Farmers adjusted uneasily to being enmeshed in distant markets. Tensions flared over railroad and grain elevator rates, grain price fluctations, banks and interest rates. Agrarian politics grew especially heated in the decades following the Civil War, when falling grain prices and deflationary pressures squeezed farmers who had to repay loans with currency that was worth substantially more than it had been when they borrowed it. Late in 1867, these impulses found organized political expression in the Patrons of Husbandry, a secret association organizing in Washington, D.C. The Grangers, as they were popularly known, quickly grew in numbers and spread across the agricultural heartland. A Farmers' Convention held in Springfield, Illinois, adopted typical resolutions, including a denouncement of "all chartered monopolies" and a call for legislation "fixing reasonable maximum rates" for railroad freights and passengers. In the same vein, the Declaration of Purpose of the...