48 THE GRANGER MOVEMENT 



Patrons of Husbandry or requests for deputies to organize, 

 and in general showing a growing interest in the order in all 

 parts of the country. 



The plan of work during the next few years was to get a few 

 active subordinate granges started, and out of them to organize 

 a temporary state grange, the master of which would appoint 

 deputies to carry on the work of organizing subordinate granges 

 in the different parts of the state. Charters were issued for 

 subordinate granges only when at least nine men and four 

 women were pledged as members, and the number of charter 

 members was limited to thirty, of whom ten must be women. 

 The initiation fee was usually three dollars for men and fifty 

 cents for women, but this varied somewhat from time to time. 

 Of the money thus collected, fifteen dollars went to the National 

 Grange to pay for the dispensation, and sums ranging from five 

 to fifteen dollars and expenses were received by the deputies 

 for organizing the grange. In some states the state grange 

 also took a small fee from each grange organized, and whatever 

 remained went into the treasury of the subordinate grange. 



During the remainder of the year 1870, the work of organiza- 

 tion progressed but slowly. In Illinois, the feeling of antagonism 

 to railroads had led to the calling of a Producers' Convention 

 which met at Bloomington, April 20, and appointed a committee 

 to take measures for the establishment of town and county 

 transportation leagues. Efforts were made by Kelley and W. W. 

 Corbett, the editor of the Prairie Farmer, to capture this move- 

 ment for the Patrons of Husbandry; and in June, 1870, they 

 revived Garden City Grange, which had been organized by 

 Kelley on his trip to the West in 1868, and then proceeded to 

 organize a temporary state grange made up largely of deputies, 

 but with H. C. Wheeler, a member of the committee on organiza- 

 tion appointed by the Bloomington convention, as its secretary. 

 This move proved abortive, and but one new grange was organ- 

 ized in Illinois in I87O. 1 



1 Kelley, Patrons of Husbandry, 245, 269-272, 285, 289, 295; Prairie Farmer, 

 xli. 89, 130 (March 26, April 30, 1870). For a fuller account of this Producers' 

 Convention, see below, p. 127. 



