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Title: Grange Appeal
Author: Peter Lamborn Wilson
Date: 2006
Language: en
Topics: agriculture, Fifth Estate, Fifth Estate #360, Hakim Bey, permaculture
Notes: From Fifth Estate #360, Spring 2003

Peter Lamborn Wilson

Grange Appeal

The work we are going about is this, to dig up Georges Hill and the

waste grounds thereabouts, and to sow corn, and to eat our bread

together by the sweat of our brows.

And the First Reason is this, that we may work in righteousness, and lay

the Foundation of making the Earth a Common Treasury for All, both rich

and poor. That everyone that is born of the land may be fed by the Earth

and his Mother that brought him forth, according to the Reason that

Rules in the Creation.

— Gerrard Winstanley, the Digger

“The True Levellers Standard Advanced,” April 26, 1649

Brothers of the plow, The power is with you;

The world in expectation waits For action prompt and true,

Oppression stalks abroad, Monopolies abound;

Their giant hands already clutch The tillers of the ground.

(Chorus)

Awake, then, awake! the great world must be fed,

And heaven gives the power to the hand that holds the bread.

— Geo. F. Root,

“The Hand That Holds The Bread”

Grange Melodies (Philadelphia, 1905)

I.

One summer day in Colorado some years ago, the poet Reed Bye drove me

around to look at a few of the still-standing Grange Halls of Boulder

County. Plain wood-frame structures, simple in an almost Amish or Shaker

manner (American Zen) and almost barn-like, these rural outposts of farm

culture have been overtaken by the county’s insane rate of

“development.” The farms that once surrounded the Grange Halls have been

sold and subdivided — the Denver gentry have built huge “trophy homes,”

strip malls, defense and biomutagenic labs, New Age supermarkets, etc.,

etc. The few horses and bewildered cows that still stand around in the

shrinking “open spaces” appear to be waiting for the End. A thick but

slightly luminous atmosphere of nostalgia hangs over the lonely halls

baking in the sunlight.

Ever since childhood Sunday afternoon excursions in the fifties, I’ve

been noticing Grange Halls in little American towns and admiring them.

The bigger halls sometimes resemble charming Victorian churches —

“carpenter gothic” — or firehouses. Not many of them appear to be still

active or owned by the Grange. In Rosendale, a town near where I live in

Upstate New York, the slightly ornate but decaying Grange Hall was saved

by artists but tragically burned down several years ago.

So far I’ve been unable to discover any nice coffee table books devoted

to this rich cross-section of American working-class vernacular public

architecture. Not even the Grange itself seems to have published a study

of its own disappearing heritage. At first I wasn’t even certain that

the Grange still existed. But eight years ago when I moved to the Hudson

Valley, I began to see signs that the organization was not entirely

moribund. At the Ulster County Fair, I met some exceedingly pleasant old

ladies selling spiral-bound cookery books compiled by local Grangers.

At one point I thought about doing a book on Grange Hall architecture,

but soon realized how huge a job it would be. Between 1868 and 1933, New

York State alone spawned 1,531 Granges.[1] I’m no photographer, and I

don’t even own a car. I’d need a grant just to record the Granges in my

own immediate area, let alone the state or the whole country.

Old photo archives do exist, as I learned when I tracked down some

Grange historians and corresponded with them. But in the meantime I’d

discovered other and even more fascinating aspects of Grange history. In

its heyday, the Grange was one of the most progressive forces in the

Populist movement, not just a club for lonely farmers in those long-dead

days before cars and TVs atomized American social life. Once upon a

time, the Grangers were firebreathing agrarian radicals. Moreover, it

turned out that the Grange was a secret society with secret rituals.

Why hadn’t I ever heard about this before?

II.

Of course, the Grange wasn’t the first manifestation of American

agrarian radicalism. In colonial times, for example, rural New York

experienced a number of “Anti-Rent” uprisings against the

feudal-manorial “Patroon System” introduced by the Dutch but preserved

and even extended under the British. Even after the Revolution, farmers

were still subjected to feudal leases and rents and treated as a rural

proletariat by manor-lords like the Rensselaers and the Livingstons. In

1845, the long-simmering situation exploded in an Anti-Rent War. Farmers

disguised as “Calico Indians” tarred and feathered some sheriffs.[2] A

few people got shot. English and Irish Chartists, German Communists, and

Manhattan radicals supported the rebels. But the movement was co-opted

by the usual clever politicians who rode to power on radical slogans,

then delivered only tepid reform. Private property was saved from the

extremists who had really dreamed of abolishing rent. Like Punk

squatters in Amsterdam or Manhattan who win legal control of their

squats, the Anti-Rent farmers were transformed suddenly into landlords.

Looked at from a “Jeffersonian” point of view, America seems founded on

agrarian principles as a revolutionary democratic nation of free

yeoman-farmers. However, the 1789 Constitution acted as a

counter-revolution and put an end to any immediate hope of extending the

Jeffersonian franchise to slaves, Indians or women. (The Bill of Rights

represents the last-minute “tepid reforms” of Jefferson himself, who —

like many of the Founding Fathers — was a slave owner and land

speculator.)

Back-country farmer uprisings like Shay’s Rebellion and the Whiskey

Rebellion were crushed by Washington, the new “King George.” The

American ruling class would consist of slave owners, merchants,

financiers, lawyers, manufacturers and politicians — all male, all

white. When freedom is defined in terms of property, those with more

property have more freedom. Most Americans were still small farmers, and

this remained the case throughout the 19^(th) and even into the 20^(th)

century. But already by the end of the 18^(th) century, the Jeffersonian

yeoman had lost control of the American future.

This loss, however, went largely unnoticed. Because of the existence of

the frontier, (itself a creation of land speculators and Indian

killers), the farmer could always leave rents and oppression behind and

find 40 acres and a mule somewhere over the horizon. By the time of the

Civil War, however, the frontier was already beginning to vanish.

Slavery was abolished largely because it no longer suited an emergent

capitalist economy based on money rather than land as the true measure

of wealth. Labor had to be “free” — that is, regulated by wages and

rents. In the Gilded Age of the Robber Barons following the Civil War,

two classes emerged as the prime victims of this supposed freedom: the

urban proletariat and the small farmers.

Railroads “opened up” America’s rural hinterlands, true, but railroads

also acted as the tentacles of predatory capitalism. Financiers and

monopolists controlled the farm economy at nearly every point of supply,

demand and transportation. Farmers didn’t work for wages, and they might

even own property; nevertheless, they were exploited just like factory

workers in the city. “Money interests” ruled reality itself, or so it

seemed.

The Civil War had put an end to many of the old antebellum reform

movements, but the post-War era created a whole spectrum of new ones.

