The Government, however, did not adopt the scheme. Some settlers, like the Mennonites, followed the plan of community settlement, even though the square farms made them lose time in going backwards and forwards to their work. Mr. Van Horne’s efforts for the settlement of the country led also to his company building immense elevator accommodation at the Great Lakes and providing facilities for transport thereto. There were flashes of humour in this grim fight for the settler. Mr. Van Horne was restively asserting one hard year that the grain-buyers who were paying only thirty-five cents a bushel for wheat were practising highway robbery on the farmer. Mr. L. A. Hamilton, the Company’s land commissioner, said to him, “Why not go in and outbid the grain-buyers.” The idea appealed mightily to Van Horne and he sent Alex Mitchell, a grain man from Montreal, to the West to organize some agency and offer fifty cents a bushel. No one knew that Mitchell was acting for the Canadian Pacific, but when he offered fifty cents a bushel, grain poured in on him till all the cars were full and bags of wheat were piled up along station platforms on account of the car shortage. Then the enemies of the Railway who were on the lookout for chances to find fault with the Railway and who, of course, had no idea that the Railway owned the wheat, attacked the Company because it could not take care of the crop and ship it out of the country. These active enemies got photographs taken to show the congestion of the grain at stations and on platforms along the line. Van Horne said nothing, but had these photographs bought up by scores and sent abroad to show that the prairies were so productive that the railway was caught unprepared to handle the enormous crops. All this was great immigration material, and a boomerang for the men who had gone to the expense of getting the photographs.