COOPERATIVE GRAIN MARKETING. 3 
simply because the grain eventually had to move through them. The 
result of their efforts was the Manitoba Grain Act, which later 
became the Canada Grain Act. This act is very comprehensive, and 
it specifically prescribes how nearly every phase of the business of 
grain marketing in Canada shall be carried on. Among its many 
provisions are regulations relating to the distribution of cars and 
the establishment by railroad companies of loading platforms for 
the convenience of individual shippers. There is also provided a 
licensing sj^stem for country elevators, commission merchants, termi- 
nal elevators and track buyers. Under this act comes also the author- 
ity for and the establishment and administration of grades, as well 
as weighing and inspection. The law is administered by a commis- 
sion appointed by the Governor in Council of Canada. 
It was not until extensive investigations by the Government had 
been made of the entire grain-marketing system at the instance of 
the grain growers' associations of some of the Provinces, and the 
passage of the Manitoba Grain Act, that the grain growers in Canada 
engaged in cooperative marketing, and then they entered the termi- 
nal markets without first establishing country elevators. Their first 
activity was the establishment of the Grain Growers' Grain Co., 
Ltd., at Winnipeg, now the United Grain Growers, Ltd. During 
the first years of its existence this company conducted a purely 
commission business, receiving shipments of grain direct from mem- 
ber growers. It will be seen, therefore, that the farmers of Canada 
went into the terminal markets even before they established elevators 
at the country railroad stations, whereas in the United States farmers' 
elevators were first established locally. 
Just why the grain growers in western Canada should begin their 
actual marketing activities in the terminal markets, while in the 
United States the farmers' elevator movement originated with the 
establishment of country elevators, may not at first appear clear. 
However, it must be remembered that in Canada the efforts of the 
grain growers to market cooperatively began while the country was 
still new and sparsely settled. Capital with which to erect elevators 
at the country points was not readily available. Most of the growers 
had 'scarcely enough capital to carry on the business of growing 
wheat, and in that thinly populated section a capital subscription 
sufficient to erect a modern grain elevator at each shipping point 
would have amounted to a considerable per capita cost. The wheat 
farms were large; farm storage was not so adequately provided as 
it was in Iowa, Illinois, and other Middle Western States when the 
movement started there, and consequently the establishment of load- 
ing platforms, and the possibility of shipping grain direct, without 
having it pass through the hands of the country dealers, seemed to 
the growers the most logical way out of their difficulties. 