“Populism” was in the air — a hard-to-define radicalism, both urban and

rural, that began to give birth to new organizations and take up new

causes. In 1866, a Bureau of Agriculture clerk (and Freemason) in

Washington, D.C., named Oliver Hudson Kelley, toured the devastated

South and reported back not only to his office but also to a small

circle of friends, all minor government clerks with farming backgrounds.

They agonized over the plight of the American farmer and decided to take

action. They founded a fraternal order, the Patrons of Husbandry (i.e.,

agriculture), that became known as the Grange (an archaic word for

barn).

The “Seven Founders” of the Grange were all white men, but Kelley’s

niece, Miss Carrie Hall, convinced him to include women in the new

organization, even as officers. For this she is recognized as “equal to

the Founders” of the order. Aside from “Father” Kelley himself, a

tireless, idealistic and charismatic figure, two founders exercised

great influence on the order’s forms and functions: William Saunders, a

prominent landscape gardener originally from Scotland, and Francis

Morton McDowell, the only non-bureaucrat, a fruit farmer from Steuben

County, New York. Three Celts and their inspiring ideas for the order

breathe a glorious and eccentric air of imagination and poetry. They

proposed nothing less than a Masonic-style mystic and secret society,

complete with ritual, regalia, and seven degrees of initiation, all

based on the symbolism of farming.

In 1868, the first Grange of the infant order, Number One of Fredonia,

New York, was founded in Chautauqua County, where another great Populist

organization, the educational Chautauqua movement, also originated. (I

wonder if the Marx Brothers knew of this when they or George S. Kaufman

chose the name “Fredonia” for the fictional setting of their great

anti-war comedy “Duck Soup.”)

After a slow start, the new organization began to experience almost

unbelievable success. Within eight years, some 24,000 charters had been

granted, and membership was pushing a million. The Grange had hit on a

magical formula: economic self-organization, cooperation, and mutual

aid; no involvement in legislative electoral politics but militancy on

social and economic issues; plenty of picnics, outings, celebrations,

socializing and shared fun; and a really impressive but simple ritual

based on the Eleusinian Mysteries.

III.

Patrons, on your weary way,

Is there darkness and delay?

Have you trouble, constant strife

To attain the higher life?

Seek Pomona’s signet ring,

Talismanic words ‘twill bring,

Words that conquer far and near;

Always hope and perservere.

— Jas. L. Orr, “Hope and Perservere”

(initiation hymn for 5^(th) Degree)

Grange Melodies

Between, say, 1840 and 1914, at a rough but reasonable guess, one out of

every three Americans belonged to a fraternal organization — Masons,

Oddfellows, Elks, Woodsmen, Rosicrucians, Good Templars, Druids,

Daughters of Isis, etc. — or at least to some cultural society such as

the Athenaeum or Chautauqua. With hindsight we can speak of a society

falling away from organized religions but needing a secular substitute

for the sociality or conviviality of the churches. After all, we reason,

without telephones, TVs and automobiles, humans needed to come together

physically to reproduce social life. (We moderns appear to have evolved

beyond this crude physicality and require only the image of the social.)

As technology came to mediate and even determine all aspects of the

social, those fraternal and cultural organizations collapsed or

disappeared.

This abstract view sees only a negativity (social isolation) and its

negation in association. It tells us very little about the consciousness

and motivation of the fraters and sorors of these organizations, nor of

the positive and creative aspects of their thought and activity.

Nineteenth century America possessed a great seriousness about raising

its consciousness and reforming its institutions. It still dreamed of

itself as a new world wherein the poisoned human relations of the past

could be cured and transformed. The more radical of the fraternal

organizations should really be considered as elements of the historical

movement of the social.

The Grange cannot be seen merely as a refuge from isolation; nor can it

be understood solely in economic terms, as some historians seem to

imply. Certainly these motives existed, but they were enriched and

informed by philosophical ideals which themselves were enacted or

“performed” as social act in festivals and rituals. The masonic-inspired

rituals of organizations like the Grange or the Knights of Labor can’t

be dismissed as epiphenomenal frippery or mere fraternal icing on the

cake of ideology. These rites were experienced as an integral aspect of

practice that included conviviality and cooperation — indeed, as the

essence or very meaning of such practice.

Historians writing from a perspective outside the Grange, such as the

excellent Solon Justus Buck,[3] have little to say about its ritual.

Insider Grange historians, such as Father Kelley[4] have little to say

about the ritual’s meaning, which for them is a given — and moreover to

some extent a secret, and thus not discussable. So, in order to lift

even a tiny corner of the veil, I’ve tracked down a very rare and

obscure privately published (but not secret) book by C. Jerome Davis.[5]

Davis’s sources seem to imply that the real meaning and purpose of

Grange ritual was the creation for modern agriculture of a craft Mystery

in the classical sense of that term: an “open cult,” so to speak, or

symbolic discourse orchestrated toward transformation of life through

transformation of consciousness.

It’s not my intention to attempt a full description and history of the

Grange degrees and their symbolism. In any case, much of this material

remains secret, and I have no access to it. In order to set the scene

for the Eleusinian connection, however, I’ll begin with Solon Buck’s

brief summation of the “mystic” aspects of the Grange — in which, by the

way, he takes very little interest.[6]

When the Grange was founded on December 4, 1867, Bro. McDowell was not

present. He arrived in Washington on the eighth of January, 1868, and

immediately suggested changes that resulted in a complete reorganization

of the upper framework of the order.

The arrangement then adopted, which has remained substantially in force

ever since, embraced seven degrees, four to be conferred by the

subordinate grange, one by the state grange, and the two highest by the

National Grange. The four subordinate degrees for men were entitled

Laborer, Cultivator, Harvester, and Husbandman; and the corresponding

degrees for women were Maid, Shepherdess, Gleaner, and Matron. The state

grange was to confer the fifth degree, Pomona (Hope), on masters and

past-masters of subordinate granges, and their wives if Matrons. The

National Grange would confer the sixth degree, Flora (Charity), on

masters and past-masters of state granges and their wives who had taken

the fifth degree. Members of the sixth degree would constitute the

National Council and after serving one year therein might take the

seventh degree and become members of the Senate, which body had control

of the secret work of the order. This degree, Demeter or Ceres (Faith),

embraced a number of new features introduced by McDowell and was put

forward as “a continuation of an ancient Association once so flourishing

in the East.” McDowell accepted the position of supreme head of this

degree with the title of High Priest. Although there was considerable

agitation for the abolition of the higher degrees among the rank and

file of the Grangers when the organization was at the height of its

prosperity in the seventies, all that was accomplished was a series of

changes which rendered these degrees accessible to all Patrons in

regular order; while the control of the order was kept in the hands of

representative delegate bodies.[7]

The “ancient Eastern flourishing Association” was, of course, the

Eleusinian Mysteries. McDowell electrified the D.C. conclave with the

revelation that he himself had been initiated in Paris in 1861 into the

Mysteries by the last High Priest of Demeter, the Duc D’Ascoli of

Naples. Contrary to received opinion, the Mysteries had not been stamped

out by the Church in the 4^(th) century A.D. but had survived secretly

in Magna Graecia (southern Italy, originally colonized by Greeks)

throughout the centuries. McDowell was to be the next High Priest of

Demeter.

