Not a little of the early success of the Saskatchewan Co-Operative Elevator Company was due to the energy and business ability which Dunning brought to bear upon its organization and development. The story of this young homesteader's rise from the ranks of the Grain Growers is worth noting. It was back in 1902 that he first reached the West--a seventeen-year-old Englishman, "green" as the grass that grew over there in Leicester. He did not know anything then about the historic meeting of pioneer grain growers which Motherwell and Dayman had assembled not long before at Indian Head. He was concerned chiefly with finding work on a farm somewhere and hired out near Yorkton, Saskatchewan, for ten dollars a month. After awhile he secured one of the Government's 160-acre slices of homestead land and proceeded to demonstrate that oxen could haul wheat twenty-five miles to a railway if their driver sat long enough on the load. There came a day when Dunning, filled with a new feeling of independence, started for Yorkton with a load of wheat and oats. It was along towards spring when the snow was just starting to go and at a narrow place in the trail, as luck would have it, he met a farmer returning from town with an empty sleigh. In trying to pass the other fellow Dunning's sleigh upset. While helping to reload the farmer imparted the information that oats were selling for eight cents and all he had been able to get for his wheat was something like thirteen cents in Yorkton the day before! The young Englishman's new feeling of "independence" slid into his shoe-packs as he stared speechless at his neighbor. Right-about went his oxen and back home he hauled his load, angry and dismayed and realizing that something was wrong with Western conditions that could bring about such treatment. When a branch of the Grain Growers' Association was formed at Beaverdale, not far from his homestead, it is scarcely necessary to say that young Dunning joined and took an active part in the debates. Finally he was chosen as delegate for the district at the annual Grain Growers' convention at Prince Albert on condition that he could finance the trip on $17.50. The story is told that Dunning figured by making friends with the furnace man of one of the hotels he might be allowed to sleep in the cellar for the week he would be in Prince Albert and manage to get through on this meagre expense fund! At any rate he did find a place to lay his head and, if reports be true, actually came back with money in his pocket.