THE OUTCOME OF THE GRANGER MOVEMENT 66 1 



National Grange's efforts now subsided into protests and warnings 

 against the commission and joint-stock ventures so common in 

 the Order, and pleas for the Rochdale system. Many enterprises 

 were undertaken upon this basis, proving, if not highly profit- 

 able, at least not disastrous. Some are still in existence, notably 

 the " Texas Co-operative Association." But, in general, the warn- 

 ing came too late. The patrons had been too impatient to grasp 

 the anticipated gains, and had burned their fingers. 



The step from co-operation in the National, to co-operation in 

 the State and district Granges, is one from theory tinged by 

 practice, to practice pure and simple. The craze for co-operation 

 was like that for gold in 1848. The first and simplest step was 

 to appoint a profusion of buying and selling agents, usually on 

 salaries from the State Granges. But a few losses by mismanage- 

 ment and rascality were enough to deter the farmers from trust- 

 ing their produce to selling-agents. The system of agencies for 

 buying only was not open to the same risks, but its utility differed 

 in different states. For Iowa, where every farmer raised grain 

 and wanted plows and reapers, an agent could buy to great ad- 

 vantage. The patrons there gave figures to show that they saved 

 $50,000 in one year on plows and cultivators alone. In the same 

 year they bought fifteen hundred sewing-machines at a reduction 

 of 45 per cent from retail prices. Local dealers were driven out 

 of business. In New York, on the other hand, where the farmers 

 are dairymen, grain-growers, nurserymen, and hop-growers, a state 

 buying-agency was found useless, and was abandoned, after some 

 hard experience, for a system of district agencies. These have 

 effected saving in some instances, in others proved unprofitable, 

 partly owing to the outcroppings of mean human nature among 

 those most clamorous for the benefits. The " State Women's 

 Dress Agency," in New York City, lasted longer, but, strangely 

 enough, the patronesses preferred to buy their own dresses, and 

 it finally expired. The states did not stop with agencies. They 

 too began to buy patent-rights. There was an idea that all the 

 principal machinery used by the Order should be manufactured 

 within it. Flouring-mills, elevators, tobacco and grain warehouses, 

 were established. Some ventures were unsuccessful from the start, 



