230 THE GRANGER MOVEMENT 



The failure of the Reagan bill by no means put an end to the 

 agitation for federal regulation of railroads, but it does mark the 

 end of that part of the agitation to which the term " Granger " 

 can be distinctively applied. In some ways, indeed, it might 

 be more appropriate to confine that term to the agitation which 

 centered around the Windom committee report and the McCrary 

 bill, and which was contemporaneous with the Granger legisla- 

 tion of the northwestern states. At any rate, after 1880, the 

 influence of the agricultural element in the agitation for railroad 

 regulation seems to have been relatively slight. This was due 

 in part to the fact that the order of Patrons of Husbandry was 

 giving way to other farmers' organizations interested more in 

 financial questions than in railroad regulation; but still more to 

 the growing interest which the manufacturing and commercial 

 classes were displaying in the transportation problem. At 

 session after session of Congress railroad bills were introduced 

 and discussed, and in 1885 the Senate and House each passed 

 different bills. In the same year the Senate established another 

 select committee, with Senator Cullom of Illinois as chairman, 

 to investigate the subject of railroad transportation during the 

 recess of Congress; and the report of this Cullom committee, 

 made in 1886, together with the Wabash decision by which the 

 Supreme Court denied to the states any authority over inter- 

 state traffic, led to the enactment of the interstate commerce 

 act of iSS;. 1 



The claims of certain Grange enthusiasts that the credit for 

 this act belongs to the order of Patrons of Husbandry 2 can 

 hardly be substantiated, for an examination of the report of 

 the Cullom committee shows that the demand for regulation 

 of railroads was fully as insistent among merchants and manu- 

 facturers at this time as among farmers. It is true, however, 

 that the Patrons of Husbandry and other agricultural organiza- 

 tions of the seventies, to whose agitation for railroad regulation, 

 both state and national, the general term " Granger movement " 



1 James, The Agitation for Federal Regulation, 39-50; Johnson, American Rail- 

 way Transportation, 368-370; Larrabee, The Railroad Question, 353; Cullom Com- 

 mittee, Report (49 Congress, i session, Senate Reports, no. 46). 



8 Darrow, Patrons of Husbandry, 50; Messer, The Grange. 



