NATIONAL FARMERS' ORGANIZATIONS 



291 



The Grange. The Grange is to-day a powerful organization of 

 farmers, active in thirty-three States, with its own press, its own 

 body of organizers, its own lecturers, its own literature, poems, 

 music, and traditions. The story of its rise to power, its decline, its 

 new growth, and its achievements forms an interesting chapter in 

 the annals of rural life. Perhaps no other organization ever showed 

 such rapid changes from prosperity to depression and back to pros- 

 perity, such rapid shifts in the geographical territory it occupied. 

 A glance at the table below illustrates in a measure these two points 

 a shifting from the South to the North; a decline in organization 

 in some States and a growth in organization in other States. 



Grange, States (States Having State Granges) 



