a great
increase in car supply and a more efficient and cheaper system of
transportation. Again, the use of loading-platforms had introduced
real competition with the elevators, almost fifteen million bushels of
the 1908-09 crop in Western Canada having been shipped direct by the
farmers. The development of co-operation among the farmers through the
Grain Growers' Associations had led to much advantageous legislation,
while Farmers' Elevators and Public Weigh Scales had had a salutary
effect at many shipping points. The organization of the Grain Growers'
Grain Company as a farmers' own selling agency likewise had exerted a
wide influence for good all over the West, enabling the farmers to
obtain first-hand information about existing methods of dealing in
grain. Finally, the protection afforded by the Manitoba Grain Act was
not to be questioned; for while it was impossible to draft any Act
which would prevent all the abuses alleged, it had been the means of
providing many weapons of defence for the farmer and unfamiliarity with
these provisions by individual farmers was scarcely to be blamed upon
the Act itself.

The improvement in conditions, compared with earlier years, was
recognized by most of the farmers appearing before the commission and
many of them had no personal complaint to make in regard to weights,
grades or prices. They were advocates of provincial ownership not so
much on their own behalf as upon behalf of settlers in newer districts.
The commission, therefore, while not saying that there were no cases of
sharp practice or no grounds for dissatisfaction, were impressed by the
fact that however powerless farmers had been in earlier days they were
now in a very different position. The strong feeling which many
farmers had against the line elevator companies was based upon
experiences of rank injustice and bitter recollections of the past; for
this the elevator people could blame nobody but themselves. But the
factors enumerated undoubtedly had improved the situation from the
farmers' standpoint and it only remained to strengthen these factors to
give the farmer complete control in the matter of initial storage.

The commission were unanimous in recommending co-operative organization
of the farmers as the probable solution of the situation in
Saskatchewan. They suggested the enactment of special legislation to
provide for the financing of the undertaking by the farmers themselves,
assisted by a gov