Deep Furrows Part 13

"Just so," nodded the commission men among themselves. "The logical and certain result will be the weeding out of the commission men and track buyers, who give practically the only element of compet.i.tion that exists in the trade! One of the curses of our Canadian commercialism is the strong tendency to monopoly and this looks like an effort to create an absolute elevator monopoly of the grain trade, which is the staple industry of the country."

But if the small dealers on the Exchange were aroused, what about the farmers' trading company? They did business on a commission basis only and with the elevators offering to handle the farmers' grain for nothing, or next door to it, what would happen? Would the farmer be "unable to see past his nose," as was predicted? Would he forget the conditions of the early days and grab for a present saving of five or ten dollars per car? If the farmers did not stand together now, they were licked! It was a showdown.

There was only one thing to do--take a referendum of the shareholders as to the basis on which they wished the year's business handled. The Board of Control of the Grain Growers' Grain Company therefore issued the following circular letter, which was mailed to every farmer shareholder:

"This matter we now bring to your notice is the most important yet.

"At a meeting of the Grain Exchange, held a few days ago, the Commission Rule was suspended for a year. This means that there is no fixed charge for handling grain, and any company or firm can, if they wish, handle car lots for nothing. How did this come about? The Elevator Companies did it with the aid of Bank Managers and other Winnipeg men outside of the Grain Trade, who hold seats on the Exchange, and voted with them. The intention of these Elevator Companies is to handle all grain for 1/2c. per bushel or for nothing in order to take it away from the Commission Men, who have no elevators, and especially to keep it away from the Grain Growers' Grain Company.

"The Elevator Companies can handle farmers' cars for nothing and still not lose anything. How? In four ways--

"1st. They all buy street grain and the immense profits they make on this will make up for any loss they have in handling cars for nothing.

"2nd. The dockage they get on street grain and on car lots pa.s.sed through their elevators helps them.

"3rd. The charges on the cars loaded through their elevators helps them.

"4th. When they get your car it is sent to their own terminal elevator, and they earn the storage on it there which is very profitable.

"The commission man, such as ourselves, has none of these things to fall back on. His profit is what is left out of the cent a bushel commission after all expenses such as rent, taxes, insurance, wages for office help, telegrams, telephone, etc., are paid.

"The Elevator Combine know this. They know the weakness of the commission dealers' position and the strength of their own, and knowing it, deliberately cut out the commission and will offer to handle the farmers' grain for nothing in order to put the only opposition they have out of business. And mark you! this is aimed at our company more than any other, though we believe they are after all commission dealers. Some of them have said so. They want to kill us and they think they have at last found a way. Their dodge is simple. By handling cars for half a cent or nothing, they are going to bribe the farmers and our own shareholders to send cars away from us, and by keeping grain from us help to kill us and plant us that deep we shall never come up again.

"In this way they hope to 'rule the roost' and get back the good old days they had ten or twelve years ago.

"Can they succeed? It depends on the men who s.h.i.+p the grain. If they support the combine by giving the elevators (or the commission houses that work for the elevators under a different name) their cars, they may soon expect to find themselves in a worse position than they have ever been before.

"As a prominent commission man said the other day, 'The elevator companies are asking the farmers to help at their own funeral.' It is an anxious time for our own company. We have shown that with anything like fair play it may succeed. We have been growing stronger and, we believe, doing some good. Are our shareholders and friends going to take the bribe that is meant to put us out of business? We hope and believe not. For this reason we are taking a referendum vote of our shareholders."

It was at this crisis that the _Grain Growers' Guide_ had an opportunity of demonstrating its value to the farmers as a fighting weapon. It seized the cudgels and waded right into the thick of the controversy without fear or favor. It came out flat-footed in its charges against the elevator interests and emphasized the warning of the Company in language that carried no double meaning.

"We have no quarrel with the Winnipeg Grain Exchange as an Exchange,"

said the _Guide_. "It is a convenience for gathering reports from other parts of the world, market conditions, and for drafting rules that facilitate and simplify business dealings.

"As we have often pointed out, however, the Exchange is being used by the Elevator Interests that seem to dominate it, to further their own particular ends with the result that the nefarious methods of the Elevator Trust bring suspicion and condemnation upon the Exchange and its members.

"The demand for the Royal Grain Commission arose from the methods pursued by the Elevator Companies in dealing with the farmers at country points. The pooling of receipts at country points is not forgotten by the farmers; heavy dockage and unfair grading and low prices paid when the farmers were compelled to sell and could not help themselves, are also not forgotten.

"Every injustice and disturbance in the trade that has taken place since grain commenced to be marketed in Manitoba, can be traced to the Elevator Monopoly.

"The farmers of this country owe nothing to the Elevator Trust and we have confidence enough in them to believe that they will not be bought over by them now. The Commission Men and Track Buyers certainly owe nothing to this trust either. They have helped in the past to carry the suspicion and sin arising from its methods and it commences to look as if they were getting tired of carrying the load."

Column after column of such plain talk was given place in the _Guide_ week after week, together with reports of Grain Exchange proceedings, interviews with commission men and elevator men, p.r.o.nouncements of Grain Exchange officials and comment upon pamphlets circulated amongst the farmers by the North-West Grain Dealers' a.s.sociation, etc.

Everything having a bearing upon the situation was brought to light and a.n.a.lyzed. Letters from farmers throughout the country were published as fast as they reached the editor's desk, and they were coming pretty fast, about as fast as the mail could bring them.

