218 DEEP FURROWS 



Finally, when words failed them and they rested their 

 case, the President spoke briefly. 



In the annual address, which he had delivered that 

 morning, no attempt had been made to deny the 

 inadequacy of the Company's office organization to cope 

 with the exceptional crop conditions of 1911 and 1912. 

 The latter season particularly had been very trying 

 owing to the lateness of the crop and the wet harvesting 

 conditions. Twenty-five per cent, of the grain, which 

 started for market a month late, was tough, damp or 

 wet. The arrival of snow had prevented hundreds of 

 thousands of acres from being threshed and, on top of 

 it all, railway traffic had become congested so that cars 

 of grain got lost for weeks and even months and there 

 were long delays in getting the outturns of cars after 

 they were unloaded. Money was scarce and farmers 

 who were being pressed for liabilities to merchants, 

 banks and machinery companies found it hard to get 

 cars ; naturally, once they had shipped, they were in no 

 mood for further delays. 



Owing to the condition of the grain, too, the grading 

 was so uncertain that exceptional care had been neces- 

 sary in accepting bank drafts on carloads of grain for 

 amounts nearly double their possible value under the 

 unusual current crop conditions. Even with the 

 greatest care the Company found that in many 

 instances they had given greater advances than were 

 realized when the cars were sold. The refusal of drafts, 

 passed by some local banks for amounts the managers 

 should have known could not be met, led to many hard 

 things being said against the farmers' agency. 



Under these conditions it was only to be expected 

 that the work in the office would become congested 

 badly for weeks at a stretch. Double the amount of 



