Founding the Grange—A Populist and Progressive Force

Grange Founder Oliver Hudson Kelley

Officially it was known by the grandiose name of The National Grange of the Order of Patrons of Husbandry, a fraternal organization with rites and oaths seemingly not much different than the dozens of other such organizations which were spreading like wildfire across mid-19th Century America.  But the Grange, as it was more simply and universally known, quickly became the most important voice for family farmers in the country, the spearhead of a growing anti-monopolist social movement, and an organization remarkably egalitarian and inclusive in its membership and philosophy.

It came together on December 4, 1867 thanks to the efforts of Oliver Hudson Kelley and seven other Founders including one woman, Kelley’s 29 year old niece Caroline A. Hall.  Grange #1 in Fredonia, New York became the first chartered unit.  From there the organization spread with astonishing speed and gathering momentum as a social force.

Kelley was born on January 7, 1826 in Boston. Despite these urban roots he moved to the virtual frontier in Minnesota in 1849.  He prospered moderately but like many pioneer farmers he was dislocated by the Great Sioux Uprising of 1862.  Two years later, in 1864 he got an appointment to a clerkship at the Bureau of Agriculture in Washington.  His intelligence, organizational skills, and deep knowledge of agricultural conditions brought him to the attention of President Andrew Johnson after the Civil War.

Disrupted by the war—and the abolition of slavery—the South’s agricultural economy had collapsed causing actual local famine.  The accidental President and former Tennessee Democrat, Johnson was more eager to reconcile the country than the Radical Republicans who controlled Congress and wanted a punitive policy for the former Rebels while providing modest land claims for the new Freedmen.  Johnson dispatched Kelley on a mission to survey conditions on Southern farms and to make recommendations to aid in their recovery.

On his first visits Kelley found himself stonewalled as a damned Yankee.  He discovered, however, that his status as a Mason could open doors and he was soon escorted everywhere he went by brother Masons.  He found the operational condition of most farms appallingly primitive, whether small family homesteads or the old plantations.  Reliance on cheap slave labor had prevented the introduction of more efficient agricultural innovations and machinery while the dedication of much of the land to cash crops like cotton, tobacco, or sugar cane—all of which wore out the soil after years of mono-production—left food production to small garden plots and with little access to markets more than a day’s walk away.

Appalled, Kelley submitted his report, which like most such reports simply gathered dust with no effective action taken.  He turned to discussions with other farmers and agricultural experts around the country to seek solutions that would not only aid Southern farmers and perhaps heal the wounds of the war, but advance the condition or agriculture generally.

Kelley recruited a strong nucleus for a new kind of organization which he envisioned.  Scottish born botanist, nurseryman, and horticulturalist William Saunders became the first Master of the Grange.  Francis M. McDowell was a former stockbroker turned Upstate New York vintner who provided many of the new groups organizational structures and became the first High Priest in the Assembly of Demeter.  The Reverend Aaron Burt Grosh was a Universalist minister had a major part in the design of the Grange ritual and was also responsible for the various songs used during various celebrations of the Grange who also played a similar role in another important fraternal organization, the Oddfellows.  John R. Thompson of New Hampshire was Kelley’s first confidant on the project and a high ranking Mason who collaborated with Grosh in creating ritual and establishing criteria for the seven degrees of membership.  William M. Ireland was Chief Clerk of the Post Office who brought organizational and accounting skills to the new organization.  The Rev. John Trimble was an Episcopal priest who had kept a school in Kentucky that was lost in the War and then had taken a clerkship in the Department of the Treasury.  He was the organization’s main connection to the South and served as its first Treasurer.  Kelly took the position of Secretary, which encompassed the day-to-day management of the Grange’s affairs with Caroline Hall became his chief assistant and managed much of the communications with affiliates.

