SOCIAL AND EDUCATIONAL FEATURES 295 



undertook this work: special committees were appointed in the 

 local granges to report monthly on the condition of crops and 

 stock in their respective vicinities; and these reports were 

 sent to the secretaries of the state granges who compiled them 

 into general state reports. 1 Calls for a national crop report to 

 be compiled through the Grange soon began to come from the 

 West; 2 and at its seventh session, in February, 1874, the National 

 Grange authorized the executive committee to establish " a 

 system of statistical crop reports." 



The committee deliberated upon the subject and finally 

 decided to issue blanks to and call for reports directly from 

 subordinate granges, thus ignoring the state granges entirely. 

 A force of clerks was engaged in Washington and work was begun 

 in March, 1874. Circulars and blanks were sent out to from 

 sixteen thousand to twenty-two thousand subordinate granges 

 at intervals of two months throughout the summer; but in no 

 case were returns received from more than one-fifth of the 

 granges, and the vast majority of these were said to be incomplete, 

 unsatisfactory, and " accompanied by lengthy epistles, con- 

 taining advice, complaints, suggestions, encouragement and 

 caustic criticism." In spite of the neglect of the great majority 

 of the granges to make these reports, the returns which were 

 received came from all parts of the country, and the consolidated 

 reports are said to have been of considerable value. The work 

 was very expensive, however, and was not continued by the 

 National Grange after the eighth session in February, 1875. 3 

 After this experiment was given up, state granges in all parts of 

 the country again took up the work of collecting crop reports, 

 but none of them appear to have had any considerable degree 

 of success. If the order had continued to flourish as it did for 

 a few years, it is quite possible that a workable method of col- 

 lecting crop statistics through it might have been developed in 



1 Alabama State Grange, Proceedings, ii. 33 (1874); Mississippi State Grange, 

 By-laws, 1872, p. n. 



2 Iowa State Grange, Proceedings, iv. 82 (1873). 



3 National Grange, Proceedings, vii. 31, viii. 26-29 ( I 874~7s); Western Rural, 

 xiii. 236 (July 24, 1875); Martin, Grange Movement, 463; Carr, Patrons of Hus- 

 bandry, 122; Aiken, The Grange, 13. 



