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“Our Agricultural Brotherhood”

Origins, Purposes, and Structure

We propose meeting together, talking together, working together, buying together, selling together, and in general acting together for our mutual protection and advancement. . . . Sectionalism is, and of right should be dead and buried with the past. . . . In our agricultural brotherhood . . . we shall recognize no North, no South, no East, no West.

—Declaration of Purposes of the Patrons of Husbandry

Months before President Andrew Johnson formally declared an end to the US Civil War on 20 August 1866, he sent Bureau of Agriculture clerk Oliver Kelley to inspect the ravaged rural South. Six days after his fortieth birthday, Kelley departed Washington on 13 January 1866 and traveled across the South until 21 April, recording the effect of the war on southern agriculture.¹ Although the South bore the brunt of the war’s devastation, farmers across the nation were suffering, especially when compared to the business titans emerging in the postbellum period.

A year and a half after Kelley’s southern journey, the Patrons of Husbandry were born. The first official meeting of what became the Grange took place on 15 November 1867 in Washington, DC, and officers were elected on 4 December 1867. By no means the first nor the only American agricultural organization, the Grange nevertheless stands out for its longevity.² Improving the economic lot of farmers was its original focus, but the Grange has sustained itself primarily by its appeal as a fraternal and social association that engages in community service and political advocacy for farmers.

Setting the Stage for Farmer Discontent: Aftermath of the War

Military deaths during the Civil War accounted for more than 2 percent of the US population, with most of the dead being able-bodied men in their prime. An estimated one out of ten men of military age never returned home; nearly a quarter of Southern men ages twenty to twenty-four in 1860 lost their lives in the war. The demobilization of both armies sent hundreds of thousands of survivors back to their farms, but many of them returned to neglect and disarray. The men themselves did not always come back whole: for instance, 20 percent of Mississippi’s entire state budget in 1866 went for artificial limbs. Although the Homestead Act of 1862 had opened up cheap land to aspiring farmers, improved capital-intensive farm technology made it difficult for small farmers to achieve economic success. Tumultuous weather and periodic pest infestations (fig. 1.1)—described so vividly in Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House books—added to the misery.³

The official cessation of conflict also meant a downturn in demand for rations, animal feed, wool, horses, and mules. Emancipation and Reconstruction generated major changes in agricultural supply as well. Former slaves met with resistance, political suppression, and violence as they sought to distance themselves from the plantation and to grow their own crops and food. The war was over, but the struggle to move from a slave to a free society had only just begun. Under the leadership of General O. O. Howard, the Freedmen’s Bureau made heroic efforts to smooth the transition, but lack of funds hampered the bureau, which was disbanded under President Ulysses S. Grant.

As a further irritant to farmers and other citizens, corruption plagued the postwar federal government. Perhaps the best-known episode was the Crédit Mobilier scandal, which consisted of financial hijinks by the directors of the Union Pacific Railroad abetted by certain members of Congress. The public learned the details of Crédit Mobilier in 1872, during Grant’s second run for office, but the shady behavior by government officials actually occurred during Andrew Johnson’s administration.⁴

Figure 1.1. Grangers versus Grasshoppers, 1880. Source: Minnesota Historical Society

Financial turmoil and monetary policy took its toll on postbellum agriculture as well. Many farmers experienced setbacks during the massive financial panic of 1873. What is more, the nation’s return to the gold standard after its experiment with greenbacks during the war meant precipitous price declines and financial uncertainty, which affected numerous farmers adversely.⁵

Even as farmers suffered, they observed others amassing enormous amounts of wealth. Extensive inequality existed in the United States throughout the nineteenth century, but it increased markedly between 1870 and the early twentieth century.⁶ Some of the richest men in American history built their fortunes starting during this time, including John D. Rockefeller, Cornelius Vanderbilt, and Andrew Carnegie. Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner satirized the greed of this period—and bestowed its name—in 1873 in their coauthored book, The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today.

In short, the time was ripe for farmers to find an outlet to express their discontent. The Grange provided it.

