er direct. Here was the High Cost of Living that everybody was
talking about. The remedy? The same chance as the Other Fellow for
the farmer to use the resources of Nature and, by co-operation, the
reduction to a minimum of production and distribution cost.

"I've done it with my grain. Why can't I do it with what I need to
buy?" That was what the Grain Grower was asking himself. "Why must I
feed and clothe and buy the smokes for so many of these middlemen?"

So when the directors of the grain-trading company came before him with
the suggestion of buying a timber limit in British Columbia in order to
put in their own saw-mills eventually to supply building materials on
the prairie, the Grain Grower slapped his leg and said: "Good boy! An'
say, what about a coal mine, too?"

That was the beginning of great developments for the organized farmers
of Western Canada. It was the beginning of new furrows--the opening up
of new vistas of emancipation, as the farmer saw it. And as the
furrows lengthened and multiplied they were destined to cause much
heart-burning and antagonism in new directions.

The timber limit which the Grain Growers' Grain Company purchased was
estimated to contain two hundred and twenty-two million feet of lumber.
A Co-Operative Department was opened with the manufacture and sale of
more than 130 carloads of flour at a saving to the farmer of fifty
cents per cwt, even this small beginning registering a drop in milling
company prices. Next they got in touch with the Ontario Fruit Growers'
Association and sold over 4,000 bbls. of apples to Western farmers at
the Eastern growers' carload-lot price, plus freight, plus a commission
of ten cents per barrel. More than one hundred carloads of coal were
handled in one month and the farmers then got after the lumber
manufacturers for lumber by the carload at a saving of several dollars
per thousand feet.

Still experimenting, the Grain Growers' Grain Company added to the list
of commodities in 1912-13--fence posts, woven fence wire, barbed wire
and binder twine. Followed other staples--cement, plaster, sash and
doors, hardware and other builders' supplies; sheet metal roofing and
siding, shingles, curbing, culverts, portable granaries, etc.; oil,
salt and other miscellaneous supplies; finally, in 1914-15, farm
machinery of all kinds, scales, cream separators, sewing machines and
even typewriters. Of binder twine alone nearly seven million pounds
w