It’s impossible to sort out a precise chronology from Notes & Quotes,

but it’s clear that McDowell had first visited Europe in 1858 looking

for esoteric experiences relevant to his passion and profession of

pomology. At some point he meets the mysterious Duke (and Duchess) and

is persuaded to undergo initiation. He receives certain symbolic

regalia, described in the following letter:[8]

To the Officers of National Grange

Dear Brothers:

I reached here yesterday noon & became the guest of Brother McDowell our

Worthy Priest of Demeter. I need not assure you I found a cordial

welcome — that you already anticipated. As instructed by you I made him

familiar with the entire work we have accomplished since he confered

upon us the seventh degree — and our labors have met his most hearty

approbation while he expresses himself even more sanguine than ourselves

of the success of the order. It is his intention, now that the work is

completed, to take immediate steps to organize Subordinate Granges in

several towns in this vicinity, having the proper material already

selected for that purpose.

I have already had the pleasure and satisfaction of examining the papers

and paraphanilia which he received from the Duke of Ascoli at the time

he had the Degree of Demeter confered upon him & am perfectly satisfied

with the authenticity of the same. The portraits of the Duke & Duchess

are both before me also the Priests cap with which the Duke decorated

Brother McDowell at the time he was made a Priest. This cap is well

worthy a description & is the work of a Nun. It is composed of various

colored silk & pure gold thread, the later, predominating. The designs

upon it are leaves of various hireogliphics & to every design even the

minutest there is an appropriate explanation. It is lined inside with a

pea green silk very finely quilted & its weight is about two pounds. You

can form some idea of the workmanship when I assure you it required two

years steady labor of a nun to make it. There is no tinsel or bead work

about it — it is all genuine needlework. While the purity of the gold

shows for itself being now over three hundred years old & as bright and

brilliant as when made.

I have had this cap on my head & while describing it have it on the

table before me. Could it but speak & tell of the honored heads that it

has decorated & which now have crumbled to dust, could it exemplify to

us the mysteries where it has been present what interesting mementos we

should possess.

Kelley then describes McDowell’s “Surplice” (black silk with gold trim)

and hierophantic vest of white satin embroidered “with designs

appropriate to agriculture” (dove, pruning hook, sickle).

When we were first told about the Duke’s regalia I must confess that I

had some misgivings, but seeing is believing in this case. Besides the

Duke has his biography in print, & on page 195 New American Encyclopedia

you will find a notice of the town of Ascoli an ancient city in Italy,

from whence the Duke was made Grand Chamberlain to the King of Naples.

However credulous others may be in regarding this degree of Demeter,

just rest easy and do not trouble yourselves about showing proof — the

whole history is at hand & it is ours & we have the bonafide thing. Your

Scottish & Memphis rites & Solomon’s Temple are completely eclipsed. We

can just bust the wind out of anything in the way of antiquity. It will

be the height of my ambition to receive at some future day the position

& the regalia & occupy the chair of the Priest of Demeter, the very

highest position in our order but as it is a life office & must descend

in regular rotation I shall probably be binding grain in the harvest

field above long before it will come my turn.

However it is in good hands as it now is and there is no one connected

with the Order to whom we can all look with greater pride & respect than

to Bro. McDowell. It was our salvation that he came to Washington at the

time he did & he is worthy of all honor for the interest he has taken in

the Order. When he shall appear in the seventh degree during the session

when it will be confered — we can all bow to him in deep reverence & do

so with heartfelt pleasure.

All masonic-style organizations require a legend or founding myth, such

as the Masons’ myth of the Temple of Jerusalem, the Rosicrucian story of

Christian Rosenkreutz’s tomb, and the Shriners’ links to the Bektashi

Sufi Order of Turkey. Ancient Greece, Rome and Egypt, India (and the

American “Indians”), Chaldea, Islamdom, the Druids and many other exotic

sources were invoked. Scholars always assume these myths are bogus, but

they may sometimes judge too hastily. For example, I believe the

Bektashi-Shriner connection may be real (for reasons too twisted to get

into here). As for the Grange legend, I reserve judgment but also see no

reason to debunk it. However, even without a genuine “apostolic

succession” from remote Antiquity, the legend remains very suggestive.

Naples since the Renaissance seethed with alchemy, hermeticism, and

secret societies; pagan and obsessed with magic, Evil Eyes, phallic

cults (think of the murals at Pompei), ancient Naples never died.

Eighteenth century Egyptian Freemasonry had origins in southern Italy

(Cagliostro), once a hotbed of Isis worship. The Eleusinian Mysteries

had already been introduced into Masonry in the 18^(th) century when

Antoine Court de Geacutebelin, French occultist and author of Le Mond

primitif, performed his own version of the rites at Voltaire’s

initiation as a Mason.[9]

In another unsigned paper probably by Father Kelley, we find further

clues:

The Temple of Solomon was dedicated in the year 1004 before Christ — 800

years before that time the Mysteries of Ceres were celebrated, and in

1356 B.C. they were introduced into Greece by Emolpos — where they

became the most celebrated of all the religious ceremonies. History

tells us that for 1800 years these Mysteries of Ceres were maintained

and the Ceremonies were of the most costly and magnificent in the known

world. Both sexes were admitted and of all ages & so popular did they

become that it was considered a crime to neglect them. So great was the

influence of the prominent officials, that the Emperor Valentinian

attempted to suppress them, but he met with strong opposition, they were

finally combatted by Theodosius in the year 370 A.D. and the public

displays discontinued. After that they were maintained privately & by

prominent supporters introduced into Italy. There the Mysteries of Vesta

were the most popular and after became mingled with the forms in the

Church of Rome. Somewhat modified the Mysteries of Ceres here met with

favor & handed down from generation to generation after a while became

almost a secret political organization, which it is claimed had much to

do in curtailing the temporal power of the Pope of Rome. Its principles

were strongly Republican and its ceremonies of the very highest order.

