rn States; and when the Supreme Council, as the
national body was now called, held its next meeting at Ocala, Florida,
in December, 1890, delegates were present from state alliances of seven
Northern and Western States, in addition to those represented at the St.
Louis meeting. The Farmers' Mutual Benefit Association, a secret order
with about two hundred thousand members, had a committee in attendance
at this meeting, and the Colored Farmers' Alliance, which had been
founded in Texas in 1886 and claimed a membership of over a million,
held its national meeting at the same time and place. Plans were
formulated for a federation of these three bodies, and of such other
farmers' and laborers' associations as might join with them, to the end
that all might work unitedly for legislation in the interests of the
industrial classes.

Signs of approaching dissolution of the Alliance movement were already
apparent at the Ocala meeting. The finances of the Southern Alliance
had been so badly managed that there was a deficit of about $6000 in
the treasury of the Supreme Council. This was due in part to reckless
expenditure and in part to difficulties in collecting dues from the
state organizations. Discord had arisen, moreover, from the political
campaign of 1890, and an investigating committee expressed its
disapproval of the actions of the officers in connection with a
senatorial contest in Georgia. The decline of the Southern Alliance
after 1890 was even more rapid than that of the Grange had been. The
failure of many of the cooperative ventures contributed to this decline;
but complications and dissensions resulting from the establishment of
a new political party which took over the Alliance platform, were
principally responsible. The Northwestern Alliance continued for a few
years, practically as an adjunct to the new party but it, too, lost
rapidly in membership and influence. With the year 1890 interest shifts
from social to political organization, from Alliances to Populism.

CHAPTER IX. THE PEOPLE'S PARTY LAUNCHED

Alliances, wheels, leagues--all the agrarian organizations which
multiplied during the eighties gave tangible form to the underlying
unrest created by the economic conditions of that superficially
prosperous decade. Only slowly, however, did there develop a feeling
that a new political party was necessary in order to apply the remedies
which, it was believed, would cure some if not all the ills of the
agr