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In Essentials, Unity
New Approaches to Midwestern Studies
SERIES EDITORS: PAUL FINKELMAN AND L. DIANE BARNES
Nikki M. Taylor, Driven toward Madness: The Fugitive Slave Margaret Garner and Tragedy on the Ohio
Jenny Bourne, In Essentials, Unity: An Economic History of the Grange Movement
IN ESSENTIALS UNITY
An Economic History of the Grange Movement
JENNY BOURNE
Ohio University Press
Athens
Ohio University Press, Athens, Ohio 45701
© 2017 by Ohio University Press
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available upon request.
Hardcover ISBN 978-0-8214-2236-6
Paperback ISBN 978-0-8214-2237-3
eISBN 978-0-8214-4581-5
book supported by Figure Foundation progress with truth
For Austin, Jackson, and my kin at Thomas Farms
Contents
1. “Our Agricultural Brotherhood”: Origins, Purposes, and Structure
3. The Grange’s Ambitious Experiments with Private Cooperation
5. Legacies of the Grange: Its Influence on Grassroots Organizations and American Law
Illustrations
Figures
1.1. Grangers versus Grasshoppers, 1880
1.3. Grange Membership, 1875–1960
1.5. Minnehaha Grange Hall, 1945
1.6. Minnehaha Grange Hall, 2013
1.8. Officers of the Minnehaha Grange, 1944–45
1.10. Organizational Structure of the Grange
1.11. Midwestern Farm Prices and Consumer Price Index, 1870–1900
1.12. Farm and Economy-Wide Productivity, 1800–1900
1.13. Density of Minnesota Granges by County and Minnesota Railroad Lines, 1874
2.1. First Locomotive into St. Peter, Minnesota, 1870
3.1. Ignatius Donnelly, 1880
3.2. Regional Proportions of Grange Families, 1875–1960
3.3. Farm Organization Membership, 1874–1933
3.4. Farm Organization Membership, 1936–84
3.5. Membership Reported to Minnesota State Grange, 1881–1916
3.6. Percent Change in Grange Membership and Real Per Capita Farm Income, 1917–30
3.7. Establishment of Newly Organized
