Whenever American farmers leave their plows en masse and race threateningly after the regular politicians they are called wild jackasses, or worse. An agrarian tide is said to be rising, or a fire sweeping the prairies, or a farm rebellion in progress. Mixing of the burning and flowing and rebelling metaphors is hard to avoid. There is a pattern in agrarian upheavals. In these pages, the author shows this pattern while portraying the departed leaders of farmers' movements in their hours of glory, with emphasis on the stirring rise of the crusades and the accomplishments of the agrarian movements. -- from Preface.