GRANGER MOVEMENT AT FLOOD TIDE 35 



Other Middle Western States at this time also 

 felt the uneasy stirring of radical political thought 

 and saw the birth of third parties, short-lived, most 

 of them, but throughout their brief existence cry- 

 ing loudly and persistently for reforms of all de- 

 scription. The tariff, the civil service system, and 

 the currency, all came in for their share of criticism 

 and of suggestions for revision, but the dominant 

 note was a strident demand for railroad regulation. 

 Heirs of the Liberal Republicans and precursors of 

 the Greenbackers and Populists, these independent 

 parties were as voices crying in the wilderness, pre- 

 paring the way for national parties of reform. The 

 notable achievement of the independent parties in 

 the domain of legislation was the enactment of 

 laws to regulate railroads in five States of the upper 

 Mississippi Valley. : When these laws were passed, 

 the parties had done their work. By 1876 they 

 had disappeared or, in a few instances, had merged 

 with the Greenbackers. Their temporary suc- 

 cesses had demonstrated, however, to both farmers 

 and professional politicians that if once solidarity 

 could be obtained among the agricultural class, that 

 class would become the controlling element in the 

 politics of the Middle Western States. It is not 



1 See Chapter IV. 



