s or as stockholders in cooperative stores or Grange
factories, many farmers gained valuable business experience which helped
to prevent them from being victimized thereafter. The farmers learned,
moreover, the wisdom of working through the accepted channels of
business. Those who had scoffed at the Rochdale plan of cooperation, in
the homely belief that any scheme made in America must necessarily be
better than an English importation, came to see that self-confidence
and independence must be tempered by willingness to learn from the
experience of others. Most important of all, these experiments in
business taught the farmers that the middlemen and manufacturers
performed services essential to the agriculturalist and that
the production and distribution of manufactured articles and the
distribution of crops are far more complex affairs than the farmers
had imagined and perhaps worthy of more compensation than they had been
accustomed to think just. On their side, the manufacturers and dealers
learned that the farmers were not entirely helpless and that to gain
their goodwill by fair prices was on the whole wiser than to force them
into competition. Thus these ventures resulted in the development of
a new tolerance and a new respect between the two traditionally
antagonistic classes.

The social and intellectual stimulus which the farmers received from the
movement was probably even more important than any direct political or
economic results. It is difficult for the present generation to form any
conception of the dreariness and dullness of farm life half a century
ago. Especially in the West, where farms were large, opportunities for
social intercourse were few, and weeks might pass without the farmer
seeing any but his nearest neighbors. For his wife existence was even
more drear. She went to the market town less often than he and the
routine of her life on the farm kept her close to the farmhouse and
prevented visits even to her neighbors' dwellings. The difficulty of
getting domestic servants made the work of the farmer's wife extremely
laborious; and at that time there were none of the modern conveniences
which lighten work such as power churns, cream separators, and
washing-machines. Even more than the husband, the wife was likely to
degenerate into a drudge without the hope--and eventually without the
desire--of anything better. The church formed, to be sure, a means of
social intercourse; but according to prevai