by the unlimited liability of its enthusiastic promoters, whatever that might be worth, in a small Saskatchewan village, with Partridge as its first President.

To the critical student, the whole plan appears so destitute of all the acknowledged elements of success as to be farcical. The grain trade had long been a strongly organised business, supplied with ample capital, with the Winnipeg Grain Exchange as the focus of chains of local elevators. The Farmers' Company had no capital to speak of. The $250,000 were purely nominal; only about 10 per cent. had been paid up; the rest might or might not mature. The executive officers knew something about growing grain, but they had no business training whatever; common-sense was their sole endowment. The only real assets were the good-will of other farmers having wheat to sell, and their determination to stick together and see the thing through. Carrying war into old preserves of vested interests, they could expect no quarter, and got none. Vulnerable, owing to their inexperience, in half-a-dozen places, their unavoidable blunders left them open to attack on many sides. They committed a technical breach of the rules of the Winnipeg Grain Exchange. The Exchange excluded them from membership, and only reinstated them when the Manitoba Government threatened to suspend the Charter of the Exchange. As heavy borrowers without security beyond the good-will of their business, they were at the mercy of their Bank; and the Bank, dominated by the elevator interests, suddenly requested them one day to close their accounts. The story of the first two or three years

is one of hair-breadth escapes.

Under the direction of T. A. Crerar, whom Partridge selected to succeed himself in the president's chair (1907), co-operation and the Grain Company marched in step with each other; the success of the Company destroying the remnants of scepticism among farmers as to the possibility of close co-operation, and the spread of the co-operative idea adding to the capital, increasing the clientèle, and widening the sphere of action of the Company. Henceforth the story of its grow this on allfours with the life history of any business supplying a real need in a practically virgin field-a story of logical development, of progressive aggregation, each step in

advance leading to the next, each hard-won position disclosing a new position within easier grasp. If a Farmers' Company could sell grain on commission to millers or exporters at Winnipeg, what was there to prevent it from selling this grain to the ultimate British importer? If it could dispense with one set of middlemen whose charges were comparatively small, why not dispense with another set of middlemen whose charges were comparatively high? For the margin between the price at which the exporter bought in Winnipeg and the price at which he sold in Liverpool was, even after deducting ocean freights, the heaviest charge on the whole grain trade. It is true that the business was speculative and complicated, and called for large capital. The Grain Growers' Grain Company launched into the export trade and eventually placed it on a paying basis.

Since the life-blood of co-operation is propaganda, and the enemies of the Grain Growers' Company were well supplied with newspapers and magazines, the institution of a farmers' paper, owned exclusively by farmers and devoted solely to their interests, was a highly advisable measure. Accordingly, the Grain

Growers' Guide' was founded, with the effervescent Partridge as its first editor (1908). To-day, with a circulation of 70,000 copies weekly, it is the most potent political force in the West. As a factor in emancipating the farmers, as a distinct economic group, from the guidance of other people, the importance of the 'Grain Growers' Guide' can scarcely be exaggerated. There were plenty of rural papers before the 'Guide,' but they were controlled and subsidised by, and edited in the interests of, governments or railway companies or Manufacturers' Associations who wished to fill the country with settlers, and were anxious that these settlers should produce as much as possible, but not so anxious that they should thrive to the extent of acquiring mental and financial independence.

Accordingly, while such papers were often full of excellent matter on the side of farming technique, they closed their eyes resolutely to the economic aspect of farming. Their backers laboured under the strange delusion that they could succeed for ever in attracting settlers to the West from the four corners of the globe

on the plea that farming in Canada was a money-making business, and yet reconcile these men, once safely fixed on Canadian soil, to a condition of permanent economic serfage. The man on the land was to produce for a bare living, or less than a bare living, the raw materials of industry. To the traders, manufacturers, and financiers were to belong all the profits of the industry. The aim of all immigration propaganda was to create in one-half of Canada a race of peasants subservient to a race of business men in the other half. Such was the real reason for the flood of Ukrainians, Galicians, Mennonites, Doukhobors, with which the country was deluged during the Laurier régime. These people, at all events, would prove docile; starved and beaten in the countries they came from, they would not kick over the traces in their new country, where they were not beaten and only half starved. As for politics, they did not understand the English language; they were absolutely devoid of democratic instincts; and their votes were as cheap as dirt. Fifteen years ago, the British were not wanted as immigrants. They were too stiff-necked, too obstinate; their economic standards were too high; they would never fit in with the plan. And indeed, had none but aliens from Russia and Austria invaded Western Canada, there would be to-day no co-operation, no farmers' economic movement.

