GRANGER MOVEMENT AT FLOOD TIDE 33 



the "Farmers' Fourth of July." This had always 

 been the greatest day of the farmer's year, for it 

 meant opportunity for social and intellectual en- 

 joyment in the picnics and celebrations which 

 brought neighbors together in hilarious good-fel- 

 lowship. In 1873, however, the gatherings took 

 on unwonted seriousness. The accustomed spread- 

 eagle oratory gave place to impassioned denuncia- 

 tion of corporations and to the solemn reading of a 

 Farmers' Declaration of Independence. "When, in 

 the course of human events," this document begins 

 in words familiar to every schoolboy orator, "it 

 becomes necessary for a class of the people, suffer- 

 ing from long continued systems of oppression and 

 abuse, to rouse themselves from an apathetic in- 

 difference to their own interests, which has become 

 habitual ... a decent respect for the opinions of 

 mankind requires that they should declare the 

 causes that impel them to a course so necessary to 

 then- own protection." Then comes a statement 

 of " self-evident truths, " a catalogue of the sins of 

 the railroads, a denunciation of railroads and Con- 

 gress for not having redressed these wrongs, and 

 finally the conclusion: 



We, therefore, the producers of the state in our 

 several counties assembled ... do solemnly declare 



