GRANGER MOVEMENT AT FLOOD TIDE 37 



emigrated from Scotland. Three weeks after his 

 birth his mother died, and six years later his father, 

 a sea captain, was drowned. The orphan boy, 

 brought up by strangers in Jefferson County, New 

 York, experienced the hardships of frontier life and 

 developed that passion for knowledge which so fre- 

 quently is found in those to whom education is 

 denied. When he was sixteen, he had enough of 

 the rudiments to take charge of a country school, 

 and by teaching in the winter and working in the 

 summer he earned enough to enter Union College. 

 He was unable to complete the course, however, 

 and turned to teaching in Ohio, where he restored 

 to decent order a school notorious for bullying 

 its luckless teachers. But teaching was not to be 

 his career; indeed, Taylor's versatility for a time 

 threatened to make him the proverbial Jack-of -all- 

 trades : he was employed successively in a grist mill, 

 a saw mill, and an iron foundry; he dabbled in the 

 study of medicine; and finally, in the year which 

 saw Wisconsin admitted to the Union, he bought a 

 farm in that State. Ownership of property steadied 

 his interests and at the same time afforded an ade- 

 quate outlet for his energies. He soon made his 

 farm a model for the neighborhood and managed it 

 so efficiently that he had time to interest himself 