Figure 1.2. Oliver Kelley, 1875. Source: Minnesota Historical Society

Oliver Kelley and the Founding of the Grange

Kelley’s Early Years

Oliver Kelley (fig. 1.2) is generally acknowledged as the principal founder of the Grange, with his talent appearing to lie more in organizing than in actual farming. He grew up in Boston but moved to St. Paul in 1849, where he joined Minnesota’s first Masonic Lodge. Kelley’s connection with the Masons proved critical in helping him shape the Grange.⁷

Town life did not satisfy Kelley. After reading a number of books on agriculture, he bought land in Itasca—at the headwaters of the Mississippi River—in hopes that the territorial capital would move there and Kelley could benefit from a ready market for his crops. Unfortunately for him, a split vote in the legislature kept the capital in St. Paul. Kelley then established the first Minnesota agricultural society in 1852. His personal farm operation collapsed shortly thereafter, in part because Kelley tied up his cash in a real estate venture called “Northwood” that went bust in the Panic of 1857. Portentously, volatility in railroad stock prices contributed to this financial crisis.⁸

After drought destroyed much of the rest of his holdings, Kelley moved to Washington in 1864 to serve as a correspondent for the St. Paul Pioneer Press as well as a clerk in the Department of Agriculture. There, he struck up friendships with men who later joined him to organize the Grange. These included William Saunders, who headed the division of gardens in the Bureau of Agriculture and designed the military cemetery at Gettysburg; William Ireland, a clerk in the Post Office and a fellow Mason; and John Trimble, a Treasury Department clerk and an Episcopalian clergyman. In December 1867, Kelley and his colleagues formally elected the first officers of the Grange in Washington, DC.⁹

Organizational Growth, Methods, and Structure: The Heady Beginning

Membership in the Grange was never larger than shortly after its birth in late 1867, although it came close to its original size again in about 1950 (fig 1.3). Grange membership swelled considerably before the financial panic of 1873 began.¹⁰ But the panic made the Grange even more relevant: transportation-cost worries and financial irregularities (particularly among railroad enterprises) that surfaced as the panic spread encouraged the new farmer association to focus on collaborative enterprises and rate regulation. A number of financial institutions—including Jay Cooke & Company, which had helped the federal government with innovative financing techniques during the Civil War—failed during the panic due to railroad loans gone bad. This added steam to the budding farmer movement.

The founders of the Grange set up a temporary national organization, but they intended its structure to grow from the ground up, with the fundamental building block being a subordinate Grange made up of at least thirteen initial members.¹¹ Each subordinate was to have at its helm a “Worthy Master,” along with other officers. Kelley and his companions envisioned an eventual web of subordinates spun across the nation, woven together to form larger county- and statewide Granges.

Figure 1.3. Grange Membership, 1875–1960. Source: Tontz (1964, table 1)

The beginning was rocky, as Kelley’s initial attempts to inaugurate subordinates on his own mostly failed. Kelley organized the first permanent subordinate in Fredonia, NY, in April 1868 but was unsuccessful in establishing others as he traveled from Washington back to his Minnesota home. By 1871, four years after the inception of the National Grange, only 180 subordinate Granges existed across the country, with three-quarters seated in Iowa and Minnesota. These were arranged concentrically by date of creation around Oliver Kelley’s farm (fig. 1.4). Only three State Granges had formed by 1871, with Minnesota leading the way in 1869, followed soon by Iowa and Wisconsin.¹²

Kelley then hit upon a surefire formula: send a paid recruiter to obtain an introduction to a leading farmer, win over the farmer by stressing the practical benefits of the Grange, and enlist the farmer’s help in signing up his neighbors. Colonel D. A. Robertson, a fruit grower, journalist, legislator, and sheriff, spearheaded much of the early recruitment effort. By choosing respected men in the community to lead the charge, particularly in the South, Kelley’s army of recruiters soon met with considerable success. A. J. Rose, a rancher, farmer, and education reformer, was a prime example in Texas. Rose reassured wary farmers that the organization was fundamentally conservative in nature and pointed to its refusal to ally itself with the Knights of Labor (one of the largest and most influential labor unions of the 1870s and ’80s) as proof.¹³

Figure 1.4. Oliver Kelley Farm, 2013. Source: Photograph by Austin Wahl

In Minnesota, many people organized a single subordinate Grange, but a few organized huge numbers of them. Among all those involved, 65 individuals organized only one subordinate each and 49 organized between two and four subordinates. An early success was T. A. Thompson, a State Worthy Master and a Worthy Lecturer for the National Grange, who organized 37 subordinates in the period 1870–73. Even more prolific was State Worthy Master George I. Parsons, a Winona farmer and lawyer who organized 87 subordinates, all in 1873. After his initial failures, Oliver Kelley rallied during the early ’70s to organize 20 Minnesota subordinates single-handedly and cofound another.¹⁴

Recruiters changed the face of the Grange dramatically in the early 1870s. At one point, the rate of increase in new subordinates nationally was 2,000 per month. By 1874, the number of subordinates had climbed to 21,687, and only Rhode Island had no State Grange. Total Grange membership was 858,050 by 1875, with nearly half of all members residing in the Midwest. Iowa led the pack with 1,994 subordinates. Indiana had two Granges for each of the 984 townships in the state. Missouri had 80,000 members, encompassing more than 25 percent of farm families; and Kansas Grangers included at least three-quarters of all those eligible for membership. Out of a total of 834 subordinates ever formed in Minnesota, an astonishing 304 opened their doors in 1873, with 126 joining them the following year. The Grange spread into Canada as well.¹⁵

