THE RISE OF THE GRANGER MOVEMENT 653 



those fighting railroads. From this it was an easy step to the 

 assertion that the Grange was the fighting organization. There 

 were some exceptions. The Tribune sent a special correspondent 

 West, and afterward published a " Farmers' Extra," in which it 

 is expressly recognized that the Grange is not fighting railroads, 

 though some Grangers are. The Times published the same dis- 

 covery with the comment that the general impression on this 

 point was a mistaken one. But the Nation, which talked loudest 

 of all, and the press in general, made no such distinction. It is 

 not strange that Mr. C. F. Adams and other writers on railroads 

 have followed this leading, as it was of no consequence to them 

 whether the Western agitators were known as "Grangers" or by 

 any other name. The principal difficulty is with those who wrote 

 from the farmers' standpoint. It can only be said that they wrote 

 before the railroad legislation had been given a fair trial, and 

 that they wanted to claim for the order the credit of what looked 

 like a success. Their books, in general, are of a hortatory and 

 prophetic rather than historical character. 



From this point of view it may seem foreign to our subject 

 to discuss the railroad agitation further. Its intimate connection 

 with the Granger movement, however, and the casual relation 

 between the two in the public mind, may furnish excuse. In 

 1867, when the Grange was founded at Washington, most of the / 

 Western states were still passing laws to facilitate municipal and 

 other aid to railroads. A few, however, were beginning to take 

 the alarm, and about 1867 six made feeble attempts to check the 

 growing abuses ; from Iowa, which merely affirmed the full lia- 

 bility of the railroads as common carriers, to Ohio, where 

 a " commissioner of railroads and telegraph " was provided for. 

 The feeling grew during the next three years. Illinois, for 

 example, passed an act in 1869 providing that "all railroad cor- 

 porations shall be limited to a just, reasonable, and uniform toll." 

 These facts are mentioned to show not tangible results, for they 

 were not attained, but the growth of public feeling prior to the 

 adoption of the new state constitution by Illinois in 1870, which, 

 with the bills immediately following, first awakened the country 

 at large to the fact that something was brewing among the 