A Grange poster from 1876

The Grange was organized a secret society loosely modeled on Freemasonry because such organizations were wildly popular.  But the secrecy also had benefits, as the Knights of Labor, an early labor union of the same vintage, also discovered.  It meant members were able to freely and openly discuss their problems—and to plan for action in pressing reforms.  This would be critical to its quickly growing influence.  The rituals and secrets were less daunting than the Masons.  They were non-sectarian, and in fact not even explicitly Christian.  It could appeal to members of all denominations, and was even open to freethinkers and agnostics.  That meant that Grange Halls rapidly became the social center of many rural communities, the only place where Methodists, Baptists, even Catholics and apostates could meet and mingle.

Similarly the Grange was strictly non-partisan when it came to elections.  Prominent members were Republicans, Democrats, and later Greenbacks and Populists.  The organization adopted and advanced many causes including the establishment of Rural Free Delivery by the Post Office, the construction of county and state farm-to-market roads, regulation of railroad freight rates, the direct election of U.S. Senators, and the adoption of Women’s Suffrage but did so without endorsing parties and candidates.  This approach made their advocacy often stunningly successful.

In the immediate post-war ere the Grange also was probably the only institution in many communities, especially in Border States and in the West which attracted emigrants from all sections, where Union and Confederate Veterans could safely join together for cooperation.

One of the most remarkable features of the Grange which set it apart from all of the other fraternal organizations of its day was the absolute equality of women in membership.  The grange recognized that farming was a family affair with all members needed to keep the homestead operating.  To insure representation at every level some elected positions were reserved for women, but they could hold any.  They helped steer the organization’s advocacy for suffrage, improved rural schools, and in many areas Temperance.  Likewise full membership was open to youths of both sexes “old enough to pull a plow,” at age 14.  Younger children were enlisted in active auxiliaries.  Young people were this groomed and introduced to leadership preventing the organization from stagnating.

In areas where it was safe to do so, local Granges were open to Blacks.  In the South were that would have been impossible, segregated Granges were established, but these had to cooperate at higher levels of the organization.  Likewise the Grange was open to immigrants and non-citizens.

Structurally the organization is hierarchical.  The basic unit is the local or subordinate Grange meant to include members from a single rural community, often hamlets too small to be incorporated.  All of the local Granges in a county, or sometimes a group of counties, belong to and are active in Pomona Granges which in turn belong to State Granges.  All of this is coordinated by the National Grange headquartered in Washington.  Granges at each level determine their own agendas and are active in their respective communities.  Thus Pomona Granges were especially active in pushing county governments to building and maintaining roads and consolidating tiny one room school houses while State Granges became powerful lobbying forces, as did the National Grange in Congress. 

Ideally in this arrangement authority passes upward from the local to the National while organizational services flow downward.  As in all organizations this ideal was not always fulfilled in practice, but was common.  Due to unusually effective organization, the National Grange was able to employ a number of agents who helped establish local Granges and organize participation at the various levels.  That led to the astonishingly rapid rise of the organization.

In the period of 1872-1875 the Grange grew from 200,000 to 850,000 members with local Granges in most states.  It was most successful in a broad swath from New England and New York State, through the Great Lakes region, the Midwest, Great Plains, and onto the Pacific Coast.  It was weakest in the Deep South, Inter-Mountain West, and Southwest.  Its backbone was the family farm and the local businesses supporting agriculture.

A typical Grange Hall, Chichester, New Hampshire.

Much of the growth in this period came from a program encouraging local Granges to establish buying cooperatives for seed, utensils, and other essential.  Local Granges were also encouraged to have members pool their money to buy otherwise prohibitively expensive farm equipment—modern reapers, planters, and even steam tractors.  This was assisted by State and National.  Aaron Montgomery Ward was one of the businessmen that supplied the equipment and stocked the cooperatives.  Local Granges were also encouraged to build halls, which were popular community centers and became a ubiquitous feature of small town life.  Most of these Halls were financed by mortgages.

