Talk:Northwestern Consolidated Milling Company

Northwestern Consolidated Milling Company was a good articles nominee, but did not meet the good article criteria at the time. There may be suggestions below for improving the article. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.

Article milestones
Date	Process	Result
June 4, 2007	Good article nominee	Not listed

A fact from this article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "Did you know?" column on April 23, 2007.

The text of the entry was: Did you know ...that the oligopoly formed in Minneapolis by Pillsbury, Northwestern Consolidated (pictured) and General Mills before the Great Depression was the world's largest flour miller?

GA review[edit]

I've read this version, and this sentence from the lead makes no sense to me:

The company was touched by an attempt at U.S. monopoly and became part of a Minneapolis oligopoly that valued in 1905 owned almost 9% of the country's flour and grist products.

For the history section, the article seems to be saying that there were no major technological advances during the life of this company. However, starting a section with "Technological advances in flour milling were already in place by the 1880s" was confusing. "From that point on and for the next 50 years, mergers and changes in business administration were the primary developments in the industry" is difficult to parse, and would work better by saying something like "mergers and administrative changes dominated the industry". This sentence is cited to footnote [3], which does not seem to support it.

Next paragraph; "Northwestern and their new Ceresota flour brand name were established..." How about "A group of businessmen led by... founded Northwestern in July 1891. The company was formed from six independent existing mills... Ceresota was the first flour brand name." Or something like that. The mention of "elevator" needs explaining.

I'm also not clear by the end of the article what actually became of this company, as the article is short on history after 1910. Because of this and the work needed on making the prose accessible, I do not feel comfortable promoting this article to GA. If you disagree, you may resubmit or seek a review at WP:GA/R. Gimmetrow 03:07, 4 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Gimmetrow, thank you for the careful review. After standing back a few weeks I agree with you and will 1) make these copy edits, 2) try at the library to find some history after 1910, and 3) resubmit this for GA at a later date. Best wishes. -Susanlesch 16:38, 4 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

More pictures[edit]

There are many Public Domain pictures of Crown Roller Mill here --Appraiser 17:32, 1 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

1889–1990[edit]

Hi, SusanLesch. Can you help fix this date range of 1889–1990? I don't think that I have access to its citation to ensure that I get it right. Cheers! {{u|WikiWikiWayne}} {Talk} 21:17, 25 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

No I have my hands full for the next couple months. Sorry. -SusanLesch (talk) 21:47, 25 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, SusanLesch – I worded that poorly. The date "-1990" seems way off. Should it be "-1890"? Cheers! {{u|WikiWikiWayne}} {Talk} 22:25, 25 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The Internet Archive will give you a copy of the source which says "Demian Hess and Jeffrey A. Hess, January 1990". I have no idea what you're looking for and don't have time to deal with this now. -SusanLesch (talk) 00:29, 26 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I found the reference and you're right, I had it wrong. Fixed now. Do you have trouble accessing the Internet Archive? I've never heard of that before. -SusanLesch (talk) 03:31, 26 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]