Editing Farmers' movement (section)

==The Alliance==
{{Agrarianism sidebar}}
The '''Alliance''' carried the movement further into economics. The [[Farmers' Alliance|National Farmers Alliance and Industrial Union]], formed in 1889, embraced several originally independent organizations (including [[Agricultural Wheel|The Agricultural Wheel]]) formed from 1873 onwards; it was largely confined to the South and was secret. The [[Farmers' Alliance|National Farmers Alliance]], formed in 1880, went back similarly to 1877, was much smaller, Northern and non-secret. The [[Colored Farmers' National Alliance and Cooperative Union]] (formed 1888, merged in the above Southern Alliance in 1890) was the second greatest organization. With these three were associated many others, state and national, including an annual, non-partisan, deliberative and advisory [[Farmers National Congress]]. The Alliance movement reached its greatest power about 1890, in which year twelve national farmers organizations were represented in conventions in St Louis, and the six leading ones alone probably had a membership of 5,000,000. Membership usually included males or females above 16 years of age. As with the Grange, so in the ends and declarations of the whole later movement, concrete remedial legislation for agricultural or economic ills was mingled with principles of vague radical tendency and with lofty idealism.{{sfn|Chisholm|1911|p=181}} Thus, the [[Farmers' Alliance|Southern Alliance]] in 1890 (the chief platforms were the one at [[Ocala Demands|Ocala, Florida]], and that of 1889 at [[St Louis, Missouri]], in conjunction with the [[Knights of Labor]]) declared its principles to be:

<blockquote>
(1) To labour for the education of the agricultural classes in the science of economical government in a strictly non-partisan way, and to bring about a more perfect union of such classes. (2) To demand equal rights to all, and special privileges to none. (3) To endorse the motto: In things essential, unity; in all things, charity. (4) To develop a better state, mentally, morally, socially and financially - - - (6) To suppress personal, local, sectional and national prejudices.{{sfn|Chisholm|1911|p=181 note 2}}
</blockquote>

For the Southern farmer a chief concrete evil was the [[crop-lien system]], mortgages on their future crops for furnished supplies by which cotton farmers fell into debt to country merchants. In the North, agricultural labor forces opposed a wide range of capitalistic legislation in [[solidarity action|solidarity]] with other industries, notably legislation sought by railway owners.{{Citation needed|date=July 2022}}
 
Practically all the great organizations demanded the abolition of national banks, the free coinage of silver, a sufficient issue of government paper money, tariff revision, and a secret ballot (the last was soon realized). Only less commonly demanded were an income tax, taxation of evidence of debt, and government loans on lands. All of these were principles of the two great Alliances (the Northern and the Southern), as were also pure food legislation, abolition of landholding by aliens, reclamation of unused or unearned land grants (to railways, e.g.), and either rigid federal regulation of railways and other means of communication or government ownership thereof. The Southern Alliance put in the forefront a subtreasury scheme according to which cheap loans should be made by government from local sub-treasuries on non-perishable farm products (such as grain and cotton) stored in government warehouses; while the Northern Alliance demanded restriction of the liquor traffic and for (a short time) woman suffrage. Still other issues were a modification of the patent laws (e.g., to prevent the purchase of patents to stifle competition), postal currency exchange, the [[eight-hour day]], inequitable taxation, the [[single tax]] on land, trusts, educational qualification for suffrage, direct popular election of federal judges, of senators, and of the president, special-interest lobbying.{{sfn|Chisholm|1911|p=182}}