Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 22, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 February 1875 — A Stupendous Power. [ARTICLE]

A Stupendous Power.

Few probably realize the immense power for good tor evil that lies dormant in the order of Patrons of Husbandry. The Order to-day contains nearly 22,000 Granges with a membership of nearly

one and a quarter millions. The vast army is thoroughly officered and working with remarkable harmony f6r a common object. But its influence consists not alone in its numerical strength. The personnel of this army is peculiar. It contains at least a million of grown men. The alms-houses, the penitentiaries, the grog-shops, the gambling-dens, the brothels, the filthy back streets, have not a representative in its ranks. None of its members live in palaces; none have offices in Wall street; none are railroad presidents, and chase folly at Saratoga or fashion at Paris. Almost every member of this agricultural army is a freeholder, a fixture, the owner of a portion of the base of prosperity of the country. It represents tiie great sober, honest, respectable, anti-shoddy middle-class of this nation. Its skirts are not filthy with respectable larceny or fashionable bribery; nor are its whiskers white with the suckings of the party teats. It holds the very lives of the people in the hollow of its hands. It controls the flour barrel and wardrobe. Let this Order lock up its wheat and corn and withhold its wool and cotton, and in six months the people from Portland to San Francisco will be starving and freezing. Here is a glimpse of the power of the Patrons of Husbandry. Now what does it propose to do about it? If it was an order of the poor and ignorant, such as you might rake up in the large cities, it would be almost sure to prove an unmitigated curse. But the safety of the nation consists in the standing of its members. Should this Order see fit to answer the sneers and abuse of the at my of middlemen who feed off their hard-earned products and blot the word “ retail” out of their dictionary, in twelve months the principal streets in our cities would be as lonely as Sodom. They want to better their own condition, not by robbing somebody else, but by taking care that nobody robs them. They have rebelled against unconscionable profits on what they buy and unreasonable commissions on what they sell. They don’t believe that the man who hands the grain over to the consumer should have the grist, and he whose sweat produced the crop only the toil. They mean further to cultivate their intellectual and social faculties—learn something as well as earn something. They have much to do before they can reach the point where they can say, “We as a class are as intelligent as the best,” and they are doing it rapidly. We shouldn’t be surprised if m process of time they should get strong enough and rich enough so they can afford to give for a week rest to the weavils and make it hot for the devils. It wouldn’t be strange if eventually they should become so inquisitive and impertinent as to ask the great ruling class what becomes of the taxes they pay. Should they, one of these years, take upon themselves the dirty job of cleaning out the filthy official stables about our National and State capitals, none but rascals would mourn. —N. J'. Granger.