if the Commission Rule had not been suspended by the
Exchange. Other commission merchants, they knew, intended to reduce
their charges to half a cent per bushel; the elevator men, they
expected, would handle the grain for the same and in many cases for
nothing in order to persuade the farmers to ship their way. It would
be a great temptation to many farmers who had been sitting on the
fence, shouting "Sic 'em!" but never lifting a little finger to help,
and it was to be expected that those with limited vision would ship
their grain where they could make the biggest saving at the time.

Notwithstanding, the directors believed that the majority of the
farmers would not prove one cent wise and many dollars foolish by
failing to realize what the future might hold in store if the elevators
succeeded in killing off competition. Finding that it was possible to
handle oats on a smaller margin, they made the farmers a gift reduction
of half a cent per bushel on oat shipments; otherwise the former rate
was sustained.

The wheat ripened. Harvesting began. The long grain trains commenced
to drag into Winnipeg across the miles of prairie. By the middle of
September the weekly receipts of the farmers' company were running to
744 cars. In 1907 they had handled about five per cent. of the crop
and seven and one-half per cent. of the 1908 crop; of the total number
of cars so far inspected in this year of "free for all" methods, the
Grain Growers' Grain Company handled about fifteen per cent.

When the end of the season brought the figures to a final total it was
found that the farmers' organization had handled well over sixteen
million bushels of farmers' grain. This was an increase over the
preceding year of nearly nine million bushels, or 114 per cent. It was
nearly one and one-half million bushels greater than all the previous
years of operation and represented one-eighth of all the grain
inspected during the year in Western Canada.

CHAPTER XIII

THE MYSTERIOUS MR. "OBSERVER"

Observation tells me that you have a little reddish mold adhering to
your instep. . . . So much is observation. The rest is deduction.
--_Sherlock Holmes_.
_Sign of Four (Doyle)_.

In Prehistoric Days, when one man hied himself from his cave to impress
his ideas upon another the persuasion used took the form of a wallop on
the head with a stone axe. It was the age of Individual Opinion. But
as Man hewed