The ripple effect of the Panic of 1873 eventually caused the collapse of most of the buying cooperatives and both communal equipment and Halls were seized and foreclosed on by banks.  Membership dropped significantly in the second half of the decade.  Kelley resigned as managing Secretary and the National Grange struggled.  Many thought it would die.

But re-focusing on farm issues rallied the remaining Granges and led to a slow recovery of membership which accelerated in the 1890’s with the rise of the Populist Movement which mirrored many Grange priorities.  The Grange could take credit for significant reforms including Rural Free Delivery, the establishment of the Cooperative Extension Service in the Department of Agriculture plus state extension services, and establishment of the Farm Credit System for reliable and affordable loans.  The peak of their political power was marked by their success in Munn v. Illinois in 1877, which held that the grain warehouses were a private utility in the public interest, and therefore could be regulated by public law. However this achievement was overturned later by the Supreme Court in Wabash v. Illinois in 1886.

The early 20th Century saw a resurgence of the Grange in both membership and influence.  It helped set the stage for the Progressive Era and for developments like the Farmer-Labor Party movement in the upper Midwest.

Other farm organizations arose to challenge the dominance of the Grange, and its progressive program, most notably the conservative Farm Bureau—eventually to become a virtual extension of the Republican Party—on one hand and the radical National Farmers Union, which conducted the widely publicized dumping of milk early in the Depression.  The Grange wove a path between but usually found allies in the New Deal.  Both Franklin Roosevelt and his successor Harry S Truman were members.

The Grange has long since abandoned secret meetings.  And it streamlined rituals are just a vestige of what they once were.  Many Grange halls have closed and been converted to other uses or razed.  In fact many of the small towns that once hosted them have vanished.  As the portion of the American population directly engaged in agriculture has shrunken to about 2% membership and affiliates have both declined.

But the Grange remains active with a membership of 160,000, with organizations in 2,100 communities in 36 states.  After years of sharp decline, the organization is reporting a modest resurgence mostly based in the far west and boasted that 7 new Granges were chartered in 2011.

If Ever a Wiz there Was—Prairie Radical L. Frank Baum

The recent release of the highly successful Disney film Oz The Great and Powerful has revived interest in the Oz tales and their quirky author.  Not that interest ever really flagged.  The 1939 classic The Wizard of Oz remains the most popular film of all time, beloved by every new generation exposed to it.

But both films, however entertaining, obscure the raging Prairie Populism and open feminism that the creator of the stories espoused.  Indeed feminist critics lambasted the new film for refocusing the story on a man—the charlatan/wizard—at the expense of the self-driven female characters at who drove the action in his stories.  Indeed two of the four main female characters in the film—Theodora and Evanora turn out to be hideous villainesses, and one, the originally lovely and guileless Theodora, flips to evil with remarkable ease when faced with nothing more than typical male thoughtlessness.   A third character is literally a broken doll that is mended by the hero.  Sweet Glenda the Good is remarkably passive.

Those feminist critics are right.  The writer would not have been pleased.

L. Frank Baum, one of America’s the most prolific and enduring children’s authors, was born on May 15, 1856 in Chittenango, New York.  His father had made his fortune in the Pennsylvania oil boom and manufactured lubricants.  His mother was an outspoken feminist.  The family lived comfortably in a large home. 

Frank, one of ten children, was a sickly boy with a heart condition.  Protected from strenuous activity, including usual childhood rough house play, he was tutored at home and spent most of his time reading and playing fantasy games with his sibling.  Although enthralled with the magic of fairy tales, he was repelled by the frightening violence of the Brothers Grimm and by the heavy moralizing.  At an early age he decided that he wanted to create magical stories for modern children that dispensed with the violence and stock characters and monsters of the European tales and which reflected American attitudes and outlook. 

After an unhappy two year brush with military school, Baum dropped out and decided to make his own way in the world.  He first took up journalism and quickly had some success, becoming a reporter on the New York World and shortly after founding a newspaper in Pennsylvania.  He also took up raising exotic chickens, edited a magazine for poultry farmers, and wrote a book on Hamburg breed in which he specialized. 

