nteresting to note, in view of the subsequent political activity
in which the movement for agricultural organization became inevitably
involved, that the founders of the Grange looked for advantages to come
to the farmer through intellectual and social intercourse, not through
political action. Their purpose was "the advancement of agriculture,"
but they expected that advancement to be an educative rather than
a legislative process. It was to that end, for instance, that they
provided for a Grange "Lecturer," a man whose business it was to prepare
for each meeting a program apart from the prescribed ritual--perhaps a
paper read by one of the members or an address by a visiting speaker.
With this plan for social and intellectual advancement, then, the
founders of the Grange set out to gain members.

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 mark