MEANWHILE, IN SASKATCHEWAN

An old man on the point of death summoned his sons around him to give them some parting advice. He ordered his servants to bring in a faggot of sticks, and said to his eldest son: Break it. The son strained and strained, but with all his efforts was unable to break the bundle. The other sons also tried, but none of them was successful. Untie the faggots, said the father, and each of you take a stick. When they had done so, he called out to them: Now break; and each stick was easily broken. You see my meaning, said their father. Let affection bind you to one another. Together you are strong; separated you are weak. Aesop.

Eventful years, these through which the Grain Growers of Western Canada were passing. While the Grain Growers’ Grain Company was undertaking the initial experiments in co-operative purchasing of farm supplies, showing the Manitoba Government that farmers could run elevators satisfactorily and fighting its way forward to success in the exporting field, how were things getting along in Saskatchewan? With $52,000 and another four or five hundred in loose change tucked away in its hip pocket as the net profit of its first season’s operations the new system of co-operative elevators had struck out “on a bee line” for Success and was swinging along at a steady gait, full of confidence. The volume of business handled through these elevators the first year had been affected by the failure of the contractors to finish construction of all the elevators by the dates specified. Even so, the new company had handled 3,261,000 bushels of grain, more than half of it being special binned.

In planning to build eighty-eight new elevators in 1912 and to purchase six, thereby bringing the total to 140 co-operative elevators, the directors thought it wise to form a construction department of their own instead of relying upon outside contractors. Also it was decided to open a commission department of their own at Winnipeg, the volume of business in sight being very encouraging. This move was not made, however, because of any dissatisfaction with the Grain Growers’ Grain Company’s services as selling agent; on the other hand, although crop conditions had been perhaps the most unfavorable in the history of Saskatchewan and the grain with its diversity of grades therefore very difficult to market satisfactorily, the Board of Directors acknowledged in their annual report that the wisdom of the arrangement with the Grain Growers’ Grain Company had been proved by the satisfactory working of it.

The volume of business handled by the 137 elevators in operation the second year jumped to 12,900,000 bushels with a net profit of approximately $168,000, and it was apparent that the general acceptance of the co-operative scheme throughout the province would mean organization upon a large scale. This was emphasized during the 1913 grain season when 192 elevators were in operation and about 19,500,000 bushels of grain were hauled in to the co-operative elevators by farmers.

This rapid expansion of the Saskatchewan Co-Operative Elevator Company was entailing such an increase in staff organization that it became necessary to provide special office accommodation. Accordingly a site for a permanent building of their own was purchased in 1914 at Regina and the following year a modern, fireproof building was erected. It stands two storeys on a high basement, with provision for additional storeys, occupies a space of 9,375 square feet, has interior finish of oak and architecturally it is a matter of pride to the farmers who own it. This building has become the headquarters of the Saskatchewan Co-Operative Elevator Company and likewise the Saskatchewan Grain Growers’ Association, the offices of the latter occupying the entire top floor.

While the erection of this building afforded visible proof of financial progress the Saskatchewan farmers were warned by the directors and the general manager of the “Co-Op” that co-operation which was allowed to degenerate into mere production of dividends would but reproduce in another form the evil it was intended to destroy. The ideal of service was the vital force which must be kept in mind and the work of the Grain Growers’ Association in fostering this ideal must be encouraged.

“The Association has its great work of organization, education and agitation,” stated Charles A. Dunning, the elevator company’s manager, “and the company the equally great work of giving practical effect to the commercial and co-operative ideals of the Association, both institutions being branches of one united Farmers’ Movement having for its object the social and economic uplift of the farming industry.”

Not a little of the early success of the Saskatchewan Co-Operative Elevator Company was due to the energy and business ability which Dunning brought to bear upon its organization and development. The story of this young homesteader’s rise from the ranks of the Grain Growers is worth noting. It was back in 1902 that he first reached the West a seventeen-year-old Englishman, “green” as the grass that grew over there in Leicester. He did not know anything then about the historic meeting of pioneer grain growers which Motherwell and Dayman had assembled not long before at Indian Head. He was concerned chiefly with finding work on a farm somewhere and hired out near Yorkton, Saskatchewan, for ten dollars a month. After awhile he secured one of the Government’s 160-acre slices of homestead land and proceeded to demonstrate that oxen could haul wheat twenty-five miles to a railway if their driver sat long enough on the load.

