count in due course.

[1] Although only about ten per cent. of the arable area in Western
Canada is under cultivation there are already 3,500 country elevators.
Terminal elevators at the head of the lakes with a storage capacity of
forty-four million bushels and interior Government terminals with ten
and one-half million bushels capacity are overflowing already. Wheat
exports of Canada have increased from 2,284,702 bushels in 1867 to
157,745,469 bushels in 1916. Per capita Canada has more railway
mileage than any country in the world.

[2] In early days nearly all grain was routed eastward via Winnipeg;
but with the development of the grain trade and the opening of the
Panama Canal some Western Canadian grain travels west and south.
Facilities for inspection and grading have been established at Calgary,
Superior, Duluth, Saskatoon, Moose Jaw, Medicine Hat and Vancouver.

[3] In 1905 three members of the Survey Board were recommended by the
Winnipeg Board of Trade and three each by the respective Departments of
Agriculture in the three Prairie Provinces.

CHAPTER VI

ON A CARD IN THE WINDOW OF WILSON'S OLD STORE

. . . Is it vain to hope
The sons of such a land will climb and grope
Along the undiscovered ways of life,
And neither seek nor be found shunning strife,
But ever, beckoned by a high ideal,
Press onward, upward, till they make it real;
With feet sure planted on their native sod,
And will and aspirations linked with God?
--Robert J. C. Stead.

Ideas grow. The particular idea which now began to occupy the thoughts
of E. A. Partridge to the exclusion of everything else was a big idea
to begin with; but it kept on growing so rapidly that it soon became an
obsession.

Why couldn't the farmers themselves form a company to undertake the
marketing of their own wheat? That was the idea. If a thousand
farmers got together in control of ten million bushels of wheat and
sold through a single accredited agency, they would be in the same
position exactly as a single person who owned ten million bushels. If
the owner of ten thousand bushels was able to make a better bargain
than the owner of one thousand, what about the owner of ten million
bushels?

"Would the owner of ten million bushels peddle his wheat by the
wagonload at the local shipping point or by the carload in Winnipeg?"
mused Partridge. "Would he pay one hundred thousand dollars to a
commission m