Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 12, No. 30, September, 1873

One of the Patrons during a late discussion of these questions predicted, from the growing intelligence of the people, and their better understanding of the possibilities of organization, that within a few years we shall see magnificent social palaces, something like the famous one at Guise, in many places in this country; and he went on to show how social and industrial life might be organized so as to secure the most complete liberty of the individual or family, magnificent educational advantanges, remunerative occupation and varied amusements for all, with perfect insurance against want for orphans, for the sick and the aged. Each palace was to be the centre of a great agricultural district exploited in the most scientific manner, and through the varied economies resulting from combination all the luxuries of industry and all the conditions for high culture were to be secured to all who were willing to labor even one-half the hours that the farmer now does. It was a glowing picture, and certainly very entertaining, whether a possibility of this, or, as one of the company suggested, of some happier planet than ours.

But whatever dreams for the future may be entertained by some of the Patrons, it is certain that they have work directly at hand, and that they are grappling it with a will. The Iowa granges, through agents appointed from among their members, now purchase their machinery and farming implements direct from the manufacturer and by wholesale. That State saved half a million during 1872 in this way, and Missouri, through the executive committee of her State grange, has just completed a contract in St. Louis for the same purpose. All members of the granges are thus enabled to secure these articles at greatly reduced prices; and as there are over three hundred and fifty granges, with a larger membership than in many other States, this is a very important item.

Now, in regard to the railroads, with which it is generally supposed the Patrons of Husbandry are in fierce conflict. Certainly, to the outside observer, the agriculturists of the South and West seem to have most grievous burdens to bear. It costs the price of three bushels of corn to carry one to the grain-marts by rail, and the whole world knows that they have been burning their three-year old crops as fuel in nearly all the Western States. Meanwhile, it seems clear that there is not too much corn raised, since a great famine has just swept over Persia, and others are threatening in different parts of the world.

The present high rates of transportation were never anticipated by the farmer. If in the beginning some great route charged high rates for carrying, his dissatisfaction was soothed by the assurance that the road had cost an enormous outlay of capital, and that as soon as the company was partially reimbursed the rates would be lowered. The sequel generally proved that the rates went up instead of down, and the still angrier mood of the farmer was again quieted by a new hope: a great competing railroad line was projected, and finally finished. Competition would certainly bring down the prices. This was the reasonable way to expect relief. Competition always had that effect. Alas for the simple producer! He had borne his burdens long and patiently only to learn the truth of George Stevenson's pithy apothegm, that "where combination is possible competition is impossible." The two great companies combined, became consolidated into one, and, having their victim completely in their power, swindled him without pity and divided the spoils between them.

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.

    MARIE ROWLAND.

[It is desirable that an organization which is assuming such proportions and promising such results should be examined from every point of view, and the foregoing article, written from that of an enthusiastic member of the order, will, we may hope, assist in throwing light upon the subject. If there is some degree of vagueness in its statement of the aims and purposes with which the movement has been set on foot, it is probable that this exactly represents the state of mind of the great majority of those who are engaged in it. The one tangible thing which it would seem to be accomplishing, a combination of the farmers for the purchase of pianos and agricultural implements at wholesale prices, is not of a very startling character; and if this can be attained at no greater cost or trouble to the individual "Patrons" than that of "decorating the granges" and taking part in the singing and the symbolical rites, a considerable advantage will no doubt have been gained. How the cost of transportation is to be reduced, or why the railroads, by facilitating the exchange of productions, should have become the bête noire of the producers, are points on which more definite information would seem to be required. But "the people" being now "aroused," and the revolution in progress, we have only to await events in that hopeful state of mind which such announcements are calculated to inspire.—ED.]

ON THE CHURCH STEPS

CHAPTER VI

I had a busy week of it in New York—copying out instructions, taking notes of marriages and intermarriages in 1690, and writing each day a long, pleading letter to Bessie. There was a double strain upon me: all the arrangements for my client's claims, and in an undercurrent the arguments to overcome Bessie's decision, went on in my brain side by side.

I could not, I wrote to her, make the voyage without her. It would be the shipwreck of all my new hopes. It was cruel in her to have raised such hopes unless she was willing to fulfill them: it made the separation all the harder. I could not and would not give up the plan. "I have engaged our passage in the Wednesday's steamer: say yes, dear child, and I will write to Dr. Wilder from here."

I could not leave for Lenox before Saturday morning, and I hoped to be married on the evening of that day. But to all my pleading came "No," simply written across a sheet of note-paper in my darling's graceful hand.

Well, I would go up on the Saturday, nevertheless. She would surely yield when she saw me faithful to my word.

"I shall be a sorry-looking bride-groom," I thought as I surveyed myself in the little mirror at the office. It was Friday night, and we were shutting up. We had worked late by gaslight, all the clerks had gone home long ago, and only the porter remained, half asleep on a chair in the hall.

