Enemies in the Field 339 



from the towns to seize the tillable lands. The same situation 

 began to repeat itself in the corn belt. But there was no Daniel 

 Shays. Instead, there were the Patrons of Husbandry, the 

 National Grange. Organized in 1867, along with several other 

 farmers associations, the Grange was at first merely a fraternal 

 organization. The depression of the seventies put it into poli- 

 tics. It quickly became a dominant factor in Illinois and Iowa 

 the leading corn-growing states. The Grange protested 

 against the railroads' grabbing of lands, demanded state agri- 

 cultural colleges, compulsory education, weather bureaus, na- 

 tional regulation of weights and measures, and commercial 

 treaties to open world markets for American farm produce. 

 The export of American corn to Europe reached its peak in 

 1899-1900 with the shipment of two hundred and thirteen 

 million bushels. 



During those years the cities in the corn belt which had 

 grown up as markets for the shipment of farm produce entered 

 on an era of industrialization. The character of the towns 

 changed. Their suburbs reached out and engulfed lands where 

 formerly cattle had grazed, or farmers had planted corn and 

 wheat. The owners of those farms sold them and retired to 

 front-porch existences in the villages. Or they responded to the 

 lure of Florida orange groves and prune ranches in the Santa 

 Clara Valley. For the first time the progress of America altered 

 its historic pattern. Men fled before advancing civilization, not 

 to a harsh frontier, but to the promise of tropical ease. 



The history of this country may be written in the terms of 

 the migration of peoples, first from the old countries of 

 Europe to wider opportunities here; later from the Atlantic 

 seaboard westward, and still westward. Massachusetts poured 

 into Ohio and the Illinois country. Virginia and the Carolinas 

 sprawled over the mountains into Kentucky and Tennessee, 

 and later into Indiana. Illinois and Indiana ventured into Iowa 

 and the Dakotas. Kansas and Colorado struck out across the 

 plains and over the divide to California. 



This migration, the most dramatic since the Arabs overran 



