62 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE 



then; lawyers, to get clients; doctors, to get cus- 

 tomers; Shylocks, to get their pound of flesh; and 

 sharpers, to catch the babes in the woods.' ' 



Not only the members who managed thus to in- 

 sinuate themselves into the order but also the le- 

 gitimate members proved hard to control. With 

 that hostility to concentrated authority which so 

 often and so lamentably manifests itself in a demo- 

 cratic body, the rank and file looked with suspicion 

 upon the few men who constituted the National 

 Grange. The average farmer was interested main- 

 ly in local issues, conditions, and problems, and 

 looked upon the National Grange not as a means 

 of helping him in local affairs, but as a combination 

 of monopolists who had taken out a patent on 

 the local grange and forced him to pay a royalty 

 in order to enjoy its privileges. The demand for 

 reduction in the power of the National Grange led 

 to frequent attempts to revise the constitution in 

 the direction of decentralization; and the revisions 

 were such as merely to impair the power of the Na- 

 tional Grange without satisfying the discontented 

 members. 



Of all the causes of the rapid collapse of the 

 Granger movement, the unfortunate experience 

 which the farmers had in their attempts at business 



