Montreal one of the best grain ports in the world, in spite
of high insurance rates and half-season. As long as there are no
elevators at Vancouver, grain must be sacked. Sacking costs from five
to six cents extra a bushel, and more extra in handling. The remedy
for this is for the Pacific ports to build elevators; and even when
they haven't elevators, the saving in rates over and above the extra
sacking has already been from eight to fourteen cents a bushel on grain
billed for Liverpool via the one hundred ninety miles of rail over
Tehuantepec, or via the Panama railroad, where bulk need not be broken
twice.

An objection is that in the humid Pacific Coast winter climate there is
danger of grain heating. This has been overcome at Portland, and
against this must be set the incalculable advantage that Pacific Coast
ports are open all the year round. One year, of 65,000,000 bushels of
grain from the prairie provinces that passed over the Great Lakes
forty-three per cent. went out by way of Buffalo to American ports.
Why? Because the glut was so great, the facilities so inadequate for
the enormous crop, the insurance so high, that the grain could not be
rushed seaward fast enough before close of navigation. Through
Vancouver during this very period there passed only 750,000 bushels of
wheat. Why not more? No facilities.

"We could have shipped millions of bushels of wheat to Liverpool by way
of Vancouver," said the head of one of the largest grain companies in
Calgary, "but there were simply no facilities to take care of it. On
16,000 bushels, which we shipped by way of Vancouver and Tehuantepec,
we saved eight cents a bushel, as against Atlantic rates. You know how
much handling the Tehuantepec route requires. Well, you can figure
what we should save the farmer when Panama opens and the cargo never
breaks bulk to Liverpool from our shore."

Rates, not heating nor sacking, are the real cloud in the Canadian mind
regarding Panama; and if Canada continues to stand twiddling her hands
over rates when she should be hustling preparations, the inevitable
will happen--Portland, which sends millions of bushels of her own wheat
to Liverpool, is ready to take care of Canada's traffic; so is Seattle.
There is nothing these cities hope more than that Canada will continue
to shun the question of rates.

V

Let us look at this question of rates!

Ordinarily the rate on wheat from Chicago to New York is about ten to