A KNOCK ON THE DOOR

Every man is worth just as much as the things are worth about which he is concerned. Marcus Aurelius.

That big shipment to Buffalo, along with several others which were placed in the East with the market recovering, relieved the situation greatly. Also, the Scottish Co-Operative Wholesale Society’s Winnipeg office decided to stand by the farmers’ co-operative marketing venture and risked disapproval to buy some of the young company’s wheat; not only that, but the farmers’ company was allowed the regular commission of one cent per bushel on the purchase and the cheque paid in to the bank amounted to $58,298. This friendly co-operation the farmers were not quick to forget and they still speak of it with gratitude.

It began to look as if the struggling farmers’ agency might worry through the winter after all. The strain of the past few months had told upon the men at the head of the young organization and especially upon the provisional President, who felt keenly the responsibilities of his office. Of a sensitive, high-strung temperament, E. A. Partridge suffered reaction to such a degree that at times he became almost despondent.

He began to talk of resigning. He felt that he had done quite a lot in getting things under way and that the hard fight which the farmers would have to wage before the trading company was established permanently would be carried on more successfully by a younger man. So frequently had his motives been questioned by suspicious farmers at organization meetings that he thought it would be better for the company if he occupied a less prominent place in the conduct of its affairs. The idea seemed to be prevalent that the organizers were enthusiastic for direct financial reasons. “Those fellows are talking for what they are going to get out of it,” was an open accusation at times a misconception so unjust that on several occasions Partridge had refuted it by pledging to resign from the presidency as soon as the company was on its feet.

“You men keep saying how much I’ve got out of this,” he reproved in disheartened tones. “Gentlemen, I’ll admit that I’ve got a little silver out of this. But it isn’t in my pocket; it’s in my hair!”

Partridge had no respect for a “quitter,” however. He did not propose to take it easy until the farmers’ agency did get into proper running order. Although his associates tried to dissuade him altogether from the course he had planned, the best he would promise was to remain at his post until the first annual meeting.

Immediately preceding the annual convention of the Manitoba Grain Growers’ Association at Brandon in February a general meeting of Grain Growers’ Grain Company shareholders was held with about two hundred represented. Until now the company had been operating under a provisional directorate only and it was the purpose of the meeting to complete organization. Since opening for business the shareholders had practically doubled in number and over 1,500,000 bushels of farmers’ grain had been handled by their own agency, its ability to dispose of wheat at good figures being demonstrated in spite of deprivation of trading privileges on the Exchange. Putting a conservative estimate upon the holdings of the farmers’ venture into co-operative marketing, its paid-up capital remained intact, its organization expenses paid including the membership on the Grain Exchange and there still was left a respectable margin of profit. To this showing the shareholders responded by electing the provisional directorate as directors for the balance of the year, adding two to their number, while the same officers were left in charge.

In connection with the directorate it was pointed out that it might be better to have the trading company’s directorate independent of the Association’s directorate. The suggestion came from a tall young man who had a habit of thinking before he spoke and it was but one of many practical ideas which he had thrown out at the meeting.

“That young chap, Crerar, of Russell makings of an able man there, Ed,” commented the re-elected Vice-president later. “Know anything about him?”

“I know his father better than I do him,” nodded the President thoughtfully. “I met his father in the old Patron movement years ago. I’ve got a great respect for his attitude of mind towards moral and economic questions. I like that young man’s views, Kennedy; he seems to have a grasp of what this movement could accomplish of the aims that might be served beyond the commercial side of it. In short, he seems to be somewhat of a student of economics and he has the education used to be a school-teacher, I believe.”

“Remember when I went up to Russell, during their Fair in October, to tell them what the Exchange was trying to do to us? Well, he was at the meeting and came over to my room at the hotel afterward,” remarked Kennedy. “That’s how interested he was. We had quite a talk over the whole situation. Told me he had an arrangement to buy grain for Graves & Reilly, besides running the Farmers’ Elevator at Russell, and he offered to ship us all the grain that wasn’t consigned to his firm. We’ve got quite a few carloads from him during the season.”

“If there were only a few more elevator operators like him!” sighed Partridge. “When I was up there last July, selling stock, only eight men turned out,” he recalled. “Crerar was one of them. I sold four shares. Crerar bought one. Say, he’d be a good man to have on the next directorate. How would it be if I wrote him a letter about it?”

But “Alex.” Crerar laid that letter aside and promptly forgot it; he did not take it seriously enough to answer it. If there was anything he could do to help along a thing in which he believed as thoroughly as he believed in the grain growers’ movement and the farmers’ agency he was more than willing to do it; but executive offices, he felt, were for older and more experienced men than he.

As manager of an elevator in his home town, as buyer for a grain firm and as a farmer himself he had had opportunities for studying the situation from many angles. From the first he had followed the organization of the farmers with much interest and sympathy. He could not forget his own early experiences in marketing grain when the elevators offered him fifty-nine cents per bushel, nineteen cents under the price at the terminal at the time. The freight rate on his N Northern wheat he knew to be only nine cents per bushel and when he was docked a bushel and a half to a load of fifty bushels on top of it all he had been aroused to protest.

