THE GRANGER MOVEMENT 



CHAPTER I 



FUNDAMENTAL CONDITIONS 



PERIODS of agrarian discontent have been of frequent occur- 

 rence in the world's history and it has generally been assumed 

 that they were preceded or caused by depressions in the condition 

 of the agricultural population. Recent investigations into the 

 causes of the English peasants' revolt of 1381 and the Peasants' 

 War in Germany in 1524-25 have suggested that the contrary 

 may be the case : the status of the peasant seems in both instances 

 to have been one of gradual improvement, and the risings, 

 attempts to hasten the amelioration. Similarly it would be 

 untrue to say that the condition of the American farmers was 

 retrograding in the decade following the Civil War. Never- 

 theless, the farmers believed that they were not advancing so 

 rapidly as the other classes of American society, and it was 

 useless to point out to them that they lived much better and 

 enjoyed far more comforts than their grandfathers had, or 

 to tell them that their financial embarrassments were due to 

 extravagent desires. 1 The fact was, their standard of living 

 was advancing nearly, if not quite, as rapidly as that of other 

 ranks of society, while their incomes were not increasing in the 

 same proportion. The causes of this situation, and of the 

 Granger movement, are to be sought primarily in economic 

 conditions, and to a less extent in political, social, and intellectual 

 conditions, as they affected the American farmer. 



THE AGRICULTURAL SITUATION 



Although the Granger movement was national in its scope 

 and some of the conditions which it sought to remedy were 



1 Nation, xvii. 68 (July 31, 1873). 

 3 