At the age of 25 Baum went to New York to study acting and appeared in several shows.  Because of his family’s wealth Baum was pursued by producers to invest in their shows with promises of good roles.  His life-long interest in the theater brought him repeatedly to bankruptcy.  Baum’s father built him his own theater, or “Opera House” in Richberg, New York where he founded his own company and began writing plays for it. 

The Maid of Aaran was a modest success in 1882 which he wrote, produced, directed and starred in.  He also composed the music.  The songs were integrated into the story, almost unheard of in American musical theater at the time.  While touring with this show, the Richberg theater burned down during a performance of another play, Matches. 

The same year he married Maude Gage, the daughter of Matilda Joslyn Gage, one of the leading Suffragists and feminists and close associate of Elizabeth Cady Stanton who Baum adored and who deeply influenced his political and religious thought—he was a consistent advocate of women’s rights and became, like Matilda, a Theosophist. 

With a new family to support, Baum left the theater to try his hand at business.  First he worked as an axle grease salesman for his father, and then in rapid succession he tried and failed at other businesses and occupations changing careers as “other men change their shirts.”  He opened a general merchandise store in Aberdeen, Dakota territory where his willingness to extend credit to drought strapped local farmers led to failure.  He then returned to journalism as the editor and publisher of a weekly newspaper which, though nominally Republican was a staunch advocate for voting rights for women and was familiar with and sympathetic to emerging Populism.  His mother in law lived with his wife and growing family—four children—during this period. 

When the newspaper failed in 1891 the family moved to Chicago where Baum wrote for the Evening Post.  He founded and edited a journal for professional Window Dressers, published his first book—on breeding Hamburg rabbits, and became a traveling salesman.  Mathilda Gage encouraged Baum to write and publish the tales he was already telling his own children.

 His first effort in 1897, Mother Goose in Prose was a success with illustrations by leading artist Maxwell Parish.  With Parish in demand by leading national magazines, Baum teamed up with artist W.W. Denslow for Father Goose, His Book, which became the bestselling children’s book of 1898. 

But it was his next book in1900 which really established him—The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.  It was a sensation and the public demanded more.  And Baum gave it to them.  Baum collaborated with producer Fred R. Hamlin and composer Paul Tietjens on a “musical extravaganza” based on the book.  It opened in Chicago then on to Broadway for a very successful run.  The show toured the country for ten years. 

Baum returned to Oz in 1904 with the publication of The Marvelous Land of Oz and there after produced a new Oz book almost every year until he died—a total of 16 titles in all, the last published posthumously.  Several times he tried to end the series, but returned to it by popular demand or when one of his business ventures failed again. 

Meanwhile Baum wrote other children’s books under his own name and various nom-de-plumes.  In additions there were numerous short stories, poetry collections, adult novels, and theater pieces, and screen plays.  The output was prodigious. 

Braun moved his family to Hollywood in 1911 and was forced into bankruptcy the following year by the expenses of an odd lecture, film and theater piece called The Fairylogue and Radio-Plays and weak sales of some of his non-Oz books.  He had to sell the rights to many of his earlier works to recover and redoubled production of Oz books. 

But the siren call of the theater was irresistible to Baum.  He joined and wrote most of the material for Harry Marston Haldeman’s group The Uplifters, which also featured Will Rogers.  Baum’s last full scale play was The Tic Toc Man of Oz, which was successfully produced in Los Angeles but could not find a producer in New York. 

Baum also was interested in motions pictures and in 1914 founded his own company, The Oz Film Manufacturing Company to produce Oz films.  Several were made to critical acclaim, but box office failure.  An attempt to re-orient the company to adult audiences as Dramatic Feature Films by Baum’s son Frank Joslyn Baum ended in failure by 1917. 

The failure of his cinema dreams took a hold on Baum’s always fragile health.  On May 5, 1919 he suffered a stroke and died just days short of his 63rd birthday.