merely a new type of Business Farmer, trained to think on his feet,
a student of economics.

To gather and verify the facts here recorded has required two years.
During that time the writer has listened to earnest farmers in prairie
shacks, pioneers and newcomers, leaders and followers, and has watched
these farmers at work in their "Farmers' Parliaments" where they assemble
annually by the thousands. It is impossible thus to meet and know these
men while examining the facts of their accomplishments without being
impressed by the tremendous potentialities that underlie their efforts.

Almost the first discovery is that the organized farmers have ideals
beyond material advantage and that these ideals are national in scope,
therefore involving responsibilities. Undeterred by these, the farmers
are eager to push on to further achievements. Their hope for these
ideals lies in the success of their business undertakings and it is
because that success is the spinal column of the whole movement that it
occupies such a prominent place in this historical outline.

Not all the Grain Growers are men of vision, it must be admitted. Many
have joined the movement for what they can get out of it. In all great
aggregations of human beings it is quite possible to discover the full
gamut of human failings. But loose threads sticking to a piece of cloth
are no part of its warp and woof. It is the thinking Grain Grower who
must be reckoned with and he is in the majority; the others are being
educated.

If there is doubt as to the sincerity of the organized farmers, why did
their pioneer business agency spend its substance in educational
directions instead of solely along the straight commercial lines of the
concerns with which it was in competition? The very mould into which it
poured its energies shaped special difficulties, generated special
antagonisms and every possible obstruction to its progress. Its cash
grants to the Associations in the West, to the official organ of the
movement, even to the Ontario farmers, run over the
hundred-thousand-dollar mark.

Or, take the case of the Grain Growers at Virden, Manitoba, who proposed
to bring into the district a large shipment of binder twine to supply
their members. When the local merchant who had been handling this
necessity learned of the plan he raised his voice, thus:

"If you fellows are going to do that then I go out of binder twine this
season. I won't handle a pound