THE FARMER'S WAR AGAINST MONOPOLIES. 459 



attained its greatest strength, thus refers to the great 

 change which the Grange has already brought about 

 there : 



" The social condition of a majority of the farmers 

 in this State before the organization of Granges is de- 

 scribed to me by leading members as anything but satis- 

 factory. The country is comparatively new, having been 

 settled only 10 to 25 years, and the people are still very 

 much isolated. The dull monotony of their lives has 

 only been broken in upon by an occasional wedding or 

 funeral, and they have plodded on year after year, work- 

 ing from sunrise to sunset, taking very few holidays, 

 rarely meeting each other except at the cross-roads 

 store, church, or town-meeting, reading very little, and, 

 in fact, transforming themselves into corn and wheat- 

 producing machines. Of business methods they have 

 known almost nothing. It was rare that a farmer was 

 able to tell how much it cost him to make a bushel of 

 corn or of wheat, a pound of beef or of butter, or to 

 bale a ton of hay. The condition of the farmer's wife 

 was even worse/ Her work began earlier and ended 

 later than that of her husband. It was a slavish life, 

 with almost nothing to give it variety or to lift the 

 woman out of the deep rut of her daily drudgery. 

 Perhaps the most of these people have never known any 

 different kind of life ; perhaps they have had better food 

 and a greater abundance of it, more comfortable homes 

 and better clothing than before they became Iowa 

 farmers, but their enjoyment of life has been of a low 

 order, and any one who will give them broader ideas 

 will be hailed as a benefactor. I have not been de- 

 scribing the average farmer of this State from personal 

 observation ; that would be impossible for a stranger 



