y,
with an average fall of eighteen inches, the total for this year was
only thirteen inches. General Miles, who had chased hostile Indians
across the plains for more than twenty years, and who had seen the new
villages push in, mile by mile, saw the terrible results of drought.
First suffering, then mortgage, then foreclosure and eviction, he
prophesied. "And should this impending evil continue for a series of
years," he wrote, "no one can anticipate what may follow." The glowing
promises of the early eighties were falsified, whole towns and counties
were deserted, and the farmers turned to the Government for aid.

The Western upheaval followed a period in which both great parties had
been attacked as misrepresentative. There was a widely spread belief
that politicians were dishonest and that the Government was conducted
for the favored classes. It was natural that the discontented should
take up one of the agricultural organizations already existing, as the
Grangers had done, and convert it to their political purpose.

Since the high day of the Granger movement there had always been
associations among the farmers and organizations striving to get their
votes. The Grange had itself continued as a social and economic bond
after its attack upon the railroads. There had been a Farmers' Union and
an Agricultural Wheel. The great success of the Knights of Labor and the
American Federation of Labor had had imitators who were less successful
because farming had been too profitable to give much room for organized
discontent, while in times of prosperity the farmer was an
individualist. A new activity among the farmers' papers was now an
evidence of a growing desire to get the advantage of cooperation.

The greatest farmer organization of the eighties was the Farmers'
Alliance, a loose federation of agricultural clubs that reflected local
conditions, West and South. In the South, it was noted in 1888 as
"growing rapidly," but "only incidentally of political importance." In
Dakota, it had been active since 1885, conducting for its members fire
and hail insurance, a purchasing department, and an elevator company.
In Texas it was building cotton and woolen mills. The machinery of this
organization was used by the farmers in stating their common cause, and
as their aims broadened it merged, during 1890, into a People's Party.
In Kansas, during the summer of this year, the movement broke over the
lines of both old parties and had