Deep Furrows Part 11

"We must bear clearly in mind," warned T. A. Crerar, "that there are still those interests who would delight in nothing more than in our failure and destruction. A great many improvements require yet to be made in our system of handling grain. The struggle for the bringing about of those reforms is not by any means accomplished. As a great cla.s.s of farmers, composing the most important factor in the progress and development of our country, we must learn the lesson that we must organize and work together to secure those legislative and economic reforms necessary to well-being. In the day of our prosperity we must not forget that there are yet many wrongs to be righted and that true happiness and success in life cannot be measured by the wealth we acquire. In the mad, debasing struggle for material riches and pleasure, which is so characteristic of our age, we often neglect and let go to decay the finer and higher side of our nature and lose thereby that power of sympathy with our fellows which finds expression in lending them a helping hand and in helping in every good work which tends to increase human happiness and lessen human misery. In keeping this in view we keep in mind that high ideal which will make our organization not alone a material success but also a factor in changing those conditions which now tend to stifle the best that is in humanity."

An important step towards the upholding of these ideals was now taken by the directors. The President and the Vice-President happened to be in a little printshop one day, looking over the proof of a pamphlet which the Company was about to issue, when the former picked up a little school journal which was just off the press for the Teachers'

a.s.sociation.

"Why can't we get out a little journal like that?" he wondered. "It would be a great help to our whole movement."

About this time the Company was approached by a Winnipeg farm paper which devoted a page to the doings of the grain growers.

"If you'll help us to get subscriptions amongst the farmers," said the publisher, "we'll devote more s.p.a.ce still to the doings of the grain growers."

"But why should we build up another man's paper for him?" argued the President. "Why can't we get out a journal for ourselves?"

The idea grew more insistent the longer it was entertained, and although at first E. A. Partridge, who was on the directorate, was opposed to such a venture, he finally agreed that it would be of untold a.s.sistance to the farmers if they had a paper of their own to voice their ideals. The logical editor for the new undertaking was E. A.

Partridge, of course, and accordingly he began to gather material for the first issue of a paper, to be called the _Grain Growers' Guide_.

Partridge had a few ideas of his own that had lived with him for a long time. On occasion he had introduced some of them to his friends with characteristic eloquence and the eloquence of E. A. Partridge on a favorite theme was something worth listening to; also, he gave his auditors much to think about and sometimes got completely beyond their depth. It was then that some of them were forced to shake their heads at theories which appeared to them to be so idealistic that their practical consummation belonged to a future generation.

In connection with this new paper it was Partridge's idea to issue it as a weekly and as the official organ of the grain growers' trading company instead of the grain growers' movement as a whole. He thought, too, that it would be advisable to join hands with _The Voice_, which was the organ of the Labor unions. The President and the other officers could not agree that any of these was wise at the start; it would be better, they thought, to creep before trying to walk, to issue the paper as a monthly at first and to have it the official organ of the Grain Growers' a.s.sociations rather than the trading company alone.

This failure of his a.s.sociates to see the wisdom of his plan to amalgamate with the organ of the Labor unions was a great disappointment to Partridge; for he had been working towards this consummation for some time, devoutly wished it and considered the time opportune for such a move. He believed it to be of vital importance to "the Cause" and its future. In October he had met with an unfortunate accident, having fallen from his binder and so injured his foot in the machinery that amputation was necessary; he was in no condition to undertake new and arduous duties in organizing a publis.h.i.+ng proposition as he was still suffering greatly from his injury. On the verge of a nervous breakdown, it required only the upsetting of the plans he had cherished to make him give up altogether and he resigned the editors.h.i.+p of the new magazine after getting out the first number.

"I'm too irritable to get along with anybody in an office," he declared. "I know I'm impatient and all that, boys. You'd better send for McKenzie to come in from Brandon and edit the paper."