Small chapters proliferated initially whereas later chapters boasted much larger enrollment, although the pace of formation slowed. The average number of original members in Minnesota subordinate Granges chartered between 1868 and 1962 is 34; two enormous Granges sprang up in Mower County in 1912 with initial subscriptions of 123 and 133.¹⁶

A hierarchy formed above the subordinates. Once six subordinates had been established in a state, they could create a State Grange. After a number of State Granges emerged in the 1870s, a permanent National Grange solidified.¹⁷

For both practical and symbolic reasons, many subordinates constructed their own halls. Grange halls provided a centralized meeting place and displayed commitment to the community; they still dot the American countryside. Figures 1.5 and 1.6 show the Minnehaha Grange hall in 1945 and today. Grange halls often feature a raised platform at one end of the main room, various stations for officers, pillars and panels depicting Roman and Greek figures, and portraits of patriots and philosophers.¹⁸ Chapter 4 offers more details about these grassroots operations.

The Role of Women

From the beginning, the Grange recognized the importance of family members working together to support the farm. To obtain a charter, a subordinate Grange had to consist of at least one-third men and one-third women. This mixed-gender requirement made the Grange quite different from nearly every other social, economic, cultural, and political association of the time.¹⁹

Figure 1.5. Minnehaha Grange Hall, 1945. Source: Minnesota Historical Society

Figure 1.6. Minnehaha Grange Hall, 2013. Source: Photograph by author

The emphasis on female participation stemmed in part from Kelley’s devotion to his niece, Caroline Hall, who encouraged the involvement of women in the nascent society. Tellingly, Miss Hall suggested that females would add stability to the Grange because they would undertake all the routine work.²⁰ The Minnehaha Grange’s experience offers some support for her view—although men served as secretary for the first ten years, women took over that role for the next seventy-seven. But women held loftier positions as well. In Minnesota, for instance, Sarah Baird organized three subordinates around the turn of the twentieth century. Mrs. Baird was a member of the Minnehaha Grange; she became the first female to occupy the position of State Worthy Master when she ascended to that post in 1894. Besides Sarah Baird, Minnesota boasted two other females at the head of the State Grange: Annie Bull in 1897 and Hildur Archer in 1963.²¹

Aaron Grosh, first chaplain for the Grange, took another view of female involvement: he thought women would elevate the tone of the meetings. Echoing Ole Rolvaag, author of the classic pioneer saga Giants in the Earth, he also worried about farmer wives ending up in the lunatic asylum if they didn’t get out of the house more often.²²

Although Grange tracts suggest that men and women were equal members, this wasn’t quite true. The Declaration of Purposes is guarded: “We proclaim it among our purposes to inculcate a proper appreciation of the abilities and sphere of women.” Grange discussions about economic policy and action mostly took place at county-level meetings of male delegates. For early Grangers, the women’s chief role was to promote virtue in men and children. But if females played a somewhat lesser part in the Patrons than males, they also paid less: original initiation fees were $3 for men but only 50 cents for women. The Minnehaha Grange initially established monthly dues for men at 20 cents and for women at 10 cents.²³

Masonic Overtones

Kelley’s Masonic background had given him entrée into southern households as well as suggested a structure for the new farmers’ organization. The Minnehaha Grange minutes from 30 September 1933 refer to the well-known anecdote of Kelley’s meeting a young southerner who had sworn never to allow a northerner to cross his doorstep after Yankees killed his Confederate father, but who admitted Kelley because he was a “brother Mason.” A case study of Black’s Bend Grange in Alabama states that nearly every page of the minute book bears the “imprint of Masonry.”²⁴

Like the Masons, the Grangers wore special regalia, established a hierarchical series of degrees, and conducted a portion of their meetings in secret rituals. The Fuller Regalia and Costume Company in Worcester, Massachusetts, supplied jewels, sashes, and badges to the Minnehaha Grange and other subordinates around the country. The Fuller Company also sold Masonic jewels and apparel, as well as badges, flags, banners, and sashes to Civil War veterans.²⁵ Figure 1.7 depicts an early Patrons of Husbandry Badge, and Figure 1.8 shows the Minnehaha officers for the 1944–45 session dressed in their finery.

