THE FARMER'S TTAR AGAINST MONOPOLIES. 467 



some convenient hall which they either hire or own, 

 each family bringing its basket of food. Many hands 

 make light work ; cooking utensils, dishes and tables 

 are owned by the Grange ; a bountiful feast is soon pre- 

 pared, and the afternoon is spent in social pleasures or 

 in discussions upon subjects in which they are mutually 

 interested. Who can doubt that an occasional breaking 

 away from work by the farmer and his family, even 

 though he should get no new ideas, will improve them 

 all in health and make them better able to perform 

 their routine of duties ? 



" But the Grange strives directly to make better far- 

 mers, and of this there is certainly need. Many of the 

 agriculturists of the West and North- West left Eastern 

 farms where high cultivation and intelligent manage- 

 ment were necessary to insure a living ; and if they were 

 fair farmers there, they have generally been abundantly 

 successful in the West. But there is a large class of 

 men who have gone upon the wild lands of the West 

 Irish, German, Scandinavian immigrants gathered in 

 Europe by railroad and emigration agents whose know- 

 ledge of agriculture is of the most limited kind, and 

 who have everything against them but the strength of 

 their arms, their ability to endure privation, and the 

 wonderful fertility of the soil when its tough sod has 

 once been broken. They put lots of muscle into their 

 business, but very little brains. Nor are all of the bad 

 farmers of the West of foreign birth. Thousands of 

 men reared in cities have been induced, by the promise 

 of cheap land and rich crops, to forsake the life in 

 which they were reared, for the reaper and the plow. 

 Some of these men have done well ; others have natu- 

 rally failed. Another fact I have noticed is that the 



