he had delivered that morning, no attempt
had been made to deny the inadequacy of the Company's office
organization to cope with the exceptional crop conditions of 1911 and
1912. The latter season particularly had been very trying owing to the
lateness of the crop and the wet harvesting conditions. Twenty-five
per cent. of the grain, which started for market a month late, was
tough, damp or wet. The arrival of snow had prevented hundreds of
thousands of acres from being threshed and, on top of it all, railway
traffic had become congested so that cars of grain got lost for weeks
and even months and there were long delays in getting the outturns of
cars after they were unloaded. Money was scarce and farmers who were
being pressed for liabilities to merchants, banks and machinery
companies found it hard to get cars; naturally, once they had shipped,
they were in no mood for further delays.

Owing to the condition of the grain, too, the grading was so uncertain
that exceptional care had been necessary in accepting bank drafts on
carloads of grain for amounts nearly double their possible value under
the unusual current crop conditions. Even with the greatest care the
Company found that in many instances they had given greater advances
than were realized when the cars were sold. The refusal of drafts,
passed by some local banks for amounts the managers should have known
could not be met, led to many hard things being said against the
farmers' agency.

Under these conditions it was only to be expected that the work in the
office would become congested badly for weeks at a stretch. Double the
amount of work was entailed in handling a given quantity of grain,
compared to the season before. The Company was handicapped for office
space also and errors were bound to occur in a business involving so
much detail that a simple mistake might lead to infinite trouble.
Correspondence had not been answered as promptly as it should have
been, the necessary information regarding shipments being unavailable.

All of these things had been met frankly in the President's annual
address and now when he brought the day's animated debate to a close he
added merely a word or two regarding the strong financial position to
which the farmers' pioneer trading organization had won its way in the
commercial world. He pointed out the future that lay before it. Upon
personal attacks he did not comment at all.

Immediately a unanimous vote of