So, the mysterious Duke appears to have been an anti-papalist and man of

“strong Republican principles,” perhaps a radical aristocrat, like

Prince Kropotkin or Lord Fitzgerald of Ireland. If so, might he have had

connections with the Italian Masonic-inspired secret society of the

Carbonari? The “Charcoal-Burners” were real revolutionaries, admired

even by the young Marx. In any case, most Italian Masons are anti-Pope,

and most Popes are anti-Mason. (The last Pope to die at the hands of a

rogue Masonic order — “Propaganda Lodge II” — was John Paul I, at least

according to a rather persuasive conspiracy theory.[10]) The Church

automatically excommunicates any Catholic who joins the Masons. The

Carbonari went farther “left” and embraced anti-monarchism as well.

These suppositions about the Duke may or may not be borne out by

subsequent research. In any case, when the Grange adopted the Eleusinian

Mysteries as their Seventh Degree legend, they were able to consult

recent scholarship and archaeology in order to flesh out their

understanding of the mythic material. What exactly were the Eleusinian

Mysteries?

The short answer is that no one really knows, since the initiatic vow of

secrecy was (almost) never broken in Antiquity. We depend on the

fulminations of early Church Fathers. But the founding myth on which the

secret and very theatrical rites at Eleusis were based has never been

kept secret: a strange and poetic version of “Persephone’s Quest,” her

rape by Pluto, Demeter’s grief, the final resurrection, the magical link

with the fertility of grain, the intimations of immorality, and so on.

Consult any good source on classical mythology for details.

But the nocturnal underground ritual theater at Eleusis remains shrouded

in obscurity. What “miracle” did the Priests of Demeter produce so

infallibly year after year for their audiences of initiates?

Philosophers found it as convincing as the simplest pilgrims. Alcibiades

dared to mock the Mysteries and was overthrown and exiled. The show went

on for several millenia. According to the Grange, it never ceased.

Perhaps the Seventh Degree Grange ritual would shed light on the elusive

mystery of Eleusis. But the Seventh Degree is secret, and I respect

secrets.

One of the most radical and controversial interpretations of Eleusis was

proposed by the Classicist, Carl Ruck. Following the speculations of

poet Robert Graves, and in collaboration with ethnomycologist Gordon

Wasson, he proposed that the key to the Mysteries was a psychedelic

mushroom. Before descending into the chamber of the ritual, each

initiate was given a cup of the kykion, a drink composed of water,

barley and mint. If I understand him correctly, Ruck suggests that the

barley was deliberately infected with ergot fungus, the organic source

of LSD. The famous discoverer of LSD, Albert Hoffman, collaborated with

Wasson and Ruck and suggested a simple way to remove toxins from ergot

with water, a method well within the possible bounds of ancient

technology.[11] If the audience at Eleusis was undergoing a directed

“entheogenic experience,” this would explain the awe, deep emotion, and

the sense of having witnessed a miracle that informs the ancient texts

despite their pious “silence” about details. (This notion was first

proposed, I think, by the magician Aleister Crowley in 1913 when he

tried to revive the Eleusinian Mysteries in London and dosed his

audience with mescaline! Ruck, Wasson, and Hoffman, however, offer a

genuine hypothesis in keeping with archaeology and ethnobotany, whereas

Crowley relied on sheer imagination.)

Pardon this digression, which has nothing to do with the Grangers —

temperance advocates to a man and woman. (Wine, yes. Distilled spirits,

no.) The Seven Founders (and Miss Carrie Hall) found in the myth only a

spiritual intoxication. For them, the most important aspects of the

Eleusinian complex revolved around a) its openness to all, originally

all free Greeks, and by extension all humanity; b) its literal

“re-enchantment of the landscape” of agriculture, its divinizing of the

farmer’s labor; and c) its feminism, manifested both as “goddess

worship” and as full and equal gender participation in rites and

offices.

In Masonry, women are usually excluded from initiation and membership.

The Utopian Socialist, Charles Fourier, among other radical 19^(th)

century hermeticists, proposed an “Androgynous Masonry” that would erase

this outdated male chauvinism and provide a new source of magical

potency for masonic rites. The official lodges never accepted androgyny,

but it proved to be an important key to success for the Grange.

Kelley and McDowell, if not intoxicated, certainly seem to have been

elated and “empowered” (in New Age jargon) by their contact with the

Mysteries. Kelley writes:

History shows that in the Temple of Ceres at Eleusis the most

magnificent scenic displays & transformation scenes were produced all

having the object & aim of impressing the most beautiful lessons upon

the minds of the initiates — visions of the creation of the Universe —

to witness the introduction of agriculture of sound laws & gentle

manners which followed the steps of the Goddess Ceres to recognize the

immortality of the Soul as typified by the concealment of corn planted

in the Earth, by its revival in the green blades.

The initiates were taken to the Vestibule of the Temple & there arrayed

in the Sacred fawn skin. From this it was intended to make our regalia,

and the first regular regalia ever made from the National Grange was

this one I now wear. But when we took into consideration the terrible

slaughter of Fawns that would be necessary to furnish the entire order

we decided upon the kind after adopted at the suggestion of Brothers

McDowell & Thompson. The nankeen was the nearest to resemble the dressed

fawn skin.

When we consider that the mysteries was the oldest organization founded

upon the cultivation of the soil & in which woman was admitted upon an

equality with man & no other secret agricultural society having existed

since until the Grange was introduced, we can claim to be fortunate in

making the connecting link by Bro. McDowell — [12]

IV.

Some curious weeds I might mention

That lend to the landscape no charm;

To one let me call your attention,

Keep politics off your farm.

Tho’ weeds will with politics mingle,

Potatoes with politics fail;

Devote your whole mind to your business,

And make ev’ry effort avail.

(Chorus)

Keep politics off your farm (your farm),

Your crops they will certainly harm (will harm);

If you would successfully labor,

Keep politics off your farm.

— C.E. Pollock, “Keep Politics Off

Your Farm, Grange Melodies

How radical was the Grange?

As an organization, the Patrons of Husbandry formally eschewed politics

and religion — but the political implications of its tenets were

obvious, and most Grangers followed them to logical conclusions.

Populism in general cannot be called “revolutionary,” since it proposed

neither overthrow of the state nor the abolition of capital. Perhaps

Populism should be compared with the Social Democratic movement of

Europe rather than with communism or anarchism.

Nevertheless, Populism’s enemies certainly saw it as socialistic, and in

newspaper cartoons of the period, the Grangers are depicted running wild

in tandem with anarchists and other undesirables. I don’t know if any

anarchists supported or joined the Grange, but I’ve also never seen any

anarchist denunciations of the Grange. Some anarchists and libertarian

socialists have sometimes practiced some sort of “united front” politics

with other radical forces. The Populist moment seems to have been so

uplifting, inspired and urgent, so optimistic (even naiumlve) in its

anticipation of universal reform that it no doubt attracted and absorbed

energies from both left and right. Some especially ungenerous historians

go so far as to interpret Populism as a “prelude to fascism”; in my

view, the racist and authoritarian aspects of later Populism constitute

a contamination rather than an essence.

