Page:History of Iowa From the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century Volume 3.djvu/85

 in large quantities, thus enabling individual farmers to order what they might need, the articles being furnished them by these agencies at wholesale prices less actual expense incurred in maintaining the agency. In the same way farm products were delivered at the agency, sold in Chicago or New York for a price equal to that obtained by the local produce buyer and the profit he had heretofore made was saved to the farmers, less the small expense of the agents’ salary. Those local Granges were gradually established through the State but more numerous by far in the great grain and live stock producing regions of the middle west.

In 1872 the number of local Granges in Iowa was more than five hundred and new Granges were being organized every week. A State Grange was established known as the Iowa State Grange of the Patrons of Husbandry which was composed of delegates from the local Granges and held annual meetings. A State Lecturer was chosen who traveled about explaining the principles of the order and assisting in organizing local Granges. Councils were established by several local Granges coöperating and these councils were the executive body through which the business of buying, selling and shipping was transacted. While the Patrons of Husbandry abstained from engaging in partisan politics, they became a power in securing legislation in the interest of the producers of the country where they came in conflict with the powerful corporations engaged in the transportation of farm products and supplies. They could, through their Granges, ascertain whether candidates for Congress and the State Legislature were favorable to the measures which they regarded as essential to their prosperity or were likely to favor the corporations which they regarded as hostile to their principles and thus, by working together, often turned an election in favor of friendly candidates. The subject of transportation was one in which they were most vitally interested and here they came in conflict with the