THE FARMER'S WAR AGAINST MONOPOLIES. 475 



to do with manufacturers selling at wholesale prices to 

 other customers within their districts, would, while the 

 present methods of. doing business are adhered to, be 

 nothing short of ruin. The farmers who were moving 

 in the matter understood this ; they knew that it was 

 unreasonable to ask a plow maker, a sewing-machine 

 dealer, or any other manufacturer or wholesale mer- 

 chant, to abandon a business system by which he was 

 supported, unless the Grange could offer him in ex- 

 change an equally profitable and extensive patronage. 

 And just here may be explained the failure of all local 

 attempts at cooperative machinery buying. When the 

 farmers of a county have united to purchase their 

 plows, and have sent their agent to the manufacturer, 

 they have found that they could get no material reduc- 

 tion of price. The manufacturer has said : ' My trade 

 in your county belongs to Mr. A, and I have agreed not 

 to sell goods to persons living there below his prices, or 

 at any rate to pay him his customary commission on all 

 such sales that we do make. You want twenty plows ; 

 if we sell them to you at our wholesale price we shall 

 either have to lose the agent's commission on them or 

 lose his trade, and he takes a thousand plows a year.' 

 No local cooperative association could command trade 

 enough to make it an object for the manufacturers to 

 show them any important favors. 



" But the wide spread of the Grange in this State 

 gave to the farmers the means of holding out to any 

 manufacturer whom its members should generally 

 patronize, an inducement to give up the trade of the 

 agents and sell directly to them, and the managers of 

 the Grange were not slow to avail themselves of the 

 power they thus acquired. Having agreed to buy 