Figure 1.7. Grange Badge, 1867. Source: Minnesota Historical Society

Figure 1.8. Officers of the Minnehaha Grange, 1944–45. Source: Minnesota Historical Society

The ceremonial objects did not come cheap: in 1928, for example, a set of symbolic tools cost $3.75 (about $51 in today’s prices), pins were $1.25 ($17 today), and sashes ranged from the “economically priced” $16.50 version ($224 today) to the model with fringe, tassels, and stars at $100 ($1,357 today). Regalia jewels in 1947 ranged in price from $6 to $15 ($62 to $156 today).²⁶

Kelley viewed degree work partly as a way of educating farmers. Each degree requires candidates to listen to lectures about morality and focuses their attention on tools and symbols to remind them of lessons learned. For example, the first degree for males is “Laborer”: it teaches the virtues of hard work and extols the nobility of agriculture. Symbolic tools include the ax, plow, harrow, and spade. Degree names are separate for men and women: Laborer (Maid), Cultivator (Shepherdess), Harvester (Gleaner), Husbandman (Matron), Pomona (Hope), Flora (Charity), and Demeter/Ceres (Faith). These degrees create a hierarchical structure like that of the Masons or the military—fitting, as many of the early Grangers were also Civil War veterans. A degree culminates with a tableau formed by its recipients (fig. 1.9). Those who reach the fourth-degree threshold are eligible to form Pomonas, which are typically county-based associations.²⁷ Figure 1.10 summarizes the Grange organizational structure.

Figure 1.9. Degree Tableaux, 1947. Source: Minnesota Historical Society

Figure 1.10. Organizational Structure of the Grange. Source: National Grange

The preamble to the Granger constitution, written in 1874, uses (literally) flowery language to justify ritual. “Unity of action [cannot] be acquired without discipline, and discipline [cannot] be enforced without significant organization; hence we have ceremony of initiation which binds us in mutual fraternity as with a band of iron; but . . . its application is a gentle as that of the silken thread that binds a wreath of flowers.”²⁸

Although some people found the Grange’s secrecy distasteful and refused to join or support the Grangers for that reason, others saw it as a necessary means of working out plans without alerting perceived adversaries. Who these adversaries were was not always clear, but presumably they included railroad executives, grain and cotton brokers, and warehousemen. An opinion piece appearing on 26 April 1873 in the New York Pomeroy’s Democrat acknowledged that some worthy persons might not join the Grange because of the secrecy requirement, but “the end fully justifies the means. The evils and oppressions under which the farmers suffer are of such an infamous and grievous nature, that almost any means directed to relief would be justified.”

The Minnehaha Grange minutes are rife with references to degree work and ceremonial rites. Meetings that welcomed initiates would “lower to the first degree,” bring in the new members, then “raise to the second degree.” Members routinely referred to one another as “Brother” and “Sister,” and they (like other Grangers) referred to their leader as “Worthy Master.” Each year, the National Grange supplied a new password to State Granges via cipher if all dues were paid. In 1924, amusingly, the Minnesota State Grange could not obtain the password because of noncompliance, but the Minnehaha subordinate—which had its affairs in good order—simply wrote to the National Grange to get it. At times, the Minnehaha Grangers chided each other about respecting rituals, such as standing up when the Worthy Master entered the room and using appropriate methods of presenting and retiring the flag.²⁹

Granger Concerns: Economic Status, Self-Improvement, Political Presence

After the explosive growth of the organization in the early 1870s, delegates to the annual meeting of the National Grange on 11 February 1874 decided they needed to draft a more formal mission statement. The result was the Declaration of Purposes, whose ringing words open each chapter of this book. The goals are noble; the suggested means of achieving them are vague.

Bettering farmers’ economic status held pride of place in the declaration. Grangers were exhorted to work together cooperatively, dispense with greedy middlemen, ensure cheap transportation, and break monopolistic practices. Oliver Kelley colorfully explained why economic concerns prevailed: “You must get into the farmers’ pockets to reach their hearts, and a lively palpitation there invigorates their minds.”³⁰

The declaration emphasized more esoteric goals as well, including development of high moral standards and a devotion to continuing education (particularly agricultural education). It emphasized teamwork and fairness: “We appeal to all good citizens for their cordial cooperation to assist in our efforts toward reform, that we may eventually remove from our midst the last vestige of tyranny and corruption. We hail the general desire for fraternal harmony, equitable compromise, and earnest cooperation, as an omen of our future success.”

The identity of the Grange came out clearly in the declaration: it was to be an organization composed solely of farmers—although some admitted members had only a tangential relationship to agriculture. What is more, Granger meetings were to steer clear of politics and religion—although not all Grangers stayed aloof from political matters, and most Grangers were solidly middle-of-the-road Protestants. Grangers were encouraged as American citizens to “take a proper interest” in the nation’s politics and to have a duty to “put down bribery, corruption, and trickery,” but were never to engage in partisan activity.

