68 AGRICULTURAL ORGANIZATIONS. 



all products the former had to sell to such an extent, that in many cases they 

 would not pay hireling's wages to the one who produced them, and were 

 really grown at a loss. The rule was, that a year spent in the most vigorous 

 labor and rigid economy would with good management yield a bare subsist- 

 ence, and in many cases it yielded less ; and would finally result in a sur- 

 render of the farm to the mortgagee merchant, and the addition of one more 

 family to the army of renters. It seemed to be an admitted fact that organi- 

 zation was the only hope of the farmer, and as the Alliance was presented as 

 strictly a farmers' organization, its ranks were rapidly filled with all those 

 who felt disposed to unite and resist the encroachments of other organizations, 

 and who realized that it required organization to meet organized power. 

 Such large numbers joining a secret organization in so short a time rendered 

 proper instructions as to the principles and objects of the order impossible ; 

 consequently many joined who were not as well posted as they should have 

 been, and vast differences were entertained as to the policy to be pursued in 

 order to accomplish with speed and certainty the objects of the order. 



" Some contended that the only hope was in the ballot-box, and that 

 united political action was the only way for the Alliance ever to accomplish 

 anything ; others, realizing the danger to American institutions, by the intro- 

 duction of a secret political party, contended that we must eschew politics 

 altogether, and that the Alliance was a social and benevolent organization, 

 calculated to make man a better farmer and a better neighbor. Others had 

 different conceptions : some, that it would make all farmers 1 boys orators ; 

 some, that it would stop horse-stealing ; some, that it would make all its 

 members truthful and honest; and the contention between. the different 

 factions was beginning to assume alarming proportions, as a family quarrel, 

 when the called session of the Farmers 1 State Alliance of Texas was held in 

 the city of Waco, in January last. One object of that called meeting was 

 to devise some plan of extending the work into other States. The Louisiana 

 State Union, which had met just prior to that time, had elected and sent to 

 that meeting a delegate, to co-operate with the State Alliance of Texas in the 

 extension of the work. It was there shown that there was already in exist- 

 ence an organization in the northwestern States calling itself the National 

 Farmers 1 Alliance, but that it was a very loose organization, and was non- 

 secret, that the door to membership was too wide for it to meet the wants of 

 the times in the South. It was the prevailing sentiment that none but those 

 most interested in farming should ever be admitted. It was, after a full inves- 

 tigation, decided that the organization as it existed in Texas, and the other 

 States of the South, to which it had spread from and by the authority of the 

 Texas Alliance, could accomplish nothing by joining the National Farmers' 

 Alliance of the Northwest, and in view of the fact that the cotton belt of 

 America was a circumscribed country, there was a necessity for a national 

 organization of those residing in the cotton belt, to the end that the whole 

 world of cotton-raisers might be united for self-protection. This was a grand 

 conception, and one susceptible of results beyond our expectations. It was, 

 therefore, decided to organize, in connection with Louisiana, a National Farm- 



