138 DEEP FURROWS 



reduced total crop yield and the keenest competition 

 from rival grain interests. 



It had been apparent to the directors that if the 

 business grew as conditions seemed to warrant it doing, 

 it would require to be highly organized. Bit by bit the 

 service to the farmer was being widened. For instance, 

 the nucleus of a Claims Department had been estab- 

 lished during the year; for under the laws governing 

 the Canadian railway companies the latter were 

 required to deliver to terminal elevators the amount of 

 grain a farmer loaded into a car and to leave the car in 

 a suitable condition to receive grain. The official 

 weights at the terminal were unquestioned and if a 

 farmer could furnish reasonable evidence of the 

 quantity of grain he had loaded, any leakage in transit 

 would furnish a claim case against the railway. During 

 six months the farmers' company had collected for its 

 shippers nearly two thousand dollars in such claims, a 

 beginning sufficient to illustrate that the Company was 

 destined to serve the farmers in many practical ways 

 if they would only stand behind it. 



IF the farmers would stand behind it! But would 

 they? It was a question which was forever popping up 

 to obscure the future. <Many tongues were busy with 

 innppflQ to belittle what the farmers had accomplished 

 already and to befog their efforts to advance still 

 farther^ At every shipping point in the West indus- 

 trious little mallets were knocking away on the 

 Xylophone of Doubt, all playing the same tune : " Just 

 Kiss Yourself Good-Bye !" No farmers' business organ- 

 ization ever had been a success in the past and none ever 

 could be. This new trading venture was going to go off 

 with a loud bang one of these fine days and every 

 farmer who had shipped grain to it would stand a 