Economic Status

Calculating farm profit seems straightforward: multiply price by quantity to find total revenue, then subtract out various production expenses. Some (albeit scanty) historical data exist on the prices of agricultural products, railroad rates, farm population, aggregate farm output, and the like, but determining what happened to individual farmers’ profits in the immediate postbellum period is no easy task. What matters to people, moreover, is not just net income but also the cost of consumption items, uncertainty about the future, ability to borrow in times of need, and perceptions of where they stand relative to others.

Several factors contributed to farmer dissatisfaction at the time of the initial enormous success of the Granger organization. These factors include farm prices falling faster than other prices, perceived exorbitant charges by middlemen and railroads, patent laws that seemed to favor the makers and sellers of farm equipment, heavy taxes on land, and regular upheavals in credit markets. At the annual gathering of the American Economic Association in 1893, Professor Edward Ross of Stanford put it like this: “A great cause of the farmers’ [sic] difficulty is that he is selling at competitive prices and buying a great many things, including transportation, at monopoly prices.” At the same convention, not-so-sympathetic Professor Franklin Giddings of Columbia thought the problem lay with the farmer himself, asking pointedly, “Why, throughout [the farmer’s] long years of his affliction, has he always come off worse in the contest? There must be something wrong in his own make-up. . . . He controls more votes than other men control. . . . The failing is in himself. If you want to reach the root of the farmers’ difficulties, you will have to begin with the farmers’ minds.”³¹

The latter view ignores something crucial, however: collective action is much easier to undertake when the number of interested parties is small. Transaction costs can impede the ability to speak with one voice, particularly when the parties are scattered and isolated from each other.³² This is precisely the problem the Grangers set out to solve. The following sections take a closer look at some of the farmers’ grievances that led them to find collaborative economic behavior attractive.

PRICES, REVENUE, AND THE PERCEIVED PROBLEM OF MIDDLEMEN

Farm prices did indeed fall in the first half of the 1870s, and initially they fell faster than other prices, as figure 1.11 shows. Perhaps surprisingly, farm prices actually started rising just about the time the Grange was enrolling members at a furious rate, whereas other prices continued falling. The relative volatility of agricultural prices was substantial, however, making planning difficult for farmers, especially because of the time lag between planting and harvesting.

Still, the total value of farm output rose throughout the nineteenth century, even adjusting for price changes over time. A measure that may shed more light on farmers’ position is the size of farm output relative to the size of total output in the economy. Because farm population declined over time as a proportion of total population, standardization is necessary to ascertain the relative position of farmers. Figure 1.12 shows this: one line indicates the real output per capita economy-wide, whereas the other shows the same figure just for farmers.

Figure 1.12 indicates that, during the nineteenth century, both farm and overall productivity grew, but the growth rate for farm productivity stalled after the Civil War. The loss of so many able-bodied men in the war was a contributing factor. In the South, the end of slavery was also an element. Although plantation agriculture continued, the disappearance of the master-slave relationship meant less coercive power over workers, which was a factor that affected agricultural productivity. Black men continued to work hard, certainly, but many black women and children withdrew from the labor force.³³ The proportion of the population living on farms fell by 27 percent from 1860 to 1900, but the proportion of output attributable to farms dropped by 51 percent. These figures show that postbellum farmers were correct in thinking that as a whole they weren’t enjoying the fruits of economic growth as much as others.

Figure 1.11. Midwestern Farm Prices and Consumer Price Index, 1870–1900. Sources: Bowman and Keehn (1974); Carter et al. (2006, Series Cc2)

Figure 1.12. Farm and Economy-Wide Productivity, 1800–1900. Sources: Carter et al. (2006, Series Ba817, Ca11, Da28, Da1285)

What is more, many Grangers thought that farmers did not get their fair share of profit because middlemen seemed to skim so much off the top. As the Declaration of Purposes put it, “Their surplus and their exactions diminish our profits.” Brokers, warehousemen, grain elevator operators, and other sorts of businessmen who stood between the farmer and the ultimate consumer seemed to be parasites that produced nothing of real value but appeared to make a lot of money, at least according to Oliver Kelley. In his column in the Sauk Rapids (MN) Frontiersman, Kelley said that the agriculture problem was the antagonism between the producing farmers and the speculating middlemen. Kelley’s followers agreed: the Minnehaha Grange on 19 May 1883 had a less-than-flattering discussion of middlemen, with Sister Yancy suggesting they all be “laid under the table.” One of Kelley’s dreams was to establish farmer cooperatives that would take the place of middlemen.³⁴ Chapter 3 discusses more fully how these establishments fared.

