Granger Movement

noun

U.S. History.

1. a campaign for state control of railroads and grain elevators, especially in the north central states, carried on during the 1870s by members of the Patrons of Husbandry the Grange, a farmers' organization that had been formed for social and cultural purposes.

Example Sentences

It started in the Midwest with the farmers, the Granger movement, the unions, but at its core were Democrats and Republicans.

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She invoked the Granger Movement of the late 1800s, in which farmers and other activists successfully fought railroad monopolies.

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We, who people this Central Northwest, were pioneers in opposing rapacious transportation rates; it was the Granger movement hereabouts, nearly forty years since, that aroused the law-making powers to the necessity of conferring on State and Federal commissions the power to regulate rates; and further results are yet to be hoped for in the regulation of charges for freight, passenger, express, sleeping-car, and mail service, together with telegraph and telephone charges.

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The railroads, naturally, took advantage of their monopoly power to charge high freight rates, and farmers fought back by organizing the Granger movement to lobby state governments for stronger economic regulation.

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Unless this method of Western settlement is comprehended, it is not possible to understand the old Granger movement and the more recent legislative conflicts between the farmers of Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, Minnesota, and the Dakotas, on the one hand, and the great transportation and grain-handling corporations on the other.

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