WINNIPEG WHEAT

Greymouth Evening Star, 18 April 1938, Page 12

WINNIPEG WHEAT

“FUNNEL” OF WEST CANADA. The Winnipeg Wheat Pit is called the funnel of the grain-growing dis trict of Western Canada, says Muriel Harris in the “Manchester Guardian.” Ah you go west across the continent through Atlantic Time. Eastern Time. Central Time, on to Mountain Time and the Pacific, you will see stretched across the wide prairie country, like sentinels, the tall, crimson elevators which punctuate the vast fields of the world’s best wheat. About, halfway across North America, west enough of the Great Lakes to be essentially western, Winnipeg bakes in the hot summer sun. and in winter gets the wind straight from the Pole, which oh occasions will send the thermometer down to many degrees below zero. A thin line of rail links infinite horizons, and along the rail the elevators standguard, eventually sending their contents, through the funnel which is Winnipeg. The Wheat Pit really is a. pit. That is to say, it is an octagon of steps built, up on the floor of the Grain Exchange, up and down which men bargain and chaffer and dispose of tens of thousands of bushels of wheat on getting perhaps a “flash” from Liverpool or a telephone message from Chicago. Chicago, Minneapolis. Duluth, at the head of the Great Lakes, are names to conjure with, and quotations from them are written up high on the wall of the Wheat Pit by men sitting there on a raised platform with telephone receivers to their ears. THE BUYING. The Wheat Pit is not an auction room. It. is a meeting-place where buyers and sellers can come together. A man ' mounts the steps shouting “Five-eighths for me; five-eighths for me.” Thirty-five thousand bushels of No. 1 Northern are wanted. For a moment or two there is an indescribable din. Men surge and push. They crook their little finger, hold up a thumb and finger, turn their hands up or down—all of which, together with the shouting, forms the language of the Wheat Pit. The din will die down as quickly as it rose. Some of the protagonists retire to dominoes, from the peaceful game of which they may at. any time be rudely aroused. Others, not daring to miss a second, which make make a difference of hundreds of dollars, hover round the edge of the pit waiting tensely for the propitious moment.

Aloft, in a pulpit, sits a recorder of what seems confusion worse confounded. Actually there are two pits, the other being for coarse grains, and so there are two pulpits. In the background a man is rapidly making a stencil of events and quotations, which will be distributed to subscribers. The Press is here recording quotations. Over and above the noise comes a bray from a megaphone telling Smith to go to No. 5. This means No. 5 of a long row of telephone booths, by means of which operators are kept in touch with everywhere where grain is of interest.

HEAT INTENSE. Now and again a man will bend his face down to a fountain of water, for the heat is intense and there may he as much as 110 degrees difference between the cold outside and the heat within. Everybody uses Christian names. The boss is “Charlie,” equally with the telephone operator. What is of the greatest interest is that the whole proceeding depends upon keeping faith in the acutest form. There is only one man’s word to confirm a bargain in which thousands of dollars may be involved. Should he repudiate what he has said in all the shouting there is nothing to be done about it. Only, of course, the faintest breath of suspicion as to his good faith is enough to blast a man’s career, and honesty is anything but an academic conception.

The elevators, which are almost the insignia of the prairie of North America], handle all but a small proportion of the total grain. Country elevators handle 95 per cent, of the grain shipped from' country points. In 1928 over 500,000,000 bushels were dealt with. This implies an intricate system of-grading and transport, and it is at the Grain Exchange that this is done. The Grain Exchange, in which the Wheat Pit is situated, also tries to deal with the relations between the producer, the buyer, and the seller. Each has his grievances. The farmer thinks of the Wheat Pit as composed of thieves and villains, while the Wheat Pit is exasperated at the farmer, who sits back "in his bald-headed i prairies,” refusing to realise that it is | Impossible to.seell low grade stuff, and impossible to sell low-grade stuff, and stuff As good. |

Much' is done to educate the farmers Nowadays. They get radio reports

lour times a day. They get weather i eports daily. The Government has an elaborate system of grading at the Grain Exchange, so that instead of having to rely upon the F.A.Q. (“fair average quality”) system of India or Argentina, the grading system here goes by weight, moisture, protein content, and so forth. Every carload is thus graded and a sample kept in a library of tin boxes for a month, to give time for protests in case any should be made. Eventually the sample are sold as fodder, apart from the tithe or so which goes to the pigeons who wait outside the windows and for whom provision is made even on holidays. One of the domestic problems here is curious. It is not that of mice, which are kept in hand by the official cats, but of moths, for which mothballs have to be freely used.