Rocky Mountain husbandman. [volume] (Diamond City, Mont.) 1875-1943, 1875-12-30
sEGRETARY,s REPORT.

Your Secretary would respectfully sub
init the following report Of the work lone
in his office for the past year. since the
last meeting of the State Grange the order
has been steadily on the increase. From
1,454 subordinate oranges then in working
order, we have grown to 1852, an increase
of nearly 200. To-day every county III the
State has the benefit of a regularly organized
grange.
While the work of organizing has been
checked, that has not been the chief concern
of your officers. While they have provided
for the Introduction of the order in all parts
of the State, their chief aim and labor has
been to cement the already existing power
full organization, bind it together as a unit,
so that the fundamental principle-co-opera-
tion-might have its full effect in relieving
the order of every evil under which, as agri-
culturists, we have long labored. Your
Secretary has, so far as was his province,
lone what his capacity permitted him to do
in furtherance of this end. How far he has
succeeded in his efforts he leaves to the
oranges to decide. There is but one feature
of his work to which he can speak with con-
scientious certainty. All his efforts have
been prompted by a heart devoted to the
great common cause.-the advancement of
our order. While the duties of the office
have been onerous, and the condition of the
order was such as to complicate and increase
his work yet, with all the earnestness of
his nature, he has striven to meet the obli-
cation imposed upon him, How far he has
succeeded the record of his work in each
subordinate grange will show.
The itemized and statistical report of the
financial work of this office has already been
referred to the finance committee. For a
correct view of the same direct your atten-
ton to the report of said committee. For
tive Committee, l refer you to the report of
its Chairman.
During the past year the correspondence
of the office has been SO great that the Ex-
ecutiye Committee, to endeavor to relieve to
some extent this daily increasing labor. and
at the same time supply a need long known
and seriously felt, determined to issue a
monthly bulletin, under the direct control of
the Master and Executive Committee. Your
Secretary was placed in charge of it's man
agement, to attend to the arrangement OF its
details, edit his own department, and see
that it was regularly published and distrib-
uted to each Master of a grange in the State.
While this was an extra duty it was willing
ly assumed However, it has failed in one
thing, it has not decreased the amount of
correspondence. The average of letters an
swered has been, during the past year, not
less than thirty per day. More than 5000
letters have been mailed from your Secre-
tary's office per month during the past year.
As the order increased, inquiry multiplied
its questions, and as the organization engen-
dered new ideas the Secretary was beseiged
with queries, SO the fact is patent beyond
dispute--a fact to be proud of by every
member of the order-which is this: Our
organization has reused from sleep the com
mon sense of our brothers in toll, drawn
their thoughts from the everlasting
struggle of digging out of the earth
a mere pittance for their labor, and
directed them to seek a better way to
elevate their condition, both mentally and
pecnniarily.
For the exact standing, pecuniarily, of
every grange in the State, / would respect
fully refer each to the books kept in the Of