Henry Farny and Eugene V. Smalley, editor at Northwest Magazine, had just completed a month long ride as part of Villard’s 1883 Last Spike Procession, taking them from St. Paul to Victoria, B.C. and back. Rather than head home from St. Paul, the pair spent a couple of days looking over the flour mills in Minneapolis that had been churning out high quality flour for Century Magazine.
The May 1886 issue of Century Magazine featured their results, with Smalley’s text and Farny’s pictures. The article is still an excellent read and explains the keys to the mills’ success.
The article can be viewed at Archive.org: https://archive.org/details/sim_century-illustrated-monthly-magazine_1886-05_32_1/page/38/mode/2up or at Hathitrust: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015036865544&seq=49&q1=Farny
