2 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE 



he journeyed to Iowa, where he married. Then 

 with his wife he went on to Minnesota, settled in 

 Elk River Township, and acquired some first-hand 

 familiarity with agriculture. At the time of Kel- 

 ley's service in the agricultural bureau he was forty 

 years old, a man of dignified presence, with a full 

 beard already turning white, the high broad fore^ 

 head of a philosopher, and the eager eyes of an en- 

 thusiast. "An engine with too much steam on all 

 the time" so one of his friends characterized 

 him; and the abnormal energy which he displayed 

 on the trip through the South justifies the figure. 

 Kelley had had enough practical experience in 

 agriculture to be sympathetically aware of the 

 difficulties of farm life in the period immediately 

 following the Civil War. Looking at the Southern 

 farmers not as a hostile Northerner would but as a 

 fellow agriculturist, he was struck with the distress- 

 ing conditions which prevailed. It was not merely 

 the farmers' economic difficulties which he noticed, 

 for such difficulties were to be expected in the South 

 in the adjustment after the great conflict; it was 

 rather their blind disposition to do as their grand- 

 fathers had done, their antiquated methods of agri- 

 culture, and, most of all, their apathy. Pondering 

 on this attitude, Kelley decided that it was fostered 



