The Timaru Herald. TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 1930. CANADIAN WHEAT POOL.

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXV, Issue 18502, 25 February 1930, Page 8

The Timaru Herald. TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 1930. CANADIAN WHEAT POOL.

Anyone familiar with the history of the foun'daiion and development of the Canadian Grain Pool will not be the least surprised to learn that a leading London wheat trader in a communication with 'The Daily Telegraph describes the Pool as “the greatest hold-up since Joseph.” The wheat position, we are informed is a difficult one. “There are all sorts of rumours current on both sides of the Atlantic, about heavy purchases of Manitoba wheat for shipment to England in the early spring,” says the fortnightly commercial summary from London,

“but no one can confirm this. If correct, these sales may be taken as an indication that the Canadian Grain Pool has changed its policy' of holding up wheat.” Since the early inception of the movement designed to assist the wheatgrowers of the prairie provinces of Canada, every conceivable method has been resorted to in an attempt to discredit the scheme. “As might be expected,” writes Dr Harold S. I’atton, Professor of Economics at Mecliigan State College, in an article in “Pacific Affairs,” “the notable position of the Canadian Grain Pool has not been attained without intense opposition from interested people, who have sought every opportunity to discredit the Pool, and to minimise its achievements. Questionable statistical comparisons have been circulated in the endeavour to prove that the prices jjaid to Pool members have been below the average closing price on the Winnipeg open market. Every day at noon the North-Western Grain Dealers’ Association “goes on the air" with market facts and anti-Pool propaganda in an effort to counteract the radio broadcasts emanating from the publicity departments of the three provincial pools. At country shipping points line elevator operators naturally have been active in seeking to influence surrounding farmers against signing Pool contracts, and at times tempting members in need of ready' cash to divert their grain from the Pool, with over-grading as a frequent inducement.'’ Generally speaking, however, it can be said that it is apparent that the opposition has tended to solidify, rather thau to disintegrate the Pool organisation, just as the earlier efforts of the opponents of the Pool only served to rally the support of farmers to their own company. Notwithstanding the activities of the anti-Pool propagandists, the Canadian Grain Pool has under contract the produce of 16,(190,000 acres of cropped wheat land in an agricultural kingdom of 25,000 square miles, equivalent to onehalf of the area of England, and representing well over 60 percent. of the wheat area of Western Canada. In addition, over one-third of the acreage devoted to oats, barley, rye and flax is signed up to subsidiary coarse grain pools operated in each province. The financing of the Canadian Pool elevator system, has been a unique and notable co-operative achievement. Last crop year the three provincial pools in Canada, owned and operated no less than 1433 country elevators, with 173 additional ones on the 1929 building programme—a total constituting fully one-tliird of all the country elevators in the Prairie Provinces. The Pool terminal elevators have an aggregate capacity of 33,606,000 bushels. This immense programme of elevator acquisition, representing an in estment of approximately 23,000,000 dollars, has been financed without any governmental loans or bond issues. The money has been obtained by the non stock method of deducting two cents a bushel on elevator reserve account from each member’s annual sales returns. The cumulative magnitude of these individually minute deductions has been a revelation in co-opera-tive finance, these penny contributions having yielded in four years an elevator reserve fund of 13,929,000 dollars. Not only has the finance been made easy and sound, but the organisation of the Canadian Wheat Pool presents a unique combination of centralised ojjeration and democratic control, the 133,000 members of which market their combined crops through a single agency which they themselves control, as was not the case under the war-time Wheat Board. It is feared that the dumping of huge accumulations of American and Argentine wheat may temporarily upset the market, and create difficult circumstances that the Pool must face, but it is obvious from the cable messages this morning, that both Provincial Legislatures and Canadian banking institutions, are satisfied that the Pool must be preserved as an integral part of the economic .structure of Canada’s primary industries. It is not surprising that hostile propaganda is continually- directed at the very foundations of the scheme, but years of experience have shown, as Dr Patton indicates, that in seeking to work out their own economic salvation by co-operative self-help, the grain growers of the Canadian prairies have built up an institution which has not only become the biggest business in Canada itself, but which stands as a demonstration

of flic profitable dividends to be drawn from unified efforts. (ooperative pooling in agriculture is the modern counterpart of combination in industry, in fact all business interests, to say nothing of the efforts of other branches of the primary industry, which have convinced themselves that it pays handsomely, not only to think in terms of co-operation, but to put their economic precepts into practice. -