204 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Mobilier," " watered stock," and " Wall Street speculation," were in 

 everybody's mouth. Most of the stock was owned in the East and in 

 Europe, and the expression " absentee ownership " began to arouse 

 somewhat the same feeling as in Ireland. The " Nation " pleaded for 

 the widows and orphans who were kept from want only by their rail- 

 road-stock, but the farmer replied that the stock was in the hands of 

 such orphans as Commodore Vanderbilt and Jay Gould, who could 

 look out for themselves. Add the fact that the railroads felt the hard 

 times as much as the farmers ; that for very self-preservation the 

 traffic at competing points was so furiously fought for as to make rates 

 ruinously low, while each road extorted all it could squeeze where there 

 was no competition, and it will not seem strange that the " Farmers' 

 Movement" developed, on one side, into a political organization to 

 fight railroads. But this was not the Grange. A misconception exists 

 on this point. In everything published on the subject, the anti-rail- 

 road movement is called the Granger movement ; the resulting legisla- 

 tion, the Granger legislation ; the cases that arose, the Granger cases. 

 It must be granted that the same farmers often were engaged in both 

 movements, and that certain subordinate parts of the Grange did some- 

 times disobey their organic law so far as to engage as bodies in the 

 agitation, chiefly by memorializing Legislatures. It was impossible to 

 control completely the rank and file of such a vast order. But, with 

 these reservations, the Grange, as an organization, took no part in the 

 anti-railroad agitation. The two were not cause and effect, but par- 

 allel effects of the same general causes. In the way of proof the 

 " Declaration of Purposes" of 1874 has already been quoted, to the 

 effect that the Grange is not hostile to railroads, and that all political 

 action and discussion is totally excluded. The published proceedings 

 of the National Grange show the same thing. In 1874 the executive 

 committee reported : " Unfortunately for the order, the impression 

 prevails to some extent that its chief mission is to fight railroads." In 

 1875 a resolution from Texas favoring railroad legislation was sup- 

 pressed. In 1873 the Master of the Minnesota State Grange, being 

 informed that certain Granges in his jurisdiction had appointed dele- 

 gates to a State anti-railroad convention, ordered the offending Granges 

 to recall their delegates. Congressman D. W. Aiken, of South Caro- 

 lina, long a member of the National Executive Committee, said in 

 an address four years ago : " Frequently had the Grange to bear the 

 odium of other men's sins. . . . For instance, there existed in Illi- 

 nois and Wisconsin, and other sections of the Northwest, agricultural 

 clubs whose province seemed to be to wage war against transportation 

 companies. Anathemas were hurled upon the Grange for making this 

 attack, whereas every Patron of Husbandry knew that the Grange as 

 such was not a participant in the fight from beginning to end." It 

 may seem surprising that such an error should have arisen, but it is 

 not inexplicable. The newspapers first applied the name " Grangers " 



