During the first four years the order grew slowly, partly because
of the mistakes of the founders, partly because of the innate
conservatism and suspicion of the average farmer. The first local
Grange was organized in Washington. It was made up largely of
government clerks and their wives and served less to advance the
cause of agriculture than to test the ritual. In February, 1868,
Kelley resigned his clerkship in the Post Office Department and
turned his whole attention to the organization of the new order.
His colleagues, in optimism or irony, voted him a salary of two
thousand dollars a year and traveling expenses, to be paid from
the receipts of any subordinate Granges he should establish. Thus
authorized, Kelley bought a ticket for Harrisburg, and with two
dollars and a half in his pocket, started out to work his way to
Minnesota by organizing Granges. On his way out he sold four
dispensations for the establishment of branch
organizations--three for Granges in Harrisburg, Columbus, and
Chicago, which came to nothing, and one for a Grange in Fredonia,
New York, which was the first regular, active, and permanent
local organization. This, it is important to note, was
established as a result of correspondence with a farmer of that
place, and in by far the smallest town of the four. Kelley seems
at first to have made the mistake of attempting to establish the
order in the large cities, where it had no native soil in which
to grow.

When Kelley revised his plan and began to work from his farm in
Minnesota and among neighbors whose main interest was in
agriculture, he was more successful. His progress was not,
however, so marked as to insure his salary and expenses; in fact,
the whole history of these early years represents the hardest