Okla-homey
12/4/2007, 07:27 AM
December 4, 1867: Oliver Kelley organizes the Grange
http://aycu17.webshots.com/image/35936/2004721608008641262_rs.jpg (http://allyoucanupload.webshots.com/v/2004721608008641262)
140 years ago on this day in 1867, former Minnesota farmer Oliver Hudson Kelley founds the Grange, which became a powerful political force among western farmers.
http://aycu21.webshots.com/image/34860/2004734380049463113_rs.jpg (http://allyoucanupload.webshots.com/v/2004734380049463113)
Oliver Hudson Kelley
Though he grew up in Boston, Kelley decided in his early twenties that he wanted to become a farmer. In 1849, he booked passage on a steamboat for St. Paul, Minnesota. Though the Minnesota area was dominated more by the Indian trade than farming, Kelley shrewdly saw that the future of the region lay in agriculture, and he proved to be a skilled and progressive farmer.
Your correspondent has no idea if the fictional city-slicker turned farmer (Oliver Douglas) of TV's Green Acres is named in homage to Oliver Kelley, but the profile fits.
http://aycu24.webshots.com/image/34183/2000631868859827195_rs.jpg (http://allyoucanupload.webshots.com/v/2000631868859827195)
Kelley gained local fame in Minnesota for boldly experimenting with new crops, installing an elaborate irrigation system, and buying one of the first mechanical reapers in the state. His attempts at scientific farming and a series of columns he wrote for national newspapers brought him national recognition.
In 1864, he won a prestigious clerking position under the federal Commissioner of Agriculture in Washington, D.C. Two years into his federal job, while on a tour of southern farms in 1866, Kelley was struck by the warm reception he received from his fellow Masons in the South, despite the otherwise pervasive dislike of northerners left over from the Civil War which had just ended two years earlier.
http://aycu15.webshots.com/image/36254/2004781845364843817_rs.jpg (http://allyoucanupload.webshots.com/v/2004781845364843817)
Determined to develop a national organization to unify farmers, he returned to Washington and gathered a group of like-minded friends. In 1867, these men became the founders of the Order of the Patrons of Husbandry, better known as the Grange.
http://aycu18.webshots.com/image/34817/2004743184779342392_rs.jpg (http://allyoucanupload.webshots.com/v/2004743184779342392)
Patrons of Husbandry (Grange) Statement of Purpose - 12/4/1867
We long to see the antagonism between labor and capital removed by common consent, and by an enlightened statesmanship worthy of the nineteenth century. We are opposed to excessive salaries, high rates of interest and exorbitant profits in trade. They greatly increase our burdens and do not bear a proper proportion to the profits of producers.
We must dispense with a surplus of middlemen, not that we are unfriendly to them, but we do not need them. Their surplus and their executions diminish our profits.
We are not enemies of railroads, navigable and irrigating canals, nor of any corporation that will advance our industrial interests, nor of any laboring classes. . . . We are not enemies to capital, but we oppose the tyranny of monopolies.
We desire a proper equality, equity, and fairness; protection for the weak; restraint upon the strong; in short, justly distributed burdens and justly distributed power. These are America ideas, the very essence of American independence, and to advocate the contrary is unworthy of the sons and daughters of an American Republic.
Although the Grange, like the Masons, began primarily as a social organization designed to provide educational and recreational opportunities for farmers, it evolved into a major political force. Farmers who gathered at local Grange Halls often voiced similar complaints about the high rates charged by warehouses and railroads to handle their grain, and they began to organize for state and federal controls over these pivotal economic issues.
The Grange's political activism resulted in a flurry of legislation that became known as the "Granger Laws," which were not very effective in solving the farmers' problems with the railroads and warehouses but did provide a crucial precedent for state and federal regulation of private enterprise for the "public interest."
The Laws were passed in five mid-western states. In decades to come, politicians took a cue from the Granger Laws and created controls over many big business industries, from meatpacking to drug making, on the grounds that governmental regulations were essential to protect the interests of all the people, not just farmers.
The Grange also played a key role in creating the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887, which called for the first federal regulation of railroads to control unfair shipping rates.
