most thoroughly organized, was not the only agency which the farmers made use of in their efforts to improve their position materially, politically, socially, and intellectually, by organized co-operation. Early in the seventies, a number of farmers, imbued with the new spirit of organized effort, seized upon the old-fashioned local farmers' club as a germ and developed it into a series of more or less independent clubs, usually avowedly political and devoted to the project of advancing the interests of the agricultural classes in every po3sible way. To many farmers the grange did not appeal, either because of its secret features or its non-partisan attitude, and for these the farmers' club presented the most satisfactory solution of the problem of agricultural organization. Fostered by the same influences which led to the great multiplication of granges, the number of these farmers' clubs increased rapidly in Illinois and several other western and southern states during the first half of the decade, 1870-188023, and it quickly became evident that some sort of machinery must be developed whereby these clubs could work together for the common purpose, if they were to hold their place against the Patrons of Husbandry and accomplish anything for the elevation of the agricultural class.

The first state in which the open farmers' clubs succeeded in uniting and the only state in which their organization had any considerable importance was Illinois. In the fall of 1872 the Union Farmers' Club of Avon resolved; that it was time for delegates from the different clubs of the State to meet and consult as to means for the organization of a general union of farmers for mutual benefit and protection from monopolies; and, after consultation with a number of other clubs, a call for such a meeting, to take place at Kewanee, October 16, was published in the Prairie Farmer of October 5. It was intended that both forms of local organizations

23 Industrial Age, Sept. 27, 1873, p. 5; Western Rural, XIII, 143, (May 8, 1875); Farmers' Home Journal, Nov. 13, 1875, p. 364.

the open clubs and the granges-should be united in this central union, but the Kewanee convention brought out delegates from only thirteen clubs and granges. However, a State central committee was appointed to perfect the organization, and W. C. Flagg, of Moro, Illinois, as chairman of this committee, published a request in the Prairie Farmer of November 16, 1872 for all clubs, granges, horticultural, and agricultural associations in the State to send him the names of their officers and other information. Following this up, the committee issued a call on January 11, 1873, for a meeting of delegates from all such local bodies at Bloomington, January 15 and 16. At this convention, 275 regularly appointed delegates from clubs and granges organized themselves as the "Illinois State Farmers' Association;" adopted a constitution in which the object of the organization was said to be the promotion of the moral, intellectual, social, and material welfare of the farmers; and elected as officers, Hon. W. C. Flagg, President; S. M. Smith, Secretary; Duncan Mackay, Treasurer; and one vice president for each congressional district. These vice presidents were to act as local deputies for the propagation of the movement in their districts24.

The work of local organization went on rapidly after the Bloomington convention, and many county organizations of clubs and granges were also formed throughout the State. On July 4, the farmers of Illinois took advantage of the occasion to hold picnics and celebrations at which inflammatory political speeches, filled with denunciations of railroads and monopolies, were the rule. Mass-meetings and farmers' conventions, mainly of a political nature, were frequent throughout the summer of 1873; and in the fall, many of the county associations assumed the functions of a political party and nominated candidates for office. All this excitement helped on the

24 Prairie Farmer, XLIII, 316, 337, 364, (Oct. 5, 26, Nov. 16, 1872), XLIV, 9, 12, 25, 26, (Jan. 11, 25, 1873); Flagg, Testimony in Windom Report, II, 646.

movement for organization and on December 15, when the State association convened at Decatur for its second annual session, the secretary was able to announce 830 clubs in the eighty counties from which he had reports25. After this meeting the State Farmers' Association drifted rapidly into an anti-monopoly party, and this seems to have injured its prestige; for the third annual session, held at Springfield, January 19, 1875, was attended by delegates from but twenty-one counties, in spite of the fact that the secretary estimated the number of clubs in the State at sixteen hundred. Accepting this estimate as approximately correct, we have, including the granges, some three thousand local farmers' organizations with a membership of at least one hundred and fifty thousand in a State in which about four hundred thousand people were engaged in agriculture. During the next four years, the number of clubs in the State diminished rapidly, from much the same causes as those which brought about the decline of the Patrons of Husbandry, but no statistics are available. The State Farmers' Association held two more meetings and the fifth annual meeting in January, 1877, appears to have been the last27.

Although many delegates from the subordinate granges helped to form the Illinois State Farmers' Association and took part largely in its earlier meetings, there was nevertheless, a continual rivalry and even hostility between the two forms of organization from the beginning. The officers of the State Farmers' Association attempted to keep them in harmony, but the leaders of the Patrons of Husbandry in the State looked

25 Prairie Farmer, XLIV, 36, 59, 100, 217, 218, 220, 225, 409, (Feb..Dec., 1873); Chicago Tribune, 1873, March 12, p. 2, March 22, p. 4, May 10, p. 2; Appleton's Annual Cyclopedia, 1873, pp. 367-369; Ill. State Farmers' Assn. Proc., II; Flagg in Am. Soc. Sci. Journal, VI, 105, (July, 1874).

26 Prairie Farmer, XLV, 27, 129, 155, 161, 195, 275, 403, (Jan.-Dec. 1874), XLVI, 35, (Jan. 3, 1875); Appleton's Annual Cyclopedia, 1875, p. 393.

27 Ill. State Farmers' Assn., Proc., V, (1877).

upon the clubs as merely steps toward the formation of granges and their proselyting zeal often caused considerable friction. The local granges soon found their double allegiance bringing them into difficulties, for the State Grange would not look with favor upon the payment of dues by the subordinate granges to the State Farmers' Association. Morever the order of Patrons of Husbandry avowed itself to be a non-political organization, and its officers, although encouraging the members to take part in politics as individuals, condemned their participation as official delegates of granges in the partisan politics into which the State Farmers' Association was rapidly drifting. Although the inability of the two systems to pull together undoubtedly weakened their effectiveness and hastened the rapid collapse of the whole movement, they should, nevertheless, be looked upon as merely two phases of the same general "Farmers' Movement" or "Granger Movement" for protective and co-operative organization28.

It has not been possible, within the limits of this paper, to present a complete account of the "Farmers' Movement" of the seventies in Illinois. To set forth the details of the various activities which resulted from this movement would carry us deep into such inexhaustible subjects as railroad regulation, financial legislation, and business co-operation. The attempt has been to show how the demand for some form of agricultural organization produced a mushroom crop of local granges and farmers' clubs united in the State Grange and the State Farmers' Association; and how in various ways these bodies became discredited, lost all their influence, and in many cases, passed out of existence before the end of the decade. The idea of agricultural organization, however, survived the disasters which overtook the instruments by which it had endeavored to express itself; new

28Ill. State Farmers' Assn., Proc., II, (Dec., 1873); Paine, Granger Movement in Ill., 12-14; Prairie Farmer, XLIV, 401-403, (Dec. 19, 1873), XLV, 131, (April 25, 1874), XLVI, 27, (Jan. 23, 1875).

orders of farmers such as the Alliance and the Wheel made their appearance in the State early in the eighties; and today a variety of means are offered to the farmers of the State who wish to band together for the advancement of their common interests.

29 Dunning, Farmers' Alliance History, 225-228, 240.