to find
their very wording incorporated in the Act. The farmers scarcely had
dared to think of such a thing before. To them the ear of a government
was a delicate organism beyond reach, attuned to the acoustics of High
Places only; that it was an ear to hear, an ear to the ground to catch
the voice of the people was a discovery. At any rate when W. R.
Motherwell and J. B. Gillespie, of the Territories, D. W. McCuaig and
R. C. Henders, of Manitoba, went to Ottawa for the first time they were
received with every consideration and many of their requests on behalf
of the farmers granted.

With such recognition and the recurring evidence of advantageous
results the jeering grins of a certain section of the onlooking public
began to sober down to a less disrespectful mien. Those who talked
glibly at first of the other farmers' organizations which they had seen
go to pieces became less free with their forebodings.

In 1904 the farmers began to press for something more than the proper
distribution of cars and the freedom of shipment. They were
dissatisfied with the grading system and the re-inspection machinery.
Some of them claimed that the grading system did not classify wheat
according to its milling value. Some wanted a change in the
Government's staff at the office of the Chief Grain Inspector where the
official grading was done. Some wanted a sample market; some didn't.
The farmers were about evenly divided.

The Department of Agriculture for the Territories commissioned
Professor Robert Harcourt, Chemist of the Ontario Agricultural College,
to conduct tests as to the comparative values of the different grades
of wheat. E. A. Partridge, of Sintaluta, and A. A. Perley, of
Wolseley, undertook to secure eight-bushel samples of the various
grades from their districts. These were carefully sacked and shipped
to the Chief Grain Inspector at Winnipeg, where he graded them and
forwarded them to Professor Harcourt, sealed in such a way that any
tampering with the shipment would be detected readily.

These samples were all of 1903 crop. There had been a bad snowstorm in
September of that year and much wheat had been standing in stook. The
farmers believed that the grain was not frozen or injured in any way
and that they were defrauded to some extent in the grading of their
wheat. The samples represented all grades from "No. 1 Hard" to "Feed."
They were milled with exceptional care to prevent mixing of the various