Included among these concerns to greater or lesser extent were the question of exploitative terms of credit, insufficient money supply to sustain the economic needs of society, super-profits extracted by merchants, millers, and other middlemen, systemically unfavorable terms of trade levied upon small-scale agricultural shippers by the railroad industry, negative impacts on land prices caused by speculation.

The accomplishments of the Farmers' Alliance are numerous. For example, many Alliance chapters all set up their own cooperative stores, which bought directly from wholesalers and sold their goods to farmers at a lower rate, at times 20 to 30 percent below the regular retail price. Such stores achieved only limited success, however, since they faced the hostility of wholesale merchants who sometimes retaliated by temporarily lowering their prices in order to drive the Alliance stores out of business.

Additionally, the Farmer's Alliance established its own mills for flour, cottonseed oil, and corn, as well as its own cotton gin. Such facilities allowed debt-laden farmers, who often had little cash to pay third-party mills, to bring their goods to markets at a lower cost.

National agenda

The limited effects of the local policies of the Alliance did little to address the overall problem of deflation and depressed agricultural prices. By 1886, tensions had begun to form in the movement between the political activists, who promoted a national political agenda, and the political conservatives, who favored no change in national policy but a "strictly business" plan of local economic action. In Texas, the split reached a climax in August 1886 at the statewide convention in Cleburne. The political activists successfully lobbied for passage of a set of political demands that included support of the Knights of Labor and the Great Southwest Railroad Strike of 1886. Other demands include changes in governmental land policy, and railroad regulation. The demands also included a demand for use of silver as legal tender, on the grounds that this would alleviate the contraction in the money supply that led to falling prices and scarcity of credit (see gold standard).

The Alliance wanted to change the way Americans worked by pushing for an eight-hour workday. It did away with national banks so private, local banks could be formed. The Alliance wanted an income tax, the freedom to coin its own money and the freedom to borrow money from the government to buy land. The Alliance also tried to do away with foreign competitors who owned land in America. It wanted to directly elect federal judges and senators. The Alliance gained powerful political strength and controlled elections in states in the South and the West.

In the South, the agenda centered on demands of government control of transportation and communication, in order to break the power of corporate monopolies. From 1890 it also included a demand for a national "Sub-Treasury Plan" calling for the establishment of a network of government-owned warehouses for the storage of non-perishable agricultural commodities, operated at minimal cost to participating farmers. Farmers would then be permitted to draw low interest loans of up to 80% of the value of warehoused goods, payable in U.S. Treasury notes, under the plan.

  • James Cockrell, member of the Illinois House of Representatives from Marion County (1891–1893)
  • Marion Butler, U.S. Senator from North Carolina (1895–1901)
  • Hosea H. Moore, member of the Illinois House of Representatives from Wayne County (1891–1893)

Select newspapers

  • American Nonconformist, Tabor, Iowa. Edited by Henry Vincent.
  • Alliance Vindicator, Texas. Edited by James H. Davis.
  • Kansas Farmer, Topeka, Kansas. Edited by William A. Peffer.
  • National Alliance, Houston, Texas. <small>—No copies known to have survived.</small>
  • National Economist, Washington, D.C. Edited by Charles William Macune.
  • Progressive Farmer, Raleigh, North Carolina. Edited by Leonidas LaFayette Polk.
  • Southern Mercury, Dallas, Texas. Edited by Harry Tracy.
  • Western Rural and Family Farm Paper, Chicago, Illinois. Edited by Milton George.

See also

  • Agricultural Wheel
  • William Jennings Bryan

Notes and references

Further reading

  • Donna A. Barnes, Farmers in Rebellion: The Rise and Fall of the Southern Farmers Alliance and People's Party in Texas. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1984.
  • Marilyn Dell Brady, "Populism and Feminism in a Newspaper by and for Women of the Kansas Farmer's Alliance, 1891-1894." Kansas History 7, no. 4 (Winter 1984–85): 280–90.
  • Robert P. Brooks, The Agrarian Revolution in Georgia, 1865–1912. Madison, Bulletin of the University of Wisconsin, 1914.
  • N.A. Dunning (ed.), Farmers' Alliance History and Agricultural Digest. Washington, DC: Alliance Publishing Co., 1891.
  • Solon Buck, The Agrarian Crusade: A Chronicle of the Farmer in Politics. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1920.
  • Solon Buck, The Granger Movement: A Study of Agricultural Organization, 1870–1880. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1913.
  • Gerald Gaither, Blacks in the Populist Revolt: Ballots and Bigotry in the "New South." Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press, 1977.
  • W. L. Garvin and J. O. Daws, History of the National Farmers Alliance and Co-operative Union of America. Jacksboro, TX: J.N. Rogers, 1887.
  • Lawrence Goodwyn, The Populist Moment: A Short History of Agrarian Revolt in America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1978.
  • William F. Holmes, "The Demise of the Colored Farmers' Alliance," Journal of Southern History, vol. 41, no. 2 (May, 1975): 187–200.
  • Robert Lee Hunt, A History of Farmer Movements in the Southwest, 1873–1925. College Station, TX: Texas A&M Press, 1935.
  • Connie Lester, Up from the Mudsills of Hell: The Farmers' Alliance, Populism, And Progressive Agriculture in Tennessee, 1870–1915. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2006.
  • Robert C. McMath Jr., Populist Vanguard: A History of the Southern Farmers' Alliance. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1975.
  • Howard L. Meredith, "'The Middle Way': The Farmers' Alliance in Indian Territory, 1889–1896," Chronicles of Oklahoma, vol. 47, no. 4 (Winter 1969–70): 377–387.
  • W. Scott Morgan, History of the Wheel and Alliance and the Impending Revolution. St. Louis, MO: C.B. Woodward, 1891.
  • Herman C. Nixon, "The Cleavage within the Farmers' Alliance Movement," Mississippi Valley Historical Review, vol. 15, no. 1, (June 1928): 22–33.
  • William Warren Rogers, The One-Gallused Rebellion: Agrarianism in Alabama, 1865–1896. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1970.
  • Theodore Saloutous, Farmer Movements in the South, 1865–1933. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1960.
  • Michael Schwartz, Radical Protest and Social Structure: The Southern Farmers Alliance and Cotton Tenancy, 1880–1890. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988.
  • Roy V. Scott, "Milton George and the Farmers' Alliance Movement," Mississippi Valley Historical Review, vol. 45, no. 1 (June 1958): 90–109.
  • Louis Aubrey Wood with Foster J.K. Griezic, A History of Farmers' Movements in Canada: The Origins and Development of Agrarian Protest, 1872–1924. Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press, 1975.
  • Minutes 9 of the Travis County Farmers' Alliance, Held in their Hall in Austin, October 11th, 1889. Austin, TX: Travis County Farmers' Alliance, 1889.
  • Donna A. Barnes, "Farmers' Alliance," Handbook of Texas Online, Texas State Historical Association.
  • Gilbert C. Fite, "Farmers' Alliance," Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture, Oklahoma Historical Society.
  • Matthew Hild, "Farmers' Alliance," New Georgia Encyclopedia.
  • William F. Holmes, "Colored Farmers' Alliance," Handbook of Texas Online, Texas State Historical Association.
  • Adrienne Petty, History of the South: The Southern Revolt. Guest lecture, Columbia University, December 1998.
  • The People's Advocate, newspaper of the Farmer's Alliance and Industrial Union in Washington State, from The Labor Press Project

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