A man named Newton ran a small grist mill (above) in what is now the town of Orangeville Ontario, Canada, in the 1870's. This is commercial milling in Ontario, and perhaps much of the East. The mill had no smutter (machine), and consequently the smut and other rubbish as well as the wheat was turned into flour. So mossy was the mill and mossy was their flour.  It could grow more than just raised bread. They have referred to us as being no better than "mildew!" They called our flour, "the Rotten Reel,"and said flour made with a plainsifter was best.

Mossy are the mills, and mossy are the millers who work in them. So this must mean that the flour and meal they produce is mossy too, old fashioned, and out of date. The old mills are moss covered to the point that their water wheels are even covered in moss. They can even be haunted by the spirits of the Old World in the dark mossy colored waters, and the dark interiors of the mills. [1] This is often the main theme of the state of mills found in nineteenth century poems. [2[ The voice of the large factory-like mills, was William C. Edgar. He said of the old Mills of the East,  "The few followers of the old method of milling, as moss-grown, out of date, and decrepit as the crumbling and neglected mills they owned." He would hammer away at the backward and unprogressive mills in the East in American Miller, "A miller whose back was of moss..........." [3] So the Mills of the East are Mossy Mills and the Milers are Mossy-back Millers. This was in direct contrast to the modern mills of the Midwest. The Mills of the Midwest are Progressive in Minnesota. Everything is new, the process is new, the machinery is new, and even the wheat they mill is new. They turned the warm green romantic image of the old mill into a bad thing.

In contrast the Mills of the East tore themselves apart to install the Oliver Evans system which is now outdated, and grind that old English wheat.  During the Nineteenth century they would tare themselves apart again in an effort to keep up with the newer and cleaner mills of the Midwest. So very little of the Mills of the East is original other than that is where the milling revolution in America happened, and the world began with Oliver Evans.

Edgar became the Voice of Minneapolis Flour Milling which in his time meant, "Progressive Milling." Edgar wrote in 1892, "That an American mill properly located, equipped according to modern ideas of mill building, and operated with skill and intelligence can outstrip that of any other country on the face of the earth in the production of wholesome flour at a very lowest cost." The was the low-cost mass production ideology of the big-city progressive millers and milling business. [4] This meant that the mills of the East were directly opposite that of the progressive mills of Minnesota, and Minneapolis. [5] It makes one wonder how many old millers of the East knew about this campaign to smear their mills and their good name. They were not just happy with the federal government railroad subsides they had to put us down and our products.

So why have you never heard about Mossy Mills, and Mossy-Backed Millers? Well if you only read milling journals whose audiences was composed of the smaller, and more rural millers then you may never have heard about the derogatory term. Why would the old-time miller in the East not pass this bit on information on to the younger-generation of miller? Why pass on gossip and information spread by the milling industry of the Midwest that we were not the progressive millers in America. It was bad enough that the American housewife was brainwashed into thinking that Minneapolis style white flour was the best. For the most part, the mill restoration field which was begun in the 1930's have primarily tried to preserve only the old mills, and for the most part the old millers were never interviewed as to what they knew, and if they made daily entries in a journal they might be reduced down to simple terms, and say, "ran the mill today, or "fixed the mill!"

1. Anonymous, Along the North Shore of Long Island, page 167, The Century, and Scribners Monthly, Volume 22, 1881.

2. Gold-Pen, Poems, Edition 2, 1856, The Cheerful Mind, page 23, "The mossy mills, like sentinels, are posted to its source." Gold-Pen,Poems, Edition 2, 1856, The Things Around Us, page 171, "The mossy when turns dripping round." Rothernberg and Robinson, Jeffrey, Poems for the Millennium: The University of California Book of Romantic and Postromantic Poetry, volume 3, 2009, Fragments From the Gutch Notebook, page 211, "Sabbath day - from the Miller's mossy wheel the water drops dripped leisurely -" Kenyon, James B., An Oaten Pie, "An hour-Glass," 1895, page 88, "A mill whose mossy wheel has ceased to go," in The Critic, Issues 776-80, page 40, 1897.

3. Stork and Teague, Flour for Man's Bread, page 256. "The Growth of Eight Years in Years," in American Miller, March 1, 1881. Edgar, "The Miller and His Mill," in Chautauguan, November, 1892. Poem line from a clipping in William C. Edgar Scrapbook, circa 1880-1896, in Edgar Papers.

4. Along the North Shore of Long Island. . Edgar, William C., "The Miller and His Mill, in Chautauguan, November, 1892.

5. Frame, Robert M., III, Minnesota History, Winter 1978, page 152-162, Mills, Machines, and Millers: Minnesota Sources for Flour-Milling Research.