98 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 



ference of opinion even among experienced graders. If, 

 for instance, wheat which has graded No. 5 Wheat is a 

 very good sample of wheat in that grade and is evidently 

 very near the line separating No. 4 Wheat from No. 5, 

 on reinspection it may happen that another inspector may 

 put it in No. 4 Wheat; but this second inspector will 

 doubtless consider it to be only a very poor sample of 

 this higher grade and only just worthy to be included 

 in it. '/"Of the appeals made, only about one in ten re- 

 sult in any change being effected. Since owners of grain 

 do not usually ask for reinspection of samples which are 

 very low in their grades and which might on reinspection 

 be put down a grade, the reinspections that are called for, 

 if they result in a change at all, usually, but not always, 

 result in a rise of grade and not a fall. 



XX. Weighing Wheat 



It is just as important for a shipper of wheat to obtain 

 accurate weights as it is to obtain accurate grades, for 

 weighing, equally with grading, affects the total amount 

 of money he will receive for his grain. 



Weighing of grain may seem to be a very simple me- 

 chanical process ; but, for various reasons, it is difficult 

 to carry out with uniform success in western Canada. In 

 the first place, grain is received into upwards of 3,000 

 country elevators, and it is weighed at every elevator; in 

 the second place, the men who weigh the grain at the ele- 

 vators are employees of the elevator companies and not of 

 the State ; and, in the third place, at the terminal elevators 

 the grain is weighed after it goes into the elevator and not 

 before. 



In the terminal elevators, the work of the elevator 

 weighman is supervised by a Government employee; but, 



