This book traces in an accurate and objective manner the sequence of events during the last twenty years which have influenced the organization fo the Canadian grain trade. During these years problems arising out of the production and marketing of western grain have been under continuous review in Canada, leading at different times to royal commissions of inquiry. The production and sale of cereals have become such a vital part of the economic life of the three prairie provinces and, indeed, of Canada, that anything affecting this great industry becomes at once a subject of general interest.
These twenty years have witnessed momentous changes. The period marks a shift from free trading on the open market to the compulsory marketing of Canadian wheat and other grains through the medium of a Federal board endowed with wide powers. Basically, this change stems from conditions arising out of the Great Depression and World War II. And in one form or another the Canadian Wheat Board will continue to be a significant factor in the marketing of Canadian wheat.
Noteworth also have been the dramatic recovery of the Pools and the negotiation of international agreements; and, on the farm front, the establishment of a permit system to control deliveries of grain to country elevators, and the enactment of legislation to protect producers against losses arising from the hazards of nature.

DUNCAN ALEXANDER MACGIBBON was born at Lochaber Bay, Quebec, in 1882. He received his B.A. and M.A. from McMaster University, and his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. He has lectured at various universities in Canada, and for six months at the Khaki University in England after the first World War. He was Professor of Political Economy and Head of the Department at the University of Alberta from 1919 to 1929. In 1929 he was appointed a Commissioner of the Board of Grain Commissioners for Canada. He served in this post for twenty years, at the end of which time he retired from the Board to return to academic life. He is at present Visiting Professor of Political Economy at McMaster University and the University of Toronto. Professor MacGibbon was a Commissioner for the Alberta Government on Banking and Credit with respect to the Industry of Agriculture, 1922, and a member of the Royal Grain Inquiry Commission, Canada, 1923-24. He was attached to the Canadian delegation to the Imperial Conference at London in 1930, and to the Imperial Economic Conference, Ottawa, 1932. He was a member of the Royal Commission on Taxation of Annuities and Family Corporations, 1944-45. Professor MacGibbon is the author of several volumes in economics; his The Canadian Grain Trade, published in 1932, is the standard work in its field.

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