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FARMERS' ORGANIZATIONS 



The Grange as aa institution is the lengthened shadow of one 

 man, Oliver H. Kelley, of Washington, D. C. At the close of the 

 Civil War, Mr. Kelley was sent by the Commissioner of Agricul- 

 ture on a long tour through the unhappy Southern States, to study 

 and report on the destruction and reconstruction of Southern 

 agriculture. The human side of the study made the deepest 

 appeal to his imagination. It was a question of the farmer rather 

 than farming that seemed to him to need first attention. The 

 rancor of sectionalism, the bitterness of defeat, the helplessness of 



FIG. 51. Home of the first local grange organized in the United States, Fredonia, N. Y. 



the situation all rankled in the breast of the southern farmer. 

 Mr. Kelley, being a loyal Mason, conceived the idea of a secret 

 society with a beautiful and symbolic ritual as a means of restoring 

 a fraternal feeling among the farmers north and south. It was his 

 niece, Miss Caroline A. Hall, of Boston, who gave him the idea of 

 having the new secret order include women as well as men. After 

 some two years of study and consultation with intimate friends, 

 Mr. Kelley in 1868 organized his new order, the Patrons of Hus- 

 bandry. It was organized at the top first, namely, the national 

 Grange, as the central unit was called. The order was to have 

 three subdivisions, namely, State Granges, County Granges (or 

 "Pomonas") and Subordinate Granges. It required the heroic 

 faith and work of Mr. Kelley about two years to make any head- 



