WHEAT IN WESTERN CANADA 61 



many a man who has been long resident in western Canada 

 knows as little about the workings of a terminal elevator 

 as he does about the mechanism of his own digestive sys- 

 tem. On passing a mighty building, beautifully special- 

 ized to handle grain in the most efficient and economical 

 manner, some there are who regard the pile with no more 

 than the mild curiosity with which, to use an expression of 

 Martin Luther, a cow looks at a new gate : the mystery in 

 concrete is tacitly accepted as insoluble; but others with 

 more enquiring minds actively desire to learn how it car- 

 ries on its functions, and it is for these that the following 

 pages have been written. 



A terminal elevator at Fort William or Port Arthur is 

 situated upon the lake front, so that the grain which it con- 

 tains may be passed directly into the hold of a lake 

 steamer. It is usually divided into two parts : the working 

 house and the storage bins. The working house is rectan- 

 gular in shape, much higher than it is long or broad, and 

 has numerous windows in its upper half. Here the wheat 

 is received from the box-cars, elevated, weighed, tempo- 

 rarily stored in smaller bins, and cleaned. Here, too, are 

 situated the shipping bins from which the wheat passes into 

 the freight vessels. The storage bins, on the other hand, 

 are great concrete cylinders which stand vertically upright 

 and are connected by concrete where they are in contact. 

 There may be several parallel rows of them. The space 

 between any four adjacent cylinders is not wasted but is 

 used as a smaller bin. Running over the top of each row 

 of bins is a passageway which leads from the upper part 

 of the working house. The grain is conveyed along these 

 passages and is deposited in the bins from above. Each 

 bin can be filled from the bottom to the top, and a single 

 cylinder may hold as much as 30,000 bushels of grain. 

 Under each row of bins there is a tunnel leading to the 



