THE NATIONAL ALLIANCE. 139 



Mr. J. F. Dunn of Florida was then introduced by Brother Rogers. 

 Mr. Dunn made a telling talk,, and gave words of encouragement and 

 cheer to the farmers of America. 



H. L. Loucks of North Dakota responded to the addresses of 

 Governor Flemming and Hon. J. F. Dunn. 



The annual message of the President was then read by the President, 

 Hon. L. L. Polk, as follows : 



To the National Farmers' Alliance and Industrial Union : 



Congratulating you, and through you the great organization you repre- 

 sent, on the hopeful and encouraging auspices under which you have 

 this day assembled, I beg to submit for your earnest consideration such 

 thoughts and suggestions, affecting the present and future of our great 

 order, as may conduce to the successful prosecution of its noble and 

 patriotic purposes. 



Profoundly impressed with the magnitude of this great revolution for 

 reform, involving issues momentous and stupendous in their character, 

 as affecting the present and future welfare of the people; the public 

 mind is naturally directed to this meeting with anxious interest, if not 

 solicitude, and you cannot be unmindful of the importance and responsi- 

 bility that attach to your action as representatives. Coming, as you do, 

 from States and localities remote from each other, and differing widely 

 from each other in their material and physiological characteristics, and 

 marked by those social and political differences which must necessarily 

 arise under our form of government, it is your gracious privilege, as it 

 shall be your crowning honor, to prove to the world, by your harmonious 

 action and thoroughly fraternal co-operation, that your supreme purpose 

 is to meet the demands of patriotic duty in the spirit of equity and 

 justice. 



The great and universal depression under which the agricultural 

 interests of these United States are suffering, is, in view of our surround- 

 ings and conditions, an anomaly to the students of industrial progress. 

 No country or people in all history has been so favored and blessed with 

 opportunity and favorable conditions for the successful and profitable 

 prosecution of agricultural industries. With soils, climate, and seasons 

 admirably adapted to the successful growth of all the great staple crops 

 demanded by commerce ; with a people justly noted for their industry, 

 frugality, and progressive enterprise, and characterized by an aggressive- 

 ness in material development which has no parallel in history ; with 

 transportation facilities, inland and upon the seas, equal to the produc- 

 tive power of the country ; with a development in railroad and manu- 



