S.C. CLARKE.
THE PATRONS OF HUSBANDRY.
"Do you know anything about this 'grange' business?" asked a lady from the city the other day; and she added, "I can hardly take up a magazine or newspaper without falling on the words 'grange,' 'Patrons of Husbandry,' 'farmers' movement,' and all that."
"Why, I am a Patron myself," I replied.
"What! you have a grange here in this little New Jersey sandbank?" she exclaimed incredulously, and plied me with a storm of questions.
It was a quiet, rainy evening, and I devoted the whole of it to answering her queries, reading documents from our head-quarters, and quoting Mr. Adams's treatise on the Railroad Systems and other authorities to explain the present war between producers and carriers; and, believing that there are many others who, like my friend, are disposed to look into this "grange business," I will give them the substance of our conversation. A great deal of that which has found its way into the press touching our order is more characterized by confidence than correctness of statement. In a late magazine article it is stated that the organization known as the Patrons of Husbandry "was originally borrowed from an association which for many years had maintained a feeble existence in a community of Scotch farmers in North Carolina." This statement has no foundation in fact. The order is not the out-growth directly, or even indirectly, of any pre-existing organization. It is the result, so far as it is possible to trace impulses to their source, of the suggestion of a lady, communicated some years ago to Mr. O.H. Kelley, the present secretary of the National Grange, and the person who has done more than any other to establish the order as it exists to-day. The suggestion was in substance this: Why cannot the farmers protect themselves by a national organization, as do other trades and professions? Mr. Kelley seized the idea with enthusiasm, worked out the plan of a secret society, and traveled over the country seeking to arouse the farmers to organize for their mutual advantage. He met with constant disappointment at first, and his family and friends implored him to abandon a project which threatened to absorb every cent he possessed, as it did all his time and energy. But he persevered against every discouragement, and to-day he may well be proud of the results of his devotion.
The first grange was organized in St. Paul, Minnesota, and called the "North Star Grange," and it is one of the most efficient subordinate granges in the country to this day. Another was organized in Washington, one in Fredonia, New York, one in Ohio, another in Illinois, and a few others during the same year in different places. This was very nearly six years ago. Since that time they have been constantly increasing—at first slowly, then with a rapidity unheard of in the history of secret or any other organizations in this country or the world. We can hardly count three years since the order fairly began to grow, and now the granges are numbered by the thousand. Ten States on the twenty-fifth of June last had over a hundred granges, and seven of these between two and five hundred. Iowa to-day has seventeen hundred and ten, and others in process of organization. Thirty-one of the States and Territories had subordinate or both subordinate and State granges, according to the June returns. There were eight at that date in Canada, twenty-three in Vermont, five in New York State, three in New Jersey, two in Pennsylvania, and one in Massachusetts. Up to this time there has been little effort made to extend the organization into the Eastern and Middle States, but at present deputies from the National Grange are being sent to these "benighted regions," and the leaven is working finely. To show how rapidly the order is extending it will be only necessary to add that seven hundred and one charters for new granges were issued during the single month of May.
The discussion of party politics is excluded from the order by common consent, as well as by the terms of its constitution. How much this one wise provision tends to preserve harmony among those of different sects and political parties needs no comment. We know that on one or both of these rocks most great popular organizations have been wrecked. So far, the Patrons of Husbandry have worked together with great harmony, and the slight discords have been nothing more than the surface ripples on a great onward-setting current. Men and women are received on terms of absolute equality throughout all the seven degrees. Four are degrees conferred in subordinate granges, and the higher in the State granges or in the National Grange—the seventh in the latter only, constituting a national senate and court of impeachment, and having charge also of the secret work of the order. All officers are chosen by ballot—those of the National Grange for three years, of State granges for two years, and of subordinate granges for one year. The names of the first four degrees are respectively, for men and women, Laborer and Maid, Cultivator and Shepherdess, Harvester and Gleaner, Husbandman and Matron; and the initiations are not only exceedingly impressive and beautiful, but really instructive. It may also be added that they are never tedious, which will be agreeable information to those who, in entering secret societies, have been dragged through long, meaningless rigmaroles, conscious of being made a spectacle of, and preserving their temper only by the most strenuous efforts.
Into the initiations of the order of the Patrons there enter as machinery or symbols music and song, the expression of exalted sentiments, ceremonies replete, without exception, with significance and instruction, together with fruits and grains and flowers and simple feasts. Two fundamental objects of the organization are social and intellectual culture. The widespread realization of the importance of these among the people is the first great step toward securing them, and the first unmistakable sign that such step has already been taken is the rebelling against pure drudgery. Said the Master of the National Grange, Mr. Dudley W. Adams, in a late address: "It will doubtless be a matter of surprise to them" (editors, lawyers, politicians, etc.) "to learn that farmers may possibly entertain some wish to enjoy life, and have some other object in living besides everlasting hard work and accumulating a few paltry dollars by coining them from their own life-blood and stamping them with the sighs of weary children and worn wives. What we want in agriculture is a new Declaration of Independence. We must do something to dispel old prejudices and beat down old notions. That the farmer is a mere animal to labor from morning till eve, and into the night, is an ancient but abominable heresy."... "We have heard enough, ten times enough, about the 'hardened hand of honest toil,' the supreme glory of 'the sweating brow,' and how magnificent the suit of coarse homespun which covers a form bent with overwork."... "I tell you, my brother-workers of the soil, there is something worth living for besides hard work. We have heard enough of this professional blarney. Toil in itself is not necessarily glorious. To toil like slaves, raise fat steers, cultivate broad acres, pile up treasures of bonds and lands and herds, and at the same time bow and starve the god-like form, harden the hands, dwarf the immortal mind and alienate the children from the homestead, is a damning disgrace to any man, and should stamp him as worse than a brute."