THE FARMERS' UNION 221 



To strive for harmony and good will among all mankind and brotherly love 

 among ourselves. 2 



During the earliest years the Farmers' Union was not only an effective 

 vehicle for the expression of farmer protests, but it also made some prog- 

 ress with cooperative ventures, particularly in the marketing of cotton. 

 Less successful were its efforts to establish cotton warehouses and to con- 

 trol the price of cotton by securing voluntary pledges for acreage limita- 

 tions. Nevertheless, by 1905, a national organization was devised, and 

 with the death of Newt Gresham the next year a new and far more able 

 leader took his place. 8 



Gresham's successor was Charles S. Barrett, of Union City, Georgia, a 

 man of some influence who for more than two decades as national presi- 

 dent of the Farmers' Union was its principal spokesman and promoter. 

 Barrett was born on a farm in Pike County, Georgia, the son of a pros- 

 perous farmer, and received a good education. But his sympathy for the 

 underprivileged led him to join the Farmers' Alliance in its time, and 

 later, when he had heard of the Farmers' Union, to make a trip all the 

 way to Texas to find out about the new order. On his return he promptly 

 organized the Georgia state Union, and became its first president. Under 

 his leadership the Union grew rapidly in numbers and influence, and 

 Barrett himself became a man with an important future. After he took 

 over the presidency of the national organization, his home Union City, 

 Georgia grew from a tiny hamlet into a sizable center of Union activi- 

 ties, with a fertilizer plant, an implement factory, and various other co- 

 operative projects to attest its importance. Barrett also spent much time 

 in Washington and won fame as the "friend of presidents." Theodore 

 Roosevelt made him a member of the Country Life Commission, and 

 almost every president from Roosevelt to Hoover honored him with an 

 appointment of one kind or another. He attended the Paris Peace Con- 

 ference as the representative of fourteen American farm organizations, 

 and described this assignment as "the most interesting and most thrilling 



2. Charles S. Barrett, The Mission, History and Times of the Farmers' Union 

 (Nashville, 1909), pp. 103-7. 



3. Tucker, in Agricultural History, XXI (October, 1947), pp. 200-1; Report of 

 the Commissioner of Corporations on Cotton Exchanges, Part V (60 Congress, i 

 session, House Document 912, serial 5322, 5 parts, Washington, 1908-9), pp. 340-59. 