EXPENSES

Transportation Costs. For farmers the single largest change to the American landscape in the latter half of the 1800s was the railroad. Just over 21,000 new miles of track came into operation from 1851 to 1860, and a little more than 22,000 additional miles opened up between 1861 and 1870. But the next decade nearly matched the total of the previous two, with 40,340 miles of new track. Over 13,000 miles of new track came into use in the two-year period 1870–71 alone. Many of the miles added in the decade and a half after the Civil War were in the Midwest, particularly the Granger states of Illinois, Iowa, Wisconsin, and Minnesota.³⁵

Farmers had complicated reactions to this enormous growth. Some had lost out personally in the Panic of 1857 (and thereafter) from worthless railroad stock or bankrupt roads that failed to pay off their bonds. Oliver Kelley fanned the flame by publishing newspaper articles about stock watering, in which companies diluted the value of existing stock by issuing new shares to the public. University of Minnesota Professor William Folwell suggested that Minnesota politician and Granger Ignatius Donnelly made farmers believe that watered stock robbed them by leading to high passenger and freight rates, whether it actually did or not. Many resented the sweet deals obtained by incipient roads: land grants from the federal and state government, tax exemption, and cash outlays from local governments to entice railroads to pass through their communities. Special rates for large shippers and free passes for public officials especially irked the smaller farmers.³⁶

Yet farmers, like other Americans, recognized that transportation by rail for both people and products was often far more efficient than earlier forms of transport such as wagons. This was a double-edged sword: railroads potentially expanded the market that any one farmer could serve, but they also meant more rivals for each farmer. Farm values increased when railroads were built nearby, but this meant little to farmers who intended to stay on their land, especially because higher assessed farm value also meant higher property taxes.³⁷

How a particular farmer felt—and how likely he was to embrace the Grange—depended in part on the presence of nearby railroads. No access to railroads typically meant more expensive modes of transporting goods and livestock to market, unless one lived close to a serviceable waterway. Consequently, farmers living in areas without railroads eagerly welcomed the possibility of the opening of a new line and were reluctant to engage in activities that would discourage railroad construction. Yet, once a road was built, its owners could charge monopoly prices until rivals entered the same market. With the entry of multiple railroads connecting one community to another, farmers more likely faced competitive rates and fares along that route.

The Grangers were particularly vocal about the “short-haul, long-haul” issue: farmers shipping their products to nearby locales often paid a much higher charge per mile than farmers whose goods traveled longer distances. In Minnesota, for instance, Rochester farmers paid 15 cents per mile to transport crops 45 miles to Winona, but Owatonna farmers paid only 10 cents per mile for a 92-mile trip.³⁸ (Note that these are the variable costs of transport and do not include the costs of loading and unloading, paperwork, and the like.) On 5 April 1884, members of the Minnehaha Grange asserted that farmers had proof of being cheated 30 cents per bushel on shipping and suggest that they would have to quit raising wheat unless an organized effort could change what they called an oppressive practice.

The difference in rates illustrates the classic economic power of a monopoly: the shorter the distance, the less likely a particular railroad had competitors for the route.³⁹ All else equal, a firm without rivals can charge more than firms that operate in competitive markets where consumers have more choices. This practice of charging two sets of rates fanned interest in finding ways to give collective voice to farmer frustration on the short-haul routes—fertile ground for the Grangers. As an editorial in the Duluth (MN) Tribune on 7 September 1883 provocatively phrased it, the railroads faced cut-throat rivalry and little profit on the through lines but then made it up with “extortionate charges for way shipments.” The Tribune article applauded the “wholesome reform” suggested by the farm movement.

The Grange had a harder time gaining a foothold in areas with numerous well-established railroads. The Philadelphia Evening Bulletin suggested that New Englanders were less inclined to form Granges because they had less to complain about. In the first of two articles in July 1874, the newspaper rested its argument on somewhat shaky ground—it claimed that New England railroads were controlled by “moral suasion” and good government. The second article offers a somewhat more plausible explanation, noting the lower rates associated with railroads that faced substantial competition. Transport on the Chicago and Northwestern was 2.47 cents per ton mile against 1.50 cents on the Pennsylvania and the Erie and 1.57 cents on the New York Central. Passenger travel was 3.16 cents per mile in the West, but only 2.48 cents on the Pennsylvania, 2.2 cents on the Erie, and 2 cents on the New York Central. The article also suggested that the higher rates out west were especially annoying because western roads enjoyed heavy public subsidies.

