quietly. When Kennedy got back he agreed with the President's choice
of a successor.

The Company was holding its first annual meeting on July 16th and care
was taken that the unsuspecting Crerar was on hand. The Vice-president
button-holed him, explaining that he was wanted on the Board of
Directors and in spite of his protest the President himself nominated
him and he was elected promptly.

But when at the directors' meeting that night the President told the
Board that he had been looking around for a young man to take charge
and that T. A. Crerar was the man--when everybody present nodded
approval, the man from Russell was speechless. If they had asked him
to pack his grip and leave at once for Japan to interview the Mikado,
he could not have been more completely surprised.

"Why, gentlemen" he objected, "I don't know anything about managing
this company! I could not undertake it."

"What is the next order of business?" asked E. A. Partridge.

The shareholders were almost as much surprised as the newcomer himself
when the name of the new president was announced. Many of them had
never heard of T. A. Crerar. Had the young president-elect been able
to see what lay ahead of him--

But, fortunately or unfortunately, that is one thing which is denied to
every human being.

[1] See Appendix--Par. 7.

CHAPTER IX

THE GRAIN EXCHANGE AGAIN

"How many tables, Janet, are there in the Law?"

"Indeed, sir, I canna just be certain; but I think there's ane in the
foreroom, ane in the back room an' anither upstairs."
--_Scotch Wit and Humor (Howe)_.

The efforts of the elevator faction of the Winnipeg Grain and Produce
Exchange, apparently to choke to death the Grain Growers' Grain
Company, had awakened the farmers of the West to a fuller realization
of the trading company's importance to the whole farmers' movement.
The Grain Growers of the three prairie provinces had been watching
things closely and they did not propose to let matters take their
course unchallenged. A second Royal Commission had been appointed by
the Dominion Government in 1906, under the chairmanship of John Millar,
Indian Head, Saskatchewan, to probe conditions in the grain trade and
the farmers felt that certain evidence which had been taken by this
Commission at Winnipeg justified their claims that they were the
victims of a combine.

In the latter part of November (1906) the President of the Manitoba
Grain Grow