There came a day when Dunning, filled with a new feeling of independence, started for Yorkton with a load of wheat and oats. It was along towards spring when the snow was just starting to go and at a narrow place in the trail, as luck would have it, he met a farmer returning from town with an empty sleigh. In trying to pass the other fellow Dunning’s sleigh upset. While helping to reload the farmer imparted the information that oats were selling for eight cents and all he had been able to get for his wheat was something like thirteen cents in Yorkton the day before! The young Englishman’s new feeling of “independence” slid into his shoe-packs as he stared speechless at his neighbor. Right-about went his oxen and back home he hauled his load, angry and dismayed and realizing that something was wrong with Western conditions that could bring about such treatment.

When a branch of the Grain Growers’ Association was formed at Beaverdale, not far from his homestead, it is scarcely necessary to say that young Dunning joined and took an active part in the debates. Finally he was chosen as delegate for the district at the annual Grain Growers’ convention at Prince Albert on condition that he could finance the trip on $17.50. The story is told that Dunning figured by making friends with the furnace man of one of the hotels he might be allowed to sleep in the cellar for the week he would be in Prince Albert and manage to get through on this meagre expense fund! At any rate he did find a place to lay his head and, if reports be true, actually came back with money in his pocket.

It was at this convention that the young man first attracted attention. The delegates had deadlocked over a discussion in regard to a scheme for insuring crops against hailstorms in Saskatchewan, half of them favoring it and half opposing it. The young homesteader from Beaverdale got up, ran his fingers through his pompadour and outlined the possibilities of co-operative insurance which would apply only to municipalities where a majority of the farmers favored the idea. He talked so convincingly and sanely that the convention elected him as a director of the Association and later when the co-operative elevator scheme was broached he was elected vice-president of the Association and the suggestion was made that he undertake the work of organizing the new elevator concern. Incidentally, the man who suggested this was E. A. Partridge, of Sintaluta the same Partridge who had fathered the Grain Growers’ Grain Company and who already had located T. A. Crerar, of Russell, Manitoba.

Out of Dunning’s suggestion at Prince Albert grew the Saskatchewan Hail Insurance Commission which was recommended to the Provincial Government by the Association in 1911 and brought into operation the following year. The legislation provided for municipal co-operative hail insurance on the principle of a provincial tax made operative by local option. Twenty-five or more rural municipalities having agreed to join to insure against hail the crops within the municipalities, authority would be granted to collect a special tax not to exceed four cents per acre on all land in the municipalities concerned. Administration would be in the hands of the Hail Insurance Commission, which would set the rate of the special tax. All claims and expenses would be paid from the pooled fund and all crops in the respective municipalities would be insured automatically. If damage by hail occurred insurance would be paid at the rate of five dollars per acre when crop was destroyed completely and pro rata if only partially destroyed. This co-operative insurance scheme was instituted successfully in the fall of 1912, soon spread throughout Saskatchewan and was destined eventually to carry more than twenty-five million dollars of hail insurance.

Shortly after the launching of co-operative hail insurance the discussions among the Saskatchewan farmers in regard to the co-operative purchasing of farm commodities for their own use came to a head in a request to the Provincial Government for the widening of charter powers in order that the Association might organize a co-operative trading department. In 1913 authorization to act as a marketing and purchasing agent for registered co-operative associations was granted and next year the privilege was extended to include local grain growers’ associations.

Thus the Trading Department of the Saskatchewan Grain Growers’ Association takes the form of a Central Office, or wholesale body, through which all the Locals can act collectively in dealing with miners, millers, manufacturers, etc. The Central sells to organized Locals only, they in turn selling to their members. The surplus earnings of the Central are distributed to the Locals which have invested capital in their Central, such distribution being made in proportion to the amount of business done with the Central by the respective Locals.

During its first season of co-operative purchasing the Association handled 25,000 tons of coal and in a year or two there was turned over in a season enough binder twine to bind fifty million bushels of grain about 4,500,000 pounds of twine. When the Western potato crop failed in 1915 the Association imported four and one-half million bushels of potatoes for its members, cutting the market price in some cases a dollar per bushel. Flour, apples, cord-wood, building supplies, vegetables and groceries likewise were purchased and distributed co-operatively. The savings effected by the farmers cannot be tallied alone from actual quantities of goods thus purchased through their own organization but must include a large aggregate saving due to reduction of prices by outside dealers.

Such commodities as coal and flour being best distributed through local warehouses, it is likely that eventually the Saskatchewan Co-Operative Elevator Company will take a hand in helping the Association and the Locals with the handling of co-operative supplies by furnishing the large capital investment needed to establish these warehouses.

