128 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE 



local elections of 1889 and 1890 the party still ap- 

 peared but was obviously passing off the stage to 

 make way for a greater attraction. 



The meager vote for Streeter in 1888 demon- 

 strated that the organized farmers were yet far 

 from accepting the idea of separate political action. 

 President Macune of the Southern Alliance prob- 

 ably voiced the sentiments of most of that order 

 when he said in his address to the delegates at 

 Shreveport in 1887 : "Let the Alliance be a business 

 organization for business purposes, and as such, 

 necessarily secret, and as secret, necessarily non- 

 political. " T Even the Northwestern Alliance had 

 given no sign of official approval to the political 

 party in which so many of its own members played 

 a conspicuous part. 



But after the election of 1888, those who had 

 continued to put their trust in non-political organ- 

 izations gradually awoke to the fact that neither 

 fulminations against transportation abuses, mo- 

 nopolies, and the protective tariff, nor the lobbying 

 of the Southern Alliance in Washington had pro- 

 duced reforms. Even Macune was moved to say at 



1 At the next annual meeting, in December, 1888, no change in 

 policy was enunciated: the plan for a national organ, unanimously 

 adopted by the Alliance, provided that it should be "strictly non-par- 

 tisan in politics and non-sectarian in religion." 



