1889.] PUBLIC DOCUMENT — No. 4. 285 



tion to its own interests, and make thorough performance of 

 its work. 



Of course equipment is vain unless used. Guns that are 

 never fired won't keep off the foe, no matter how good they 

 may be in themselves, or how perfect the condition in which 

 they may be kept. A mill full of the best machinery ever 

 constructed will accomplish nothing unless water is turned 

 onto the wheel, or fire built in the furnace of the engine that 

 is to drive it. A first-class equipment is magnificent, but it 

 must have power to impel it and care and skill to direct it. 

 I believe in good weapons for strife and good machinery for 

 work ; but I wish to guard, my every utterance against the 

 mistaken presumption that the best equipment is of any avail 

 unless intelligently and faithfully used. Those who come 

 into an association of any kind, and then stand idly by to see 

 how the thing is going to help them, are not the ones to get 

 good out of it or do good through it. 



And now, good people all, who have heard me patiently 

 so fai-, please give me credit for all the self-denial it has cost 

 me to reach this point in my discourse without once uttering 

 the magical word "-grange." The time for that utterance 

 will be no longer deferred. The name comes into the dis- 

 cussion as the thing which it designates comes into the far- 

 mer's life, in the fulness of time. Long waiting preceded 

 it and prepared the way for it. Out of a brooding conscious- 

 ness of need, this measure of relief was brought at last to 

 life and light. I do not think it misnamed when I call it an 

 inspiration, meaning by that term nothing supernatural, but 

 something far more than the thought or the device of one 

 man or of a small group of men. In some such way as 

 Thomas Jefferson voiced the unspoken and perhaps uncon- 

 scious thought and purpose of a new-born nation ; in some 

 such manner as railroad, telegraph and telephone have come 

 in response to dimly perceived but real need ; in the way in 

 which, all through the ages, individuals or groups have 

 voiced the thought of dumb masses, or wrought the work of 

 relief for which the only demand was an unspoken need ; in 

 a way not exactly paralleled by any of these examples, but 

 illustrated by them all, the minds of a few men became pos- 

 sessed with the grand ideal of an organized brotherhood of 



