278 HISTORICAL AND POLITICAL. 



betterment of their condition. The white farmers of the South, while 

 they are more reluctant to cut loose from party, are perfectly willing and 

 ready to take the negro by the hand and say to him : We are citizens 

 of the same great country ; we have the same foes to face, the same ills 

 to bear ; therefore our interests as agriculturists are one, and we will 

 co-operate with you, and defend and protect you in all your rights. 



In proof of the above, I will simply submit the agreement entered 

 into by the National Farmers' Alliance and Industrial Union and the 

 Colored National Farmers' Alliance and Co-operative Union, at their 

 meetings in the city of Ocala, Florida, on the second day of December, 

 1890, which is as follows : 



" Your committee on above beg leave to report that we visited the Colored Farm- 

 ers' National Alliance and Co-operative Union Committee, and were received with the 

 utmost cordiality, and afte* careful consultation it was mutually and unanimously 

 agreed to unite our orders upon the basis adopted December 5, 1890, a basis between 

 the National Farmers' Alliance and Industrial Union and the Farmers' Mutual Benefit 

 Association ; to adopt the St. Louis platform as a common basis, and pledge our 

 orders to work faithfully and earnestly for the election of legislators, State and 

 national, who will enact the laws to carry out the demands of said platform ; and to 

 more effectually carry it into effect recommend the selection of five men from each 

 national body, two of whom shall be the president and secretary, respectively, who 

 shall, with similar committees from other labor organizations, form a Supreme Execu- 

 tive Board, who shall meet as often as may be deemed necessary, and upon the joint 

 call of a majority of the presidents of the bodies joining the confederation; and when 

 so assembled, after electing a chairman and secretary, shall be empowered to do such 

 things for the mutual benefit of the various orders they represent as shall be deemed 

 expedient; and shall, when officially promulgated to the national officers, be binding 

 upon their bodies until reversed by the action of the national assemblies themselves 

 political, educational, and commercial; and hereby pledge ourselves to stand 

 faithfully by each other in the great battle for the enfranchisement of labor and the 

 laborers from the control of corporate and political rings ; each order to bear its 

 own members' expense on the Supreme Council, and be entitled to as many votes as 

 they have legal voters in their organization. We recommend and urge that equal 

 facilities, educational, commercial, and political, be demanded for colored and white 

 Alliance men alike, competency considered, and that a free ballot and a fair count 

 will be insisted upon and had, for colored and white alike, by every true Alliance 

 man in America. We further recommend that a plan of district Alliances, to con- 

 form to district Alliances provided for in this body, be adopted by every order in 

 confederation, with a district lecturer, and county Alliances organized in every county 

 possible, and that the lecturers and officers of said district and counties co-operate 

 with each other in conventional, business, educational, commercial, and political 

 matters." 



After the above agreement was entered into, the following communi- 

 cation was received from the Colored National Farmers' Alliance and 

 Co-operative Union : 



