The World's New Wheat Census.

Horowhenua Chronicle, 6 September 1910, Page 4

The World's New Wheat Census.

WINNIPEG TO-DAY

MAXfTOFSAX WHEAT. Not only does Manitoba .hard wheat stand at the top of the milling wheats of he world, but the production, by its bigness or its smallness, of wheat in the XlorthWest of Canada is governing at this moment the price of bread in every part of the globe. This has conic about within a period of thirty years, buit the real importance of the Winnipeg wheat market may be dater from 1901, when Manitoba safely gathered in it.s first record era pof fifty millio'n bushels. Last year tliat province and the other two similar prairie provinces of the dominion, Saskatchewan and Alberta, together raised throe times that quantity of wheat,. and all that enormous flooci of grain, save what is required foi still flowing into and out of. Winnipeg on its way to Liverpool and London and Glasgow. Winnipeg may bo likened, .roughly speaking, to the apex of gigan- I tie, irregularly

SHAPED TRIANGLE, one log of which—much the shorter of tlio two legs—stretches westward along the international boundary to the Crow's Xest in the lvoo'tenays of Blritish Columbia, while the other reaches far to the north-west above Edmonton into the upper valleys of the Peace river, the foothills of the Rockies forming the base. On Winnipeg, the apex, converge all the railways tiaversmg the vast area enclose;, •by this triangle, which includes hundreds of millions of acrcs of actual or potential wheat lands the western main lines and the dozix S branches of the Canadian PaciPf, Canadian Northern, and Grand Trunk Pacific Railroads. TfTE RIVALRY OF CHICAGO.

ft was in 1904 that Winnipeg hist appeared, at least in the eye.s ol the general public, as one of the dominant factors determininc the price of wheat. In the early autumn of that year there was a sensational rise in Chicago, then the most important whoafc centre in t.ie no rid, which was occasioned bv Irost ..scares" in Manitoba and the adjacent States ot Minnesota dud tiio two Dflkrvt'tis, Tn an nrtide published in the Dnilv Mail oil August 20, 1901. T pointed out that any failure m the wheat crops "t these territories, which mav conveniently be termed the 'Win'o wheat areas of North America? and winch are and probably alwav.s will bo liable to be affected to 'a greater or less extent

BY FROSTS shortly before harvest, meant relatively dear wheat and dear bread for tho rest of the world, because tlioir production .in a good year was pretty nearly what was 'required to supply the chronic deficiency in treat Britain and other parts' of Europe. That deficiency was, and ! is, about two hundred million binHols, and over and above the snr plnsage of wiheat received from Jn dia Australia, and tho Arg.vitme, it bad to bo and was met bv tre surplusage obtained from 'North America, principally from tlie tinted States. il B " tt •!" i° tho position has the Ujuted States. T n these sixyears the population of the Revpuibin has increased by many millions, horoas its production of has not increased at all ;as a necessary consequence, seeing that its poo.iatmn is a white-bread-eating papulation, the quantity of wheat it is able to spare, onen ;t 0 /•«,•„ —i„

are supplied grows less and less. It cannot be long before it will ave no wheat at all to spare, and not much longer •when it will have o appear in outside markets as a of wheat. That, good LiSt tlrs,,'" 11 l,nw,cn '""""'i-e NEW SOURCE OF SUPPLY. This state of things lias been offset by increased areas of wheat production in other countries, sifch as the Argentine; but nowhere toanv{lung hke the same extent asln the Canadian North-Wetet, 000 mn 1 ; 1, a *¥\ oi 150,000,() () ° bushels, of which by far the export 1 ' P T) tmn IVas avail <- (for nnte v ti yeai ' J most "ixfortunately, there seems to be smal) BS"? 4 !* Quantitj. Recent advices from he ° f I * >t,l "! 1 e ! 1 than half-crops owing to a long spell of hot weather in Manitoba and the Nortli-West, which has buirnt up the plants. The •Wl" I tho i T*' Mmnesotn Dakot ° S - Tl " l,s ■«'<»

SPRING WHEAT AREAS t0 f° a great deal of fK, tho J' lsu< 1 1 requirements is the mn' • J 6 lne . vita:b, ° is plie use in the price of whent which has taken .place. world tUiS ,{/f r Winili P e K J'as led the since ' nni/ ' yenr , s have passed since any corn exchange in Entri™ Scotland had a dWmiwiti.ig effect on the price of the cereil • the rise or fall in Chicago has been the determining factor. Ujp to i 17 ag0 + -paid out little attention to Winnineovn ° 10 / i I) I rice of wlheat Iv' "L y ' f 1 !?' 1 »ot exclusive,Z;t £ jailing tl, o tnne.. '"Shfy'fcalthe bushel at the opening of

WHEAT PIT SCgUT I 'f « mi° ni jf gW ' ol<i m'adl lv realisGd\n yeS ' scarcefires-.

(By Robert Maohray.) The excited and continued rise in the price of wheat during the last fortnight, combined with the apprehension of a poor harvest, has ImmgPvt into prominence the startling fact that Winnipeg, which came into existence only forty years ago, is booming the wheat centre of the world. To one who, like myself, has seen Winnipeg grow from ' a collection of frame and log .shacks and shanties grouped, unpietu'resrjucly enough, on the north side of the old Hudson's Bay Company's post, Eort Garry, to the great and flourishing city of to-day, with its population of 150,000, the remarkable development which is taking pla.ee is the fulfilment of the fond hopes, that many people thought vain, cherished by its I

FIRST PIONEERS. In the "fall" of a year in the late 'seventies I was driving one afternoon from the Hudson's Bay Company's store in Winnijpeg to St. John's, now a part of the city, but then some two miles away, when a gentleman hailed me from the sidewalk, and I pulled up. He got into my buggy, and said. " 1 thought you would like to Know that we are sending to-d'ay the first consignment of Manitoba, wheat to Liverpool. Of course it's a small jot—just a sample you might call it, but it's probably the beginning of the biggest export trade in wheat that the world has evei seen." The speaker was the secretary of Winnipeg's newly established Boa I'd of Trade, and the bold words are already finding their realisation.

marks, as nothing else could have marked, the pre-eminent position winch the wonderful new city oi the Canadian North-West has attained in fixing the price of wheat in all the markets of the world, let, after all, it is only natural, when one considers the rastness ol the wheat area that is tributary to it and what it means. A halfcrop this year will no.t affect what must be its position; a ha If-crop is but an incident in its expending destiny. Within a few years ChH cago will be notihinjg; more than a great local wheat market, and Winnipeg will ho universally rccognised as the wheat centre "of the world.