AS A POLITICAL FORCE III 



them among the subordinate granges, and then return them to 

 the national master for presentation to Congress. In addition, 

 the national master was to draw up a form for a circular letter 

 to the individual congressmen, requesting reports on the prog- 

 ress of the desired legislation and urging the necessity for action, 

 copies of which should be sent by the master of each state grange 

 to every senator and representative from his state. In this way 

 the demands of the farmers were to be brought to the attention 

 of all the congressmen at the same time; for the date upon which 

 the letters were to be mailed was to be fixed by the master of 

 the National Grange. This procedure, or some modification of 

 it, and the appointment of special committees to lobby for its 

 measures, were the principal methods by which the order at- 

 tempted to influence the course of national legislation; although 

 it also took advantage of the election, in the latter part of the 

 decade, of several of the members of the National Grange to seats 

 in Congress, to press through them for the desired legislation. 1 



Among the objects of the Patrons of Husbandry and the other 

 farmers' organizations, none was more prominent in the early 

 seventies than that of securing reduction in the cost of trans- 

 portation. For furthering this object two general lines of 

 procedure presented themselves to the farmers; regulation of 

 the existing means of transportation by the government, national 

 or state; and increase in the facilities for transportation. The 

 efforts of the farmers for the regulation of railways will be 

 treated in subsequent chapters, but the agitation for internal 

 improvements can best be considered here in connection with 

 the general legislative activity of the Grange. 



Almost as soon as they were organized, the different state 

 granges, especially those of the Mississippi Valley, began to 

 agitate for the construction of canals, and the improvement of 

 the river channels in which they were severally interested. 2 

 These propositions varied according to the location of the grange, 

 but there was one scheme which received the general approval 



1 Ibid. xii. 88 (1878), xiv. 99, 151 (1880). 



2 For examples see state grange proceedings: Indiana, iv (1874); Missouri, 

 iii (1874); Vermont, special (May, 1874), iv (1875); Wisconsin, ii (1874). 



