The Grange: community building in rural America

                      

Credit: Anderson Valley Grange

Some of my earliest memories are attending the yearly variety show at the Anderson Valley Grange. The bustling Grange hall during these performances felt like the busiest gathering of the year, besides the fair. The Grange gives fair warning that “this is a variety show NOT a talent show.” In catching up with my grandma about the Grange, which she was a member of for many years, she remembered most performances as “really bad,” noting affectionately that the MC was “extremely corny.” She and her hippy friends were often among the acts of the night, and may have been at least in the neighborhood of “really bad” also.

Regardless of the varying quality of the performances, the Grange provided a sense of community in a place where many people lived too deep in the forest to see their neighbors regularly. There was always some friend of my parents or grandparents who had apparently known me since I was a baby, and I would likely not see them again until the next variety show. Unbeknownst to me as a child at the variety show, the Grange had been playing a similar role in rural communities across America for almost 150 years.

The origins of the Grange

The Grange, formally known as National Grange of the Order of Patrons of Husbandry, began as an organization dedicated to agriculture when it was founded in 1867 by Oliver Kelley, a Minnesotan with an interest in reorganizing and educating agricultural workers. Kelley had been sent to the South after the Civil War by President Andrew Johnson to assess the agricultural conditions of the region and formed the Grange partially in reaction to this tour.

I Feed You All! Image Credit: Library of Congress 

The Civil War had marked the culmination of a rapid series of changes to farming communities. The draw of urban economies and the increasing efficiency of agricultural technology had steadily reduced the share of the US population engaged in farming, declining from 90% in 1790 to 42% in 1880. This demographic shift came with changes to the social fabric of rural communities.

Once, farmers had engaged in subsistence agriculture and frequently labored together if one member of the community needed help planting or with harvest. Now, innovations like the cast iron plow greatly reduced the need for farmers to work together in the fields. Additionally, most farmers had shifted from subsistence farming to commercial farming, rendering them competing market actors rather than a community with shared goals.

Kelley began the Grange with the increasing obsolescence of traditional farm life in mind, and his vision for a new farming community was a rather radical one. The National Grange claims that “[s]ince our founding in 1867, we have lived by our motto, “In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all things, charity.,” and that “[w]e have always welcomed and invited people of all races, creeds, religions and nationalities into our membership.”

The Grange did in fact embody principles of equality in many ways. The Grange not only welcomed women, but required that at least four members elected to the board be women for a Grange to be chartered. Recognition of the labor that women provided in agricultural life was central to the Grange from its inception.

In addition to the social principles espoused by the Grange, the group was strongly motivated by Kelley’s longstanding interest in developing and proliferating farm technologies in an equitable manner. Kelley saw people engaged in agriculture being left behind. In his words, “Everything is progressing. Why not the farmers? The inventive genius of the country is continually at work improving tools, and farmers remain passive.”

A feature of the Grange that is particularly interesting in the modern world is their Masonic-inspired secrecy and ritual. Kelley had found that his membership in the Masons was a helpful foot in the door during his time in the South. He believed, quite correctly it would seem, that “[t]he secrecy would lend an interest and peculiar fascination.” Grangers would ascend through a variety of ranks, known as “degrees”; wore sashes, badges, and regalia corresponding to their rank; and had secret handshakes and passwords. These features faded in modern Granges, but my grandmother still recalls a secret handshake and being given a “goddess name” when she joined in the 80s.

Expansion, goals, and advocacy

The Grange was a near-immediate and explosive success, with over 24,000 chartered Granges and almost one million members within eight years of its founding. While Kelley had begun the Grange with central planning in mind, hoping to eventually incorporate the Grange into the Department of Agriculture, Grange chapters quickly became extremely independent, with the National Grange exerting little control over their operations. The Grange was focused on farmers, but were very lenient regarding who could become a member. Even from shortly after its founding, Granges often included lawyers, judges, and educators among their members.

