In making his report to the Territorial Grain Growers' Association Partridge went into the whole situation as he saw it and particularly was he outspoken in regard to "that House with the Closed Shutters," as he called the Winnipeg Grain and Produce Exchange. In fact, his gas attack upon the Exchange was ablaze with the fires of hostility.
And for the use of his reckless language Partridge was to be called to account in due course.
[1] Although only about ten per cent. of the arable area in Western Canada is under cultivation there are already 3,500 country elevators. Terminal elevators at the head of the lakes with a storage capacity of forty-four million bushels and interior Government terminals with ten and one-half million bushels capacity are overflowing already. Wheat exports of Canada have increased from 2,284,702 bushels in 1867 to 157,745,469 bushels in 1916. Per capita Canada has more railway mileage than any country in the world.
[2] In early days nearly all grain was routed eastward via Winnipeg; but with the development of the grain trade and the opening of the Panama Canal some Western Canadian grain travels west and south. Facilities for inspection and grading have been established at Calgary, Superior, Duluth, Saskatoon, Moose Jaw, Medicine Hat and Vancouver.
[3] In 1905 three members of the Survey Board were recommended by the Winnipeg Board of Trade and three each by the respective Departments of Agriculture in the three Prairie Provinces.
CHAPTER VI
ON A CARD IN THE WINDOW OF WILSON'S OLD STORE
. . . Is it vain to hope
The sons of such a land will climb and grope
Along the undiscovered ways of life,
And neither seek nor be found shunning strife,
But ever, beckoned by a high ideal,
Press onward, upward, till they make it real;
With feet sure planted on their native sod,
And will and aspirations linked with God?
—Robert J. C. Stead.
Ideas grow. The particular idea which now began to occupy the thoughts of E. A. Partridge to the exclusion of everything else was a big idea to begin with; but it kept on growing so rapidly that it soon became an obsession.
Why couldn't the farmers themselves form a company to undertake the marketing of their own wheat? That was the idea. If a thousand farmers got together in control of ten million bushels of wheat and sold through a single accredited agency, they would be in the same position exactly as a single person who owned ten million bushels. If the owner of ten thousand bushels was able to make a better bargain than the owner of one thousand, what about the owner of ten million bushels?