STATE GRANGP: OB^ ILLINOIS. 



The By-Laws of our own State seem to me to need some changes. I 

 hope you will appoint a committee to consider this subject and to report 

 upon it. 



The money loaned by the National Grange to this State, and now in the 

 bands of the E.xecutive Committee, has recently been donated in full; and 

 is now fully under your control. 



Information in regard to the organization of mutual insurance com- 

 panies under State laws has been prepared, and distributed to those 

 requesting it. I feel like urging this plan of insurance upon the Subor- 

 dinate Granges, as vastly cheaper than ordinary insurance, and fully as 

 reliable as the average farmer is likelj' to secure. I am satisfied that not 

 two per cent, of the insurance money paid for insuring farm property is 

 ever repaid for losses. 



Co-operative stores for buying and selling, and for the transaction of 

 any business that can be done clieaper than by the ordinary middleman 

 agency, h&vc been quite numerously established in other States and a /ew 

 in this. They are proving eminently successful. You will have a report 

 on this subject during this session, which I hope you will carefully con- 

 sider, with a view of making recommendations of some kind to Subordi- 

 nate Granges. These institutions, when discreetly managed, accomplish 

 a great pecuniary saving to the farmer class, and are also educational in 

 their influence, b}' disseminating information in regard to operations in 

 trade and finance. The secret of this success is the adoption of the ca«h 

 principle of trade, by which the frequent turning over of the capital in trade 

 is accomplished, as well as the saving of expense which is inseparable 

 from the present mode of doing business. There are many other topics 

 and suggestions which crowd upon me for notice, but I have resolved to 

 be brief, and to leave to your fruitful minds to supply any requirement 

 I have omitted. 



In this my final address to j'ou as your Master, I am moved to express 

 to you my heartfelt thanks for the uniform kindness and favorable con- 

 sideration shown me ; and through you I desire to say this to the brothers 

 and sisters all over the State: when I took up the gavel in a Subordinate 

 Grange, I had no purpose, no ambition, extending beyond my neighbors 

 and my own towns-people; but Providence has led me forth by a way I 

 knew not. I had long been sensible of the burdens resting upon our class, 

 and thus upon all industry. I had witnessed the gradual impoverish- 

 ment of our prairie soil to build the mansions and business palaces 

 arising from the present extravagant middleman system of doing business. 

 I had, without the proof of statistics now supplied, been sensible of the 

 gradual but sure transfer of rural wealtii to city hands. It could go on — 

 it can continue to go on, only with the repetition of those scenes of 

 misery, debauchery and vice, both public and private, which have char- 

 acterized the downfall of nations of other limes. With an honest pur- 

 pose, which the judgment of my advanced age sanctions, if it does not 

 make wise, I set out in my feeble way to do battle for the rights and the 



