NEW FURROWS 211 



Railway a terminal elevator at Fort William, capacity 

 2,500,000 bushels. A small cleaning elevator was 

 acquired at the same place and, with an eye to possible 

 developments at the Pacific Coast, a controlling interest 

 in a small terminal elevator in British Columbia was 

 purchased. At Port Arthur, on a six-hundred-foot lake 

 frontage, a new elevator has just been built with a 

 storage capacity of 600,000 bushels. 



So much for terminal facilities of this farmers' 

 pioneer trading organization. Now, what about the 

 country elevators for government control of which the 

 farmers had campaigned so vigorously in the three 

 Prairie Provinces? As we have seen, the problem had 

 been handled in Saskatchewan along very different 

 lines to the method adopted in Manitoba. In Manitoba 

 the 174 elevators, owned by the Provincial Government 

 and operated by the Provincial Elevator Commission, 

 showed a loss. It was even hinted in some quarters 

 that the Manitoba Government had no intention in the 

 first place of operating at anything but a loss. Whether 

 or not there was any ground for these irreverent 

 suspicions, the fact remained that the Government 

 elevator system in Manitoba was beginning to assume 

 the bulk of a snow-white elephant. The Government, 

 not entering the field as buyers, had tried to run the 

 elevators as a storage proposition solely. In 1910-11 

 the loss had exceeded $84,000 and the year following 

 was not much better. At last the Government said in 

 effect to the Grain Growers : 



" We've lost money on this proposition. We tried it 

 out to please you farmers, but you're still dissatisfied. 

 Try to run 'em yourselves !" 



" We'll just do that," replied the farmers, although 

 the Grain Growers' Grain Company was not enthusi- 



