The December 1908 issue of The Grain Growers’ Guide offered this explanation of the roles of the various players in the grain trade, of whom the cartoonist apparently took a dim view.
The Grain Growers’ Guide was at the time the “Official organ” of the Manitoba Grain Growers Association and the Grain Growers’ Grain Company, later United Grain Growers. Much of the issue contained correspondence from members describing prices and delivery conditions at their local elevators, and supporting the association’s position that elevators should be owned by government.
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The issue reported that daily CPR grain shipments from Winnipeg to Fort William (Thunder Bay) in November averaged 541 cars. The most recent four-week rolling weekly average for Thunder Bay unloads is 2,550 cars, or 510 basis a five-day week.
That issue was the “Christmas Number” and in addition to business-related articles such as “The Farmer in Politics,” “A Word to Cattle Feeders” and “The Elevator System,” it offered “The Secrets of a Happy Life,” “The Power of Concentration” and “The Wife — And Her Money.” The unnamed writer said “(T)he wife’s ignorance of her husband’s income is often pathetic. She is made dependent on his bounty, whereas she has exactly the same right to what he earns as he has. Instead of making the income a mutual affair, as it should be, it is often a mutual affair with decided advantages in favour of the husband… his generous allowance is always a goodly percentage less than his generous words would imply.”
