H2 AGRICULTURAL DISCONTENT 



formidable in the extreme. As small producers, each standing alone, they 

 were deplorably weak in bargaining power, but they clung tenaciously 

 to their independence and resisted with all their might those same pos- 

 sibilities for united action that so intrigued the men with whom they had 

 to deal. Their business adversaries, perhaps because they were fewer in 

 numbers, less isolated, and on the whole better educated, got together. 

 City laborers joined forces in powerful unions to fight for what they be- 

 lieved to be their rights. But the discontented farmers, faced by similar 

 circumstances, were reluctant to organize. Often they preferred flight to 

 the nearest frontier, as long as the frontier remained, or even flight to the 

 city in search of a job. Only when times grew excessively hard were they 

 willing to surrender a small portion of their independence to achieve 

 something resembling a united front. 1 



During the late nineteenth century two such periods of stress and strain 

 one in the seventies and the other in the late eighties and the early nine- 

 ties actually drove the farmers together, at least in certain portions of the 

 Middle West and the South. The first period of distress produced the 

 Granger movement; the second, the Farmers' Alliance and Populism. 

 But as soon as agriculture prospered again, these organizations fell apart. 

 By the early twentieth century the Grange had reverted to the status of a 

 cultural and educational body, as its founders had originally intended it 

 to be; furthermore, it had shifted the center of its activities to the north- 

 east, and was strongest in New England and the Middle Atlantic states. 2 

 As for the Farmers' Alliance, it had evaporated into thin air, while 

 Populism, whatever ideas of political reform it might have contributed 

 to the older parties, had lost its status as an independent movement. 



The economic disorders of the 1920'$ were sufficiently acute to bring 

 into prominence another group of agricultural organizations. Most of 

 these orders, however, dated well back into the prewar years, and some 

 of them had already had short periods of vigorous activity. The prosperity 

 of the early twentieth century was by no means equally distributed, and 



1. On this general subject see W. S. Harwood, "Cooperation in the West," 

 Atlantic Monthly, LXXXV (April, 1900), p. 540; J. R. Elliot, American Farms (New 

 York, 1890), p. 125; C. Vincent, "Cooperation Among Western Farmers," Arena, 

 XXXI (March, 1904), p. 287. 



2. K. L. Butterfield, "The Grange," The Forum, XXXI (April, 1901), p. 233. 



