THE NATIONAL ALLIANCE. 67 



" 1.30 P.M. President Macune in the chair. The Alliance opened in due 

 form. 



" President Macune delivered his annual address, which was full of interest- 

 ing facts and suggestions. 



" MESSAGE. 



' ' Brethren of the Farmers' National Alliance and Co-operative Union of 



America : 



" This is indeed an auspicious occasion. It is the first session of this 

 body ; and this body is the first organization of the real cotton-raisers ever 

 inaugurated on a plan calculated to assist the poor man. It is a time in the 

 history of cotton-raising when the price of that staple is not equal to the cost 

 of producing it. This is a gathering of representative men from ten States ; 

 men who represent the greatest of all industries, the agricultural, assembled 

 here, not merely for the pleasures or emoluments to be gained by their attend- 

 ance, but, I trust, imbued with the proper conceptions of the great responsi- 

 bility resting upon them, thoroughly alive to the conditions of the times, and 

 firmly resolved to work out the proper and true solution of how to relieve the 

 depressed condition of agriculture in our beautiful southland, and, when 

 found, to stand shoulder to shoulder in one solid phalanx, till the effort is 

 crowned with victory. As the first legislative body ever convened in the 

 order, you will have a great work to perform, and the future prosperity of 

 this great movement is, therefore, largely in your hands. Your attention is 

 called to the causes that, combined, created the necessity for this organiza- 

 tion ; the plan on which organization has been effected, comprising the 

 organic law of the order, both written and unwritten ; also the objects and 

 conditions it is expected to achieve, in the event that success attends the 

 effort. The laws to be made by this body will be statutory, and will be based 

 upon and explanatory of the organic law ; they should be prompted by the 

 necessities that gave rise to the existence of the order, and executed with a 

 spirit of devotion to the objects we seek to achieve, bounded only by the limit 

 of possibility. 



"Mr. Garvin, in his history of the Alliance in Texas, says that it was 

 started somewhere between 1870 and 1875, in Lampasas County, by a num- 

 ber of farmers, who associated themselves together in a defensive league, to 

 resist the encroachments of land-sharks, who proposed to rob them of their 

 homes. The history of the move, from its inception up to 1886, was not 

 attended with much interest. It had grown by August, 1885, to the number 

 of about 700 Subordinate Alliances, and had changed its objects and workings, 

 until they resembled very closely those of the present. From August, 1885, 

 to August, 1886, a most prodigious growth was recorded; the increase was 

 about 2000 Sub-Alliances. Among the reasons for this rapid growth, and 

 probably one of the most potent, was the fact that all other occupations were 

 either organized, or were rapidly organizing, and the farming interest was 

 unable to cope with them, unorganized ; therefore the necessity for organization 

 for self-defence. Again, the results of combination had reduced the price of 



7 



OF THE 



UNIVERSITY 



