FARMERS' MOVEMENT, in American political history, the general name for a movement between 1867 and 1896 remarkable for a radical socio-economic propaganda that came from what was considered the most conservative class of American society. In this movement there were three periods, popularly known as Granger, Alliance and Populist.
The GRANGE, or Order of the Patrons of Husbandry (the latter the official name of the national organization, while the former was the name of local chapters, including a supervisory National Grange at Washington), was a secret order founded in 1867 to advance the social needs and combat the economic backwardness of farm life. It grew remarkably in 1873-1874, and in the latter year attained a membership of perhaps 800,000. In the causes of its growth--much broader than those that issued in the financial crisis of 1873--a high tariff, railway freight-rates and other grievances were mingled with agricultural troubles like the fall of wheat prices and the increase of mortgages. The condition of the farmer seemed desperate. The original objects of the Grange were primarily educational, but these were soon overborne by an anti-middleman, co-operative movement. Grange agents bought everything from farm machinery to women's dresses; hundreds of grain elevators and cotton and tobacco warehouses were bought, and even steamboat lines; mutual insurance companies were formed and joint-stock stores. Nor was co-operation limited to distributive processes; crop-reports were circulated, co-operative dairies multiplied, flour-mills were operated, and patents were purchased, that the Grange might manufacture farm machinery. The outcome in some states was ruin, and the name Grange became a reproach. Nevertheless these efforts in co-operation were exceedingly important both for the results obtained and for their wider significance. Nor could politics be excluded, though officially tabooed; for economics must be considered by social idealists, and economics everywhere ran into politics. Thus it was with the railway question. Railways had been extended into frontier states; there were heavy crops in sparsely settled regions where freight-rates were high, so that--given the existing distributive system--there were "over production" and waste; there was notorious stock manipulation and discrimination in rates; and the farmers regarded "absentee ownership" of railways by New York capitalists much as absentee ownership of land has been regarded in Ireland. The Grange officially disclaimed enmity to railways; but though the organization did not attack them, the Grangers--through political "farmers' clubs" and the like--did. About 1867 began the efforts to establish regulation of the railways, as common-carriers, by the states. Such laws were known as "Granger laws," and their general principles, soon endorsed (1876) by the Supreme Court of the United States, have become an important chapter in the laws of the land. In a declaration of principles in 1874 Grangers were declared to be "not enemies of railroads," and their cause to stand for "no communism, no agrarianism." To conservatives, however, co-operation seemed communism, and "Grange laws" agrarianism; and thus in 1873-1874 the growth of the movement aroused extraordinary interest and much uneasiness. In 1874 the order was reorganized, membership being limited to persons directly interested in the farmers' cause (there had been a millionaire manufacturers' Grange on Broadway), and after this there were constant quarrels in the order; moreover, in 1875 the National Grange largely lost control of the state Granges, which discredited the organization by their disastrous co-operation ventures. Thus by 1876 it had already ceased to be of national political importance. About 1880 a renascence began, particularly in the Middle States and New England; this revival was marked by a recurrence to the original social and educational objects. The national Grange and state Granges (in all, or nearly all, of the states) were still active in 1909, especially in the old cultural movement and in such economic movements--notably the improvement of highways--as most directly concern the farmers. The initiative and referendum, and other proposals of reform politics in the direction of a democratic advance, also enter in a measure into their propaganda.