<Tr> <Td> </Td> <Td> This section needs additional citations for verification . Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources . Unsourced material may be challenged and removed . (March 2017) (Learn how and when to remove this template message) </Td> </Tr> <P> The Grange, or Order of the Patrons of Husbandry (the latter official name of the national organization, while the former was the name of local chapters, including a supervisory National Grange at Washington), was a secret order founded in 1867 to advance the social needs and combat the economic backwardness of farm life . It was founded by Oliver H. Kelley, at that time an official working in Washington DC for the Dept. of Agriculture . He had been sent to Virginia to assess Southern agricultural resources and practices . He found them to be generally poor, and became determined to found an organization of farmers for the dissemination of information . As a Government official from the North, he must have received a generally hostile reception, but he was a Mason, and ended by founding his organization on the structure of that order . In addition to farming practices, it was to provide insurance and benevolent aid to members . He was in correspondence with his niece during the early period and both promoted the equal status of women and the principle of equal pay for equal work . The Grange grew remarkably during the early years: at its peak, its membership rose to approximately 1.5 million . The causes of its growth were much broader than just the financial crisis of 1873; a high tariff, railway freight rates and other grievances were mingled with agricultural troubles like the fall of wheat prices and the increase of mortgages . </P> <P> The condition of the farmer seemed desperate . The original objects of the Grange were primarily educational, but these were soon overborne by an anti-middleman, co-operative movement . Grange agents bought everything from farm machinery to women's dresses; hundreds of grain elevators and cotton and tobacco warehouses were bought, and even steamboat lines; mutual insurance companies were formed and joint - stock stores . Nor was co-operation limited to distributive processes; crop reports were circulated, co-operative dairies multiplied, flour mills were operated, and patents were purchased, that the Grange might manufacture farm machinery . </P> <P> The outcome in some states was ruin, and the name, Grange, became a reproach . Nevertheless, these efforts in co-operation were exceedingly important both for the results obtained and for their wider significance . Nor could politics be excluded, though officially taboo, for economics must be considered by social idealists, and economics everywhere ran into politics . Thus it was with the railway question . </P>

Who lead the grange and populist movements in the late nineteenth century