Article 14: Indefinite Foundings And Awkward Transitions: The Grange’s Troubled Formation into an Educational Institution

In the closing weeks of 1867, an educational organization was founded in Washington, D.C., that should have been stillborn. Most farmers dismissed scientific agriculture as useless book-farming. They should have been lukewarm to the Patrons of Husbandry’s promise to sponsor monthly meetings for mutual instruction in the application of scientific and business principles to farming. Moreover, the Grange (its common name) was a fraternal order, modeled loosely on Freemasonry, and American farmers typically held little regard for hierarchies of social status and elaborate rituals. Nevertheless, the Grange grew rapidly, boasting more than 850,000 members by 1875. Almost instantly, it became embroiled in controversy, then suffered a steep decline in membership, but stabilized, re-grew, and remained the largest farmers’ organization in the United States (Taylor 1953, 137).