The Grange :: essays research papers

The Grange     The Grange was the first major farm composition and began in the 1860s.This organization was created mostly as a social and self-help association notoriginally an organization of protest. During the depression of 1873, this crowd of bonded friends, became an "agency for political change." They knew inordered to help themselves they must become a voice in this new government inorder to survive.     With the depression farm product prices began to decrease. More farmsjoined the Grange to band together to resolve the issues before them. Beginningas a small group of friends learning from each other what worked and what didnt,by 1875 the Grange boasted of over 800,000 members and 20,000 local lodgesclaiming chapters in almost every state, being the strongest in the states thatproduced the most the South and Midwest. As a group (strong in member) theymade their statement to the world on an appropriate day, Independence Day 18 73.The framers Declaration of Independence informed those listening they were readyto scrap back. The Declaration stated they would use "all lawful and peacefulmeans to free themselves from the tyranny of monopoly". Many of the membersopened stores and other businesses so they could begin to deal and sell to eachother. However most of these were farmers, with families, not businessmen andmany companies didnt survive because of their lack of real business knowledgeand the pressures of the middlemen who wanted them to fail. They worked as ateam to get candidates elected who agreed with the need for governmental controlof the pressures. With the control of the Legislatures they implementedgovernmental controls on railroad rates and practices. However the railroad wasalso very wealthy. They hired lawyers who soon destroyed the new regulations.With these defeats and with the new rise in farm prices in the late 1870s theGrange began to lose strength and power, dwindle away to a membership to only100,000 by 1880.     The Grange was the springboard for another banding together of farmers,the Farmers Alliances. This new movement began in the Southern states andquickly spread beyond what the Grange had been. One of the most notabledifferences within the Alliance, was the approval of women to vote and becomespeakers and leaders for their cause. The Alliance however, had similarproblems as the Grange. Many of the cooperations, stores, banks, processingplants and other resources began to stomach the same fate. Lack of solidmanagement and the market forces operating against them caused them to fail.These disappointments aided the forming of a national political organization.