In effect, the most “anarchistic” aspect of the Grange manifests

precisely in its avoidance of legislative politics and organized

religion. In this it seems to harmonize somewhat with the

Transcendentalist/Individualist wing of American anarchism — Thoreau,

Emerson, Josiah Warren, and S. Pearl Andrews. And the very idea of an

agricultural cult is quite reminiscent of Fourier and his disciples at

Brook Farm. (The word “Association” appears rather often in Grange

literature; it was a Fourierist key-term, introduced to American

radicals by A. Brisbane and the “utopian socialists,” a generation

before the Grange appeared.)

The Grange can certainly be seen as part of the great 19^(th)/20^(th)

century movement of cooperation, whereby the real producers of value

(e.g., farmers and workers) can eliminate parasitic capitalists and

middlemen by organizing voluntarily, as producers and/or consumers, and

pooling their energies and resources. After a few rocky starts and even

disasters, the Grange settled on the English “Rochedale System” and

experienced real success with many cooperative ventures in grain

merchandizing, purchase of farm equipment, etc.[13] Of course, like all

cooperative ventures in competition with capitalism, such voluntary

associations can always be undersold and ruined by “combinations” or

even simply by rival companies with more capital. Given the chance,

coops nearly always succeed — at least at first. In the “war to the

knife” of the free market, however, coops always seem to lose in the

end.

Given its premises, the Grange logically supported state control and

regulation of economic activity — i.e., a kind of socialism. On one

level, Populism can be seen as the culmination of the 19^(th) century’s

struggle between the people and the corporations. Although most state

legislatures are supposed to have the power to grant, refuse, or revoke

corporate charters, in practice, the corporations have literally bought

and paid for very dubious legislation, such as the amazing legal miracle

— one might even call it “Mystery” — of the “fictitious person,” the

corporate body with more rights but far fewer liabilities than mere

flesh-and-blood humans. This process was well underway by the “gilded”

post-Civil War era of trusts, monopolies, the railroad, ravenous bankers

and financiers, and the railroads — the powers arrayed above the heads

of American farmers and workers: the “Octopus.”

In the end, as we know, the corporations won. But the Grange at least

gave them a run for their money. The story of the “Granger Laws,” the

many attempts to regulate the railroads, and the ultimate defeat — if

all else failed, the railroads simply declared bankruptcy and vanished —

is too complex to detain us here. I only want to emphasize the style of

the Grange, which might justly be called agrarian-social militancy.

Little by little, Grangers were drawn into the ferment of Populist

politics:

So many political meetings were held on Independence Day in 1873 that it

was referred to as the “Farmers’ Fourth of July.” This had always been

the greatest day of the farmer’s year, for it meant the opportunity for

social and intellectual enjoyment in the picnics and celebrations which

brought neighbors together in hilarious good-fellowship. In 1873,

however, the gatherings took on unwonted seriousness. The accustomed

spread-eagle oratory gave place to impassioned denunciation of

corporations and to the solemn reading of a Farmers’ Declaration of

Independence. “When, in the course of human events,” this document

begins in words familiar to every schoolboy orator, “it becomes

necessary for a class of the people, suffering from long continued

systems of oppression and abuse, to rouse themselves from an apathetic

indifference to their own interests, which has become habitual ... a

decent respect for the opinions of mankind requires that they should

declare the causes that impel them to a course so necessary to their own

protection.” Then comes a statement of “self-evident truths,” a

catalogue of the sins of the railroads, a denunciation of railroads and

Congress for not having redressed these wrongs, and finally the

conclusion:

We, therefore, the producers of the state in our several counties

assembled ... do so solemnly declare that we will use all lawful and

peaceable means to free ourselves from the tyranny of monopoly, and that

we will never cease our efforts for reform until every department of our

Government gives token that the reign of licentious extravagance is

over, and something of the purity, honesty, and frugality with which our

fathers inaugurated it, has taken its place.

That to this end we hereby declare ourselves absolutely free and

independent of all past political connections, and that we will give our

suffrage only to such men for office, as we have good reason to believe

will use their best endeavors to the promotion of these ends; and for

the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on divine

Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes,

and our sacred honor. [14]

If only the Grange had adhered strictly to its original non-political

forms of organization — economic self-management, voluntary association,

etc. — it might have been spared the fate of collapsing along with the

Populist political movement. Every radical “third force” in American

history that falls for the lure of party politics ends the same way.

(The Libertarian Party and the Green Party seem to be the latest of

these paper tigers.) Genuinely radical possibilities are buried under

the rubric (and rubble) of “practical goals” (i.e., tepid reforms),

economic organization abandoned for third-party futilitarianism,

cooptation, and eventual suppression. The feather-brained Democrat, W.J.

Bryan, promised the Populists that their cause would never be “crucified

on a cross of gold”; instead it was crucified on a cross of silver. The

anti-racist, feminist and socialist promise of Populism collapsed, and

the movement devolved toward the eventual demagogy of a Huey Long.

Leftwing remnants moved on into other forms of organization and

resistance — also eventually crushed by World War I and the “Red Scare”

of 1919–20.

For the Grange a collapse had begun as early as 1874 (the year after the

“Declaration” and the entry into politics), and by 1880 the number of

active Granges had shrunk from about 20,000 to 4,000. Cooperative

failures and electoral failures can be blamed even more than

organizational problems, such as too-rapid expansion and infighting.

When the Grange began to achieve results with the Rochedale System, the

collapse was contained and the order survived. But its heady days of

rebelliousness receded into a lost past.

The independent American farm — the old Jeffersonian ideal — began to

appear doomed. The Great Depression marked a new low point for the

family farm. Just like any other industry, agribusiness depends for its

triumph on the elimination of competition. The number of independent

farmers seems now to have fallen to a point where political and economic

power becomes impossible. The “farm lobby” represents the multinational

agribusiness corporations, not Mom and Pop. Where I live in the Hudson

Valley, I hear a lot of pro-farming rhetoric from politicians. But in

the real estate sections of newspapers and magazines, I see apple farms

— “ideal for development” — vanishing every day. How is one to conceive

of a resistance against such conditions?

In 1874, its year of greatest power, the Grange held a convention in St.

Louis and proclaimed a “Declaration of Purposes.” Among other planks,

this document endorsed the motto: “In essentials, unity; in

non-essentials, liberty; in all things, charity.” By odd coincidence,

this also happens to have been the motto of Stephen Pearl Andrews.

