CHAPTER V. THE COLLAPSE OF THE GRANGER MOVEMENT

The first phase of the agrarian crusade, which centered around
and took its distinctive name from the Grange, reached its
highwater mark in 1874. Early in the next year the tide began to
ebb. The number of Granges decreased rapidly during the remainder
of the decade, and of over twenty thousand in 1874 only about
four thousand were alive in 1880.

Several causes contributed to this sudden decline. Any
organization which grows so rapidly is prone to decay with equal
rapidity; the slower growths are better rooted and are more
likely to reach fruition. So with the Grange. Many farmers had
joined the order, attracted by its novelty and vogue; others
joined the organization in the hope that it would prove a panacea
for all the ills that agriculture is heir to and then left it in
disgust when they found its success neither immediate nor universal.

Its methods of organization, too, while admirably adapted to
arousing enthusiasm and to securing new chapters quickly, did not
make for stability and permanence. The Grange deputy, as the
organizer was termed, did not do enough of what the salesman
calls "follow-up work." He went into a town, persuaded an
influential farmer to go about with him in a house-to-house
canvass, talked to the other farmers of the vicinity, stirred
them up to interest and excitement, organized a Grange, and then
left the town. If he happened to choose the right material, the
chapter became an active and flourishing organization; if he did
not choose wisely, it might drag along in a perfunctory existence
or even lapse entirely. Then, too, the deputy's ignorance of
local conditions sometimes led him to open the door to the
farmers' enemies. There can be little doubt that insidious harm
was worked through the admission into the Grange of men who were
farmers only incidentally and whose "interest in agriculture" was
limited to making profits from the farmer rather than from the
farm. As D. Wyatt Aiken, deputy for the Grange in the Southern
States and later member of the executive committee of the
National Grange, shrewdly commented, "Everybody wanted to join
the Grange then; lawyers, to get clients; doctors, to get
customers; Shylocks, to get their pound of flesh; and sharpers,
to catch the babes in the woods."

Not only the members who managed thus to insinuate themselves
into the order but also the legitimate members proved hard to
control. With that hostility to concentrated authority which so
often and so lamentably manifests itself in a democratic body,
the rank and file looked with suspicion upon the few men who
constituted the National Grange. The average farmer was
interested mainly in local issues, conditions, and problems, and
looked upon the National Grange not as a means of helping him in
local affairs, but as a combination of monopolists who had taken
out a patent on the local grange and forced him to pay a royalty
in order to enjoy its privileges. The demand for reduction in the
power of the National Grange led to frequent attempts to revise
the constitution in the direction of decentralization; and the
revisions were such as merely to impair the power of the National
Grange without satisfying the discontented members.

Of all the causes of the rapid collapse of the Granger movement,
the unfortunate experience which the farmers had in their
attempts at business cooperation was probably chief. Their hatred
of the middleman and of the manufacturer was almost as intense as
their hostility to the railroad magnate; quite naturally,
therefore, the farmers attempted to use their new organizations
as a means of eliminating the one and controlling the other. As
in the parallel case of the railroads, the farmers' animosity,
though it was probably greater than the provocation warranted,
was not without grounds.

The middlemen--the commission merchants to whom the farmer sold
his produce and the retail dealers from whom he bought his
supplies--did undoubtedly make use of their opportunities to
drive hard bargains. The commission merchant had such facilities
for storage and such knowledge of market conditions that he
frequently could take advantage of market fluctuations to
increase his profits. The farmer who sold his produce at a low
price and then saw it disposed of as a much higher figure was
naturally enraged, but he could devise no adequate remedy.
Attempts to regulate market conditions by creating an artificial
shortage seldom met with success. The slogan "Hold your hogs" was
more effective as a catchword than as an economic weapon. The
retail dealers, no less than the commission men, seemed
to the farmer to be unjust in their dealings with him. In the
small agricultural communities there was practically no
competition. Even where there were several merchants in one town
these could, and frequently did, combine to fix prices which the
farmer had no alternative but to pay. What irked the farmer most
in connection with these "extortions" was that the middleman
seemed to be a nonproducer, a parasite who lived by chaining the
agricultural classes of the wealth which they produced. Even
those farmers who recognized the middleman as a necessity had
little conception of the intricacy and value of his service.

