he charter were specific. Moreover,
it was pointed out that contracts must be interpreted in the light of
rights reserved to the State in its constitution and in the light of its
general laws of incorporation under which the charters were granted.

* Olcott vs. The Supervisors, 16 Wallace, 678.

These court decisions established principles which even now are of vital
concern to business and politics. From that time to this no one has
denied the right of States to fix maximum charges for any business
which is public in its nature or which has been clothed with a public
interest; nor has the inclusion of the railroad and warehouse businesses
in that class been questioned. The opinion, however, that this right of
the States is unlimited, and therefore not subject to judicial review,
has been practically reversed. In 1890 the Supreme Court declared a
Minnesota law invalid because it denied a judicial hearing as to the
reasonableness of rates*; and the courts now assume it to be their right
and duty to determine whether or not rates fixed by legislation are so
low as to amount to a deprivation of property without due process of
law. In spite of this later limitation upon the power of the States, the
Granger decisions have furnished the legal basis for state regulation
of railroads down to the present day. They are the most significant
achievements of the antimonopoly movement of the seventies.

* 134 United States Reports, 418.

CHAPTER V. THE COLLAPSE OF THE GRANGER MOVEMENT

The first phase of the agrarian crusade, which centered around and took
its distinctive name from the Grange, reached its highwater mark in
1874. Early in the next year the tide began to ebb. The number of
Granges decreased rapidly during the remainder of the decade, and of
over twenty thousand in 1874 only about four thousand were alive in
1880.

Several causes contributed to this sudden decline. Any organization
which grows so rapidly is prone to decay with equal rapidity; the slower
growths are better rooted and are more likely to reach fruition. So with
the Grange. Many farmers had joined the order, attracted by its novelty
and vogue; others joined the organization in the hope that it would
prove a panacea for all the ills that agriculture is heir to and then
left it in disgust when they found its success neither immediate nor
universal.

Its methods of organization, too, while admirably adapted to arousing
enthusiasm and to s