112 PROCEEDINGS OF THE 



WHAT THE GRANGE MAT AGCOMPLISH* 



Worthy Master, Brothers and Sisters: 



In accepting the invitation of your committee to address you on this 

 occasion, in accordance with the liberty granted me, I have chosen to 

 speak upon what the Grange may accomplish. 



I acknowledge that in approaching my subject I do it with extreme 

 difl3dence, from the fact that there are brothers present who have expressed 

 their disapproval of some of the doctrines I advocate, not as I conceive 

 because they were wrong in principle, but because they were in advance of 

 the times; and, perhaps, these brothers have not caught up with the spirit 

 of the age, and advanced with advancing ideas upon the great questions 

 that underlie our movement and the means necessary to remove the dis- 

 abilities under which the labor of the country is resting, and have con- 

 sequently failed to realize the means that are necessary to this object. 



For myself, I freely admit that I have been radical from the beginning 

 of our movement, perhaps for years before these brothers ever gave a 

 thought to the degraded condition that labor -occupies, or if they did, 

 tacitly accepted it as its normal condition, governed b}^ a power over which 

 they have no control. 



Despite all attempts to keep them down, the smouldering fires 

 have burst forth, and we are to-day witnessing a spectacle new in the 

 history of the world, when all labor in every department of industry is 

 rising in self-defense and forming in solid phalanx to resist the encroach- 

 ments of corporate and consolidated capital upon its rights. No matter 

 whether the weak and timid may shrink from the contest with a powerful 

 foe, there are strong arms and gallant hearts enough to grapple with him, 

 and by a united, determined effort, crush out forever the enemies of labor 

 and establish its rights upon the immutable principles of justice. And 

 whether they will or not, 



" 'Tis coming up the steep of time. 



And this old world is growing brighter; 

 We may not see its dawn sublime. 



Yet high hopes make the hearts grow lighter, 

 Some may be sleeping in the ground 



When it awakes the world in wonder; 

 But we have felt it gathering round. 



And heard its voice of living thunder." 



" What is wit is wit," said Byron, what the Grange has accomplished 

 has gone into history, what it may accomplish, whether its future shall go 

 out in darkness, and we shall be what Charles Francis Adams says we now 

 are, a "Phenomenon of the past," or whether we shall demonstrate that 

 labor has within itself the inherent power to protect itself and to elevate and 



*An address delivered by S. M. Smith, before the Patrons of Husbandry, at their 

 annaal meeting, December, 1875. 