Against the manufacturer, too, the farmer had his grievances. He
felt that the system of patent rights for farm machinery resulted
in unfair prices--for was not this same machinery shipped to
Europe and there sold for less than the retail price in the
United States? Any one could see that the manufacturer must have
been making more than reasonable profit on domestic sales.
Moreover, there were at this time many abuses of patent rights.
Patents about to expire were often extended through political
influence or renewed by means of slight changes which were
claimed to be improvements. A more serious defect in the
patent system was that new patents were not thoroughly
investigated, so that occasionally one was issued on an article
which had long been in common use. That a man should take out a
patent for the manufacture of a sliding gate which farmers had
for years crudely constructed for themselves and should then
collect royalty from those who were using the gates they had
made, naturally enough aroused the wrath of his victims.

It was but natural, then, that the Granges should be drawn into
all sorts of schemes to divert into the pockets of their members
the streams of wealth which had previously flowed to the greedy
middlemen. The members of the National Grange, thinking that
these early schemes for cooperation were premature, did not at
first take them up and standardize them but left them entirely in
the hands of local, county, and state Granges. These thereupon
proceeded to "gang their ain gait" through the unfamiliar paths
of business operations and too frequently brought up in a
quagmire. "This purchasing business," said Kelley in 1867,
"commenced with buying jackasses; the prospects are that many
will be SOLD." But the Grangers went on with their plans for
business cooperation with ardor undampened by such forebodings.
Sometimes a local Grange would make a bargain with a certain
dealer of the vicinity, whereby members were allowed special
rates if they bought with cash and traded only with that dealer.
More often the local grange would establish an agency, with
either a paid or a voluntary agent who would forward the orders
of the members in large lots to the manufacturers or wholesalers
and would thus be able to purchase supplies for cash at terms
considerably lower than the retail prices. Frequently, realizing
that they could get still more advantageous terms for larger
orders, the Granges established a county agency which took over
the work of several local agents. Sometimes the Patrons even
embarked upon the more ambitious enterprise of cooperative stores.

The most common type of cooperative store was that in which the
capital was provided by a stock company of Grange members and
which sold goods to Patrons at very low prices. The profits, when
there were any, were divided among the stockholders in proportion
to the amount of stock they held, just as in any stock company.
This type of store was rarely successful for any length of time.
The low prices at which it sold goods were likely to involve it
in competition with other merchants. Frequently these men would
combine to lower their prices and, by a process familiar in the
history of business competition, "freeze out" the cooperative
store, after which they might restore their prices to the old
levels. The farmers seldom had sufficient spirit to buy at the
grange store if they found better bargains elsewhere; so the
store was assured of its clientele only so long as it sold at the
lowest possible prices. Farmers' agencies for the disposal of
produce met with greater success. Cooperative creameries and
elevators in several States are said to have saved Grange members
thousands of dollars. Sometimes the state Grange, instead of
setting up in the business of selling produce, chose certain
firms as Grange agents and advised Patrons to sell through these
firms. Where the choice was wisely made, this system seems to
have saved the farmers about as much money without involving them
in the risks of business.

By 1876 the members of the National Grange had begun to study the
problem of cooperation in retailing goods and had come to the
conclusion that the so-called "Rochdale plan," a system worked
out by an English association, was the most practicable for the
cooperative store. The National Grange therefore recommended this
type of organization. The stock of these stores was sold only to
Patrons, at five dollars a share and in limited amounts; thus the
stores were owned by a large number of stockholders, all of whom
had equal voice in the management of the company. The stores sold
goods at ordinary rates, and then at the end of the year, after
paying a small dividend on the stock, divided their profits among
the purchasers, according to the amounts purchased. This plan
eliminated the violent competition which occurred when a store
attempted to sell goods at cost, and at the same time saved the
purchaser quite as much. Unfortunately the Rochdale plan found
little favor among farmers in the Middle West because of their
unfortunate experience with other cooperative ventures. In the
East and South, however, it was adopted more generally and met
with sufficient success to testify to the wisdom of the National
Grange in recommending it.