The early Grange strongly advocated for cooperative farming. While we commonly think of cooperative farming as groupings of producers, the Grange additionally endeavored to unify production and sale of agricultural products to extract greater profits, a practice known as vertical integration in economics and antitrust law. At the peak of the Grange collectivization attempts in 1877, about 30,000 co-ops existed. The Grange also operated the infrastructure necessary for these co-ops, like mills, grain elevators, and warehouses.

Though the Grange is ostensibly non-political and discourages discussion of politics at their meetings, their concern for the agricultural class manifested in advocacy for a variety of political causes, especially in their early history. Perhaps most prominent was the effort of the Grange to combat the high rates charged by railroads, an effort that resulted in the Granger Laws and inspired modern antitrust law. A contribution that perhaps has the most lasting impact on rural communities is their campaign for rural free delivery of mail.

A critical view of the early Grange

While many accounts of the Grange dote over its inclusivity, Prof. Charles Postel provides a rather scathing contrasting perspective on the Grange in his book Equality: An American Dilemma. He notes that gender equality was a relatively palatable position in Washington D.C following the Civil War, where seven of the eight founding members of the Grange were working as members of the federal government at the time of the founding. While women did occupy prominent leadership positions in the Grange, many female members were relegated to secretarial roles.

Additionally, the Grange was somewhat wavering in its support for suffrage. The National Grange came out in support of suffrage in 1885, but reverted to support for state rights to set suffrage policy the next year. Granges did provide an audience for suffragettes, and the National Grange finally backed the suffrage amendment in 1915.

The Grange did not explicitly discriminate against African-Americans, however it was clear to many that they were not welcome. Kelley was a lifelong Democrat, and many Granges made quite obvious overtures to white Southern farmers. Prof. Jenny Bourne of Carleton College notes in her book In Essentials, Unity: An Economic History of the Grange Movement that the National Master of the Grange said that admitting “colored” members was a question best left to local interests in 1873. Unsurprisingly, many communities in the South answered this question with exclusion. In response black farmers created the Colored Farmers’ National Alliance near the end of the 1880s.

Many positive accounts of the Grange’s early history acknowledge and discuss the exclusion of African Americans, but the relationship of the Grange to Native Americans is often left unexplored. Prof. Postel notes that Kelley was largely disinterested in the Civil War because his “deep antipathy towards the Indians of Minnesota” motivated him to cooperate with Republicans, despite being a lifelong Democrat. While the Grange performed a variety of charitable work for Native Americans from the 1940s onwards, it must be acknowledged that the interests of white farmers were often directly opposed to Native Americans during the early history of the Grange.

As aptly put by Prof. Bourne, “the history of the Patrons of Husbandry exposes the classic tension between the desires for achieving overall economic success and for dictating how the spoils are split.”

The fall, rise, and second fall of the Grange

While declining profits from farming rendered cooperative efforts very attractive, Grange efforts to collectively sell and purchase agricultural products suffered from defection by individual farmers and a lack of effective cooperation between the National Grange and local and state Granges. Additionally, the cooperative methods employed by the Grange often required an upfront investment that many farmers were increasingly unable to afford as the economy became increasingly strained in the late 1800s.

Grange membership had fallen precipitously in the 1880s and 1890s, as many members found that the costs of their membership outweighed the perceived benefits. It did not help that some members apparently found the agricultural programming “dull as well as not worth the money.”

In terms of rural political advocacy, the space once by the Grange had been effectively co-opted by new organizations like the Farmers Alliance, the Farm Bureau, and the Greenback Party by the late 1800s. While the Grange receded from the national political science, it was a significant influence on these organizations and on modern farm interest advocacy groups, like the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association and state dairy marketing boards.

   Combined Grange and Farm Bureau Facility in Del Norte. Credit: Lisa Pruitt (2019)

The Grange currently advocates on the national level for relatively modest and non-partisan goals, like increased spending on agricultural research. They maintain their longstanding anti-tariff views and have generally been advocates of immigration, but seem to be tempering their language to assuage Trump voters in recent years.

