Rensselaer Union, Volume 6, Number 20, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 February 1874 — The Wisconsin and Michigan State Granges. [ARTICLE]

The Wisconsin and Michigan State Granges.

In the Wisconsin"Blate Grange on the 23d. resolutions were adopted favoring the Government building a double-track railway from Chicago to New York; favoring trade with those manufacturers who will give terms to Patrons, and refusing to deal with any others, and , to- instruct the State Agent to publish e list of those Anns who decline direct trade with the Order, Cungreuto authortze tte issue c-f or-

rency sufficient to supply a money circulation to answer the demands of trade, and obviate the effects of the present panic; approving of the movement of the Executive Committee of the Illinois Btate Grange in interrogating Representatives in Congress relative to the views entertained by them on leading measures now being prosecuted by Patrons of Husbandry; asking the Legislature to pass a law raising the present railway tax from three to five per cent.; and that Commissioners be appointed with full powers to regulate unjust discrimination and excessive rates of freight and passe gers; Hint railways should be taxed on their gross receipts. A telegram was received from the State Grange of Michigan, in session at Kalamazoo, sending the greeting of 800 Patrons then in session, and the response was returned that the State Grange of Wisconsin, open in the fifth degree, returns the fraternal greeting of Michigan with cheers of hope for the good cause everywhere. The Michigan State Grange adjourned on the 23d, after adopting a platform in which they declare that railroads are amenable to State regulation as much as plank and gravel road and that the Legislature lias as much right to regulate their charges as to fix turnpike toll or the charges of millers for grinding grain. They declare that the farmers have suffered more, by railway exactions than all other causes combined; and that the railway corporations have outgrown Legislatures or defy them, and have made the chosen representatives of the people a matter of barter and sale; and they assert that it is the duty of tbe Legislature and State officers to investigate the matter of the violation of the law by the various railway companies doing business in the State, and to promptly enforce the laws enacted for the protection of the rights of the people, and in cases where the present laws may be found deficient- to promptly remedy the defects by new enactments. They also resolved —that no legislative, judicial, or State officer should be allowed to accept free passes from aril ways, and all offers of any special privileges by railway companies to any such officers should be looked upon and treated as a corrupt attempt at bribery; that “we, as farmers of Michigan, regard the organization of the Order of the Patrons of Husbandry as a movement of vast importance, not only to the interests of the great producing class of our country, but also in its ultimate and highest objects designed and calcula-, ted to bless society at large,” etc.