The organization has declined in influence and numbers, but it still exists. Here's a link to the Oklahoma Grange:
http://www.oklahomagrange.org/
http://aycu28.webshots.com/image/36707/2004768135977881887_rs.jpg (http://allyoucanupload.webshots.com/v/2004768135977881887)
http://aycu17.webshots.com/image/35936/2004721608008641262_rs.jpg (http://allyoucanupload.webshots.com/v/2004721608008641262)
140 years ago on this day in 1867, former Minnesota farmer Oliver Hudson Kelley founds the Grange, which became a powerful political force among western farmers.
http://aycu21.webshots.com/image/34860/2004734380049463113_rs.jpg (http://allyoucanupload.webshots.com/v/2004734380049463113)
Oliver Hudson Kelley
Though he grew up in Boston, Kelley decided in his early twenties that he wanted to become a farmer. In 1849, he booked passage on a steamboat for St. Paul, Minnesota. Though the Minnesota area was dominated more by the Indian trade than farming, Kelley shrewdly saw that the future of the region lay in agriculture, and he proved to be a skilled and progressive farmer.
Your correspondent has no idea if the fictional city-slicker turned farmer (Oliver Douglas) of TV's Green Acres is named in homage to Oliver Kelley, but the profile fits.
http://aycu24.webshots.com/image/34183/2000631868859827195_rs.jpg (http://allyoucanupload.webshots.com/v/2000631868859827195)
Kelley gained local fame in Minnesota for boldly experimenting with new crops, installing an elaborate irrigation system, and buying one of the first mechanical reapers in the state. His attempts at scientific farming and a series of columns he wrote for national newspapers brought him national recognition.
In 1864, he won a prestigious clerking position under the federal Commissioner of Agriculture in Washington, D.C. Two years into his federal job, while on a tour of southern farms in 1866, Kelley was struck by the warm reception he received from his fellow Masons in the South, despite the otherwise pervasive dislike of northerners left over from the Civil War which had just ended two years earlier.
http://aycu15.webshots.com/image/36254/2004781845364843817_rs.jpg (http://allyoucanupload.webshots.com/v/2004781845364843817)
Determined to develop a national organization to unify farmers, he returned to Washington and gathered a group of like-minded friends. In 1867, these men became the founders of the Order of the Patrons of Husbandry, better known as the Grange.
http://aycu18.webshots.com/image/34817/2004743184779342392_rs.jpg (http://allyoucanupload.webshots.com/v/2004743184779342392)
Patrons of Husbandry (Grange) Statement of Purpose - 12/4/1867
We long to see the antagonism between labor and capital removed by common consent, and by an enlightened statesmanship worthy of the nineteenth century. We are opposed to excessive salaries, high rates of interest and exorbitant profits in trade. They greatly increase our burdens and do not bear a proper proportion to the profits of producers.
We must dispense with a surplus of middlemen, not that we are unfriendly to them, but we do not need them. Their surplus and their executions diminish our profits.
We are not enemies of railroads, navigable and irrigating canals, nor of any corporation that will advance our industrial interests, nor of any laboring classes. . . . We are not enemies to capital, but we oppose the tyranny of monopolies.
We desire a proper equality, equity, and fairness; protection for the weak; restraint upon the strong; in short, justly distributed burdens and justly distributed power. These are America ideas, the very essence of American independence, and to advocate the contrary is unworthy of the sons and daughters of an American Republic.
Although the Grange, like the Masons, began primarily as a social organization designed to provide educational and recreational opportunities for farmers, it evolved into a major political force. Farmers who gathered at local Grange Halls often voiced similar complaints about the high rates charged by warehouses and railroads to handle their grain, and they began to organize for state and federal controls over these pivotal economic issues.
The Grange's political activism resulted in a flurry of legislation that became known as the "Granger Laws," which were not very effective in solving the farmers' problems with the railroads and warehouses but did provide a crucial precedent for state and federal regulation of private enterprise for the "public interest."
The Laws were passed in five mid-western states. In decades to come, politicians took a cue from the Granger Laws and created controls over many big business industries, from meatpacking to drug making, on the grounds that governmental regulations were essential to protect the interests of all the people, not just farmers.
The Grange also played a key role in creating the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887, which called for the first federal regulation of railroads to control unfair shipping rates.
The organization has declined in influence and numbers, but it still exists. Here's a link to the Oklahoma Grange:
http://www.oklahomagrange.org/
http://aycu28.webshots.com/image/36707/2004768135977881887_rs.jpg (http://allyoucanupload.webshots.com/v/2004768135977881887)