THE RISE OF THE GRANGER MOVEMENT. 205 



to Western farmers in general, and consequently to those fighting rail- 

 roads. From this it was an easy step to the assertion that the Grange 

 was the fighting organization. There were some exceptions. The 

 " Tribune" sent a special correspondent West, and afterward published 

 a *' Farmers' Extra," in which it is expressly recognized that the Grange 

 is not fighting railroads, though some Grangers are. The " Times " 

 published the same discovery with the comment that the general im- 

 pression on this point was a mistaken one. But the " Kation," which 

 talked loudest of all, and the press in general, made no such distinc- 

 tion. It is not strange that Mr. C. F. Adams and other writers on 

 railroads have followed this leading, as it was of no consequence to 

 them whether the Western agitators were known as " Grangers " or 

 by any other name. The principal difficulty is with those who wrote 

 from the farmers' standpoint. It can only be said that they wrote be- 

 fore the railroad legislation had been given a fair trial, and that they 

 wanted to claim for the order the credit of what looked like a suc- 

 cess. Their books, in general, are of a hortatory and prophetic rather 

 than historical character. 



From this point of view it may seem foreign to our subject to dis- 

 cuss the railroad agitation further. Its intimate connection with the 

 Granger movement, however, and the causal relation between the two 

 in the public mind, may furnish excuse. In 1867, when the Grange 

 was founded at Washington, most of the Western States were still pass- 

 ing laws to facilitate municipal and other aid to railroads. A few, 

 however, were beginning to take the alarm, and about 1867 six made 

 feeble attempts to check the growing abuses; from Iowa, which merely 

 affirmed the full liability of the railroads as common carriers, to Ohio, 

 where a " Commissioner of Railroads and Telegraph " was provided for. 

 The feeling grew during the next three years. Illinois, for example, 

 passed an act in 1869 providing that " all railroad corporations shall 

 be limited to a just, reasonable, and uniform toll." These facts are 

 mentioned to show — not tangible results, for they were not attained, 

 but the growth of public feeling prior to the adoption of the new State 

 Constitution by Illinois in 1870, which, with the bills immediately fol- 

 lowing, first awakened the country at large to the fact that something 

 was brewing among the Western farmers. The Constitution of 1870 

 declares : " Railroads . . . are hereby declared iDublic highways, and 

 the General Assembly shall . . . pass laws establishing reasonable 

 maximum rates. . . . No municipality shall ever become subscriber 

 to the capital stock of any railroad." The attack was followed up in 

 1871 by an act establishing a system of maxima, and providing for a 

 Board of Commissioners to put to each company forty-one specified 

 questions and as many more as their ingenuity might devise. The 

 railroads, relying on the Dartmouth College case, declared the law un- 

 constitutional and refused to obey it. In the suits that arose, Judge 

 Lawrence, of the State Supreme Court, pronounced the fixing of maxima 