S. Pearl Andrews (1812–1886) embraced every Reform cause of the 19^(th)

century: abolitionism, free love, women’s rights, phrenology,

individualist anarchism, spiritualism, you name it. With Josiah Warren

he founded the marvelous and amorous commune “Modern Times” in

Brentwood, Long Island, and he edited a newspaper for Victoria Woodhull

(“Mrs. Satan”), spirit-medium, stock broker, Free Lover, and the first

woman to run for President of the United States. Andrews believed

himself a synthesis of Fourier, Swedenborg and Bakunin. He created his

own science, “Universology,” his own political system, “Pantarchy,” his

own church, and even his own language.[15] Andrew’s version of the motto

was: “In things proven, Unity; in whatsoever can be doubted, Free

Diversity; in things not touching upon others’ rights, Liberty; in all

things, Charity.” Perhaps an anarchist strain can, after all, be

detected in the radical heritage of the Grange.

Some while ago, I accompanied my friend, local beekeeper Chris Harp, who

had been invited to address a nearby Grange. The hall was decrepit but

beautiful; the Grangers (including a Ceres and a Pomona) were ancient

and none-too-prosperous looking but warmly hospitable; babies and

toddlers symbolized future hopes; hot dogs, cake and coffee were served.

When Chris began describing the plight of the honeybee in today’s

polluted, overdeveloped countryside, the senior Grangers all nodded

knowingly. One toothless old character thumped the arm of his chair and

said, “That’s capitalism!”

V.

The gas-lighted hall with its pleasures,

He dreams of, and longs to be there;

And heedless of trouble and labor,

He hitherward seems to repair.

“How stupid a life in the country,

The city has many a charm!”

My boy, from your reverie waken,

’Tis better to stay on the farm.

— J.H. Tenney, “Tis Better

To Stay On The Farm,”

Grange Melodies

None of the issues that once agitated the Grange have ever been resolved

— not one. They’ve simply changed their outward forms. Some of them were

mitigated, or at least held in check, during the 20^(th) century. For

example, although the U.S. preached free-market capitalism, it still

practiced protectionism, because it had to. The inherent contradictions

of American agriculture (like many other problems) were suppressed by

Keynsian government spending, the New Deal, and post-WWII prosperity.

With the triumph of global capital and neoliberalism at the end of the

20^(th) century, however, the old problems and contradictions were

suddenly once again revealed and even exacerbated. To speak of the

agricultural crisis is to speak of an ecological/environmental crisis

that threatens all life, not merely vegetables or cows. To mention only

one new form of an old problem: the Grange campaigned against unfair

patent laws that gave patent-holding monopolies the oppressive “right”

to set unfair prices on farm machinery and other socially necessary

resources. Nowadays the issue reappears as “intellectual property,” as

agribusiness megacorporations like Monsanto buy up the “rights” to

natural plant-DNA, eradicate biodiversity, fix prices and standards,

patent genetically modified (GM) crops and “terminator seeds,”

fertilizers, pesticides, and so on. The old-time Grangers had already

diagnosed the essential principle: knowledge is a social good, not a

commodity. But their struggle failed, and we’ve inherited all the

original muck plus a century of vile accretions.

The struggles over privatization of land, water and air; the Green

movement and the ecological struggle; the battle against genetic

prometheanism and “frankenfoods”; the anti-globalization movement and

its call for local autonomy and economic justice; the uprisings against

neoliberalism (the new mask of the old-time Mammon-capitalism) spreading

throughout Latin America; the growing movement to disempower the bloated

multinationals — these are all variations on the old causes of the

Grange.

The World Trade Organization, the World Bank, the International Monetary

Fund, and other “global” treaties and institutions have to some extent

superseded the old nation-states as the primary powers behind the new

oppression. The U.S. empire acts as a hegemon for this illusory “free

market,” dispensing corporate welfare and waging war on behalf of Big

Oil and at times, Big Agriculture, leading the onslaught against the

global environment, and dumbing down the world with its viral

consumerist disinfotainment industry. In the great neoliberal, neocon

mall that constitutes late — or too-late — capitalism, the U.S. has

appointed itself both CEO and security cop. It may be a New World Order,

but it’s the same old Octopus of trusts, monopolies, and state power.

All the planks in the old Grange platform could simply be repainted and

spruced up with trendy vocabulary to serve as groundwork for a new

agrarian radical movement. For instance, to speak locally, the utter

devastation facing our independent apple farmers owes much of its

genesis to “free” global economics. Not only is the U.S. apple lobby

controlled by northwest Pacific area agribusiness, but even the

megafarms there are being ruined by cheap Chinese apple juice

concentrate dumped on the world market in vast quantities. Any 19^(th)

century Granger could have analyzed this situation in two minutes.

On a very small scale some positive actions are being taken to create a

real alternative to the utter demise of agriculture. In the organic farm

movement — already in danger from agribusiness, which has scented a

“market niche” — CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) farms are

sprouting up all over our region. CSAs connect people, who sign up as

members, with the source of their food, since members pay the farmer up

front for a season of produce. Even a few genuine food co-ops do a

lively trade in local and organic produce. “Seed Savers” and other

movements have appeared to protect biodiversity and popularize tasty old

strains and plant varieties. Herbalism offers a source of income for

gardeners and wildcrafters. Permaculture and other sustainability

systems are gradually gaining recognition. Guerilla gardens are

springing up even in urban wastelands. But the question remains: does

all this amount to real resistance?

In Europe, where there are heroes and martyrs like Reneacute Riessel and

Joseacute Boveacute serving hard time for attacks on McDonald’s and GM

crops, yes. Europe even has a “Slow Food” movement. And yes, struggle

thrives also in India, where mass movements are organized around some of

these issues to provide resistance against the so-called Green

Revolution, GM seeds, dams, forest destruction, and other measures that

are destroying traditional agriculture, and with it, the peasantry

itself.

In America the answer is not so clear. In America the activists are

mostly Earth First!-type militants and wilderness defenders. By

contrast, the new forms of agriculture sometimes seem like hobbies for

well-meaning (and well-off) do-gooders rather than radical praxis for

agrarian rebels. Where is the modern Grange that could provide both an

ancient tradition of militancy along with a real appreciation of the

contemporary Green position in today’s terms and vocabulary? Where is

the movement to embrace all independent farmers and gardeners as part of

a larger movement for a “sacred Earth” and economic justice? Or is this

just an idle dream?

VI.

Scholars of prehistory used to speak of the “neolithic agricultural

revolution.” Nowadays the term “revolution” is not much used in

reference to the introduction of agriculture, since in fact, the

“appearance” of agriculture stretched over a few thousand years.

Moreover, it wasn’t really agriculture, but horticulture — gardening.