State- and county-level studies indicate that areas with no railroad service were less likely to support railroad regulation. Southern communities generally seemed more interested in seeing railroads built than worrying about regulating them.⁴⁰ A letter to the editor in the (Macon) Georgia Weekly Telegraph dated 24 February 1874 warned that the “law of supply and demand” regulates prices but “when prices are regulated by artificial means . . . it is bound to work to the injury of some.” It cautioned Georgia farmers that westerners’ desire for cheap transport could in the end hurt southern cotton farmers.

California offers an intriguing contrast to other states because of different practices in storing and shipping grain: instead of using elevators, farmers placed crops in sacks in the field until ready to sell them. They then exported grain directly to Great Britain on boats out of San Francisco. Grangers in California thus directed their frustration, not at railroads or warehousemen, but at grain dealers who cornered the supply of sacks.⁴¹ Of course, farmers could have avoided the problem by buying their sacks in advance. The lack of planning seems to have been due to ignorance of storage methods among new growers. One could consider the actions of the dealers simply as risk-taking, entrepreneurial activity rather than something more nefarious.

A look at the establishment of Granges by county in Minnesota in the period 1868–76 is revealing. Figure 1.13 shows that counties with railroads also had greater numbers of subordinate Granges. Some of this was undoubtedly due to denser county populations of agricultural families. The number of subordinates in a county is positively correlated with county population, with a correlation coefficient of 0.67.⁴² Yet the striking success of the Grange where railroads had already been built is notable: people may have been reluctant to support organizations that spoke out against railroads when hoping they could attract one to their county, but didn’t hesitate once the railroads were built. Grange activity—measured as number of subordinates per person in the county—was much stronger in counties with railroads, particularly those with only a single line.⁴³

Borrowing Costs. Debt is a part of life for most farmers. The lag time between planting and harvesting means that farmers need cash and credit in predictable cycles, although climate and weather issues such as droughts, floods, and windstorms can undermine this predictability. In isolated areas, nineteenth-century farmers relied on local bankers, storekeepers, and farm-implement dealers for credit. These loans naturally carried risk for the lender: bad weather or pests could devastate the entire surrounding area. Risk led to high interest rates; in 1872, for instance, about half the real estate mortgages in the Dakota Territory carried rates of 24 percent.⁴⁴ Like transportation costs, borrowing costs were a constant worry for farmers.

Figure 1.13. Density of Minnesota Granges by County and Minnesota Railroad Lines, 1874. Sources: Minnesota Historical Society, http://www.worldmapsonline.com/historicalmaps/kr-1874-minnesota.htm

The postbellum years were particularly difficult because many farmers had very little cushion. Discharged soldiers came home to find that years of neglect had taken their toll on farms. Abolition complicated matters in the South, as people had to adapt to a new sort of labor force. Because most battles had taken place on southern soil, destruction of property—including railroad lines and rolling stock—and disruption of land made things even worse. Families who had lost young men especially suffered. Low real wages for common soldiers during the war, coupled with high prices for many “store-bought” goods, meant that few farm families had any savings when peace came. Adding to these woes, the nation’s return to a gold standard after the war led to deflation. To the extent that debtor farmers did not anticipate this, they had borrowed dollars at one value but had to pay back dollars that were worth substantially more.

Grange organizers stressed the potential of collective arrangements that could help ease credit problems for farmers. These problems became that much more acute just as the Grange movement took off. The Panic of 1873, sparked in part by risky behavior by some railroad companies, led to a severe recession and major financial upheaval. Foreigners were particularly reluctant to invest in US railroads, drying up capital even further.⁴⁵

Taxes. Although the United States experimented with a federal income tax during the Civil War, this method of raising money quickly disappeared once the conflict ended, and it did not return until 1913 with the passage of the Sixteenth Amendment. State taxation on slave property, of course, also went by the wayside after war’s end.

State and federal tax revenue came instead from property taxes (particularly on cultivated land), excise taxes (especially on alcohol), and import tariffs (mostly on manufactured goods). The Grange thus had little trouble persuading farmers that they disproportionately bore the burden of taxes in the United States, both on production inputs and on the consumption items they purchased. Oddly, under the Tariff Act of 1883 domestic vegetable (but not fruit) growers benefited from protectionist import duties, with the case of Nix v. Hedden confirming that tomatoes should be considered a vegetable.⁴⁶

FARM VALUE: AN ALTERNATIVE LOOK AT ECONOMIC STATUS

The value of an asset reflects expected future flows—income and nonpecuniary benefits—yielded by that asset. Thus, another way to evaluate how well farmers were doing in the 1870s is to look at the value of what they owned.