The necessary financial strength to accomplish this is readily conceived to be available after a glance at later developments in Saskatchewan. The co-operative elevators now exceed 300. The figures for the season of 1915-16 show a total of more than 39,000,000 bushels of grain handled with an additional 4,109,000 bushels shipped over the loading platforms. Without deducting war-tax the total profit earned by the Saskatchewan company within the year was in the neighborhood of three-quarters of a million dollars. The Saskatchewan Co-Operative Elevator Company in 1916 began building its own terminal elevator at Port Arthur with a capacity of 2,500,000 bushels. By this time there were 18,000 shareholders with a subscribed capital of $3,358,900, of which $876,000 was paid up.

In these later years a remarkable development is recorded also by the Saskatchewan Grain Growers’ Association until it is by far the largest and best organized secular body in the province with over 1,300 Locals and a membership exceeding 28,000.

The Secretary of the Association J. B. Musselman, himself a farmer has done much hard work in office and looks forward to the time when the Locals will own their own breeding stock, assemble and fatten their own poultry, handle and ship their eggs, operate their own co-operative laundries and bakeries, kill and cure meat in co-operative butcher-shops for their own use have meeting places, rest rooms, town offices, libraries, moving-pictures and phonographs with which to entertain and inform themselves. To stand with a hand on the hilt of such a dream is to visualize a revolution in farm and community life such a revolution as would switch much attraction from city to country.

Whatever the future may hold in store, the fact remains that already much valuable legislation has been secured from the Government of Saskatchewan by the farmers. Perhaps in no other province are the Grain Growers in as close touch with the Government, due to the nature of the co-operative enterprises which have been launched with Government support financially. Three members of the cabinet are men who have been identified closely with the Grain Growers’ Movement. Hon. W. R. Motherwell has held portfolio as Minister of Agriculture for many years. Hon. George Langley, Minister of Municipal Affairs, helped to organize the farmers of Northern Saskatchewan in the early days. Finally in 1916 C. A. Dunning resigned as general manager of the Saskatchewan Co-Operative Elevator Company to become the youngest Provincial Treasurer in Canada; for already the Saskatchewan Government had called upon him for service on two official commissions to investigate agriculture and finance in most of the European countries and his services were valuable.

Langley has been a prominent figure in Saskatchewan affairs ever since his arrival in the country in 1903. He was forty-one years old when he came and he brought with him long training as a public speaker, a knowledge of human nature and a ready twinkle in his eye for everything humorous. According to himself, his first job was chasing sparrows from the crops. After leaving the English rural life in which he was reared, he had worked on the London docks and as a London business man. In politics he became a disciple of the Cobden-Bright school and was one of the first members of the Fabian Society under the leadership of the redoubtable Bernard Shaw. It was Langley’s habit, it is said, to talk to London crowds on side thoroughfares, standing on a soap-box and ringing a hand-bell to attract attention.

In becoming a Western Canadian farmer it did not take him long to slip around behind the problems of the farming class; for there was no greater adept at poking a cantankerous problem about with a sharp stick than the Honorable George. It was natural for this short, stout, bearded Englishman to gravitate into the first Legislature of the newly-formed Province of Saskatchewan and just as naturally he moved up to a place in the cabinet.

As one of the sponsors of the co-operative elevator scheme, by virtue of his place on the commission which recommended it, Langley has taken much interest in the co-operative activities of the farmers and on many occasions has acted as their spokesman.

With the relationships outlined it was to be expected that now and then opponents would hint that the Saskatchewan authorities had played politics with the farmers. Such charges, of course, are refuted indignantly. Knowing the widespread desire among the farmers themselves to keep free from political alliances, it would be a foolish government indeed which would fail to recognize that not to play politics was the best kind of politics that could be played.

Other leaders of sterling worth have contributed to the acknowledged success of co-operation in Saskatchewan, not forgetting John A. Maharg who came from Western Ontario in 1890 to settle near Moose Jaw. From the very beginning J. A. Maharg has worked for the cause of the farmers. A pioneer himself, he has a deep understanding of the Western Canadian farmers’ problems and his devotion to their solution has earned him universal appreciation among the Grain Growers of Saskatchewan. Year after year he has been elected to the highest office in the gift of the Association. He has been President many times of both the Saskatchewan Grain Growers’ Association and the Saskatchewan Co-Operative Elevator Company.

The Grain Growers’ Movement, then, in this Province of Saskatchewan where it had its beginning, has grown to wonderful proportions with the passing of the years. Co-operation has been a pronounced success. The old conditions have passed far back down the trail. The new order of things has been fought for by men who have known the taste of smoky tea, the sour sweat of toil upon the land, the smell of the smudge fires on a still evening and the drive of the wind on the open plain. Out of the pioneer past they have stepped forward to the larger opportunities of the times times which call for clear heads and wise vision.

For as they build for the future so will the Sons of the Movement watch and learn.