1 68 THE GRANGER MOVEMENT 



agreement between the two houses; and the legislature once 

 more adjourned without enacting a railroad law. 1 



While the railroad question was thus agitated in session 

 after session of the legislature, and partly as a result of that 

 agitation, the farmers of Iowa had been banding themselves 

 together in the order of Patrons of Husbandry, which by the 

 opening of the year 1873 had a membership of about fifty thou- 

 sand in the state. 2 After the failure of the fourteenth general 

 assembly in 1872 to enact a law for railroad regulation, it quickly 

 became evident that the Grange was going to concentrate the 

 influence of the agricultural population in favor of such legisla- 

 tion at the first opportunity. Ordinarily that opportunity 

 would not have come until the meeting of the next general 



illustrates one of the railroad abuses and a method which the railroad forces em- 

 ployed to prevent hostile legislation: " Those of us in the Senate who voted for 

 the bill, were remembered by the railroad managers when we met in adjourned 

 session last winter, (January i5th, 1873,) by leaving us out of the list of senators 

 whom they favored with free passes. But they sent passes to all the senators 

 who voted against the bill. The passes from the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific 

 Railroad Company were accompanied with a private note, stating that free passes 

 were not now given generally, * but only to their friends.' " McNutt, in Cloud, 

 Monopolies and the People, 163-166. 



1 The railroad lobby at this session of the legislature was said to have been made 

 up of four able lawyers, who posed as farmers and members of the Grange. Near 

 the close of the session, a resolution was adopted in the Senate as follows: 



" WHEREAS, There has been constantly in attendance on the Senate and House 

 of this General Assembly, from the commencement of the session to the present 

 time, four gentlemen professing to represent the great agricultural interest of the 

 State of Iowa, known as the Grange; and 



" WHEREAS, These gentlemen appear entirely destitute of any visible means of 

 support; therefore be it 



" Resolved, By the Senate, the House concurring, that the janitors permit afore- 

 said gentlemen to gather up all the waste paper, old newspapers, &c., from under 

 the desks of the members, and, they be allowed one postage stamp each, The 

 American Aguriculturist, What Greeley Knows about Farming, and that they be 

 permitted to take with them to their homes, if they have any, all the rejected rail- 

 road tariff bills, Beardsley's speech on female suffrage, Claussen's reply, Kas- 

 son's speech on barnacles, Blakeley's dog bill, Teale's liquor bill, and be given a 

 pass over the Des Moines Valley railroad, with the earnest hope that they will 

 never return to Des Moines." 



The Chicago Tribune accepted this at its face value and took the Senators to 

 task for their disrespectful treatment of the Grange. Senate Journal, 1872, p. 688; 

 Chicago Tribune, 1873, June 28, p. 4, July 5, P- 4, July 7, P- 3- 



8 See above, p. 58. 