A protest from young Crerar was no mild and bashful affair, either. It was big-fisted with vigor. But when, with characteristic spirit, he had pointed out the injustice of the price offered and the dockage taken the elevator man, quite calmly, had told him to go to the devil!

“There’s no use going to the other elevators, for you’re all alike,” said young Crerar hotly.

“Then take your damned grain home again!” grinned the elevator operator insolently.

So the young farmer was compelled to sell his first wheat for what he could get. He was prepared to pay three cents per bushel on the spread, that being a reasonable charge; but although plenty of cars were available at the time, the spread cost him ten cents, a direct loss of seven cents per bushel. Besides this he was forced to see between twenty-five and thirty bushels out of every thousand appropriated for dockage, no matter how clean the wheat might be. That was in 1902.

It was hard to forget that kind of treatment. And when, later on, young Crerar accepted an offer of $75 per month to manage a Farmers’ Elevator at Russell he bore his own experience in mind and extended every possible consideration to the farmers who came to him. The elevator company, as a company, did not buy grain; but as representative of Graves & Reilly, a Winnipeg firm, he bought odd lots and for this service received an extra fifty dollars per month.

Financially, it was better than teaching school. He had made ten dollars the first summer he taught school and to earn it he had walked three miles and a half each morning after milking the cows at home, arriving at the school soaking wet with dew from wading in the long prairie grass. And even at that, the trustees had wanted a “cheaper” teacher! A woman, they thought, might do it cheaper.

The young schoolmaster objected so earnestly, however, that the argument was dropped. He needed this money to assist in a plan for attending the Collegiate at Portage la Prairie. He taught the school so well that after studying Latin at Manitoba College in 1899, the trustees were glad to get him back the following year at a salary of $35 per month.

But milking cows at home night and morning and teaching school in between was not an exciting life at best for a young fellow ambitious to go farming. So at last he acquired a quarter-section of Hudson Bay Company land near Russell and took to “baching it” in a little frame shack.

In the fall some lumber was required for buildings and it so happened that along came an old chap with a proposition to put in a portable sawmill on a timber limit up in the Riding Mountains nearby. The old man meant business alright; he had the engine within ten miles of its destination before he was overtaken and the whole machine seized for debt. It looked as if the thousands of logs which the residents of the district had taken out for the expected mill had been piled up to no purpose. Crerar, however, succeeded in making a deal for the engine and, with a couple of partners, began sawing up logs. The little sawmill proved so useful that he ran it for four winters. When finally it was burned down no attempt was made to rebuild. Its owner was entering wider fields of activity.

After meeting Partridge and Kennedy his interest in the affairs of the farmers’ little trading concern was quickened. He was much impressed with the fact that here were men so devoted to an idea so profound in their belief that it was the right idea that its advancement was their first and only thought at all times. Alex. Crerar liked that. If a thing were worth attempting at all, it was worth every concentration of effort. What these men were trying to accomplish appealed to him as a big thing, a bigger thing than most of the farmers yet realized, and it deserved all the help he could give it. The little agency was in the thick of a fight against tremendous odds and that, too, had its appeal; for to a natural born fighter the odds meant merely a bigger fight, a bigger triumph.

Accordingly, the young man lost no opportunity to boost things along. He was able to consign many carloads of grain in a season. If an idea occurred to him that he thought might be of service he sat down and wrote a letter, offering the suggestion on the chance that it might prove useful to the Executive. He did everything he could to build up the Company’s business in the Russell district and when he returned home from the shareholders’ organization meeting he kept right on sending in business, offering helpful suggestions and saying a good word when possible.

As the weeks went by and it became more apparent that they would wind up their first year’s business satisfactorily, E. A. Partridge decided definitely that he would not accept another term as President. There were several good men available to succeed him; but he could not get it out of his head that the one man for the tasks ahead was the young fellow up at Russell. When he went there in June to speak at a Grain Growers’ picnic he drew Crerar aside for an hour’s chat, found out why he had not answered the letter suggesting that he play a more active part, and liked him all the better for his modesty.

Without saying anything of what he had in mind he returned to Winnipeg and sent the Vice-President to Russell to size up the situation quietly. When Kennedy got back he agreed with the President’s choice of a successor.

The Company was holding its first annual meeting on July 16th and care was taken that the unsuspecting Crerar was on hand. The Vice-president button-holed him, explaining that he was wanted on the Board of Directors and in spite of his protest the President himself nominated him and he was elected promptly.

But when at the directors’ meeting that night the President told the Board that he had been looking around for a young man to take charge and that T. A. Crerar was the man when everybody present nodded approval, the man from Russell was speechless. If they had asked him to pack his grip and leave at once for Japan to interview the Mikado, he could not have been more completely surprised.

“Why, gentlemen” he objected, “I don’t know anything about managing this company! I could not undertake it.”

“What is the next order of business?” asked E. A. Partridge.

The shareholders were almost as much surprised as the newcomer himself when the name of the new president was announced. Many of them had never heard of T. A. Crerar. Had the young president-elect been able to see what lay ahead of him

But, fortunately or unfortunately, that is one thing which is denied to every human being.