February 16, 2011
By Staff Reporter
In recent years he’d become quite active in an effort to ease the difficulties of farmers in the American heartland. Now he decided the time was right to formally establish an organization dedicated to such a cause. The result was the formation of the Patrons of Husbandry, better known as the Grange, an organization that would soon lead a national revolt against the inequities of the emerging industrial economy.
Oliver Hudson Kelley was born on Jan. 7, 1826 in Boston. His father was a tailor, the grandson of Thomas Kelley, an Irishman who came to the U.S. as a soldier in the British Army during the French and Indian wars. Oliver Kelley and his four siblings enjoyed a comfortable upbringing and received a solid education at private academies.
Kelley showed some talent for writing and at age 21 set out for Chicago seeking work as a journalist. He worked for the Chicago Tribune for a while, then moved on to become a telegraph operator, before finally deciding to try his hand at farming. He acquired a large tract of land in Minnesota and soon transformed it into an experimental farm where he tested the latest seeds, fertilization techniques, and new technology like mechanical reapers. Like a good New Englander raised in an artisan’s household, he believed that the traditional loneliness and poverty of farm life could be overcome with a proper dose of Yankee ingenuity, science, and organization. In the latter case, Kelley helped found in 1853 the Minnesota Territory Agricultural Society and served as one of its officers. Soon he was writing a weekly column, “The Farmer,” for a local newspaper in which he touted the latest innovations in farming and advocated the need for farmers to find ways to share information.
Kelley kept up this mixture of experimental farming and farmer advocacy, not to mention several entrepreneurial ventures with his brother, until 1867 when he accepted a position with the Postal Service in Washington, D.C. He stayed on the job only long enough to meet several men who shared his interest in agricultural issues. Together they founded a national organization dedicated to boosting the fortunes of the nation’s struggling farmers. Kelley resigned from the Post Office on Dec. 2 to return to Minnesota to assume his duties as the head of the organization, The Patrons of Husbandry, or Grange.
Over the next few years Kelley canvassed the Midwest delivering speeches and writing articles spreading the word about the Grange. Local chapters opened all across the nation and thousands of farmers (known as “Grangers”) joined the movement. Initially, the Grange operated as a social and educational society dedicated to promoting fellowship and fraternity among farmers who otherwise lived far apart from each other. Grangers were encouraged to share new ideas about farming through a newsletter and to attend lectures offered by traveling experts. By the early 1870s the organization had several hundred thousand loyal members.
The Grange underwent a dramatic change in size, character, and purpose in the aftermath of the Panic of 1873. That economic meltdown caused the worst depression in American history to that time and its effects reached every corner of the economy, from manufacturing to agriculture. Farmers saw prices for commodities plummet while their creditors demanded payment for loans extended to buy land and equipment. Worse still, railroads charged extortionate prices to transport their produce to market. Before long, hundreds of thousands of farmers faced ruin. In their desperation, they turned to Oliver Kelley and the one organization that might help solve their plight. Almost overnight the Grange was transformed into a powerful political movement that would soon come to dominate Midwestern politics for the rest of the decade.
By 1874, Granger Parties controlled the legislatures of Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Minnesota and enjoyed significant influence in several more. They used their newfound political power to enact a series of “Granger Laws,” some of the earliest regulations of abusive corporations, banks, and railroads. The latter were especially hated by farmers because they were so dependent upon them to move farm produce to market. Farmers bitterly opposed the high rates charged by railroads to transport and store agricultural commodities. This problem was especially acute in the Midwest and West where the lack of competing lines allowed railroads to charge high rates and left farmers with no option but to pay them.
Granger-dominated legislatures passed laws setting maximum rates for transporting or storing grain and banning certain abusive practices. Equally important, they established state railroad commissions empowered to enforce the new laws. Railroad magnates denounced these limitations on their power and profit as unconstitutional and sued. The Supreme Court, however, in two key cases in 1876 (Munn v. Illinois and Peik v. Chicago and North Western Railroad) ruled that state legislatures did possess the legal authority under the Constitution to regulate commerce — including that between states.
Despite this stunning legal victory, the Grange had already begun to fade as an organization. The depression lifted in 1877 and farm product prices rose for the next several years, ending the sense of crisis that produced the Granger movement. In addition, Democrats and Republicans added pro-farmer planks to their party platforms that made the Granger parties seem less necessary.
By 1877 Oliver Kelley had also tired of the movement. He resigned that year and moved to Florida, where he founded a new town and served as its mayor. He later rejoined the Grange as a popular speaker in 1890 when farmers once again united in anger over corporate abuses and government indifference. Kelley returned to obscurity for good when this effort — the so-called Populist Movement — disintegrated in the mid-1890s.
Kelley’s legacy lived on long after he died in 1913. The Granger laws of the 1870s represented the first significant challenge to laissez-faire business practices and gave hope to others, notably industrial workers, that government might be used to create a more just economic order. Subsequent court decisions and a major effort by industrialists to thwart government regulation would leave many of them disappointed.
Nonetheless, the principle established by the Grangers — that government regulation of private enterprise to promote the common good — proved remarkably resilient, forming the basis of reform movements in the succeeding Progressive (1900-17), New Deal (1933-40), and Great Society (1964-68) eras, not to mention contemporary efforts by groups such as environmentalists.
lkeinster
HIBERNIAN HISTORY WEEK
Dec. 6, 1921: Anglo-Irish treaty signed, ending the War for Independence and establishing the Irish Free State as a self-governing dominion within the British Commonwealth.
Dec. 6, 1933: A federal judge lifts the ban on James Joyce’s 1922 novel, “Ulysses”.
Dec. 7, 1972: Lawmakers in Ireland remove the “Special Position” clause regarding the Catholic from the Irish Constitution, eliminating its privileged status among the nation’s many faiths.
HIBERNIAN BIRTHDATES
Dec. 5, 1901: Entertainment and movie pioneer Walt Disney is born in Chicago.
Dec. 8, 1966: Singer Sinead O’Connor is born in Dublin.
Dec. 9, 1942: Author Joe McGinniss is born in Rye, N.Y.