| A national movement of farmers started by Department of Agriculture employee Oliver Hudson Kelley in 1867, when he toured the South and discovered shocking instances of agricultural mismanagement.
Kelley addressed this problem by inventing fraternal groups of farmers that he called 'Granges'. Granges would manage community banks, pool equipment and storage facilities, and lobby for agricultural legislation in their own state.
In the late 1870s, the movement started to lose membership as Granges tried and failed to create cooperative factories for making farming equipment. It lives on today as The National Grange, a lobbying group for farmers. | 
