stock, with an increased burden of taxation because his township
had also been gullible enough to buy stock, and with a railroad
whose excessive rates allowed him but a narrow margin of profit
on his produce.

When the farmers sought political remedies for their economic
ills, they discovered that, as a class, they had little
representation or influence either in Congress or in the state
legislatures. Before the Civil War the Southern planter had
represented agricultural interests in Congress fairly well; after
the War the dominance of Northern interests left the Western
farmer without his traditional ally in the South. Political power
was concentrated in the East and in the urban sections of the
West. Members of Congress were increasingly likely to be from the
manufacturing classes or from the legal profession, which
sympathized with these classes rather than with the
agriculturists. Only about seven per cent of the members of
Congress were farmers; yet in 1870 forty-seven per cent of the
population was engaged in agriculture. The only remedy for the
farmers was to organize themselves as a class in order to promote
their common welfare.



CHAPTER III. THE GRANGER MOVEMENT AT FLOOD TIDE

With these real or fancied grievances crying for redress, the
farmers soon turned to the Grange as the weapon ready at hand to
combat the forces which they believed were conspiring to crush
them. In 1872 began the real spread of the order. Where the