122 THE GRANGER MOVEMENT 



a vote of twenty-seven to eleven; several of those who voted 

 in the negative explaining that they were in sympathy with the 

 purposes of the resolution, but objected to its consideration by 

 the Grange. 1 



It cannot be said, on the whole, that the order of Patrons 

 of Husbandry exercised any considerable direct influence on 

 national legislation during the decade 1870-80. With the 

 possible exceptions of the reduction of the internal revenue duty 

 on tobacco and the restoration of the high tariff on wool, prac- 

 tically all of the demands of the order for national legislation 

 went unheeded by Congress or were in line with laws which 

 would have been enacted even without the support of the Grange. 

 The same probably is true of much of the legislation since 1880 

 for which the members of the order have been wont to claim the 

 credit. Even the elevation of the bureau of agriculture to a 

 cabinet department would doubtless have taken place in time 

 without the agitation of the Grange, though that agitation 

 probably hastened the step somewhat; and no student of national 

 railway legislation would be willing to accept the claim of many 

 members of the order that it was chiefly instrumental in securing 

 the passage of the interstate commerce act. 2 To understand 

 this failure to exercise effective influence on national legislation, 

 even with regard to questions upon which the order was united, 

 consideration should be given to the facts that the Grange did 

 not attempt to exercise such influence to any considerable 

 extent until 1875 or 1876, by which time it had begun to decline 

 rapidly in numbers and prestige ; and that when the order began 

 to revive in the next decade, numerous other and more vigorous 

 agricultural organizations had come to the front, and it could 

 no longer claim to be the principal spokesman of the farming 

 class. 



1 National Grange, Proceedings, xii. 105 (1878). 



2 Messer, The Grange, 17; Darrow, Patrons of Husbandry, 50; J. J. Woodman, 

 in American Grange Bulletin, August i, 1901. 



