Rensselaer Union, Volume 6, Number 39, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 June 1874 — GRANGE ITEMS. [ARTICLE]

GRANGE ITEMS.

... .Maine has thirty Granges now and a State Grange has been organized. ... .There are nearly 800 Granges. in Ohio, according to a list lately compiled. ....Michigan now has about 450 Granges, with a total membership of over 30,000. ....lowa Patrons have contributed nearly SB,OOO cash to the homesteaders’ relief fund. ... .By a recent count there were 660 chartered Granges in Mississippi, numbering 22,400 members. ... .Grange picnics arc becoming quite common affairs, and the Fourth of July promises to be very generally celebrated under the auspices of the Order. ....Some of the lowa Granges have adopted the practice of appointing one of their number an editor, whose duty it is to prepare a paper for the succeeding meeting. ....N. D. Wetmore, Secretary of the State Grange, has been appointed State Agent for the purchase of supplies and sale of products for the Patrons of Husbandry of the State of Louisiana. ;...A California paper says the Order has, wherever established, been the means of correcting existing evils, extending mutual aid and assistance to its members, and of advancing the interests of agricul ture. ... .The Order is prospering wonderfully in Texas. Already over 400 Granges have been formed, and it is expected that fully 1,000 Granges will be represented in the State Grange which meets in August. ... .Recent letters from Pennsylvania state that the Order is making very steady progress in all parts of the State, if not as rapid progress as has characterized the work in some other States. By the fall there will be few unoccupied counties. ... .It is estimated that there will not be less than from 50,000 to 75,000 Grangers in Tennessee by next fall. The Order Is experiencing • a wonderfully rapid growth, and soon there will scarcely be a farmer in the State who Will not be a member of some Grange. .Master Allen, of Missouri, urges upon Patrons the necessity of keeping up Grange work during the busy season. Continued vigilance, he says, is the price away they will certainly inaugurate a disintegration that will be attended with ruinous consequences. ... .The Grange aims to increase knowledge br stimulating mental activity and aiaing inquiry, to add dignity to labor and elevate the social position of the husbandman, to mutually relieve sicknesß and suffering among the fraternity, to prevent crnelty to animals, to lessen litigation and its consequent ills, to collect accurate statistics of products and gain a full knowledge of markets, to give a better understanding of the principles of business and the laws of trade, to overthrow the credit system and encourage the practice of true economy, to bring the manufacturer near-

er the producer and foster a varied home industry, to place the producer and con. sumer in nearer relations to each other, to teach better culture of the soil, to surround our homes with beauty and comfort, to avoid imposition, and to dispense with middlemen as far as practicable, and to inculcate morality ana temperance, foster education, and cultivate brotherly love among mankind.— lndiana Farmer. ... .The Grangers are doing a good work in Northern Missouri, but the long win. ter has prevented them from accomplishing many desirable things that would have been of great benefit to.all- All the men who follow the plow are aware of the evils that the Grangers are.cjntending against, and to-day it is obvious to all farmers that something has been done for them by the way of a reduction in the price of agricultural implements. We can now buy a plow for twelve dollars that last year cost us eighteen; a walking cultivator for twenty-four dollars that cost us last year twenty eight. This is economy in’the proper place, for it was folly to pay such enormous prices. I remember that in 1853 ten dollars was the price of the best breaking plows manufactured, and a two-horse corn-planter could be had for thirty dollars. Now the manufacturers of those implements have improved their machinery so that they can make three to where they could make" but one then. But the manufacturers became monopolists, and the farmers had to ac. quiesce.— J. B. 8., in Rural World. ... .Among the papers read before the session of the American Social Science Association at New York, in May, was one by Mr. W. C. Flagg, on “ The Farmers’ Movement in the West.” The paper concludes as follows: “The farmers’ movement meant, primarily, an advancement in intelligence and ability of the tillers of the soil. Secondly, an unusual feeling of oppression and distress, resulting from the mischievous legislation of the country, and finally an effort to reform the abuses and carry to a more logical conclusion the principles of our re’ publican democracy. It was a large part of the universal upward tendency of the manual workers of the world, and was as irrepressible as the pirogress of democracy on earth. It foreshadowed the time when the cunning of the land would be directed by the brain of the worker. ‘Equal rights and exact justice to all men;’ * government derives its just powers irom the consent of the governed; ‘ Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even so unto them.’ These were all accepted principles, and must work out their logical results.”