The progressive farmer. [volume] (Winston, N.C.) 1886-1904, 1891-02-24
WHAT HAS THE ALLIANCE DoNEa

this way we become able to understand
what remains to be done or passed. It
is well for AIliancemen to review the
progress already made in order that
they may accurately measure the dis
lance that lies betwixt them and the
goal for which they started. We in
tend to point out in this article some
of the things that have already been
accomplished.
The Alliance movement has organ
lied the farmers of thirty-three States
into a compact mass of virtue and in
tegrity, to be welded against every
species of political and social abuse
which threatens the perpetuity of our
institutions of freedom, or the happi-
ness of the people. No man to-day
dares to deny that the farmers of this
country are united to a man upon the
principles and plans of governmental
and social reform which the age and
civilization to which we belong de-
mands. No one who knows anything
about it will dispute the statement that
the Alliance has united as grand a yeO-
many as ever blessed the world with
it's toll for the defense of the essential
doctrines Of Christianity. These mil
lions of farmers are united to make
it known, now and evermOre, that
man, simple, unadorned man is, and
was intended by the Almighty God to
be, the primal thing, the highest value,
in this present scheme of things.
The Alliance movement has shown
the farmers how to sell their produce
in the highest markets, and how to
buy the commodities they need in the
cheapest market. With their purchas-
ing agencies, their warehouses, their
manufactures and their combinations
and cooperative concerns, they have
cheapened almost everything they buy.
And this cheapening of commodities
has not Injured to the good of the
farmers alone; but it has brought bles-
sings and the light of hope into thou
sands upon thousands of the homes of
those who are not farmers. All classes
are learning through this organization
of the farmers that they are not the
natural property of the merchants and
factors and middlemen and spectators;
but men, with the instincts and aspira-
tiOns of men.
The Alliance movement has put in
motion the highest educational forces
that eve started in the same length of
time in the history of the world. The.
poor words we are nov writing will be
read and pondered by more than sixty
thousand free men and women before
the coming of another Sabbath day.
And the readers of this paper are but a
handful in comparison with the vast
multitudes who have been set to read
ing and studying all sorts of political,
social, economic and religious ques-
tions. Surely we have started, and we
are pressing on, the most wonderful
educational movement the world has
ever seen.
The Alliance movement has done
more to destroy sectionalism and to
reunite an unhappily divided country,
within the last two years, than has
been done by all the philanthropists of
the country in the last quarter of a
century. What may we not expect in
the way of future healing, when Kan
sas and South Carolina drench out the
fires of political hate in the tears of
mutual forgiveness, and lock their
hands together and move onward for
the accomplishment of a common pur-
pose; when Ingalls, and Hampton, the
representatives of the opposing forces
OF spite and revenge, are forced to sit
down in the ashes of their own political
ruin and scrape themselves with pot
sherds!
Finally, the Alliance movement has
elected several State legislatures. has
sent quite a number of able men into
both branches of the National Con-
gress, and has scared some hundreds
of thousands of politicians to within
an inch of their lives.
These are some of the things already
done. We may ~innocently congratu-
late ourselves upon our success. But
much remains to be done. The terri
tory we have Won must be guarded;
and the doctrine of equal rights for
all and special privileges for none"-
the doctrine of the universal brother
hood of man, with it's corollary, the
universal Fatherhood of God-must
be preached in the regions beyond;
and all men must be made to feel that
they ''are, and of right ought to be,
free and equal" To help this work on