THE GRANGE 137 



attempts at co-operation have been ill-judged, 

 even fantastic. It is true that much of the ma- 

 chinery of organization failed to work and can 

 be found on the social junk-pile, in company 

 with other discarded implements not wholly 

 rural in origin. But it is also true that great 

 progress has been made; that the spirit of co- 

 operation is rapidly emerging as a factor in 

 rural social life; and that the weapons of rural 

 organization have a temper all the better, per- 

 haps, because they were fashioned on the anvil 

 of defeat. 



Among all these efforts to unite the farming 

 classes, by far the most characteristic and the 

 most successful is the Grange. The truth of 

 this statement will immediately be questioned 

 by those whose memory recalls the early rush 

 to the Grange, "Granger legislation," and 

 similar phenomena, as well as by those whose 

 impressions have been gleaned from reading the 

 periodicals of the late seventies, when the Grange 

 tide had begun to ebb. Indeed, it seems to be 

 the popular impression that the Grange is not 

 at present a force of consequence, that long ago 

 it became a cripple, if not a corpse. Only a 

 few years ago, an intelligent magazine writer, in 

 discussing the subject of farmers' organizations, 



