THE OUTCOME OF THE GRANGER MOVEMENT. 369 



the Grangers. Meanwhile, the Executive Committee was busy in 

 another direction. Congressman Aiken of South Carolina, one of its 

 members, says that they " visited the manufacturers who supplied the 

 market with such implements as the farmers needed, from a scooter- 

 plow to a parlor-organ, proposing to concentrate the purchases of the 

 order where the greatest discounts were obtained for cash. In no in- 

 stance did they fail to secure a reduction of twenty-five to fifty per 

 cent." ]\Ir. Aiken notes the astonishment of one cutlery-maker at a 

 single order for ten thousand pruning-knives of a particular pattern. 

 Such enormous reductions from regular prices were obtained only 

 under a pledge of secrecy. But as information had to be distrib- 

 uted by thousands of printed sheets, the Patrons could not keep the 

 secret. The contracts leaked out, causing the withdrawal of many 

 firms from their agreements. What experiments the National Grange 

 might have tried with the great sums in its treasury can only be con- 

 jectured, as its resources and influence over the subordinate lodges 

 were crippled almost fatally in the Charleston meeting in 1875. It 

 probably would have continued the crop reports, which, though costly, 

 and often unreliable through the ignorance and carelessness of Granges 

 about furnishing statistics, had proved valuable. Like the State 

 Granges, which had full treasuries, it might have squandered its 

 capital and come to grief on co-operative ventures. Such is the infer- 

 ence to be drawn from utterances like the following, from the Execu- 

 tive Committee: "To secure rights to manufacture leading imple- 

 ments ... is pre-eminently a duty of the National Grange, and a 

 measure of the greatest importance, directly, because the profits of 

 manufacture will thus be controlled by the Order, as well as the 

 profits of transfer or dealing ; indirectly, by securing facilities that 

 will favor the introduction of manufacturing establishments in dis- 

 tricts at present far removed from them, and where their products are 

 in demand." The plan of having the farmer's machinery manufact- 

 ured at his door and under his supervision was much better as a 

 statement of protectionist doctrine than as a guide to safe investment. 

 The policy of the meeting of 1875 indicated that, before it was too 

 late, the National Grange recognized that there was danger of going 

 too fast, and that its province was rather to devise plans for the use of 

 the order than to plunge into enterprises itself. It therefore sounded 

 a note of caution, and first issuing a scheme for co-operative joint-stock 

 stores based on something found in this country, proceeded to work 

 out a more elaborate system on the model of the Rochdale Pioneers. 

 Various English publications on co-operation were distributed among 

 the order, and an envoy was sent to England to confer with English 

 co-operators. The result was a new set of rules, closely following the 

 Rochdale plan, and insisting on the feature of investing the profits 

 of trade for the stockholders on the basis of purchases, as opposed to 

 the simple joint-stock arrangement of the earlier scheme, which had 

 VOL. XXXII. — 24 



