Gradual reduction, as its name implies, consists in reducing the wheat to flour, shorts, and bran, by several successive operations or reductions technically called breaks, the process going on gradually, each break leaving the material a little finer than the preceding one. Usually five reductions or breaks are made, though six or seven may be used. The larger the number of breaks the more complicated the system becomes, and it is preferable to keep it as simple as possible, for even at its simplest it requires a good, wide-awake thinking miller to handle it successfully. When it is thoroughly and systematically carried out in the mill it is without question as much in advance of the new process as that is ahead of the old style of milling. In order that I may convey to you as clear an idea of gradual milling reduction as possible, I will give as fully as possible the programme of a mill of one hundred and fifty barrels maximum daily capacity designed to work on mixed hard and soft spring wheat, and which probably will come much nearer to meeting the conditions under which you have to mill than any other I have found readily obtainable. I have chosen a mill of this size, first, because following out the programme of a larger one would require too much time and too great a repetition of details and not give you any clearer idea of the main principles involved, and secondly, because I thought it would come nearer meeting the average requirements of the members of your association. Your worthy secretary cautioned me that I must remember that I was going to talk to winter wheat millers. The main principles and methods of gradual reduction are the same, whether applied to spring or winter wheat; the details may have to be varied to suit the varying conditions under which different mills are operated. For this programme I am indebted to Mr. James Pye, of Minneapolis, who is rapidly gaining an enviable and well deserved reputation as a milling engineer, and one who has given much study to the practical planning and working of gradual reduction mills. And right here let me say that no miller should undertake to build a gradual reduction mill, or to change over his mill to the gradual reduction system, until he has consulted with some good milling engineer (the term millwright means very little nowadays), and obtained from him a programme which shall fit the size of the mill, the stock upon which it has to work, and the grade of flour which it is to make. This programme is to the miller what a chart is to the sailor. It shows him the course he must pursue, how the stuff must be handled, and where it must go. Without it he will be "going it blind," or at best only feeling his way in the dark. A gradual reduction mill, to be successful, must have a well-defined system, and to have this system, the miller must have a definite plan to work by. But to go on with my programme.