In its attitude toward manufacturing, the National Grange was
less sane. Not content with the elimination of the middlemen, the
farmers were determined to control the manufacture of their
implements. With the small manufacturer they managed to deal
fairly well, for they could usually find some one who would
supply the Grange with implements at less than the retail price.
In Iowa, where the state Grange early established an agency for
cooperative buying, the agent managed to persuade a manufacturer
of plows to give a discount to Grangers. As a result, this
manufacturer's plows are reported to have left the factory with
the paint scarcely dry, while his competitors, who had refused to
make special terms, had difficulty in disposing of their stock.
But the manufacturers of harvesters persistently refused to sell
at wholesale rates. The Iowa Grange thereupon determined to do
its own manufacturing and succeeded in buying a patent for a
harvester which it could make and sell for about half what other
harvesters cost. In 1874 some 250 of these machines were
manufactured, and the prospects looked bright.

Deceived by the apparent success of grange manufacturing in Iowa,
officers of the order at once planned to embark in manufacturing
on a large scale. The National Grange was rich in funds at this
time; it had within a year received well over $250,000 in
dispensation fees from seventeen thousand new Granges. Angered at
what was felt to be the tyranny of monopoly, the officers of the
National Grange decided to use this capital in manufacturing
agricultural implements which were to be sold to Patrons at very
low prices. They went about the country buying patents for all
sorts of farm implements, but not always making sure of the worth
of the machinery or the validity of the patents. In Kansas, Iowa,
Missouri, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, and Kentucky, they
planned factories to make harvesters, plows, wagons, sewing-
machines, threshing-machines, and all sorts of farm implements.
Then came the crash. The Iowa harvester factory failed in 1875
and bankrupted the state Grange. Other failures followed; suits
for patent infringements were brought against some of the
factories; local Granges disbanded for fear they might be held
responsible for the debts incurred; and in the Northwest, where
the activity had been the greatest, the order almost disappeared.

Although the Grange had a mushroom growth, it nevertheless
exerted a real and enduring influence upon farmers both as
individuals and as members of a class. Even the experiments in
cooperation, disastrous though they were in the end, were not
without useful results. While they lasted they undoubtedly
effected a considerable saving for the farmers. As Grange agents
or as stockholders in cooperative stores or Grange factories,
many farmers gained valuable business experience  which helped to
prevent them from being victimized thereafter. The farmers
learned, moreover, the wisdom of working through the accepted
channels of business. Those who had scoffed at the Rochdale plan
of cooperation, in the homely belief that any scheme made in
America must necessarily be better than an English importation,
came to see that self-confidence and independence must be
tempered by willingness to learn from the experience of others.
Most important of all, these experiments in business taught the
farmers that the middlemen and manufacturers performed services
essential to the agriculturalist and that the production and
distribution of manufactured articles and the distribution of
crops are far more complex affairs than the farmers had imagined
and perhaps worthy of more compensation than they had been
accustomed to think just. On their side, the manufacturers and
dealers learned that the farmers were not entirely helpless and
that to gain their goodwill by fair prices was on the whole wiser
than to force them into competition. Thus these ventures resulted
in the development of a new tolerance and a new respect between
the two traditionally antagonistic classes.

The social and intellectual stimulus which the farmers received
from the movement was probably even more important than any
direct political or economic results. It is difficult for the
present generation to form any conception of the dreariness and
dullness of farm life half a century ago. Especially in the West,
where farms were large, opportunities for social intercourse were
few, and weeks might pass without the farmer seeing any but his
nearest neighbors. For his wife existence was even more drear.
She went to the market town less often than he and the routine of
her life on the farm kept her close to the farmhouse and
prevented visits even to her neighbors' dwellings. The difficulty
of getting domestic servants made the work of the farmer's wife
extremely laborious; and at that time there were none of the
modern conveniences which lighten work such as power churns,
cream separators, and washing-machines. Even more than the
husband, the wife was likely to degenerate into a drudge without
the hope--and eventually without the desire--of anything better.
The church formed, to be sure, a means of social intercourse; but
according to prevailing religious notions the churchyard was not
the place nor the Sabbath the time for that healthy but
unrestrained hilarity which is essential to the well-being of man.

