the order is more commonly called, the Grange. These men, all of
whom but one had been born on farms, were O. H. Kelley and W. M.
Ireland of the Post Office Department, William Saunders and the
Reverend A. B. Grosh of the Agricultural Bureau, the Reverend
John Trimble and J. R. Thompson of the Treasury Department, and
F. M. McDowell, a pomologist of Wayne, New York. Kelley and
Ireland planned a ritual for the society; Saunders interested a
few farmers at a meeting of the United States Pomological Society
in St. Louis in August, and secured the cooperation of McDowell;
the other men helped these four in corresponding with interested
farmers and in perfecting the ritual. On December 4, 1867, having
framed a constitution and adopted the motto Esto perpetua, they
met and constituted themselves the National Grange of the Patrons
of Husbandry. Saunders was to be Master; Thompson, Lecturer;
Ireland, Treasurer; and Kelley, Secretary.

It is interesting to note, in view of the subsequent political
activity in which the movement for agricultural organization
became inevitably involved, that the founders of the Grange
looked for advantages to come to the farmer through intellectual
and social intercourse, not through political action. Their
purpose was "the advancement of agriculture," but they expected
that advancement to be an educative rather than a legislative
process. It was to that end, for instance, that they provided for
a Grange "Lecturer, " a man whose business it was to prepare for
each meeting a program apart from the prescribed ritual--perhaps
a paper read by one of the members or an address by a visiting
speaker. With this plan for social and intellectual advancement,
then, the founders of the Grange set out to gain members.