"WHEAT IN WESTERN CANADA 55 



use the loading platform and others do not. Naturally, 

 the elevator owners look upon loading platforms with dis- 

 favor, and railway operators regard them as tending to 

 delay the cars unduly. Their popularity with the farm- 

 ers, however, is shown by the fact that their number has 

 now been increased to upwards of 1,600 and that about 30 

 per cent, of the grain shipped from the country points is 

 loaded from them.-^* 



VIII. The Old Flat Warehouse 



Elevators first came into existence about the year 1880. 

 Before this time the only receptacles for wheat along the 

 railway line were small flat warehouses built by grain 

 dealers. Farmers brought their wheat to these ware- 

 houses in sacks and sold it to the dealers, who shipped it 

 in car lots to Winnipeg for sale. The flat warehouse was 

 divided into two by a passageway running across the 

 middle from the front to the rear, and each end was sub- 

 divided into bins. The bottom of the bins was on a level 

 with the ground. The machinery consisted of a scale in 

 the passageway, a trolley for pulling the sacks, and a 

 small four-wheeled grain cart for handling the wheat in 

 bulk. The cart was propelled by hand along a light rail 

 which ran through the passageway to the railway track. 

 When a dealer wished to ship his grain away, he pulled or 

 pushed it to a railway car in his grain cart. The handling 

 of grain is much more efficiently done by an elevator than 

 by the old flat warehouse, and on this account the latter has 

 fallen into disuse.*" 



i» Cf. R. Magill, Grain Inspection in Canada, Department of Trade 

 and Commerce, Ottawa, 1914, pp. 11-14. 

 2aiUd., p. 11. 