Into lives thus circumscribed the Grange came as a liberalizing
and uplifting influence. Its admission of women into the order on
the same terms as men made it a real community servant and gave
both women and men a new sense of the dignity of woman. More
important perhaps than any change in theories concerning
womankind, it afforded an opportunity for men and women to work
and play together, apparently much to the satisfaction and
enjoyment of both sexes. Not only in Grange meetings, which came
at least once a month and often more frequently, but also in
Grange picnics and festivals the farmers and their wives and
children came together for joyous human intercourse. Such
frequent meetings were bound to work a change of heart. Much of
man's self-respect arises from the esteem of others, and the
desire to keep that esteem is certainly a powerful agent in
social welfare. It was reported that in many communities the
advent of the Grange created a marked improvement in the dress
and manners of the members. Crabbed men came out of their shells
and grew genial; disheartened women became cheerful; repressed
children delighted in the chance to play with other boys and
girls of their own age.

The ritual of the Grange, inculcating lessons of orderliness,
industry, thrift, and temperance, expressed the members' ideals
in more dignified and pleasing language than they themselves
could have invented. The songs of the Grange gave an opportunity
for the exercise of the musical sense of people not too critical
of literary quality, when with "spontaneous trills on every
tongue," as one of the songs has it, the members varied the
ritual with music.

One of the virtues especially enjoined on Grange members was
charity. Ceres, Pomona, and Flora, offices of the Grange to be
filled. only by women, were made to represent Faith, Hope, and
Charity, respectively; and in the ceremony of dedicating the
Grange hall these three stood always beside the altar while the
chaplain read the thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians. Not
only in theory but in practice did the order proclaim its
devotion to charitable work. It was not uncommon for members of a
local Grange to foregather and harvest the crops for a sick
brother or help rebuild a house destroyed by fire or tornado. In
times of drought or plague both state and national Granges were
generous in donations for the sufferers; in 1874, when the
Mississippi River overflowed its banks in its lower reaches,
money and supplies were sent to the farmers of Louisiana and
Alabama; again in the same year relief was sent to those Patrons
who suffered from the grasshopper plague west of the Mississippi;
and in 1876 money was sent to South Carolina to aid sufferers
from a prolonged drought in that State. These charitable deeds,
endearing giver and receiver to each other, resulted in a better
understanding and a greater tolerance between people of different
parts of the country.

The meetings of the local Granges were forums in which the
members trained themselves in public speaking and parliamentary
practice. Programs were arranged, sometimes with the help of
suggestions from officers of the state Grange; and the discussion
of a wide variety of topics, mostly economic and usually
concerned especially with the interests of the farmer, could not
help being stimulating, even if conclusions were sometimes
reached which were at variance with orthodox political economy.
The Grange was responsible, too, for a great increase in the
number and circulation of agricultural journals. Many of these
papers were recognized as official organs of the order and, by
publishing news of the Granges and discussing the political and
economic phases of the farmers' movement, they built up an
extensive circulation. Rural postmasters everywhere reported a
great increase in their mails after the establishment of a Grange
in the vicinity. One said that after the advent of the order
there were thirty newspapers taken at his office where previously
there had been but one. Papers for which members or local Granges
subscribed were read, passed from hand to hand, and thoroughly
discussed. This is good evidence that farmers were forming the
habit of reading. All the Granger laws might have been repealed;
all the schemes for cooperation might have come to naught; all
the moral and religious teachings of the Grange might have been
left to the church; but if the Granger movement had created
nothing else than this desire to read, it would have been worth
while. For after the farmer began to read, he was no longer like
deadwood floating in the backwaters of the current; he became
more like a propelled vessel in midstream--sometimes, to be sure,
driven into turbulent waters, sometimes tossed about by
conflicting currents, but at least making progress.