declared, however, as the oft-repeated truth taught in the organic law of the order, that the grange, national, state, or subordinate, is not a political or party organization; and yet, while no grange, if true to its obligations, can discuss political or religious questions, nor call political conventions or nominate candidates, nor ever discuss their merits in its meetings, the principles enunciated by the order are, it is claimed, such as underlie all true politics and all true statesmanship, and, if properly carried out, tending to purify the whole political atmosphere of the country; that, though seeking the greatest good to the greatest number, no one by becoming a grange member gives up that inalienable right and duty which belong to every American citizen, to take a proper interest in the politics of his country. On the contrary, the grange pronounces it to be the right and duty of every member to do all in his power legitimately to influence, for good, the action of any political party to which he belongs; that it is his duty to do all he can, in his own party, to put down bribery, corruption, and trickery,-to see that none but competent, faithful, and honest men, who will unflinchingly stand by the interests of the order are nominated for all positions of trust, the governing principle in this respect to be, that the office should seek the man and not the man the office. The broad principle is acknowledged, that difference of opinion is no crime, and that progress towards truth is made by differences of opinion, while the fault lies in bitterness of controversy. A proper equality, equity and fairness, protection for the weak, restraint upon the strong,-in short, justly distributed burdens, and justly distributed power, the grange holds to be American ideas, the very essence of American independence, to advocate the contrary being unworthy the sons and daughters of an American republic. Cherishing the belief, too, that sectionalism is and of right should be dead and buried with the past, the order declares its work to be for the present and future, and consequently recognizes in its agricultural brotherhood,

and its associational purposes, no north, no south, no east, no west, and to every member is reserved the freeman's right to affiliate with any party that will best carry out his principles.

The wonderful growth of the grange movement, especially throughout the west, is asserted by Mr. J. K. Hudson, an intelligent and reliable authority, to have been without a parallel in the history of associational movements in this country; and this fact he attributes to the condition of the public mind which existed at the time of the founding of the movement,the prevailing feeling of distrust towards the organized interests of every kind then existing, the common indignation against the injustice of the unfair distribution of profits, the prevailing discrimination against agricultural labor which was, year after year, constantly kept alive in the minds of the farmers of the west by the fast decreasing profits, buying goods sold. at heavy profits, paying burdensome taxes brought upon them by unscrupulous rings which had squandered and stolen the public funds, while the result of the year's product and sale showed a loss to honest labor.

Such a remarkable feature in American life as the rise and progress of this movement has not failed to attract attention in foreign lands, and particularly in England. Thus, at the Social Science Congress of Great Britain, assembled in 1875, the Earl of Roseberry, president of the association, after speaking of the various 'Unions' to be found in the United States, such as the Sons of Toil, the Brethren of Labor, etc., characterized as incomparably above these, "the gigantic association of Patrons of Husbandry, commonly called the Grange, a great agricultural, co-operative, independent union. Its progress has been amazing. Its first grange, or lodge, was formed in the last month of 1867; there are at this moment 20,500, with 1,311,226 members, and at the end of the year it is certain that they will have thirty thousand, with two million members. The order is practically identified with the agricultural

population of twenty-six states, and with two-thirds of the farmers in ten others. In Missouri alone there are said to be 2,150 granges; they are making their way in Canada. Pennsylvania began the year with six lodges, and at this moment she has eight hundred." In regard to the cause of this prodigious increase, the earl thinks it easily accounted for, in view of the fact that, as alleged, the membership adds not less than fifty per cent. to the income of the order; and their enterprise and importance are further made manifest by the fact, as stated, that the California grangers have their own fleet, and ship their corn direct to Liverpool, by which they saved two million dollars, in freights, in a single year,-their vessels bringing, as return cargoes, tea, sugar, coffee, silk, and other commodities, which are retailed to members at cost price, and a system is being organized by which their ships return with loads of every foreign article which the members may need, thus making them an independent mercantile nation. In a similar strain, it is remarked by Mr. Leavitt, an ardent advocate of the order, that, although the fact be a disagreeable one to some classes of non-producers, it is none the less undeniable that the rugged health of the movement arises from its direct bearing upon the pockets of its members,-the chief advantage being the wholesale buying and selling which is done through the machinery of the order, differing, of course, in different states; thus, in the west, a large part of the gain is from the wholesale disposal of grain, and its handling through grange elevators, while, in the south, planters have saved large sums by using the grange agents in disposing of their cotton.

This last named consideration appears to be a vital point in the principles and aims of the grangers, and is urged-very strongly in the writings of those who are the acknowledged spokesmen of the order. According to the argument of Mr. Aiken, a leading member at the south, the philosophy of the order is based upon the idea of affording mutual benefit to the producer

and consumer by bringing them together. This position he enforces by stating the disadvantage the farmer labors under, by the system of trade at present carried on. To dispose of his crop as he pleases, says Mr. Aiken, is an enjoyable privilege, and, when he exchanges his products for the cash in hand he experiences a satisfaction not suggested by the receipt of bills of sale made at a distance; those who buy from the farmer in a home market, however, are most generally speculators, or 'middlemen' of the genuine stamp; they buy simply to sell at a profit, and if they, by their better judgment and astuteness, can realize a handsome profit upon their investment, they should not be condemned as tradesmen. If A buys B's crop, and nets fifty per cent. upon the purchase, he was no more to blame than B was for selling to him; both transactions were legitimate, but the result would show there was something erroneous in this method of dealing-the error was that farmer B did not properly comprehend the 'tricks of trade,' he had not studied the difference between wholesale and retail, between local and through freights, between individual and combined efforts, between isolation and co-operation. The purchase of a single article, the shipment of a single crop, the efforts of a single individual, are all alike in their results, and of minor importance to tradesmen; but where the purchases are made by wholesale, crops are grouped together for shipment, and the entire transaction submitted to a single disbursing agent, the commission on sales is diminished, the cost of transportation is reduced, and the aggregated profits become a handsome amount. Just so the 'middleman' acts; he buys individually, but groups his purchases and ships collectively, is his own disbursing agent, and pockets the results of his profitable labors. It is exactly in this capacity that the grange proposes to act for the farmer.

Similar in its spirit and principles of fraternity and co-operation is the organization, so increasingly prosperous, known as the Sovereigns of Industry. As defined

by Mr. Alger, a prominent exponent of the society's aims, its members maintain that the true desideratum is to raise the quality and quantity of every sort of useful production to the maximum, and to reduce the cost both of creation and distribution to the minimum; and, with this end in view, holding that men should be producers of good in some form, and that their sum of goods will be perfected by equitable exchanges, they have already begun the systematic organization of a method of bringing all kinds of producers and consumers into direct contact, for their common gain and to the universal advantage, the system being intended to prevent the waste of labor, and to put an end to the exaction of profit without any correspondent creation of value or use, and to swallow up the bitter rivalries and animosities of labor and capital and trade in an inclusive harmonizing of them all. In the further declaration of the purposes of

the order, upon which its action as above indicated is based, it is urged that the master principle of a true civilization must be the direct application of labor to the production of the goods of life. In utter opposition, however, to this, is the application of artifice to obtain money from those who possess it, in order that the obtainer may command the goods of life without producing them. The only real remedy,

says the declaration of this order,-is the overthrow of the existing monopoly and gambling concentrated in the present system of money, and the assignment of its just prerogatives to productive labor; an end must be put to all those forms of speculation which simply transfer money from hand to hand without any use or equivalent, and an end must be put also to the enormous profits exacted by the distributors of goods who create no value but get rich out of the earnings of productive labor.