National Grange president visits Slocum, sees bright future

By Arline A. Fleming | Special to the Independent

NORTH KINGSTOWN — The President was in North Kingstown on Saturday giving a talk at the Slocum Grange hall.

He came from Washington, D.C., but this President’s office is not in the White House, but next door to it, where from an 11-story building, Edward L. Luttrell heads up the nearly 100,000-member National Grange, a group formed almost a century and a half ago to unite private citizens in improving their economic concerns.

“We’ve had a lot of ups and downs over those 150 years,” said Luttrell, Master/President of the nation’s oldest national agricultural organization, addressing State Grange members from around Rhode Island in the century-old hall at 96 Slocum Road.

“What I’m seeing now translates from a downswing to an upswing, and I fully expect that it will continue and we’re going to see a resurgence in the Grange across the country,” he predicted.