144 THE GRANGER MOVEMENT 



Club was a factor in securing the enactment of the restrictive 

 legislation of 1871, still the marked development of the move- 

 ment for agricultural organization did not come until after the 

 passage of the first " Granger laws." The rapid organization 

 of farmers' clubs and granges throughout the state during the 

 years 1871 and 1872, together with the establishment of the 

 state grange in March, 1872, and the State Farmers' Association 

 in January, 1873, gave the farmers adequate vehicles for the 

 expression of their opinions on the dominant political and 

 economic question of the period in Illinois, the railroad problem. 

 Nor were they at all backward in giving vent to these opinions. 1 

 To the farmer, who was inexperienced in politics and unfamiliar 

 with legal procedure, it seemed that the politicians and the courts 

 were combining to prevent any effective regulation of railroads, 

 and the demand came in no uncertain tone for the enforcement 

 of the railroad legislation of 1871 and the enactment of additional 

 and more stringent laws. 2 Some of the farmers, despairing 

 of any enforcement of the laws by the commission or the courts, 

 determined to put them into effect themselves, and the result 

 was a curious episode of riding for " legal fares," in which the 

 victory lay sometimes with the farmers and sometimes with 

 the railroad employees. All this agitation served to keep up 

 the interest in the railroad question and was undoubtedly the 

 chief factor in the rapid development of agricultural organization 

 in 1872 and 1873. In the field of practical politics it led directly 

 to the defeat of Judge Lawrence and the organization of the 

 Independent Reform party, while in the field of legislation, it 

 brought about the enactment of another Granger law, the 

 railway act of 1873. 



Just a week after the opening of the twenty-eighth general 

 assembly in January, 1873, some two hundred and seventy-five 

 farmers from all parts of the state, in convention at Bloomington 

 for the purpose of organizing the State Farmers' Association, 3 



1 See the columns of the Chicago Tribune and the Prairie Farmer for 1872 and 

 1873, passim. 



2 See, for example, resolutions adopted by a Livingston County farmers' con- 

 vention on January 6, 1873. Chicago Tribune, January 10, 1873, p. 5. 



8 See above, p. 75. 