If it were possible to eliminate middlemen on the grain-selling side of the farming business, why should it not be possible to eliminate middlemen on the purchasing side? Many of the things needed were handled in great quantities by a host of small traders all over the country. But lumber, coal, flour, apples, agricultural implements could all be bought in large quantities, and distributed co-operatively through the farmers' elevators. This was a logical step, and it was the next to be taken. Timber limits were purchased in British Columbia, and saw-mills installed, supplying the grain-growers with lumber for their barns, their grain-bins, their houses, without the intervention of half-a-dozen middlemen. Apples were purchased by the train-load in Ontario or British Columbia and distributed direct to the consumer, at an enormous saving. Other staples were gradually added to the list-cement, sashes and doors, hardware and

builders' supplies, oil, salt, sewing-machines, type-writers, and so on. Anything for which there is a universal demand, and which is more or less standardised, can be and before long will be distributed through the Farmers' Companies in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta. Still greater economies and higher efficiency were bound to result if, instead of acting separately, they were all amalgamated into a single body. The final step was taken in 1917, when the Grain Growers' Grain Company, the Saskatchewan Co-operative Elevator Company, and the Alberta Co-operative Elevator Company were all merged in a new body under the name of United Grain Growers, Ltd.,' with a paid-up capital of $5,000,000.

A few years earlier, the Canadian Council of Agriculture had come into existence. It did not spring into immediate spectacular prominence. Hardly any one foresaw the weight that would come to be attached to its pronouncements. Most people have only become aware of it in the course of the last two or three years. It was an outgrowth of the various Territorial Farmers' Associations, a committee formed from among their officers, for the purpose of sifting, discussing, and codifying any resolutions passed by local conventions concerning desired reforms which could only be brought about by Federal legislation. It was a new form of lobbying, a method long known and brought to a fine art at Ottawa; but it was lobbying by the pressure of opinion, not by bribery. The Council acted as political spokesman on behalf of the Grain Growers, standing strictly aloof from any ties with either of the old political parties. Farmers, as a class, were practically unrepresented in the Legislature. If we accept Mr Charles W. Peterson's data in his 'Wake up, Canada!', while farmers in 1918 made up 46.5 per cent. of the total adult population, their percentage of total representation (Provincial and Federal) was but 18.3. Business and professional classes, on the other hand, making up but 16.7 per cent. of the adult population, engrossed no less than 81.2 per cent. of the total representation. The lawyers alone, numbering less than 5000, monopolised 25 per cent. of the total representation. It is clear then that the Council of Agriculture performed a very necessary service in counterbalancing the inadequate representation of farmers in Parliament.

In the third year of the war, its influence had already become so considerable that Sir Robert Borden, when forming the Unionist ministry, found it advisable to include some of its leaders. Mr Crerar took the portfolio of Agriculture; Mr Dunning joined the Board of Food Control.

The most contentious issue, then as now, was of course the Tariff. By their own efforts, along the lines of business co-operation, the United Farmers had removed many a handicap; but the most serious of all could only be removed by Federal legislation, by a complete reform of the fiscal system. No impartial student has ever come forward to defend or even to excuse the Canadian Tariff. It transgresses every known canon of sound taxation. It has signally failed to accomplish the purpose for which it was supposed to be created. It was an economic blunder from the first; it has become a serious political danger. Introduced by the Conservative Party under Sir John A. Macdonald as a national policy of protection for infant industries, perpetuated by the Liberal Party under Sir Wilfrid Laurier as a revenue-producer, this hybrid system, which only produces revenue by accident in so far as it does not protect, and protects only in so far as it fails to produce a revenue, has succeeded in dividing the country into two sharply-opposed camps, of which Winnipeg is the dividing point, and has succeeded in nothing else. The infant industries of fifty years ago claim to be infant industries to-day and clamour for still higher protection. The possible benefits of protection, supposing there were any, are purely local in character and extent, for the object of the system is to secure the home market, that is to say, the farmer-consumers; while the farmers' market is not in Canada but overseas. One-half of the total population is thus taxed, with no counterbalancing advantage, in order to bolster up the prosperity of a few towns in the East. And as the general cost of living is artificially increased to the extent of 40 per cent. all round, the advantage to mechanics and labourers who form 37 per cent. of the total population is illusory. Their real wages would be higher in the United States. Regarded as a system of taxation, it will not bear discussion. It strikes with blind indifference alike at implements Vol. 235.-No. 466.

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