Now, this progress had been achieved in the face of continuous difficulties of one kind and another. Chief of these was the attempt to finance such a large amount of grain upon a small paid-up capital. The Company found that after finishing construction of the elevators they had no money with which to buy grain nor any assets available for bank borrowings. It was impossible to obtain credit upon the unpaid capital stock. The Provincial Government was approached for a guarantee of the account along the lines followed in Saskatchewan; but the Government refused to assume the responsibility.
It was at this juncture that the enemies of co-operation were afforded a practical demonstration of the fact that they had to deal not with any one farmers' organization but with them all. For the Grain Growers' Grain Company stepped into the breach with its powerful financial assistance.
The Alberta farmers were clamoring for the handling of farm supplies as well as grain; so that the young trading company in Alberta had its hands more than full to organize a full stride in usefulness from the start. The organization of the United Farmers of Alberta was growing very rapidly and the co-operative spirit was tremendously strong throughout the province. There was a demand for the handling of livestock shipments and soon it was necessary to establish a special Livestock Department.
It will be recalled that one of the subjects in which the Alberta farmers were interested from the first was the possibility of persuading the Provincial Government to undertake a co-operative pork-packing plant. Following the report of the Pork Commission upon the matter, however, official action on the part of the authorities had languished. The various committees appointed from year to year by the United Farmers gradually had acquired much valuable data and at last were forced to the conclusion that the development of a packing industry along co-operative lines was not so simple as it had appeared at first. Even in much older settled countries than Alberta the question, they found, had its complications. The first thing to discover was whether the farmers of a community were able and willing to adjust themselves to the requirements of an association for shipping stock together in carload lots to be sold at the large markets. Until such demonstration had been made it seemed advisable to defer the organization of a co-operative packing business.
After the formation of the Co-Operative Elevator Company, therefore, the Alberta farmers proceeded to encourage the co-operative shipment of livestock on consignment by their local unions. The Livestock Department entered the field first as buyers of hogs, handling 16,000 hogs in the first four months. The experiment bettered prices by half-a-cent per pound and the expansion of the Department began in earnest the following season when nearly 800 cars of hogs, cattle and sheep were handled.
On top of all the other troubles of the first year the farmers lost a valuable leader in the death of the president of the Co-Operative Elevator Company, W. J. Tregillus. Complete re-organization of the Executive was made and the question of his successor was considered from every angle. It was vital that no mistake be made in this connection and two of the directors were sent to study the business methods and policies of the Grain Growers' Grain Company and the Saskatchewan Co-Operative Elevator Company and to secure a General Manager. They failed to get in touch with anyone to fill the requirements and the management of both the other farmers' concerns expressed grave doubts as to the wisdom of a farmers' company looking for a manager whose training had been received with line elevator companies and who had not seen things from the farmer's side.
One of the remarkable features of the advance of the Farmers' Movement has been the manner in which strong leaders have stepped from their own ranks to meet every need. It has been a policy of the organized farmers to encourage the younger men to apply themselves actively in the work in order that they might be qualified to take up the responsibilities of office when called upon. There are many outstanding examples of the wisdom of this in the various farmers' executives to-day; so that with the on-coming of the years there is little danger that sane, level-headed management will pass. Several of the men occupying prominent places to-day in the Farmers' Movement have grown up entirely under its tutelage.
So it turned out that in Alberta the man the farmers were seeking was one of themselves—one of the two directors sent out to locate a manager, in fact. His name was C. Rice-Jones. His father was an English Church clergyman whose work lay in the slum districts of London. This may have had something to do with the interest which the young man had in social problems. When at the age of sixteen he became a Canadian and went to work on various farms, finally homesteading in Alberta, that interest he carried with him. Out of his own experiences he began to apply it in practical ways and the Farmers' Movement drew him as a magnet draws steel. He became identified with the Veteran district eventually and there organized a local union. It was not long before he was in evidence in the wider field of the United Farmers' activities.
Fortunately the new President and General Manager of the Alberta Farmers' Co-Operative Elevator Company was not a man to lose his sense of direction in a muddle of affairs. Into the situation which awaited him he waded with consummate tact, discernment and push; so that it was not long before his associates were pulling with him for the fullest weight of intelligent effort. The difficulties were sorted and sifted and classified, the machinery oiled and running true, and with a valuable directorate at his back Rice-Jones "made good."
The third season of the Alberta Farmers' Co-operative Elevator Company brought the final proof that the farmers knew how to support their own institutions. For through the 87 elevators that the farmers operated in Alberta flowed a total of nearly twenty million bushels of grain, with well over ten and one-quarter million bushels handled on commission. The Livestock Department in the face of severe competition achieved a permanent place in the livestock business of the province with offices of its own in the stock yards at Calgary and Edmonton. By this time livestock shipments had amounted to a value in excess of two million dollars. The Co-Operative Department had handled farm supplies to a total turnover of approximately $750,000.