The characteristic of the day is the tendency to consolidation. But nothing can prevent the people from fearing the results of great monopolies and "rings," or from organizing to circumvent their schemes. Those who make no calculation for the growing intelligence of industry are walking blindly. Never were the people so conscious of their power--never so fully aware that in this country the machinery for correcting abuses lies in the degree of concentration with which public opinion can be brought to bear in a given direction. Once let the people become fully aroused to the existence of an evil or abuse, and there is no interest nor combination of interests that can long hold out against them. The trouble heretofore has been the multiplicity of conflicting opinions everywhere disseminated, and the consequent difficulty of agreeing upon measures, and uniting a great number of people in their adoption for the accomplishment of certain ends. If we may rely upon the promise of the order of the Patrons of Husbandry, now slowly and surely sweeping toward the eastern shores of the country, and yet still widening and extending in the West, where it rose, we may hope that this is the great moving army of the people so long waited for, which is to work out the vexed problems of labor and capital by a sudden but peaceful revolution.
The record of the vast work that the order of the Patrons has accomplished for its members exists at present in a detached and scattered form among the different granges, and in piles of yet unused documents at the national head-quarters. The full history of the movement is promised, and in good time will doubtless appear.
Since the first part of this paper was written the Iowa granges have increased to over one thousand seven hundred and fifty. Twenty-nine new ones were organized during the week ending July 24. Over one-third of all the grain-elevators of the State are owned or controlled by the granges, which had, up to December last, shipped over five million bushels of grain to Chicago, besides cattle and hogs in vast quantities; and the reports received from these shipments show an increased profit to the producers of from ten to forty per cent. over that of the old "middlemen" system; and by the complete buying arrangements which the Western granges have effected it is calculated that the members save on an average one hundred dollars a year each. Large families find their expenses reduced by three or four hundred dollars annually, aside from amounts saved on sewing-machines, pianos, organs, reapers, mowers, corn-shellers and a hundred other costly articles; all of which any member of any grange can obtain to-day at a saving of from twenty-five to forty per cent. They are ordered in quantity from the manufacturers by the agents of the State granges of the West, and a single order even from a member of a new-formed grange in Vermont will be incorporated in the general State order. The granges of the Eastern and Middle States are as yet mostly engaged in the work of organizing, and have not yet realized the pecuniary advantages accruing to older granges. By this vast co-operative and entirely cash system all parties are well satisfied except certain unfortunate middlemen, who find their "occupation gone," and themselves obliged to become producers or to enter into the sale of the numerous small and low-priced articles not yet affected by the movement.