Marshall County Republican. (Plymouth, Ind.) 1856-1878, 1874-07-02
DEFENDING THE GRANGE.

Its Purposes Pure and Phtianthropic-A
Reply TO the Speech of Charles w
| Green-His Statements Concerning thu
Grange Denounced rs Falsehoods.
To the Editor of the New York Tribune:
SIR IN one or the issues of you
paper OF last week an account was giver
of convention which assembled al
Syracuse, n. Y, having the two-fold
object of opposing all secret organiza.
tons and societies, and of organizing q
new party, which should be established
on new principles, and which should be
Immediately pure. With several OF
officers of this new organization 1 have
been, in the past, intimately acquainted.
esteem them as good, honest and
Conscientious men, somewhat utopian
in their views, and little prone to for
get that human nature is very far from
being absolutely perfect. With their
projected organization l have no dis
position to find fault. believe it to
be impracticable. But they will find
that out soon enough. But one thing
they did which was sadly out of place,
in a body of men protesting to be actu-
ated by such high and pure motives.
They suffered Mr.. Charles w. Green
to utter the grossest ISLANDERS and false
hoods against men who were as pure
and free from any faint of selfish or
merceaary Iaotives as the purest of
themselves; they allowed him without
rebuke or reproof to make statements
which he knew to be false, and which
they certainly had no reason for believ-
ing to be true, and by implication they
Endorsed these ISLANDERS by their resolu-
tions of the next day. / could not have
believed that men like President
Blanchard, the Hon. Francis Gillette,
81. r. Kellogg, or others who were mem
bers of that convention, would have
been so unjust or so easily entrapped.
Of this man Charles W. Green I only
know what he says of himself in this
speech. If, as Isuspect, he is the same
Charles W. Green who in the Farmers
Convention at Indianapolis was one of
the orators, then I have only to say that
he possesses most unbounded amount
of assurance for the platform of the
Farmers Convention which, as / under
stand it, he had hand in preparing, is
about half of it taken verbdtim ct liter
atm from the Declaration of Prin-
ciples" put forth by the National
Grange at st. Louis in February last,
and which you have already printed in
your columns and yet he processes the
most undying hostility to the grange,
whether national, State or subordinate.
But my object is not to identify the
mamie is not worth the effort-but to
traverse his SANDERS, which only de-
rive Importance from having found a
place in your columns. His statement
of the origin of the Order of Patrons
of Husbandry" is false from beginning
to end. The only truth / have been
able to find in it is that William Saun-
ders was the founder of the order. The
whole North Carolina story is myth.
and had nothing whatever to do with
its origin. 1t was founded Dec. 4, 1867,
and like every other organization of the
sort, its originators claimed, as they
undoubtedly had the right to do, the
privilege of issuing dispensations and
charters to the oranges organized by
themselves or under their direction. The
order is essentially philanthrophic in
its origin and modes of working; its
founders, among whom Mr.. Saunders is
the one most widely known, so far frop
being, as Green represents them,
" dignitaries without dignity" " given
to vulgarity," and "men who would
hardly he received into decent society"
are men of refinement, culture and of a
most genial and benevolent disposition.
So far is it from being true that they
have sought to continue themselves in
office for the sake of personal gain or
honor, that at the expiration of their
first term, all of them withdrew from
Office, and but two, the Secretary and
Treasurer, would permit themselves to
be re- elected. Mr.. Saunders, the first
Master of the National Grange, refused
absolutely a reelection, and When he
was compelled, by the National Grange,
to accept the laborious and thankless
Office OF Chairman of the Executive Com
hiittee, he put himself under the orders
of the other officers. The revenues of
the National Grange, under the great
but healthy increase of the order, are
now of considerable amount, the aggre-
CATION of millions of Titles but every
dollar of its expenditure is accounted
for, and its books are now, as they a.
ways have been, opel. to the inspection
of every member of the order. There is
no contingent or secret service fund
no money to be used in brides or to be-
squandered by pampered officials, or
expended for political OF other sinister
purposes. The salaries of all the Of
ticers of the National Grange, though
they are the hardest worked men in the
United States, are less than those which
any wholesale merchant pays to his
clerks and it is true to-day that the
salaried officers of the National Grange
are poorer than they would have been
had they remained in their several pre-
vious avocations. The records of any
secret society in this or any other coun-
try may be searched in vain, for a no.
bier, purer and more patriotic showing
than these earnest and patient men have
made and can make of their connection
with the National Grange. The whole
story Of the connection of the Grange
with politics and political parties is
equally false, and to any member of the
order is perfectly absurd. The consti.
tuition of the National, State and supor-
dinate Oranges requires that no political
mr. partieop tonic shall ha dico,Icead in