ves out of debt and leave their land to their children to farm in turn.
Very soon it became apparent to the farmers that while talking to each other was useful, it was more important for them to acquire political power. They could not, they believed, effect change within the current structure of government. (They were in all probability right about this: The only way to make significant changes in a political system without being first enfranchised with it is through revolution, which the farmers were not prepared to wage.)
The farmers in the Grange Movement began to organize a number of political parties that were focused on issues of local concern but that also incorporated the general concerns of the Granger movement. Members of parties like the Reform Party (not Ross Perot's Reform Party by any means!) and the Anti-Monopoly Party were elected to state offices in the two decades after the Civil War.
A number of pieces of legislation bearing the imprint of Granger ideals were also passed, although many of them would be quickly repealed. Railroad companies found their power limited, and a number of anti-monopoly strategies were written into law.
After the initial political push of the Granger movement, it appeared that the uprising of populism might in fact die out, but in fact it experienced a number of mini-revivals, as McCabe describes for us. It was not only farmers, after all, who were harmed by the dominance of the U.S. economy by large and monopolistic corporations. Many workers in a wide range of professions joined together to fight against the corrupting economic and political power of large corporations.
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