COLLAPSE OF THE GRANGER MOVEMENT 71 



helped to prevent them from being victimized 

 thereafter. The farmers learned, moreover, the 

 wisdom of working through the accepted channels 

 of business. Those who had scoffed at the Roch- 

 dale plan of cooperation, in the homely belief that 

 any scheme made in America must necessarily be 

 better than an English importation, came to see 

 that self-confidence and independence must be 

 tempered by willingness to learn from the expe- 

 rience of others. Most important of all, these ex- 

 periments in business taught the farmers that the 

 middlemen and manufacturers performed services 

 essential to the agriculturalist and that the produc- 

 tion and distribution of manufactured articles and 

 the distribution of crops are far more complex affairs 

 than the farmers had imagined and perhaps worthy 

 of more compensation than they had been accus- 

 tomed to think just. On their side, the manufac- 

 turers and dealers learned that the farmers were 

 not entirely helpless and that to gain their good- 

 will by fair prices was on the whole wiser than to 

 force them into competition. Thus these ventures 

 resulted in the development of a new tolerance 

 and a new respect between the two traditionally 

 antagonistic classes. 



The social and intellectual stimulus which the 