Table 1.1 shows that, in real terms (using 1860 prices as a base), the average value of an acre of farm land was lower in 1870 than in 1860. Over the same period, average farm size fell from nearly 200 acres to just over 150 acres. Although the per capita value of GDP and per capita wealth fluctuated over the decade, the general trend was upward.⁴⁷ So, by comparison to the average American, the average farmer was not keeping up in terms of asset holdings. The Grange could and did exploit this discrepancy in its efforts to recruit members.

Table 1.1. Farm Number, Size, and Value, 1850–80

Source: http://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/farm-income-and-wealth-statistics.aspx#27514, Carter et al. (2006, Series Cc2).

Self-Improvement, at Least for Some

Improving farmers’ economic status was paramount for the early Grangers, particularly Oliver Kelley, and appealing to economic interests generated the Grange’s initial success. But the inability of the Grange to live up to its economic goals also caused it to founder a few years later, as Chapter 3 discusses.

From the beginning, however, some Grange founders also emphasized its mission to provide for the moral and educational uplifting of the farmer.⁴⁸ Chapter 4 shows that these features of the Grange helped sustain it as a fraternal organization into the twentieth century and today.

Regrettably, the morals of the early Grange did not extend to welcoming African Americans into the fold, particularly in the South. Given that half of the people engaged in southern agriculture were black, this excluded a large swath of farmers. The first subordinate Grange in Louisiana—a state firmly under control of the Radical Republicans since before the end of the Civil War—reportedly let all join without regard to color, but this was not true elsewhere. A reporter at the New Orleans Times-Picayune asked National Master Dudley Adams in October 1873 whether a subordinate Grange would admit “colored” members, and he replied that this was a question best left to local interests. Some white southern Grangers organized blacks into a Council of Laborers, primarily in an attempt to groom blacks to be reliable farmhands rather than to offer them any sort of equal voice or treatment. The later Farmers’ Alliance did not admit blacks, either. The Colored Farmers’ National Alliance, the first massive black organization in the United States, finally emerged near the end of the 1880s.⁴⁹

Race wasn’t the only possible excluding factor. Article 12 of the Granger Constitution states that no religious tests for memberships would be applied. But the activities of the Minnehaha subordinate certainly exhibit a strong mainstream Protestant Christian influence. An entry from 6 April 1883 states that “A member of our order—when joining he confessed he was astonished to find so much of the teachings of the [N]ew [T]estament in our lessons—and when he was called south to organize a church where its members were composed of many denominations, advised them to organize a Grange instead, to avoid sectarianism and quarreling.” Each meeting closed with a hymn, with favorites including “Blest Be the Tie that Binds,” “Bringing in the Sheaves,” “Church in the Wildwood,” “Praise God from Whom all Blessings Flow,” “All Hail the Power of Jesus’ Name,” and “Onward, Christian Soldiers.” Members were exhorted each year (as least as late as 1962) to observe “Go to Church” Sunday in honor of Oliver Kelley’s birthday. The chapter contributed funds to local Lutheran and Evangelical churches. These practices undoubtedly created a less-than-welcoming atmosphere for people who were not white Protestants.

Political Voice (But No Political Party)

The Declaration of Purposes emphasizes that the Grange is not a political or party organization, and Grangers could not talk about partisan politics, call political conventions, or nominate or discuss political candidates in their meetings. In the 1950s, for instance, the Minnehaha Grange refused to rent its hall for a political meeting, even though its treasury was in major need of funds. Nor would it allow the hall to be used as a polling place if doing so entailed the storage of voting machines.⁵⁰

Refusing to align themselves with a political party did not mean that the Grangers failed to participate in the political process. Grange members in the Missouri legislature determined that they would “act as a unit on all questions of financial policy and political reforms, without regard to their former political associations, and that they [would] introduce bills providing for cheaper railroad rates.”⁵¹ Texas Grangers joined with Republicans at the 1875 Texas constitutional convention to defeat a poll tax, fearing that it would disenfranchise poor whites. And the first resolution by Washington Grangers in September 1889 was to object to the new state constitution because they considered public-servant salaries fixed at too high a rate. They also opposed its apparent welcoming of foreign purchasers of state land and industries.⁵²

But the professed apolitical nature of the Grangers would come to haunt them. The 1870 census reports that 47 percent of the population identified themselves as farmers, yet only 7 percent of the members of the 43rd Congress (1873–75) were farmers.⁵³ One reason for the inability of the Grange to continue its initial success was the greater willingness of other farm organizations to align themselves with powerful political allies and to engage in party politics to obtain preferential treatment. Chapter 3 explores this more fully.