Year: 1875

truth, that the National Grange o
the United States should definitel,
proclaim to the world its general oh
jects, we hereby unanimously make
this Declaration of Purposes of the
Patrons of Husbandry:


GENERAL OBJECTS
We shall endeavor to advance oul
cause by laboring to accomplish the
following objects:


To develop a better and higher
manhood and womanhood among
ourselves. To enhance the comforts
and attraction of our homes, and
strengthen our attachments to our
pursuits. To foster mutual under
standing and -eo-opcration. IN
maintain inviolate our laws, and to
emulate each other in labor to has
ten the good time coming. To re
duce our expenses, both individual
and corporate. To buy less and pro-
duce more, in order to make our
farms self-sustaining. To diversity
our crops, and crop no more than we
cultivate. To condense the weight
of our exports, selling less in the
bushel and more on the hoof and in
fleece. To systemise our work and
calculate intelligently on probabili-
ties. To diseountenance the credit
system, the mortgage system, the
fashion system, and every other sys-
TEN tending to prodigality and bank
ruptcy.


We propose meeting together
talking together, working together,
buying together, selling together,
and in general acting together for our
mutual protection and advancement,
as occasion may require. We shall
avoid litigation as much as possible
by arbitration in the Grange. We
shall constantly strive to secure en-
tire harmony, good will, vital brother
hood among ourselves, and to make
our Order perpetual. We shall
earnestly endeavor to suppress per-
sonal, local, sectional and national
preiudices, all unhealthy rivalry, all
selfish ambition. Faithful adher-
ance to these principles will insure
our mental, moral, social and mate
rial advancement.


BUSINESS RELATIONS.


For our business interests, we de-
sire to bring producers and consum-
ers, farmers and manufacturers into
the most direct and friendly relations
possible Hence we must dispense
with a surplus of middlemen, not
that we are unfriendly to them, but
we do not need them. This surplus
and their exactions diminish our
profit.


We wage no aggressive warfare
against any other interests whatever.
On the contrary, all our acts and all
our efforts, so far as business is con-
cerned, are not only for the benefit of
the producer and consumer, but also
for all ether interests that tend to
bring these two parties into speedy
and economical contact. Hence, we
hold that transportation companies
of every kind are necessary to our
success, that their interests are init
mately connected with our interests,
and harmonious action is mutually
advantageous, keeping in view the
first sentence in our declaration of
principles of action that eIndividual
happiness depends upon general
prosperity"


We shall, therefore, advocate for
every State the increase in every
practicable way of all facilities for
transporting cheaply to the seaboard,
or between home producers and con-
sumers. all the productions of the
country. We adopt it as our fixed
purpose to "open out the channels in
natures great arteries that the life
blood of commerce may flow freely"


We are. not enemies of railroads,
navigable and irrigating canals, nor
of any corporation that will advance
our industrial interests, nor of any Ia
boring. classes.


In our noble Order there is no COM
munism, no agrarianism.


We are opposed to such spirit and
management of any corporation or
enterprise as tends to Cypress the
people and rob them of their just
Eprofit. We are not enemies to capt.
tai, but we oppose the tyranny Of