416 HISTORY OF THE GRANGE MOVEMENT; OR, 



campaigners, and put professional office-seekers to more 

 embarrassment than even the Back Pay. The Grange 

 was not the origin of the Farmers' Movement ; it was 

 only its outgrowth. Yet in calculating the moral and 

 physical forces of the movement, the Grange must be 

 the principal factor. It took its origin a few years ago 

 in a Washington office. Its founders were not farmers, 

 but Government clerks. They understood, however, 

 the temper and the wants of the agricultural class, and 

 they devised, with aid, perhaps, from the prairies, one 

 of the most ingenious and effective organizations ever 

 invented in so short a time. From Washington the 

 Grange spread all over the great grain region, and back 

 again to the far East, and Southward into the country 

 of cotton and tobacco. Everywhere it found enthusi- 

 astic adherents. Everywhere it found farmers who 

 needed its help, farmers' wives and daughters, who 

 picked up a new life and a fresh spirit under its social 

 and intellectual influence, and gave it in return the at- 

 traction of a refined and cheerful membership. Business 

 and pleasure surely were never so profitably combined 

 before. It was the old principle of the husking-frolic 

 and the quilting-bee, applied to loftier objects and prac- 

 tised with a sterner eye to the main chance. The 

 women and the young people, who met at evening to 

 go through the little ceremonies of the Grangers' ritual, 

 and pass an hour or so in decorous amusements and 

 conversation, and song, and reading, may have fancied 

 that they were only breaking the monotony of toil by a 

 bit of harmless entertainment; but the Grange knew 

 better. They were learning, and teaching others, to be 

 better farmers, to be thrifty, to buy cheaper, to sell 

 better, to rid themselves of creditors, to keep out of 