It was striking nine as I gathered up my bundle of papers and thrust them into a bag. I was rid of them for three days at least. "Bill, you may lock up now," I said, tapping the sleepy porter on the shoulder.

"Oh, Mr. Munro, shure here's a card for yees," handing me a lady's card.

"Who left it, Bill?" I hurriedly asked, taking it to the flaring gaslight on the stairway.

"Two ladies in a carriage—an old 'un and a pretty young lady, shure. They charged me giv' it yees, and druv' off."

"And why didn't you bring it in, you blockhead?" I shouted, for it was Bessie Stewart's card. On it was written in pencil: "Westminster Hotel. On our way through New York. Leave on the 8 train for the South to-night. Come up to dinner."

The eight-o'clock train, and it was now striking nine!

"Shure, Mr. Charles, you had said you was not to be disturbed on no account, and that I was to bring in no messages."

"Did you tell those ladies that? What time were they here?"

"About five o'clock—just after you had shut the dure, and the clerks was gone. Indeed, and they didn't wait for no reply, but hearin' you were in there, they druv' off the minute they give me the card. The pretty young lady didn't like the looks of our office, I reckon."

It was of no use to storm at Bill. He had simply obeyed orders like a faithful machine. So, after a hot five minutes, I rushed up to the Westminster. Perhaps they had not gone. Bessie would know there was a mistake, and would wait for me.

But they were gone. On the books of the hotel were registered in a clear hand, Bessie's hand, "Mrs. M. Antoinette Sloman and maid; Miss Bessie Stewart." They had arrived that afternoon, must have driven directly from the train to the office, and had dined, after waiting a little time for some one who did not come.

"And where were they going?" I asked of the sympathetic clerk, who seemed interested.

"Going South—I don't know where. The elder lady seemed delicate, and the young lady quite anxious that she should stay here to-night and go on in the morning. But no, she would go on to-night."

I took the midnight train for Philadelphia. They would surely not go farther to-night if Mrs. Sloman seemed such an invalid.

I scanned every hotel-book in vain. I walked the streets of the city, and all the long Sunday I haunted one or two churches that my memory suggested to me were among the probabilities for that day. They were either not in the city or most securely hid.

And all this time there was a letter in the New York post-office waiting for me. I found it at my room when I went back to it on Monday noon.

It ran as follows:

"WESTMINSTER HOTEL. "Very sorry not to see you—Aunt Sloman especially sorry; but she has set her heart on going to Philadelphia to-night. We shall stay at a private house, a quiet boarding-house; for aunt goes to consult Dr. R– there, and wishes to be very retired. I shall not give you our address: as you sail so soon, it would not be worth while to come over. I will write you on the other side. B.S."

Where's a Philadelphia directory? Where is this Dr. R–? I find him, sure enough—such a number Walnut street. Time is precious—Monday noon!

"I'll transfer my berth to the Saturday steamer: that will do as well. Can't help it if they do scold at the office."

To drive to the Cunard company's office and make the transfer took some little time, but was not this my wedding holiday? I sighed as I again took my seat in the car at Jersey City. On this golden Monday afternoon I should have been slowly coming down the Housatonic Valley, with my dear little wife beside me. Instead, the unfamiliar train, and the fat man at my side reading a campaign newspaper, and shaking his huge sides over some broad burlesque.

The celebrated surgeon, Dr. R–, was not at home in answer to my ring on Monday evening.

"How soon will he be in? I will wait."

"He can see no patients to-night sir," said the man; "and he may not be home until midnight."

"But I am an impatient," I might have urged, when a carriage dashed up to the door. A slight little man descended, and came slowly up the steps.

"Dr. R–?" I said inquiringly.

"Yes, sir."

"Just one minute, doctor, if you please. I only want to get an address from you."

He scanned me from head to foot: "Walk into my office, young man."

I might have wondered at the brusqueness of his manner had I not caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror over the mantelshelf. Dusty and worn, and with a keen look of anxiety showing out of every feature, I should scarcely have recognized myself.

I explained as collectedly as possible that I wanted the address of one of his patients, a dear old friend of mine, whom I had missed as she passed through New York, and that, as I was about to sail for Europe in a few days, I had rushed over to bid her good-bye. "Mrs. Antoinette Sloman, it is, doctor."

The doctor eyed me keenly: he put out his hand to the little silver bell that stood on the table and tapped it sharply. The servant appeared at the door: "Let the carriage wait, James."

Again the watchful, keen expression. Did he think me an escaped lunatic, or that I had an intent to rob the old lady? Apparently the scrutiny was satisfactory, for he took out a little black book from his pocket, and turning over the leaves, said, "Certainly, here it is—No. 30 Elm street, West Philadelphia."

Over the river, then, again: no wonder I had not seen them in the Sunday's search.