SOME farmers' organizations. 287 



evidently tlie deatli of the order, involving not only the morti- 

 liccilion of failure, but serious pecuniary loss to some who had 

 advanced money for the expenses of starting it. Under the 

 stimulus of the new idea the Grange began to grow and 

 speedily overrun all the northern states. As it grew, coopera- 

 tive stores were established everywhere, as well as manufac- 

 turing and other business enterprises. Nearly all these were 

 in the liands of men entirely unskilled in the business which 

 they were to conduct, and to a very large extent were es- 

 tablished and carried on upon credit. Cora})lete failure, of 

 course, was the inevitable result in nearly every case, involv- 

 ing great individual losses, and very nearly the death of the 

 order. 



But, while carrying out the principles of cooperative trad- 

 ing, the Grange also took up the doctrine of the control of the 

 railroads by government authority. Railroad management 

 in those days was entirely arbitrary, and as a necessary conse- 

 quence, harsh and oppressive. The Grange adopted the doc- 

 trine that the state had the right to regulate fares and freight 

 rates on all railroads, and under the impulse of the Grange 

 movement, and mainly by the influence of the Grange, state 

 laws were passed in several of the western states, prescribing 

 maximum rates for freight and passenger service. The power 

 to do anything of the kind was disputed by the railroads, and 

 the cases were carried to the Supreme Court of the United 

 States. The Grange won, and in so doing established forever 

 tJje inestimably valuable principle that no quasi-public corpo- 

 ration can escape legitimate regulation by the authority which 

 created it. Of course this doctrine, being sound and just, was 

 certain, in due time, to be recognized and established. None 

 the less is credit due to the agency by which the work was 

 actually done, and this agency was the Grange, The cases 

 in which the doctrine was finally established in the United 

 States, are universally known and referred to as the "Granger 

 cases," and constitute the first grand triumph of organized 

 rural society. 



This great political triumph, however, did not come in 

 time to save the Grange from the consequence of its egregious 



