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The world of agriculture kind of got left behind by this new wave [Agriculture in ocean behind technology wave]

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of technology sure farmers had new machines like steam and gas powered

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tractors but only a few farmers had those mostly big farmers in Great Lakes [Tractors appear in big lakes]

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states we had lots of industry and money flowing through them farmers in the

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south the plains and the West however were farming in the Stone Age like they

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had woolly mammoths pulling plows and crazy well the South was the worst off [Woolly mammoth pulling plow]

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mostly because the south leaders would not industrialize after the war one

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because they leaned on the manual labor of sharecroppers instead and two because [Workers raking the soil]

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they associated industrialization with those darn northern Yankees and there

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was nothing worse than acting like a Yankee and then there were the Great

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Plains where there were no big cities in this period and no big business and no [Open plain fields]

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banking really just farmers stuck in much the same position as farmers in the

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south kind of subsistence living well in the West small farmers were in the same

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boat and this boat was not shipshape when the railroads finally crossed the [Man sinking in ocean with boat]

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nation and expanded to every region farmers were glad at first the days of

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hauling crops to market in a horse-drawn wagon were over they could get their [Horse and wagon appear on farm field]

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crops to market much faster with trains which would allow them to ship more

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crops than ever but things got ugly fast the railroads were run by big money back

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in the Big East and the money guys made mad stacks by [Man with long list of bill]

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overcharging farmers for delivery they also forced farmers to agree to all

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kinds of binding condition or else and if you think about it if you apply

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manual labor against machine labor or machine aided manual labor well you can

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harvest a whole lot more crop with man plus machine than just man so you can [Machine with lots of crops]

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imagine that the man plus machine people were able to sell corn and wheat and all

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that kind of stuff for a whole lot less money than the farmer who's just kind of [Man in grocery store surrounded by veges]

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doing it all himself shipping crops by rail actually ended up

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driving plenty of farmers into bankruptcy well who could save the [hammer smashes piggy bank]

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farmers well themselves together farmers formed

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an organization called The Grange yeah it sounds like a nickname for Hermione

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Granger but really it was short for the National Grange of the order of the

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patrons of husbandry husbandry means raising livestock no one knows why [Woman appears beside a cow]

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well the Grange was originally formed in 1867 by a Department of Agricultural

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employee named Oliver Kelly he took a little tour of Virginia and was so [Oliver Kelly appears in Virginia]

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horrified at how bad farming conditions were that he said I got to do something

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Grange members paid dues and the money was used to help them in all kinds of [Coins going into Grange Dues piggy bank]

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ways it helped them to get lessons in new better farming techniques and some

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technology to buy and share new farm equipment like tractors combines and [Farms R Us store appears]

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threshing machines and was also used to help sale them out if one of them hit

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hard times or a drought or something well after the panic of 1873 the grains [Man with sack of cash in a drought farmland]

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banded together to try to survive the economic downturn that shut off even

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more money from farmers the Grange was all about cooperation alone its members

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were weak but together they had the dough to buy grain elevators so that the

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railroads couldn't charge him a good zillion dollars to use them they also

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had the dough to buy warehouses in form cooperative farms as well as mills and [Warehouse and farmland appears under sold sign]

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factories where they could manufacture new farm equipment well on top of that

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they set up their own grocery and supply stores and to this day there are still [Man in grocery store]

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plenty of signs for the old farmers co-ops in the plain state Rangers fought

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the railroads by lobbying the federal government for regulation and they were

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partly successful in 1876 when the government passed some regulations on [Gavel banged]

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railroads that were called yet the Granger laws this is all pretty sweeps

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for the grains but in the end their cooperation was there doomed

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railroads big business and big banking fought back by accusing the Rangers of

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being a bunch of Communists at the same time some of the co-op's Rangers created [People working in a crop field]

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went bust ruining the farm family who had invested

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in them but the biggest blow came from the [Men surrounded by tomatoes]

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farmers themselves they were still over producing using the new farm equipment

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and getting lower railroad race just lead farmers to send more crops to [Man covered by crops]

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market supply dwarfed demand which is even worse than helping demand because

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there were more crops than the farmers could sell the prices went down and

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plenty of farmers started going bankrupt and since the Grange had failed to solve

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this fundamental problem it went into a tailspin by 1876 the very year its

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regulations were gaining traction in Washington the Grange was pretty much [Grange in the water]

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washed up which took a while considering you know all the dirt on those farmers [Dirty farmer with mud on hands]

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