and the payment by each member of the Alliance of a small sum in the form of tuition. Very many Alliance academies and high schools have been opened in various sections of the country. In not a few communities the people, impelled by the higher cultivation of their social instincts, have built new places of worship, while the intellectual and moral grade of their pastors and teachers has been immeasurably advanced.

The relation of the colored people in the South to their white neighbors had been long a question of the last importance to both races. There were not wanting those who believed in race conflict, race war, and even race extermination. These beliefs and opinions were shared by some of the best people on both sides, as, perhaps, painfully inevitable results which must follow from existing conditions; but there were others who were in apparent haste to put their views into practical operation, and who, if judged by their own testimony, were ready to baptize their prejudices in the blood of their fellow-beings, and dishonor themselves by the destruction of their country. The Alliances, both colored and white, were organized from the first largely with a view to the suppression of all prejudices, whether national, local, sectional, or race, and to create conditions of peace and good will among all the inhabitants of our great nation. On this account the " race question" was from the beginning a matter of profoundest interest to the order. At the first practicable moment steps were taken looking to the peaceful solution of that much-vexed and intricate problem.

December 3, 1889, the representatives of the Colored Farmers' National Alliance convened in the city of St. Louis. During this session they were visited by committees of fraternal regard from the Farmers and Laborers' Union, the Farmers' Mutual Benefit Association, and the National Farmers' Alliance. These visits were acknowledged with the utmost good will, so that the messengers from the several brotherhoods were looked upon rather as ministers of light and salvation. Like committees were appointed from our body to visit and bear our good will and fraternal greetings to these several organizations.

Again, in Ocala, Florida, at which place their National Council was held in December, 1890, they were visited by committees from the Farmers and Laborers' Union, and by officers of the Knights of Labor, and by members of other labor associations. They appointed committees to each of these bodies, as bearers of their good will and fraternal regard. They further proposed the holding of a joint meeting by these committees to form an association or confederation of the several orders represented, for purposes of mutual protection, co-opera

tion, and assistance. The committees, in their joint session, found themselves able to agree, and the matter of their agreement being reported back to their several orders, was heartily indorsed by all concerned. It recognizes common citizenship, assures commercial equality and legal justice, and pledges each of the several organizations for the common protection of all. This agreement will be known in future ages as the burial of race conflict, and finally of race prejudice. Its announcement has fired many hearts with renewed hope, has given a new impetus to progress among the people, and will exert tremendous influences in the healing of sectional and national misconceptions and prejudices throughout the entire country.

"DECLARATION OF PURPOSES OF THE COLORED FARMERS' NATIONAL ALLIANCE AND CO-OPERATIVE UNION OF THE UNITED STATES.

"The seventh section of the charter declares the object of this corporation shall be to elevate the colored people of the United States, by teaching them to love their country and their homes; to care more for their helpless and sick and destitute; to labor more earnestly for the education of themselves and their children, especially in agricultural pursuits.

"To become better farmers and laborers, and less wasteful in their methods of living.

"To be more obedient to the civil law, and withdraw their attention from political partisanship.

"To become better citizens, and truer husbands and wives."

CHAPTER XIII.

1

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 thirtyone States and Territories, and whose influence is now being felt throughout 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, intelligent, and faithful workers in the Sub-Alliances.

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