They were reaching the office of the farmers' trading company by the bagful. The Company had asked three definite questions of the farmers in connection with the commission to be charged on grain s.h.i.+pped to the Company--whether or not the old rate should be maintained in spite of the action of the Exchange; whether the commission should be reduced; whether the whole matter should be left to the discretion of the directors. The letters poured in by the thousand and only two per cent. of the farmers recommended any reduction in the rates; of the remainder, seventy per cent. were in favor of the Company maintaining the one cent commission and the other twenty-eight per cent. were willing to abide by the decision of the directors.

The comments contained in some of these letters revealed strong feeling. Many farmers were ready to pay two cents commission per bushel if necessary, rather than sell to "the monopolies."

"I will pledge myself to s.h.i.+p every bushel of grain I grow to the Farmers' Company," wrote one, "even though the directors found it necessary to charge me five cents per bushel, coin."

"No, they cauna draw the blinds ower the daylights o' a Scotchman,"

a.s.sured one old son of the heather. "I am verra pleased to leave the hale concern in your hands as I do believe you are thoroughly plumb and always square."

With this encouragement the directors announced that they would continue to charge a commission of one cent per bushel on wheat s.h.i.+pped to them, just as if the Commission Rule had not been suspended by the Exchange. Other commission merchants, they knew, intended to reduce their charges to half a cent per bushel; the elevator men, they expected, would handle the grain for the same and in many cases for nothing in order to persuade the farmers to s.h.i.+p their way. It would be a great temptation to many farmers who had been sitting on the fence, shouting "Sic 'em!" but never lifting a little finger to help, and it was to be expected that those with limited vision would s.h.i.+p their grain where they could make the biggest saving at the time.

Notwithstanding, the directors believed that the majority of the farmers would not prove one cent wise and many dollars foolish by failing to realize what the future might hold in store if the elevators succeeded in killing off compet.i.tion. Finding that it was possible to handle oats on a smaller margin, they made the farmers a gift reduction of half a cent per bushel on oat s.h.i.+pments; otherwise the former rate was sustained.

The wheat ripened. Harvesting began. The long grain trains commenced to drag into Winnipeg across the miles of prairie. By the middle of September the weekly receipts of the farmers' company were running to 744 cars. In 1907 they had handled about five per cent. of the crop and seven and one-half per cent. of the 1908 crop; of the total number of cars so far inspected in this year of "free for all" methods, the Grain Growers' Grain Company handled about fifteen per cent.

When the end of the season brought the figures to a final total it was found that the farmers' organization had handled well over sixteen million bushels of farmers' grain. This was an increase over the preceding year of nearly nine million bushels, or 114 per cent. It was nearly one and one-half million bushels greater than all the previous years of operation and represented one-eighth of all the grain inspected during the year in Western Canada.

CHAPTER XIII

THE MYSTERIOUS MR. "OBSERVER"

Observation tells me that you have a little reddish mold adhering to your instep. . . . So much is observation. The rest is deduction.

--_Sherlock Holmes_.

_Sign of Four (Doyle)_.

In Prehistoric Days, when one man hied himself from his cave to impress his ideas upon another the persuasion used took the form of a wallop on the head with a stone axe. It was the age of Individual Opinion. But as Man hewed his way upward along Time's tangled trails personal opinions began to jog along together in groups, creating Force. With the growth of populations and the invention of printing this power was called Public Opinion and experience soon taught the folly of ignoring it.

In the course of human aspiration Somebody who had a Bright Mind got the notion that in order to get his own way without fighting the crowd all he had to do was to educate the "Great Common Pee-pul" to his way of thinking and by sowing enough seed in public places up would come whatever kind of crop he wanted. Thus, by making Public Opinion himself he would avoid the hazard of opposing it. The name of this Sagacious Pioneer of Special Privilege who manufactured the first carload of Public Opinion is lost to posterity; all that is known about him is that he was a close student of the Art of concealing Artifice by Artlessness and therefore wore gum rubbers on his feet and carried around a lot of Presents to give away.

It is quite possible to direct the thought of Tom-d.i.c.k-and-Harry. A skillful orator can swing a crowd from laughter to anger and back again. The politician who prepares a speech for a set occasion builds his periods for applause with every confidence. But it was to the public prints that they who sought the manufacture of Public Opinion were in the habit of turning.

There has always been something very convincing about "cold print."

The little boy believes that the cow really did jump over the moon; for isn't it right there in the nursery book with a picture of her doing it? And despite the disillusionments of an accelerated age many readers still cherish an old-time faith in their favorite newspaper--a faith which is a relic of the days when the freedom of the press was a new and sacred heritage and the public bought the paper to learn what Joseph Howe, George Brown, Franklin, Greeley or Dana thought about things. This period gave place gradually to the great modern newspaper, the product in some cases of a publis.h.i.+ng company so "limited" that it thought mostly in terms of dollars and cents and political preferments.

When the cub reporter rushed in to his city editor with eyes sparkling he cried out enthusiastically:

"Gee, I've got a peach of a story! Old John Smith's daughter's eloped with the chauffeur. She's a movie fan and----"

But it did not get into the paper for the very good reason that "Old John" was the proprietor of the big departmental store which took a full-page advertis.e.m.e.nt in every issue the year around. The editor would have used it soon enough, but--the business office--!

Then there was the theatrical press-agent, a regular caller with his advance notices and free electros of coming attractions, his press pa.s.ses.

"Give us a chance, old man," he pleaded, perhaps laying down a good cigar. "Say, that was a rotten roast you handed us last week."

"Yes, and it was a rotten show!" the editor would retort. "I saw it myself."

The telephone rings, maybe--the business office again.