When men set themselves up in business they expect to have to compete for their share of trade. The farmers did not expect to find their path lined with other grain dealers cheering them forward and waving their hats. They expected competition of the keenest. What they could not anticipate, however, was the lengths to which the fight might go or the methods that might be adopted to put their Agency out of business altogether. Hitherto the grain grower had been in the background when it came to marketing and handling grain. He was away out in the country somewhere--busy plowing, busy seeding, busy harvesting, busy something-or-other. He was a Farm Hand who so "tuckered himself out" during daylight that he was glad to pry off his wrinkled boots and lie down when it got dark in order to yank them on again, when the rooster crowed at dawn, for the purpose of "tuckering himself out" all over again. It was true that without him there would have been no grain to handle; equally true that without the grain dealers the farmer would have been in difficulty if he tried to hunt up individual consumers to buy his wheat. The farmer interfering in the established grain trade was something new and it was not to be supposed that when the surprise of it wore off things were not liable to happen. The farmer was quick to infer that the action of the bank in cutting off the trading company's credit without apparent cause was another move of the opposing forces. It was so palpably a vital spot at which to strike. This time, however, the threatening cloud evaporated almost as soon as it appeared. The manager, W. H. Machaffie, resigned and assumed the management of another bank. He was a far-sighted financier, Mr. Machaffie, and almost the first account he sought for the Home Bank was that of the Grain Growers' Grain Company. The Home Bank was new in the West and in the East it had been an old loan company without big capitalistic interests, its funds being derived mostly from small depositors; but while at that time it was not among the wealthiest banking institutions of the country, it was quite able to supply full credit facilities.