then; lawyers, to get clients; doctors, to get cus-
tomers; Shylocks, to get their pound of flesh; and
sharpers, to catch the babes in the woods."

Not only the members who managed thus to in-
sinuate themselves into the order but also the le-
gitimate members proved hard to control. With
that hostility to concentrated authority which so
often and so lamentably manifests itself in a demo-
cratic body, the rank and file looked with suspicion
upon the few men who constituted the National
Grange. The average farmer was interested main-
ly in local issues, conditions, and problems, and
looked upon the National Grange not as a means
of helping him in local affairs, but as a combination
of monopolists who had taken out a patent on
the local grange and forced him to pay a royalty
in order to enjoy its privileges. The demand for
reduction in the power of the National Grange led
to frequent attempts to revise the constitution in
the direction of decentralization; and the revisions
were such as merely to impair the power of the Na-
tional Grange without satisfying the discontented
members.

Of all the causes of the rapid collapse of the
Granger movement, the unfortunate experience
which the farmers had in their attempts at business

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