We give some other articles and the price in 1864 : Prints....... per spool. .18 per yard. $0.38 to $0.50 per yard. State Grange Report. To the Officers and Members of the State Board of Agriculture: It is with more than ordinary pleasure that I submit the report of New Jersey State Grange to this intelligent body. During the century now closing the farmers have awakened from the slumbers that have been spreading over them, and have joined an organization that will lift them from their isolated condition, and they are receiving a greater reward for their toil through the formation and prosperity of the Grange, which has been the farmer's safeguard for over thirty-three years. It is a complete organization, which is peculiarly adapted to the tastes, conditions and requirements of farm life in all parts of the country. It teaches co-operation in every line of Grange work, and the farmers of the whole land need this more than any other class of people. The Grange is teaching the farmer that this is an age of organized effort, an age of rapid changes, and the methods of our fathers, however successful in the past, will not succeed now. New methods, new systems, thought, brain culture, must be applied in keeping with the changed conditions, to insure success. What the farmers need now is not more physical labor, but more thought. The farmer who expects to keep to the front must do so by the power of konwledge, cultured brain, not muscle. We believe the farmer will succeed best who will spend one-fourth of all the hours he devotes to labor, to mental labor, and thinking and devising his plans for conducting his business. We believe, further, that the farmer who will spend three or four hours each week attending some good Grange, and with his mind quickened and sharpened by coming in contact with other minds, will, in the course of years, make and save more money than the same man will with all his time spent in physical labor, saying nothing of the pleasures of life and our duties to each other as citizens, and the growth of knowledge gained thereby. The question arises, Why should not the farmers organize? They need it more than any other class, their work is isolated, and, as all other classes are organized, they need to organize for self-protection. The wife of the farmer needs the Grange for sociability, for rest and recreation. The young men and women can extend their education by being members of a live Grange; it will teach them how to add to the pleasures and happiness of life and the attractions of their homes, and increase the profits of the farm, add to its value, both as a home to live in and a means of making money. All these and hundreds of other equally interesting and profitable questions are weekly considered by the Grange. We congratulate ourselves on the progress and growing popularity of the free delivery of mail in the rural districts, of which the Grange was the originator and promoter. And, by good authority, the service so far has resulted in increased postal receipts; the enhancement of the value of farm lands reached by rural free delivery of from $2 to $5 per acre; a general improvement to the condition of the roads traversed by the rural carrier, besides educational benefits conferred by relieving the monotony of farm life through ready access to wholesome literature and knowledge of current events. The National Grange Legislative Committee will continue to press its demands for appropriate legislation on the following important matters: 1st. Free delivery of mail in the rural districts, and that the service be placed on the same permanent footing as the delivery of mail to the cities, and that the appropriation therefor be commensurate with the benefits and demands for the service. 2d. Providing for Postal Savings Banks. 3d. Submit an amendment to the Constitution providing for the election of United States Senators by direct vote of the people. 4th. Enlarging the powers and duties of the Interstate Commerce Commission, giving it the power, and charging it with the duty of fixing maximum rates of fare and freight on all inter-State railways. 5th. Regulating the use of shoddy. 6th. Enacting a pure food law. 7th. Providing for the extension of the markets for farm products, making it the duties of United States consuls to render the same aid in extending the markets for farm products as for manufactured articles. |