, and at the time of his
election was financial agent for Yankton College. A radical Fourth of
July oration which he delivered at Aberdeen brought him into favor with
the Alliance, and he was elected to the state senate on the Independent
ticket in 1890. Prior to this election Kyle had been a Republican.

The other senatorial victory was gained in Kansas, where the choice fell
on William A. Peffer, whose long whiskers made him a favorite object of
ridicule and caricature in Eastern papers. He was born in Pennsylvania
in 1831, and as a young man had gone to California during the gold boom.
Returning after two years with a considerable sum of money, he engaged
in farming first in Indiana and then in Missouri. When the Civil War
began, his avowed Unionist sentiments got him into trouble; and in 1862
he moved to Illinois, where after a few months he enlisted in the army.
At the close of the war he settled in Tennessee and began the practice
of law, which he had been studying at intervals for a number of years.
He removed in 1870 to Kansas, where he played some part in politics as a
Republican, was elected to the state senate, and served as a delegate to
the national convention of 1880. After a number of newspaper ventures he
became the editor of the Kansas Farmer of Topeka in 1880 and continued
in that position until he was elected to the United States Senate. He
was a member of the Knights of Labor and was an ardent prohibitionist
and, above all, an advocate of currency inflation.

After the elections of November, 1890, came definite action in the
direction of forming a new national party. The Citizens' Alliance, a
secret political organization of members of the Southern Alliance, held
a convention with the Knights of Labor at Cincinnati on May 19, 1891.
By that time the tide of sentiment in favor of a new party was running
strong. Some fourteen hundred delegates, a majority of whom were from
the five States of Ohio, Kansas, Indiana, Illinois, and Nebraska,
attended the convention and provided for a committee to make
arrangements, in conjunction with other reform organizations if
possible, for a convention of the party to nominate candidates for
the presidential election of 1892. To those who were anxious to have
something done immediately the process of preparing the ground for a new
third party seemed long and laborious. Seen in its proper perspective,
the movement now appears to have been as swift as it was inevitable.