“GOLDEN STREAM OF WHEAT."

Manawatu Times, Volume XLIX, Issue 3491, 29 October 1926, Page 11

“GOLDEN STREAM OF WHEAT."

CANADIAN GRAIN FOB AMERICAN MILLS. MILLERS BITTER COMPLAINT. TORONTO. Sept 18. Canada’s wheat crop will run this year between 350,000,000 and 400,000,000 bushels, almost equalling last year’s immense crop, despite the fact that early In the season unfavourable weather conditions threatened a partial failure. Western Canada as a result is again buoyant and bids the east to be of good cheer. The fly in the ointment is the fact that as yet Canada fails to reap the full benefit of her greatest individual wealth producer. The Le Moyne, the largest grain boat in the world, which docked at Buffalo on her maiden trip, is a Canadian boat carrying Canadian grain. She unloaded at a Canadian-owned elevator, but, thereafter, the profit on her cargo was lost to Canada. An American mill ground the wheat into flour, American railways carried it to sea, American ports transferred it probably to American ships, and in the markets of Europe this American milled flour, no doubt blended with cheaper wheat from American farms, competed with a purely Canadian product Buffalo in the last few years has become the largest flour milling centre in the world. Her achievement has been built on Canada’s wheat crop. Canada does not begrudge Buffalo her new prosperity, but she cannot help but wish that this industry based on a Canadian produce could be retained for Canada. Minneapolis, formerly the United States’ greatest milling centre, is said to be panic-stricken at Buffalo’s new ascendancy. That is no consolation to Canada, even though misery loves company. Buffalo Still in the Lead.

Minneapolis has flour mills with a capacity of 500,000 barrels of flour per week. They are now operating at from 38 to 50 per cent, of capacity. Buffalo has flour mills with a capacity of 268,710 barrels per week. They are operating to capacity and it is reported that additional mills will be built soon. Thus Buffalo, with a smaller milling capacity, already leads Minneapolis. This year Buffalo will mill 10,000,000 barrels of flour, an increase of more than 400 per cent, over 20 years ago. And over half the wheat that passes through Buffalo either for milling or merely in transit is Canadian. Twenty miles across Lake Erie from Buffalo lies Port Colbourno, a small Canadian town. At the entrance to the Welland Canal, it lies at the neck of the funnel for Great Lakes traffic produced by the Niagara escarpment. On the map it occupies an ideal strategic situation for transhipment to Montreal and other Canadian ports. A few years ago one of the largest Canadian companies established great mills at Port Colbourno and not long ago this firm secured from the Soviet Government of Kussia the largest single order for flour, payable in gold, ever placed. But the Canadian company found it profitable to sublet a substantial portion of the contract to a Buffalo milling concern. Even when not a wheel was turning in the Canadian plant Buffalo mills were turning out flour for the Canadian company (milled in the United States from Canadian wheat. Thus Port Colbourno remains more or less stagnant while Buffalo forges ahead. “Milling in Bond” Device. An anomaly in the situation is the fact that the United States prohibits the import of Canadian wheat with an import duty of 42 cents a bushel. But this import duty is dodged by a provision in the Eord-ney-McCombcr tariff, which permits a drawback of 99 ,pcr cent, of the duty when the flour is exported. This "milling in bond” device is supposed to protect the American farmer from competition, and at the same time permits the American miller to profit Irom the handling of the Canadian product. The arrangement is as satisfactory to American as it is unsatisfactory to Canadian interests.