Page:This Journey through the Pure Food Factories (1906).djvu/19



All the factory buildings are sheathed with steel, both inside and out, with a coat of asbestos underneath the metal, making the whole plant practically fire-proof.

To supply the water used in the factory, the Company has driven two artesian wells, each of which has a capacity of 500 barrels an hour, giving an unlimited supply of the purest water.



There are 14 of these large brick ovens, with a baking capacity of twenty-eight thousand (28,000) loaves of Grape-Nuts per day. The first baking is done in these ovens; the loaves then pass from this room to the slicing machine, where they are cut into slices and then placed on wire trays. These trays are then placed on portable iron racks and wheeled into the secondary kilns, where they remain many hours in slow heat, during which time the final conversion of cereal starch into sugar or maltose takes place. This presents the food actually pre-digested.