CHAPTER III 



THE GRANGER MOVEMENT AS A POLITICAL FORCE 

 INDEPENDENT PARTIES 



IT has been a peculiarity of American politics since the Civil 

 War that the two principal parties have been controlled, in 

 the main, either by men of a conservative type who are naturally 

 opposed to taking up any new or radical issues, or by professional 

 politicians who find it to their interests to keep in the foreground 

 the old familiar questions on which parties have been divided 

 in the past, and thus to draw away attention from new issues 

 which are likely to disrupt party lines. 1 Consequently almost 

 the only method by which the advocates of new measures have 

 been able to get them before the public has been the formation 

 of third parties. Though these parties have seldom had any 

 considerable or lasting success as parties, they have frequently 

 accomplished their purpose by forcing the adoption of their 

 platforms on one or the other of the old parties, and this it is 

 which gives to third parties their importance in American 

 political history. 



The close of the Civil War in 1865 left the Republican party 2 

 in control in every state of the Northwest from Ohio to the 

 Pacific coast. In Ohio and Indiana on the east, in Missouri 

 on the south, and in California and Oregon on the west, the 

 Democratic party remained a factor to be reckoned with, but 

 in the rest of this section in Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, 

 Minnesota, Iowa, Kansas, and Nebraska the great majority 

 of the voters looked upon the term " Democrat " as practically 



1 Cf. Bryce, American Commonwealth, ii. chs. liii-lvi, and Ostrogorski, Democ- 

 racy and the Organization of Political Parties, ii. 



2 The party called itself " Union " at that time, but in 1868 it adopted the name 

 of " National Republican." In an article in the American Historical Review for 

 October, 1910, Professor W. A. Dunning points out that this party was distinct in 

 purpose, in personnel, and in name, from the Republican party which elected 

 Lincoln to the presidency in 1860. 



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