the Librarian of the Congressional Library at Washington. His successor, an eminent scholar, Dr. James K. Hosmer, has continued building upon the foundation laid by Mr. Putnam. The system gives to the public a much greater liberty of access to the books than had been considered safe and desirable in other large libraries. The plan has been successful and there have been no losses or injuries to the books which would justify the withdrawal or restriction of such freedom. The library now contains 113,000 books, and during the past year the circulation was over 600,000, which was an average of three books for each inhabitant of the city. [Illustration OLE BULL MONUMENT IN LORING PARK.]