ly because the present system allows them to
charge any price they like. The men who know their business will
remain. Those who are objecting to us are objecting to the very thing
they have been doing themselves for fifty years--organizing."

"We want to farm, not to go into business," remarked H. W. Wood,
President of the United Farmers of Alberta. "The local merchant gives
us a local distribution service, a service which has to be given. We
cannot destroy one single legitimate interest. But if there are four
or five men living by giving a service that one man should give in a
community and get just a living--that is what we are going to correct
and we are absolutely entitled to do so. The selfishness we are
accused of the accusers have practiced right along and these very
things make it necessary for us to organize for self-protection. If
they will co-operate with us to put their business on a legitimate
basis we are willing to quit trying to do this business ourselves."

That is straight talk, surely. It is a challenge to the business men
to meet the farmers half way for a better understanding. No problem
ever was solved by extremists on either side. Enmity and suspicion
must be submerged by sane discussion and mutual concessions bring about
the beginnings of closer unity.

CHAPTER XXII

THE WIDTH OF THE FIELD

Our times are in His hand
Who saith, "A whole I planned,
Youth shows but half; trust
God; see all, nor be afraid."
--_Robert Browning._

The Grain Growers' Movement in Western Canada now had attained
potential proportions. In Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Alberta the
Provincial Associations with their many Locals were in a flourishing
condition. Each province was headquarters for a powerful farmers'
trading organization to market grain and provide co-operative supplies.
Unlike the Saskatchewan Co-Operative Elevator Company and the Alberta
Farmers' Co-Operative Elevator Company, however, the pioneer business
organization of the Grain Growers--the Grain Growers' Grain
Company--was not provincial in scope but had a large number of
shareholders in each of the three Prairie Provinces, in British
Columbia and Ontario. Altogether, in 1916 the farmers owned and
operated over 500 country elevators as well as terminal elevators to a
capacity of three million bushels. The farmer shareholders in the
three business concerns numbered more than 45,000. During 1916 the
farmers