14 BULLETIN 937, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



recently been provided for in Canada, the great bulk of the grain 

 business in the past has been conducted on the basis of Government 

 inspection and grade. Sales are made by grade and without ex- 

 amination of .samples. Grain bought in the country may be sold 

 either in transit before inspection, after inspection but before being 

 unloaded, or after being unloaded and placed in public storage. A 

 large share of all the grain marketed in Canada is understood to be 

 sold on basis in store at Port Arthur or Fort William. In actual 

 practice one of the farmers' companies operating public terminal 

 elevators may consign grain which it has bought at country stations 

 to its own terminal elevators at Port Arthur or Fort William but 

 before the car is unloaded the grain is sold to shipper or exporter. 

 If in the meantime the car is not diverted or ordered to some other 

 elevator, the farmers' company will in natural course receive this 

 storage patronage. In addition to patronage secured in this way 

 there is more or less opportunity to exchange warehouse receipts with 

 other companies operating terminal elevators. 



For example, the Saskatchewan Cooperative Elevator Co. is not 

 allowed to own any of the grain which it has in its public elevators, 

 but it may own grain stored in the public elevators operated by the 

 United Grain Growers or any other company. It is a simple matter 

 to transfer title to grain held in one elevator for title to grain held 

 in another elevator by the indorsement of warehouse receipts. In this 

 manner one public elevator may give storage patronage to another 

 elevator in return for similar storage patronage received. The prac- 

 tical results are the same as if a public terminal elevator were allowed 

 to have custody of the grain owned by it, with this exception, that 

 there is less temptation to substitute or to specially select grain taken 

 out of storage for delivery on contracts in which the company is di- 

 rectly interested. Under the present system of elevator supervision, 

 however, there would be very little opportunity for practices of this 

 kind. 



Since public elevators are required to account for every bushel of 

 grain received by them and are made responsible for shortages, they 

 have likewise been deemed to be entitled to overages. Grain received 

 into these elevators has been government-inspected and warehouse 

 receipts are issued for the net number of bushels after deducting 

 dockage. No matter how accurate may be the method of ascertain- 

 ing the percentage of dockage in any one lot, discrepancies in clean- 

 ing are bound to occur. A very small percentage variation in dock- 

 age amounts to considerable in handling several million bushels. 

 While every effort is made to keep overages down to a minimum 

 without resulting in shortages and while shortages do occur some- 

 times, nevertheless the records indicate that overages are not un- 

 common and a possible additional revenue is had from this source. 



