474 HISTORY OF THE GRANGE MOVEMENT; OR, 



for collection, and, by official figures, constituting 

 almost half the delinquent debts, they have doubted 

 and hesitated when relief through cooperation has been 

 offered, and have been far more ready to advocate re- 

 forms with which they personally have nothing par- 

 ticular to do than to begin at home and help them- 

 selves. Happily, the Grange of the State has had 

 among its members a few men of good business ability 

 and sterling integrity, who have felt interest enough 

 in the welfare and prosperity of the farmers and the 

 success of the order of which they were members, to 

 give much of their time and in some cases to risk their 

 money in this much-needed home reform. While at 

 Des Moines, and since I came here, I have found out 

 some of these men, and, in their desire to spread a 

 knowledge of their success, and to encourage farmers 

 elsewhere to imitate their example or improve 011 it, 

 they have given me every facility to learn the inside 

 workings of the system of cooperative purchases and 

 sales they have adopted, and to see what its results 

 have thus far been. 



" It is but little more than a year since prominent 

 Grangers of Iowa were first successful in making large 

 cooperative purchases, although previous to that, I 

 think, they had appointed a State agent and a few 

 county agents. They then found the manufacturers 

 almost wholly in the power of the agents. Not only 

 had they made their contracts with these agents for the 

 year, giving to each a monopoly of the sales for his par- 

 ticular district, but, had they been disposed to disregard 

 those contracts and sell to the ascents of the Granges at 



c^ o 



wholesale rates, they did not dare to do it, because to 

 lose the trade of the agents, who would have nothing 



