an to sell his wheat, with perhaps a nice rake-off to an
exporter, who turns it over at a profit by selling it to a British
dealer, who blends it and makes a good living by selling the blend to a
British miller?"

His pencil travelled swiftly on the back of an envelope.

"Would he pay one hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars to the line
elevator and stand a dockage of one hundred thousand bushels in
addition? Would he pay the terminal elevator seventy-five thousand
dollars' worth of screenings? Would he pay two and one-half million
dollars for transportation when 'by a little method known to large
exporters' he could save one and a quarter million dollars out of this
item?

"You just bet he wouldn't!" concluded this man Partridge. "And
supposing we had ten thousand farmers in one company and each farmer
produced, on an average, five thousand bushels of wheat--that would put
the company in control of the sale of _fifty_ million bushels, not ten!
Why, there's the answer to the whole blame thing--so simple we've been
stepping right over it!"

Pools, mergers, combines, trusts and monopolies were but various forms
of the same co-operative principle acting within narrow limits to the
benefit of the co-operatives and the prejudices of the outsiders. The
remedy lay not in legislative penalties against co-operation but in the
practice of co-operation on a large scale by the people. That would
provide the most powerful weapon of defence against financial
buccaneering. Universally employed, it would bring about an industrial
millennium!

But this was dreaming, of course. None knew better than E. A.
Partridge that if even a small part of it was to come true, there lay
immediately ahead a great educational campaign. Ignorance and
suspicion would require to be routed. It would be difficult to
convince some farmers that his motives were unselfish. Others would be
opposed to the idea of a farmers' trading company in the belief that it
would wreck the Association. "We must keep our organization
non-partizan, non-political and non-trading" had been the slogan from
the first.

Nothing daunted by the difficulties which loomed in the foreground,
Partridge obtained permission from his Territorial associates to tell
the central Manitoba Grain Growers' Association the result of his
investigations at Winnipeg. The Manitoba convention was about to be
held at Brandon and on his way back home he remained over to address
t