152 THE POSSIBILITIES 



views. The 15,000,000 to 20,000,000 bushels 

 of wheat, which are exported every year from 

 Manitoba, are grown almost entirely in farms 

 of one or two " quarter-sections " that is, of 

 160 and 320 acres. The ploughing is made in the 

 usual way, and in an immense majority of cases 

 the farmers buy the reaping and binding machines 

 (the " binders ") by associating in groups of 

 four. The thrashing machine is rented by the 

 farmer for one or two days, and the farmer carts 

 his wheat to the elevator with his own horses, 

 either to sell it immediately, or to keep it at the 

 elevator if he is in no immediate need of money 

 and hopes to get a higher price in one month or 

 two. In short, in Manitoba one is especially 

 struck with the fact that, even under a system 

 of keen competition, the middle-size farm has 

 completely beaten the old mammoth farm, 

 and that it is not manufacturing wheat on a 

 grand scale which pays best. It is also most in- 

 teresting to note that thousands and thousands 

 of farmers produce mountains of wheat in the 

 Canadian province of Toronto and in the Eastern 

 States, although the land is not prairie-land at 

 all, and the farms are, as a rule, small. 



The force of " American competition " is thus 

 not in the possibility of having hundreds of acres 

 of wheat in one block. It lies in the ownership 

 of the land, in a system of culture which is ap- 