While the Grange largely withdrew from the political stage by the early 1900s, membership had begun to rebound as Grange organizations started to offer important services to rural communities. In particular, the Grange began offering insurance and created power cooperatives in the 1930s.

While nonprofit utilities and insurance providers initiated by the Grange still serve rural communities, these enterprises are now mostly under non-Grange management and no longer exclusively serve Grange members. The fact that these services gradually stopped being linked to Grange membership and decreasing rural populations has caused a steady decline in Grange membership. Since the 1955 Grange membership has fallen from 850,000 members to 140,000.

The Anderson Valley Grange and the new role of Granges

The Anderson Valley Grange has a particularly Northern California themed history. This wonderful article recently written by Lisa Morehouse details the initial frictions at the Anderson Valley Grange in the 70s and 80s as the longtime residents of the area, largely loggers, apple farmers, and sheep herders, were suddenly inundated by hippies hoping to use the Grange, home of the best dance floor in town.

The Anderson Valley Grange. Credit: Lisa Pruitt (2020)

The current head of the Anderson Valley Grange, a man known around town as Captain Rainbow who “wore a loincloth [and] lived up in the woods” when he first moved to Anderson Valley, tells the story of how a crisis led to a reconciliation of this "old-timer" vs hippie conflict. 

In his early days in Anderson Valley, “if you were a hippie, you weren’t particularly welcome here.” He didn’t go to the local bar, nicknamed “the Bucket of Blood” for about 10 years “because it was chainsaw haircut time if you did." The hippies would use the Grange hall for concerts and plays, but the old-timers were reluctant to rent to them.

Things changed in 1985 when the old Grange hall, built in 1939, burned down. The community came together to build a new Grange hall. The hippies begged the Grangers to include a dance hall and offered to help rebuild the hall if the insurance money ran out.

Captain Rainbow recounts that even if you had a bad encounter with an old timer, “The next day, hungover, both of you would be hanging sheetrock together, and you’d find out that, hey, you’re all right.” He was delighted to receive an invite to join the Grange, along with the many other hippies who had helped rebuild the hall.

A post buried about half way down this archive of the Anderson Valley Advertiser shares a similar sentiment, noting that running out of insurance money, “was a blessing in disguise, forcing us to rely on each other, it forged new friendships and respect.”

My grandmother recalls joining after this cultural divide had somewhat mended. She joined because she wanted to find a venue for her Congolese dance teacher and was welcomed with open arms (certainly supporting the acceptance of hippies by this stage).

Today, the Anderson Valley Grange still acts as a center of community for the region. They host their annual variety show, monthly pancake breakfasts, dances, and quinceaneras. The Grange maintains ties to their agricultural roots, collaborating with Anderson Valley Brewery, using the hall for agricultural education, and hosting seed exchanges. Mendocino County Grangers also started a retirement facility that houses 170 people.

Food Bank Sign at the Anderson Valley Grange. Credit: Lisa Pruitt (2022)

While still lively, the Anderson Valley Grange faces the same issues as Granges nationwide. In Captain Rainbow’s words, “We need some fresh blood.” The Grange is active, but the membership is aging. “When my generation came in and became part of the Grange, the old-timers, they needed us. And [], I’m a geezer now!”

While Grange membership has been on a long downward trend, there has been some incremental growth in the last few years. The Anderson Valley Grange, like many in California, has an increasingly Latino membership, and is making overtures to Native Americans in the area.

Conclusions

The Grange is an institution with an extremely rich and complicated history that this post has barely scratched the surface of. While its political relevance has faded, it still remains with us as a hub of community in many rural areas. Living in the city, it is easy to forget how crucial simple infrastructure like a large hall with a stage is to engender a sense of community. As rural communities struggle and decline, we should be mindful of the role that organizations like the Grange play in supporting them.