namely:

In this view, they were joined, on consultation, by others, and a circular was drawn up, embracing the various points it was deemed desirable to embody, in presenting the plan of the Grange to the country. On the 4th of December, 1867, in Washington, D. C., the first Grange was organized, being officered as follows: William Saunders, master; J. R. Thompson, lecturer; Rev. A. B. Grosh, chaplain; O. H. Kelley, secretary. This became the National Grange. Soon after, a subordinate grange was established in that city, as a school of instruction, and to test the efficiency of the ritual. This grange numbered about sixty members. In April, 1868, Mr. Kelley was appointed to the position of traveling agent. The first dispensation was issued for a grange at Harrisburg, Pa.; the second at Fredonia, N. Y.; the third at Columbus, O.; the next at Chicago, Ill. In Minnesota, six granges were organized. Thus, the whole number during the first year was but ten: in 1869, thirty-nine dispensations were granted; in 1870, thirty-eight; in 1871, one hundred and twenty-five; and during the next year, more than eight hundred dispensations for subordinate granges were issued from the headquarters at Washington, and the total increase during 1872 was rising eleven. hundred.

The declaration of principles put forth, authoritatively, by the national grange, leaves no room for doubt as to the character and purposes avowed by this now powerful order. Starting with the proclamation of union by the strong and faithful tie of Agriculture, with a mutual resolve to labor for the good of the order, the country, and mankind, and indorsing the motto,'In essentials, unity, in non-essentials liberty, in all things charity,' the following specific objects are set forth as those characterizing the order and

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To develop a better and higher manhood and womanhood among those constituting the order; to enhance the comforts and attractions of home, and strengthen. the attachment to their pursuits; to foster mutual understanding and co-operation; to maintain inviolate the laws, and emulate each other in hastening the good time. coming; to reduce expenses, both individual and co-operate; to buy less and produce more, in order to make their farms self-sustaining; to diversify crops, and crop no more than can be cultivated; to condense the weight of exports, selling less in the bushel and more on hoof and in fleece; to systematize work, and calculate intelligently on probabilities; to discontinue the credit system, the mortgage system, the fashion system, and every other system tending to prodigality and bankruptcy; to meet together, talk together, work together, buy and sell together, and in general act together for mutual protection and advancement, as association may require; to avoid litigation as much as possible, by arbitration in the grange; to constantly strive to secure entire harmony, good will, and vital brotherhood, and to make the Order perpetual; to endeavor to suppress personal, local, sectional and national prejudices, all unhealthy rivalry, and all selfish ambition.

In regard to the principles and aims of this organization in respect to business,concerning which much public discussion has taken place, the statement is made by the order, authoritatively and explicitly, that it aims to bring producers and consumers, farmers and manufacturers, into the most direct and friendly relation possible, and, in order to fulfill this, it is necessary that a surplus of middlemen be dispensed with,-not in any spirit of unfriendliness to them, but because such a class is not needed, their surplus and exactions diminishing the raiser's profits.

Emphatically disavowing any intention. to wage aggressive warfare against other interests, the grangers assert that all their

declared, however, as the oft-repeated truth taught in the organic law of the order, that the grange, national, state, or subordinate, is not a political or party organization; and yet, while no grange, if true to its obligations, can discuss political or religious questions, nor call political conventions or nominate candidates, nor ever discuss their merits in its meetings, the principles enunciated by the order are, it is claimed, such as underlie all true politics and all true statesmanship, and, if properly carried out, tending to purify the whole political atmosphere of the country; that, though seeking the greatest good to the greatest number, no one by becoming a grange member gives up that inalienable right and duty which belong to every American citizen, to take a proper interest in the politics of his country. On the contrary, the grange pronounces it to be the right and duty of every member to do all in his power legitimately to influence, for good, the action of any political party to which he belongs; that it is his duty to do all he can, in his own party, to put down bribery, corruption, and trickery,-to see that none but competent, faithful, and honest men, who will unflinchingly stand by the interests of the order are nominated for all positions of trust, the governing principle in this respect to be, that the office should seek the man and not the man the office. The broad principle is acknowledged, that difference of opinion is no crime, and that progress towards truth is made by differences of opinion, while the fault lies in bitterness of controversy. A proper equality, equity and fairness, protection for the weak, restraint upon the strong,-in short, justly distributed burdens, and justly distributed power, the grange holds to be American ideas, the very essence of ́American independence, to advocate the contrary being unworthy the sons and daughters of an American republic. Cherishing the belief, too, that sectionalism is and of right should be dead and buried with the past, the order declares its work to be for the present and future, and consequently recognizes in its agricultural brotherhood,

and its associational purposes, no north, no south, no east, no west, and to every member is reserved the freeman's right to affiliate with any party that will best carry out his principles.

The wonderful growth of the grange movement, especially throughout the west, is asserted by Mr. J. K. Hudson, an intelligent and reliable authority, to have been without a parallel in the history of associational movements in this country; and this fact he attributes to the condition of the public mind which existed at the time of the founding of the movement,the prevailing feeling of distrust towards the organized interests of every kind then existing, the common indignation against the injustice of the unfair distribution of profits, the prevailing discrimination against agricultural labor which was, year after year, constantly kept alive in the minds of the farmers of the west by the fast decreasing profits, buying goods sold at heavy profits, paying burdensome taxes. brought upon them by unscrupulous rings. which had squandered and stolen the public funds, while the result of the year's product and sale showed a loss to honest labor.

Such a remarkable feature in American life as the rise and progress of this movement has not failed to attract attention in foreign lands, and particularly in England. Thus, at the Social Science Congress of Great Britain, assembled in 1875, the Earl of Roseberry, president of the association, after speaking of the various 'Unions' to be found in the United States, such as the Sons of Toil, the Brethren of Labor, etc., characterized as incomparably above these, "the gigantic association of Patrons of Husbandry, commonly called the Grange, a great agricultural, co-operative, independent union. Its progress has been amazing. Its first grange, or lodge, was formed in the last month of 1867; there are at this moment 20,500, with 1,311,226 members, and at the end of the year it is certain that they will have thirty thousand, with two million members. The order is practically identified with the agricultural