its members were expounding
doctrines which seemed rank treason to the elderly gentlemen whose
influence had once been so potent. It is now clear that their fall from
power was inevitable, though they refused to believe it possible.

CHAPTER III

THE REVOLT OF THE COMMON MAN

Practically all the farmers in the South, like those of the West, were
chronically in debt, and after 1870 the general tendency of the prices
of agricultural products was downward. In spite of largely increased
acreage--partly, to be sure, because of it--the total returns from the
larger crops were hardly so great as had been received from a much
smaller cultivated area. The Southern farmer began to feel helpless and
hopeless. Though usually suspicious of every movement coming from the
North, he turned readily to the organization of the Patrons of
Husbandry, better known as the Grange. In fact, the hopeless apathy of
the Southern farmer observed by Oliver Hudson Kelley, an agent of the
Bureau of Agriculture, is said to have determined him to found the
order. In spite of the turmoil of Reconstruction, the organization
appeared in South Carolina and Mississippi in 1871. Tennessee.
Missouri, and Kentucky had already been invaded. During 1872 and 1873,
the order spread rapidly in all the States which may be called Southern.
The highest number reached was in the latter part of 1875 when more than
6400 local granges were reported in the States which had seceded; and in
Kentucky, Maryland, Delaware, West Virginia, and Missouri there were
nearly 4000 more. The total membership in the seceding States was more
than 210,000 and including the border States, over 355,000. Since
negroes were not admitted, the proportion of the total white
agricultural population in the Grange was perhaps as high in the South
as in any other part of the Union. In the years that followed, the order
underwent the same disintegration in the South as elsewhere.

As a class the Southern Grangers did not take an active part in
politics. The overshadowing question of the position of their States in
the Union and the desire to preserve white supremacy prevented any great
independent movement. In a few instances, men ran for Congress as
Independents or as Greenbackers, and in some cases they were elected;
but the Southern farmers were not yet ready to break away from the
organization which had delivered them from negro rule. There was not at
that time in the South the same op