304 THE GRANGER MOVEMENT 



the Agricultural Wheel, and the Brothers of Freedom, 

 and about the same time a Farmers' Union made its appearance 

 in Louisiana. The purposes and characteristics of these various 

 orders were so nearly alike that little difficulty was experienced 

 in merging them in a single organization. In 1885 the Brothers 

 of Freedom were consolidated with the Wheel making a total 

 of over a thousand local branches under the jurisdiction of the 

 State Wheel of Arkansas; in 1887 the Alliance of Texas and the 

 Union of Louisiana joined to form the National Farmers' Alliance 

 and Cooperative Union of America; and in 1889 this National 

 Farmers' Alliance merged with a National Wheel, which had 

 developed from the Arkansas Wheel, and took the name of the 

 " Farmers' and Laborers' Union of America." This last title 

 does not appear to have been used very extensively and the 

 order was generally spoken of from this time on as the National 

 Farmers' Alliance and Industrial Union. Meanwhile this 

 movement had been spreading from the Southwest, where it 

 originated, until at the session of the National Alliance in St. 

 Louis in December, 1889, delegates were present from every 

 southern state except West Virginia, and also from Indiana, 

 Kansas, and Nebraska. At the next session at Ocala, Florida, 

 in 1890, the National Colored Farmers' Alliance, and the Farmers' 

 Mutual Benefit Association, which had a considerable member- 

 ship in Indiana and Illinois, were absorbed, and a total member- 

 ship of between three and four million was then claimed for the 

 order. It will be noticed that the course of development of the 

 Alliance was somewhat different from that of the order of Patrons 

 of Husbandry, which started out as a national organization and 

 then established the local and state granges; but all the main 

 features of the Alliance and its component parts, prior to 1890, 

 were strikingly similar to those which had been developed by the 

 Grange in the preceding decade. About 1890, however, the 

 order was drawn into the maelstrom of party politics and from 

 that time on its decline was as rapid as that of the Grange had 

 been. 



While this new phase of the farmers' movement was developing 

 in the South, another agricultural organization with a very 



