CHAPTER XIII. 



THE GROWTH OF THE ALLIANCE. 



BY BEN TERRELL, PAST NATIONAL LECTURER, NATIONAL FARMERS' ALLIANCE 

 AND INDUSTRIAL UNION. 



THE Farmers' Alliance originated in the Lampasas County, Texas, in 

 1875, but died out in a few years. In 1879 W. T. Baggett, a member 

 of the old Alliance, organized in Poolville, Parker County, July 29, the 

 first Sub-Alliance of the great organization that now embraces thirty- 

 one States and Territories, and whose influence is now being felt through- 

 out the nation. Great as this growth in numbers has been, in its business 

 efforts, in the education of its members in their duties as citizens, in 

 rekindling the fires of patriotism, in its general ability to accomplish 

 results, the growth has been even greater. All of this has not been 

 accomplished without determined and intelligent effort on the part of 

 those composing the rank and file of the order, and to the earnest, intel- 

 ligent, and faithful workers in the Sub- Alliances. 



From the organization of the first Sub- Alliance, July 29, 1879, tne 

 growth was slow, not so much from the opposition it encountered from 

 moneyed and partisan interests for it was too weak to provoke their 

 opposition ; but the failure of the Grange and the general apathy of the 

 people were the enemies which in its infancy the Alliance was compelled 

 to meet. In the latter part of 1879 there were only twelve Sub- Alliances 

 in the State. 



When it is considered that it required five years to arouse sufficient 

 interest in the order to obtain a State charter and devise plans to extend 

 it throughout the State, and that in all this time so little had been accom- 

 plished, we may well be amazed at the persistent determination of those 

 hardy frontiersmen, the pioneers of the Alliance in Texas. Knowing 

 that something was wrong, that labor was being discriminated against, 

 that the doctrine of equal rights to all had become a mere theory, and 

 not a condition in government, they worked on doggedly, determined 

 to restore conditions that obtained in the days of the fathers of the 

 nation. 



That political reform, even in those early days, was the grand central 

 idea of the Alliance movement, is made more than manifest by their 

 declaration of purposes. From August, 1884, there commenced a 



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