This suggestion of his editorial successor seemed to the others to be a good one; for Roderick McKenzie had been Secretary of the Manitoba Grain Growers' a.s.sociation from the first and had been a prime mover in its activities as well as wielding considerable influence in the other two prairie provinces where he was well known and appreciated. He was well posted, McKenzie.

So the Vice-President wired him to come down to Winnipeg at once.

Yes, he was well posted in the farming business, Rod. McKenzie. He had learned it in the timber country before he took to it in the land of long gra.s.s. At eleven years of age he was plowing with a yoke of oxen on the stump lands of Huron, helping his father to scratch a living out of the bush farm for a family of nine and between whiles attending a little log schoolhouse, going on cedar-gum expeditions, getting lost in the bush and indulging in other pioneer pastimes.

Along in 1877, when people were talking a lot about Dakota as a farming country, McKenzie took a notion to go West; but he preferred to stay under the British flag and Winnipeg was his objective. A friend of his was running a flour-mill at Gladstone (then called Palestine), Manitoba, and young McKenzie decided to take a little walk out that way to visit him. It was a wade, rather than a walk! It was the year the country was flooded and during the first thirty days after his arrival he could count only three consecutive days without rain. In places the water was up to his hips and when he reached the flour-mill there was four feet of water inside of it.

Such conditions were abnormal, of course, and due to lack of settlement and drainage. After helping to build the first railway through the country Roderick McKenzie eventually located his farm near Brandon and so far as the rich land and the climate were concerned he was entirely satisfied.

Not so with the early marketing of his grain, though. He disposed of two loads of wheat at one of the elevators in Brandon one day and was given a grade and price which he considered fair enough. When he came in with two more loads of the same kind of wheat next day, however, the elevator man told him that he had sent a sample to Winnipeg and found out that it was not grading the grade he had given him the day before.

"The train service wouldn't allow of such fast work, sir," said Roderick McKenzie. "I suppose you sent it by wire!" He picked up the reins. "That five cents a bushel you want me to give you looks just as good in my pocket as in yours."

So he drove up town where the other buyers were and three of them looked at the wheat but refused to give a price for it. One of them was a son of the first elevator man to whom he had gone and, said he:

"The Old Man gave you a knockdown for it, didn't he?"

"Yes, but----"

"Well, we're not going to bid against him and if you want to sell it at all, haul it back to him."

As there was nothing else he could do under the conditions that prevailed, McKenzie was forced to pocket his loss without recourse.

With such experiences it is scarcely necessary to say that when the grain growers' movement started in Manitoba Roderick McKenzie occupied a front seat. He was singled out at once for a place on the platform and was elected Secretary of the Brandon branch of the a.s.sociation. At the annual convention of the Manitoba locals he was made Secretary of the Provincial a.s.sociation, a position which he filled until 1916, when he became Secretary of the Canadian Council of Agriculture.

His activities in the interests of the a.s.sociation have made him a well-known figure in many circles. From the first he had been very much in favor of the farmers' trading company and only the restrictions of his official position with the a.s.sociation had prevented him from taking a more prominent part in its affairs. As it was, the benefit of his experience was frequently sought.

McKenzie was plowing in the field when the boy from the telegraph office reached him with John Kennedy's message.

"They don't say what they want me for; but I guess I'm wanted or they wouldn't send a telegram--Haw! Back you!" And like Cincinnatus at the call of the State in the "brave days of old," McKenzie unhitched the horses and leaving the plow where it stood, made for the house, packed his grip and caught the next train for Winnipeg.

John Kennedy met him at the station.

"What's wrong?" demanded the Secretary of the Manitoba Grain Growers'

a.s.sociation at once. "I came right along as soon as I got your wire, Kennedy. What's up now?"

"The editor of the _Grain Growers' Guide_. Partridge wants you to take his place."

"ME? Why, I never edited anything in my life!" cried McKenzie, standing stock still on the platform.

"Pshaw! Come along," laughed Kennedy rea.s.suringly. "You'll be alright. It ain't hard to do."

