education,
may be fostered; and fifth, to expect the teacher to have a knowledge of
the industrial and general social conditions of agriculture, especially
those of the community in which her lot is cast.

CHAPTER X

THE GRANGE

The difficulty of uniting the farmers of America for any form of
co-operative endeavor long ago became proverbial. The business of
farming encouraged individualism; comparative isolation bred
independence; and restricted means of communication made union
physically difficult, even among those who might be disposed to unite.
It was not strange, therefore, that the agricultural masses developed a
state of mind unfavorable for organization--that they became suspicious
of one another, jealous of leadership, unwilling to keep the pledges of
union, and unable to sink personal views and prejudices.

It must not be supposed, however, that the farmers themselves have
failed to realize the situation, or that no genuinely progressive steps
have been taken to remedy it. During the last four decades at least, the
strongest men that the rural classes have produced have labored with
their fellows, both in season and out of season, for union of effort;
and their efforts have been by no means in vain. It is true that some of
the attempts at co-operation have been ill-judged, even fantastic. It
is true that much of the machinery of organization failed to work and
can be found on the social junk-pile, in company with other discarded
implements not wholly rural in origin. But it is also true that great
progress has been made; that the spirit of co-operation is rapidly
emerging as a factor in rural social life; and that the weapons of rural
organization have a temper all the better, perhaps, because they were
fashioned on the anvil of defeat.

Among all these efforts to unite the farming classes, by far the most
characteristic and the most successful is the Grange. The truth of this
statement will immediately be questioned by those whose memory recalls
the early rush to the Grange, "Granger legislation," and similar
phenomena, as well as by those whose impressions have been gleaned from
reading the periodicals of the late seventies, when the Grange tide had
begun to ebb. Indeed, it seems to be the popular impression that the
Grange is not at present a force of consequence, that long ago it became
a cripple, if not a corpse. Only a few years ago, an intelligent
magazine writer, in discussing the subject