Il8 AGRICULTURAL ORGANIZATIONS. 



mittees to confer with any or all other labor organizations, on questions 

 relating to the objects and methods of organized producers, always 

 reserving to this body the right to ratify or reject their action. 



With these recommendations as to matters within the order, I will 

 leave that feature of the work and call your attention to the relations of 

 the national order to the government and people of this country at large. 

 Our relations, as an organized force, with the people of the United 

 States and with the government have been wonderfully improved during 

 the last year, by the establislfment and publication of your national 

 organ, the National Economist, at the national headquarters. It has 

 been the means of presenting the true, just, and equitable side of the 

 movement to a class of readers who before never saw anything but 

 misrepresentations of the objects of the order. It has fought for our 

 rights from a high, dignified, and indisputable standpoint of right, and 

 as a result we now see leading papers #.nd periodicals in the large cities 

 publishing articles in the interest of the masses that a few years ago 

 they would not have allowed to come inside their doors. In fact, our 

 national organ has been so conducted that the entire order has shown 

 unmistakable evidences of the fact that they are proud of it, and that 

 it has been a wonderful educator and benefit to the membership. 

 Nevertheless, the national organ will never reach its highest develop- 

 ment for good until it goes hand in hand with a good, efficient State 

 organ in every State, and the State organs of the various States will not 

 reach their highest development for good without a harmony of effort 

 and concentration of forces. I therefore submit for your consideration 

 the propriety of authorizing the national and State organs to organize 

 themselves into a newspaper alliance for the purpose of, first, lessening 

 their expenses ; second, guaranteeing a uniformity of sentiment, offi- 

 cially indorsed by a national supervising committee ; and third, in- 

 creasing their usefulness and efficiency; and that this body make its 

 president ex officio chairman of a committee of three, who shall pass 

 upon and, if approved, place their stamp upon every article expressing 

 editorial opinion as to doctrine which emanates from a central editorial 

 bureau for publication in the various papers of such newspaper alliance. 

 A thoroughly reliable and uniform expression of sentiment can in this 

 way be secured in all parts of the country at the same time. Our State 

 organs are at present doing a great work, and accomplishing much 

 more for the order than is generally supposed. In nearly every State 

 in which the order has a State organ it will be found, on comparison, 

 to be the best farmers' paper in that State, and members who read their 

 State and national organs are always too well posted to waver in their 



