CHAPTER II 



ORGANIZATION 

 ORIGIN OF THE PATRONS OF HUSBANDRY 



EVER since the latter part of the eighteenth century agri- 

 cultural associations, both state and local, have existed in dif- 

 ferent parts of the United States; but their influence was slight 

 previous to the Civil War and was confined principally to such 

 aristocratic gentlemen farmers as the large planters of the 

 southern states. After the close of the war the idea of organ- 

 ization took a firm hold on the farming classes, and the country 

 witnessed the rise, rapid development and often equally 

 rapid decline of a number of great agricultural orders, some 

 of which have exerted considerable influence on the progress of 

 the farming population and on the economic and social develop- 

 ment of the country as a whole. 



The first of these orders to be organized was the Patrons of 

 Husbandry, or Grange, as it is commonly called, which came 

 into existence in I867. 1 Although the phenomenal growth of 

 this order was due principally to the economic and political 

 causes set forth in the preceding chapter, its immediate con- 

 ception came from the fertile brain of Oliver Hudson Kelley, 2 

 a clerk in the government service at Washington. Kelley was 



1 The material for the ensuing account of the origin and early years of the Patrons 

 of Husbandry to the permanent organization in 1873 is contained mainly in Kelley, 

 The Patrons of Husbandry. Short accounts covering the field are to be found in 

 Carr, Patrons of Husbandry, ch. x; Paine, Granger Movement in Illinois, 3-15; 

 C. W. Pierson, " Rise of the Granger Movement," in Popular Science Monthly, 

 xxxii. 199-208 (December, 1887); J. W. Darrow, Origin and Early History of the 

 Order of Patrons of Husbandry; D. W. Aiken, The Grange, its Origin, Progress, and 

 Educational Purposes (United States Department of Agriculture, Special Report, 

 No. 55); N. A. Dunning, Farmers' Alliance History, 232-236; Martin, The Grange 

 Movement, 407-411. 



2 Father Kelley, as he has long been known to the members of the order, died 

 at his home in Washington, D.C., January 20, 1913, while these pages were going 

 through the press. 



