a

dle-men. The farmers holding stock would thus control both the capital and the crop, and could easily prevent it from being an engine of oppression. It need not necessarily be organized to secure profit and declare dividends; these results would be obtained by cheap freights and increased prices for produce, and the profit would be found in “ farming." Each stockholder should be a member of a Farmers' Club.

3d. We also recommend the incorporation of the State Farmers' Union, with a capital of $1,000,000.

The benefits to be derived from this organization may be outlined as follows: The several clubs at their meetings can report the prospects of the crops from time to time, to the Union, and the probable amount of the several products; the estimates of the county thus made and forwarded promptly to the officers of the State Union, will enable them to make estimates of the number of sacks required, and the tonnage necessary to convey the crops to foreign markets.

The officers of the State Union, by observation of the prospects in foreign countries, and the East, will be enabled early to form an estimate of the value of the several products of export. Thus the farmers, by their agents, will be able to fix the prices of their own products, and by the moneys and credits established by and represented in these exportations, they will be able to maintain the prices they may agree upon.

Thus organized, thus combined for the maintenance of our rights, we will be able to bid defiance to the monopolists who have been preying upon us in the past; and if we cannot entirely dispose of the middle-men,” who stand between the producer and consumer, we shall be able at least to induce a more liberal division with us, of the fruits of our toil, to compel them to live less sumptuously, to ride in less elegant carriages, drawn by slower horses.

Nor was this all talk, as the liberal subscriptions to the stock of the local and county clubs bore testimony. All farmers, whether members of the clubs or not, were invited to coöperate in obtaining sacks at reduced prices. At the above-mentioned meeting of the Sonoma Club, Mr. Isaac De Turk proposed the establishment of an experimental farm, and supported his views by strong and well considered reasons.

The Dixon Club drew up a petition to Congress for the repeal of the duty on grain sacks, which was duly communicated to the other clubs for their signatures. On the 1st of March, there was an immense gathering of farmers at Stockton, to incorporate the San Joaquin Farmers' Union, with a proposed capital stock of $300,000.

This indeed looked like a “revolt of the field.” "Farmers should conbine against monopolists,” said Mr. Paulsell; “and to protect their own interests, the association proposed to de

FIRST STEPS TOWARD THE GRANGE.

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vise some plan of getting to foreign and domestic markets without having their products go through the hands of so many middle-men; to import grain sacks direct, instead of allowing California merchants to swallow up the farmers' earnings by enormous profits.” The sum of nineteen thousand dollars was subscribed on the spot, and eleven thousand subsequently, making a total of thirty thousand dollars on that Saturday after

11oon.

By the first of April, there was a chain of farmers' organizations completed on the Pacific Coast, from El Monte in Los Angeles County, to Walla Walla, in Washington Territory. It began to appear likely that greater privacy in carrying on the large business interests contemplated by them, would be indispensable. In the Spring of 1871, W. H. Baxter, residing on his farm near Napa City, had communicated with the Secretary of the National Grange, with respect to the wants of agriculturists in California, the social isolation in which so many of them lived, and the exactions which they suffered. Certain plans for their relief had been shaping themselves in his mind, which, through this correspondence, he found anticipated, or met to a reasonable extent by the statements of the purposes and practical effects of that Order. In August, 1871, he received a commission as Deputy of the National Grange for California.

Mr. Baxter at once began to spread information with regard to the objects and advantages promised in the new organization, but his hearers, for the most part, were already members of clubs, and had no suspicion that any open organization would necessarily fail before the combination of intellect and capital with which the farmers had to contend. Patient and persistent, Mr. Baxter watched his opportunity, and was content to bide his time, which came even sooner than he expected, at the Farmers' Union Convention, which met in San Francisco, on the 8th of April, 1873, and was fully represented by delegations from all the Clubs, and by those who are now the leading Patrons in the State.

The convention was opened by an address from President Bidwell, who said:

We are convened as farmers and representatives of the farming and industrial interests of California. For several years a growing want has been felt among the farmers of the State for co-operation through a State organization, and that feeling found expression in the formation of this California Farmers' Union in September last, during the State Fair at Sacramento. In that movement there was something very American in its character—a directness, an ability to improvise, to meet emergency. In a word, there was something to be done, and they met and did it.

One of the grievances of the past year complained of by farmers is the enormous price imposed for sacks in which to market or store their wheat. Instead of eleven to thirteen cents, which would have been a fair price, they have had to pay fifteen to nineteen cents, or an aggregate overcharge in the State of half a million of dollars. Instead of $12 50 per ton freight on wheat from San Francisco to Liverpool, which would have been a fair rate, ocean tonnage became monopolized and demoralized, and farmers were made to suffer to the tune of probably $2,500,000 more. That interior freights are too high, all agree, and the overcharge on wheat alone may be within the actual limits if placed at half a million more. In how many other ways farmers are and have been unjustly taxed I will not undertake to enumerate. The aggregate totals, at a moderate estimate, cannot be stated at a lower figure than three to five millions; and the universal complaint of the farmers is that they are burdened beyond their ability to bear. (How many frugal and industrious farmers during the past year-which was one of overflowing abundance, and coincided with high prices and large demand in Liverpool and elsewhere-were obliged to borrow money to pay their State and County taxes?)

At a meeting of your Board of Directors, convened January 3d last, in this city, the question of grain sacks for the coming harvest was considered. There was still time to order from Dundee, and a committee of the Board made every possible effort to arrange with a reliable house for a promise to furnish sacks at the lowest definite rate, and on such terms as to time and responsibility as the committee could recommend and the farmers afford to accept, with the view of communicating the information to the several clubs for their acceptance. For some time we were hopeful of success. But I must say, as one of the committee, we utterly failed to accomplish our mission in that respect. The parties could not do as we wished. After repeated delays, the manufacturers or the holders would not agree to a stipulated price, which would make it an object for farmers to accept.

This subject is submitted to your consideration, with the suggestion that the manufacture of sacks in this State should, by every means in our power, be encouraged as the only adequate remedy for existing wants in that respect.

In order to bring about efficiency on the part of your Board of Directors, and enable them to meet your reasonable expectations, I beg leave to suggest that at least the President, Treasurer and Secretary, if not a quorum of the Board, should reside in San Francisco or Sacramento (San Francisco, everything considered, would be preferable, I think), and have some certain place of business. The officers named must necessarily. be on the Executive Committee, and it is indispensable, in my judgment, that they be where they can