CHAPTER XI

FROM THE RED RIVER VALLEY TO THE FOOTHILLS

It ain't the guns or armament nor the funds that they can pay, But the close co-operation that makes them win the day; It ain't the individual, nor the army as a whole, But the everlastin' team-work of every bloomin' soul!

--_Kipling_.

At one of the early grain growers' conventions it had been voiced as an ideal that there were three things which the farmers' movement needed--first, a trading company to sell their products (with ultimately, it might be, the cheaper distribution of farm supplies); second, a bank in which they could own stock; third, a paper that would publish the farmers' views. So that if the new Executive of the Company had done little else than break ground for better financial arrangements and a farmers' own paper, their record for the year would have shown progress.

But when the second annual meeting of the Company was held they were able to show that the volume of farmers' grain handled was almost five million bushels, double that of the first year, while the net profits amounted to over thirty thousand dollars. The number of farmer shareholders had increased to nearly three thousand with applications on file for another twelve hundred and a steady awakening of interest among the farmers was to be noticed all over the West. All this in spite of the general shortage of money, a reduced total crop yield and the keenest compet.i.tion from rival grain interests.

It had been apparent to the directors that if the business grew as conditions seemed to warrant it doing, it would require to be highly organized. Bit by bit the service to the farmer was being widened.

For instance, the nucleus of a Claims Department had been established during the year; for under the laws governing the Canadian railway companies the latter were required to deliver to terminal elevators the amount of grain a farmer loaded into a car and to leave the car in a suitable condition to receive grain. The official weights at the terminal were unquestioned and if a farmer could furnish reasonable evidence of the quant.i.ty of grain he had loaded, any leakage in transit would furnish a claim case against the railway. During six months the farmers' company had collected for its s.h.i.+ppers nearly two thousand dollars in such claims, a beginning sufficient to ill.u.s.trate that the Company was destined to serve the farmers in many practical ways if they would only stand behind it.

IF the farmers would stand behind it! But would they? It was a question which was forever popping up to obscure the future. Many tongues were busy with inuendo to belittle what the farmers had accomplished already and to befog their efforts to advance still farther. At every s.h.i.+pping point in the West industrious little mallets were knocking away on the Xylophone of Doubt, all playing the same tune: "Just Kiss Yourself Good-Bye!" No farmers' business organization ever had been a success in the past and none ever could be. This new trading venture was going to go off with a loud bang one of these fine days and every farmer who had s.h.i.+pped grain to it would stand a first-cla.s.s chance of losing it. You betcha! The Grain Growers' a.s.sociations mightn't be so bad; yes, they'd done some good.

But this concern in the grain business--run by a few men, wasn't it?

Well, say, does a cat go by a saucer of cream without taking a lick?

"Farmers' company" they called it, eh? Go and tell it to your grandmother!

The worst of it was that in many localities were farmers who believed this very suggestion already--that the Company belonged to the men at the head of its affairs. Discouraged by past failures and without much respect for the dignity of their occupation, their att.i.tude towards the Company was almost automatic. That it was a great co-operative movement of their cla.s.s, designed to improve economic and social conditions, was something quite out of their grasp. And upon these strings, already out of tune, elevator men strummed diligently in an effort to create discord.

From the first it had been like that. Friends who would speak a good word for the struggling venture at the time it was most needed were about as scarce as horns on a horse. On the other hand the organizers ran across "the knockers" at every turn. A traveller for one of the milling companies, for instance, happened to get into conversation on the train with E. A. Partridge one day. The latter was a stranger to him and he naturally supposed he was talking to "just a farmer." The subject of conversation was the grain trade and this traveller began to make a few remarks about the "little grain company" that had started up.

"What about that company?" asked Partridge with visible interest.

"I've heard a lot about it."

"Oh, it's just a little d.i.n.ky affair," laughed the traveller. "They've got a little office about ten feet square and they actually have a typewriter! They get a car or two a month. Don't amount to anything."