THE NATIONAL ALLIANCE. 71 



hence, some general laws and recommendations should be in print, in plain 

 and easy-to-be-understood language, so that all may understand, and tenci 

 towards one and the same object. Much might be said as to the future o. 

 this great movement, and still it is all expressed in the single sentence 

 ' There is no limit to the possibilities. 1 However, I call your attention to the 

 fact that our people, owing to money pressure and the fact that cotton is out- 

 great money crop, are disposed to rely too much on it, and purchase many-'' 

 things that should be produced at home ; therefore this body should strongly 

 recommend more diversity of farming, to the end that our people become 

 more self-sustaining, and therefore less dependent. 



" State Alliances should be called upon to take steps to assist their mem- 

 bers in procuring the facilities for diversifying their products, and to assist V 

 them in the sale of their surplus ; and further, these States raise 7,500,000 

 bales of cotton yearly ; a little over two-thirds of this enormous crop is sold 

 in Europe, and the price not only for that, but for all that is used in America, 

 is fixed in Great Britain ; and yet our government does not allow one yard of 

 cotton cloth imported without a tax of about sixty per cent of its value. This 

 enables American spinners to undersell the British looms, and prevents the 

 importation of British cloth, but dies not prevent British spinners from dis- 

 criminating against American cotton in every conceivable manner, and in con- 

 stantly crowding the price of the staple down, so as to enable them to compete 

 with the American spinner. The condition simply is, that the British spinner 

 fixes the price on every pound of cotton raised, and the effect of our law is to 

 make him virtually interested in reducing the price of our cotton. Were it 

 not for this tariff-law discrimination against him, by an ad valorem tax, he 

 would as soon see cotton high as low ; and would, perhaps, prefer it high. 



" Our people occupy the ridiculous position of not only paying the New 

 England spinner about fifty per cent more for the cotton cloth than it is worth, 

 but they, by submitting to that law, allow conditions that very naturally reduce 

 the price of every pound of cotton they raise. 



"It is not claimed that as cotton-planters and Alliance men we should 

 demand the abolition of all tariff; that would not be our province in that 

 capacity. We may do that as citizens, if we choose ; but as cotton-raisers and 

 an Alliance business organization, we have a right to demand the correction of 

 evils that afflict and sap the very life-blood from our business. Merchants, 

 bankers, insurance men, and all others do the same. But in so doing we should 

 be careful that we do not inflict wrongs on others, or on other interests. 



" It is claimed by many intelligent and honest thinkers, that if we reduce 

 the tariff on manufactured cotton goods, we would ruin American manufac- 

 turing ; and we might with propriety reply : Which is the most essential, that 

 the few American factories keep on paying a dividend of from twenty to forty- 

 five per cent, and that the many farmers become tenants, serfs, and slaves ; or 

 that the manufacturer be placed upon a level with the agriculturist, and that 

 each be allowed the fruits of his own labor, and a fair interest on the money 

 invested ? But our object is to show the effect that a reduction of the cotton 

 tariff would have on the mills. In the first place, there is no surplus of cotton 