Historians also used to assume that agriculture represented “progress”

in relation to the million-year human economy of hunting and gathering.

In the 1960s, however, anthropologist Marshall Sahlins turned this

notion upside down when he demonstrated that hunter/gatherers were the

“original leisure society,” “working” on average three or four hours a

day and enjoying an average of 200-odd different food items.[16]

Primitive agriculturalists, by contrast, worked twelve to fourteen hours

a day and got by on twenty or so foodstuffs. Hunters spent vast amounts

of time napping, dancing, making love, or getting high. “Advanced

civilization” doesn’t appear magically with the new agricultural

technology. Gardeners are self-sufficient no more; yet Sumer and Egypt

were still 10,000 years away.

In this context, the reason for agriculture suddenly becomes very

mysterious. Why give up the good life of hunting for the brow-beating

labor of farming? The “neolithic revolution” now looks more like a fall

from grace — from Golden Age or Eden into the curse of Cain, work and

war. Sahlins himself never said this, but many of his readers believed

it, since it chimed nicely with 60s radicalism and “zero-work”

rebelliousness.

In subsequent years, however, I came to reconsider this critique of

agriculture in light of the work and writings of botano-historians like

N. Vavilov and Carl O. Sauer and archeologists like Marija Gimbutas.

Sahlins and his school still seem relevant, but a more nuanced picture

emerges.[17]

Nomadic hunter/gatherers usually move in an annual round within a given

territory, returning to the same camps at the same seasons. Men hunted

and women gathered, more or less. Seeds of favored plants would fall

around the campsite into disturbed soil enriched by garbage and feces.

Next year when the band returned, they found their favorite plants

waiting for them, as if the plants had followed them and loved them as

much as they loved the plants. The first gardens appeared in an intense

erotic aura, realized in the universal figure of the Earth Goddess and

her many avatars. As gardening thus took on more and more meaning, women

came to play a greater role in the tribe.

The first gardenstuffs, or “cultivars,” were all luxuries, not

necessities. In the old world, in South Central Asia, the first

cultivars seem to have been barley (for beer), grapes (for wine), and

hemp (for intoxication). In the New World, the earliest cultivar was

tobacco. Gardening may involve hard work, but its origin was in love,

its end in sheer pleasure. No wonder it proved popular and began to

spread, most likely through “Women’s Mysteries” and shamanic secret

societies.

Neolithic gardening/hunting humans organized themselves into small

villages of “free peasants.” They preserved and maintained the old

rights and customs of the hunters: rough egalitarianism (no “classes”),

no leaders (only elders and specialists), a “gift economy” and a

shamanistic spirituality, with a new emphasis on earth goddess mysteries

and the calendrical cycle. Eventually they managed to produce a surplus,

largely of stored grain, which became their communal wealth. The village

temple served as a center for redistribution. Everyone received a fair

share, more or less. In Mesopotamia, the villagers even began to

experiment with small-scale irrigation.

Then around the Fourth Millenium, something suddenly went drastically

wrong with this harmonious polity. Was it the discovery of metallurgy

and new weapons technology? A revolt of the warriors or of bad shamans

against ancient egalitarian folkways? Or even a revolt of men against

women? In any case, it happened with the swiftness of revolution (or

coup d’eacutetat): the sudden emergence of the state.

The essential act of the state was to seize control of the surplus on

behalf of an elite who, from then on, would concern themselves not with

work but war: the new form of war, source of booty and slaves. The rest

of the tribe was reduced to the status of peons. The earliest dynasties

of Sumer and Egypt indulged in paroxysms of cruelty, hecatombs of human

sacrifice, self-glorifying architecture, and a new temple ideology of

war gods and divine kings. Land was no longer a “commons” but was

divided into property, most of it belonging to the temple and palace.

The disappearance of the commons proved to be a long drawn out process.

Here and there some scraps of socially owned land may still survive even

today, as yet overlooked by the forces of privatization. But the problem

began in Sumer in about 4000 BCE. By the time of Gilgamesh (an actual

historical figure), few humans farmed for themselves and their

community; most farmed for the Man, the ruler and owner. Naturally,

resentment and rebellion ensued, and memory traces of the turmoil linger

in the old myths. Civilization — and its discontents — arose from the

violent appropriation of the agricultural surplus.

From this “fall” many other miseries arose — at least for the majority

of humans. The usurping minority recreated for itself all the old

leisure and freedom of the hunters — in fact, they spent their leisure

hunting and monopolized hunting, the “sport of kings,” and punished all

poachers. Stealing the king’s game must be one of the very oldest forms

of radical resistance. Many others soon followed.

Charles Fourier believed that civilization was based on agriculture, and

that civilization was a tragic mistake. He was, of course, defining

agriculture as alienated labor. Humans should have progressed directly

from horticulture to utopia (or “harmony” as Fourier called it); and the

husbandry of the utopian future would consist of complex horticulture

practiced by voluntary associations of community-dwelling

“gastrosophists” (gourmet philosophers) devoted to pleasure and luxury

for all, not for a tyrannical few. Fourier’s odd and poetic notions

found many enthusiastic followers in America, and he was also considered

a seminal figure in the Cooperative movement.

Agrarian radicalism might be seen as a deeply conservative concept based

on shared culture memories (perhaps unconscious) of the Neolithic polity

of free peasant horticulturalists. The image of the neolithic certainly

survives in folktales and myths, from Hesiod’s Hyperborea to the “Big

Rock Candy Mountain.” The free peasant village form seems to be so

natural that it reappears spontaneously wherever and whenever it can.

William Morris and other socialists admired the European Middle Ages,

not for their feudalism but for their craft guilds and peasant communes.

The ancient Russian Mir, or free peasant commune, inspired many radical

thinkers — Kropotkin, Herzen, the Narodniks, the Mystical Anarchists,

Gustav Landauer, and even Marx (otherwise a fierce Russophobe).

In the 19^(th) century during the Imperialist era, radical agrarian

ideas spread to colonies where the economy still depended on peasant

labor. These ideas invariably resonated with ancient folkways and local

myths of resistance and freedom. In Mexico, for example, agrarian

radicalism melded with indigenous and mestizo culture in interesting

ways. The anarchist Magon Brothers (who ironically operated as the

“Mexican Liberal Party”) popularized the slogan Tierra y Libertad —

almost a three-word definition of agrarian radicalism. Zapata took the

message to the people, and in 1994, the whole tradition, now with a

strong Mayan input, re-emerged in Chiapas as the EZLN. The Zapatistas

were the honorable first to declare war on global capital and

neoliberalism — either desperate fools or prophetic heroes.

