226 DEEP FURROWS 



this young homesteader's rise from the ranks of the 

 Grain Growers is worth noting. It was back in 1902 

 that he first reached the West a seventeen-year-old 

 Englishman, " green " as the grass that grew over there 

 in Leicester. He did not know anything then about the 

 historic meeting of pioneer grain growers which 

 Motherwell and Dayman had assembled not long before 

 at Indian Head. He was concerned chiefly with finding 

 work on a farm somewhere and hired out near Yorkton, 

 Saskatchewan, for ten dollars a month. After awhile 

 he secured one of the Government's 160-acre slices of 

 homestead land and proceeded to demonstrate that 

 oxen could haul wheat twenty-five miles to a railway if 

 their driver sat long enough on the load. 



There came a day when Dunning, filled with a new 

 feeling of independence, started for Yorkton with a 

 load of wheat and oats. It was along towards spring 

 when the snow was just starting to go and at a narrow 

 place in the trail, as luck would have it, he met a 

 farmer returning from town with an empty sleigh. In 

 trying to pass the other fellow Dunning's sleigh upset. 

 While helping to reload the farmer imparted the infor- 

 mation that oats were selling for eight cents and all 

 he had been able to get for his wheat was something 

 like thirteen cents in Yorkton the day before! The 

 young Englishman's new feeling of " independence " 

 slid into his shoe-packs as he stared speechless at his 

 neighbor. Kight-about went his oxen and back home 

 he hauled his load, angry and dismayed and realizing 

 that something was wrong with Western conditions 

 that could bring about such treatment. 



When a branch of the Grain Growers' Association 

 was formed at Beaverdale, not far from his homestead, 

 it is scarcely necessary to say that young Dunning 