Looking at the “long duration” of the history of agriculture, the Grange

seems to fit with many of the themes outlined above, and even to offer a

“proof-text” for some of them. The impulse to rediscover a “sacred”

dimension in farming, with the inevitable reappearance of the Goddess,

strikes a chord of recognition that vibrates back to the neolithic.

Nineteenth century American farmers were not peasants in any strict

sense of the term and cherished no specific image of a “commons,” no

specific tradition of non-authoritarian self-management such as the Mir.

But the rank injustice they experienced plus the exuberance of their

imagination conspired to awaken in them archaic forms of mythic desire —

for autonomy, conviviality, mystery and pleasure — for the return of the

Goddess.

VII.

1. You may talk of all the nobles of the earth,

Of the kings who hold the nations in their thrall,

Yet in this we all agree, if we only look and see,

That the farmer is the man that feeds us all.

2. There’s the President ...

3. There are Governors and legislators ...

4. There are speculators ...

5. Then the preacher ... lawyer ... doctor ...

Tailor ... smith ...

6. Now the Patrons true are coming to the fight.

7. From the rising to the setting of the sun,

Great monopolies are surely doomed to fall;

Then onward in the fight, and we’ll battle for the right,

While the farmer is the man that feeds us all.

— Knowles Shaw, “The Farmer Feeds Us All,”

Grange Melodies

The title of this essay has a double meaning. First, I wanted to try to

describe the appeal of the Grange, its colorful history of radicalism

and mysticism. I find that very few educated Americans have even heard

of the Grange, much less its significance. I hope I’ve managed at least

a brief sketch of the inspiring importance of this history for

contemporary Green theory and praxis.

However, since the Grange still exists, I also intended an appeal to the

Grange. With all due humility and deference as an outsider, I’d like to

point out that some movement very much like the Grange will undoubtedly

emerge to offer some coherence to the struggles of the new agriculture,

in all its myriad forms, against the antibiosis and oppression of the

megacorporations. True, the appropriation of the surplus has reached the

point where five or six behemoths own and control 90 percent of the

world’s food. But the 6,000-year resistance is still not ended and

cannot end until the last grain of wheat is dead.

If a Grange-like movement is thus demanded by history (assuming we

haven’t already reached the end of history, as the corporate globalists

proclaim), then perhaps it could be... the Grange.

Two different worlds would have to unite to create a new and militant

Grange — but those two worlds have a great deal in common. The same

forces are crushing peasants in India and the last few family farms in

America. The Zapatistas and the urban gardeners of New York City’s Lower

East Side are ultimately on the same side as the independent farmers —

the side of life, of biophilia, of love of life.

Well, it’s a nice thought. If Populism is going to be reborn in America,

then the question of politics arises, though this is not a political

essay. Instead it merely wants to establish the general principle that

the radical Green agenda has deep roots; it has ancestors, precursors,

patron saints. It has tradition — “that which is handed down.” Old

principles can be creatively adapted and applied to new situations.

Terms like “Gaia Hypothesis” and “biophilia” are not sentimental or

poetic devices, nor political slogans. They might perhaps be called

scientific mysteries. (In fact, both terms were coined by scientists.)

That the earth is alive and in love with life may be true but

unprovable, like certain axioms in mathematics. Precisely here mysteries

can become Mysteries. Hermeticism is perhaps a science of the

unprovable, and it is based on the axiom that the earth is not only

alive but in some sense sacred. Long before modern neo-pagans began

worshipping Nature, the cult of the goddess was already reborn, as it

always will be — but this time in the hearts of hardworking

Temperance/Protestant American farm families. A strange moment in

radical history, to be sure — this birth of Green Spirituality.

[1] See Leonard L. Allen, History of New York State Grange (Watertown,

NY: Hungerford-Holbrook Co., 1934).

[2] See Henry Christman, Tin Horns and Calico (New York: Henry Holt,

1945); see also Dorothy Kubik, A Free Soil — A Free People: The

Anti-Rent War in Delaware County, New York (Fleischmanns, NY: Purple

Mountain Press, 1997).

[3] Solon Justus Buck, The Grange Movement: A Study of Agricultural

Organization and its Political, Economic and Social Manifestations,

1870–1880 (Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, reprint

1963, c. 1913).

[4] Oliver H. Kelley, Origin and Progress of The Order of the Patrons of

Husbandry in the United States: A History from 1866 to 1873

(Philadelphia: J. A. Wagenseller, 1875).

[5]

C. Jerome Davis, High Priest of Demeter: Notes & Quotes on the Origin

of the Ritual and Early Years of the Order of the Patrons of

Husbandry (No place of publication, 1974). Many thanks to New York

State Grange Historian Stephen C. Coye for a photocopy of this gem.

[6] Most historians seem rather embarrassed by “secret societies” and

unwilling to discuss them seriously lest they themselves be seen as

conspiracy-cranks rather than real scholars. I’ve scanned many histories

of, say, the intellectual origins of the American Revolution or

Constitution that made no mention of Freemasonry! One needn’t be a

mystic to discuss the history of mysteries, but this subtle point seems

to elude academics.

[7] Davis, op. cit.

[8] This letter, dated April 8, 1868, from Wayne, NY, McDowell’s home

town, was written by Father Kelley. The last page or pages and signature

are missing. Spelling errors and punctuation in original.

[9] See James Stevens Curl, The Art & Architecture of Freemasonry

(Woodstock, NY: Overlook Press, 2002).

[10] David Yallop, In God’s Name: An Investigation into the Murder of

Pope John Paul I (London: J. Cape, 1984).

[11]

R. Gordon Wasson, Stella Kramrisch, Carl Ruck, and Jonathan Ott,

Persephone’s Quest: Entheogens and the Origins of Religion (New

Haven: Yale University Press, 1992).

[12] Davis, op. cit.

[13] Founded 1844 in Rochedale by English weavers under the influence of

Robert Owen. It really worked, unlike other Owenite ideas; its

principles still form the basis for many contemporary Cooperative

systems.

[14] Solon Justus Buck, The Agrarian Crusade (Washington, DC: Ross and

Perry, 2003 [1913]).

[15] See my biography of Stephen Pearl Andrews in Dictionary of Literary

Biography, Vol. 250, 2^(nd) series, Gale Group, 2002).

[16] Marshall Sahlins, Stone Age Economics (Chicago: Aldin Atherton,

1972).

[17] On N.I. Vavilov, see references in the bibliography in Hakim Bey

and Abel Zug (eds.), Orgies of the Hemp Eaters: Cuisine, Slang,

Literature & Ritual of the Cannabis Culture (Brooklyn: Autonomedia,

2004); and Frank Browning, Apples (New York: North Point, 1998) for

Vavilov’s work on the origin of apples and his (fatal) disagreement with

Lysenko and Stalin.