join another organization embodying all its essential features but
proposing to avoid its mistakes. The conditions which brought about the
rapid spread of the Grange in the seventies still prevailed; and as soon
as the reaction from the Granger movement was spent, orders of farmers
began to appear in various places and to spread rapidly throughout
the South and West. This second movement for agricultural organization
differed from the first in that it sprang from the soil, as it were,
and, like Topsy, "just grooved" instead of being deliberately planned
and put into operation by a group of founders.

A local farmers' club or alliance was organized in 1874 or 1875 in the
frontier county of Lampasas, Texas, for mutual protection against
horse thieves and land sharks and for cooperation in the rounding up of
strayed stock and in the purchase of supplies. That it might accomplish
its purposes more effectively, the club adopted a secret ritual of
three degrees; and it is said that at first this contained a formula
for catching horse thieves. Affiliated lodges were soon established
in neighboring communities, and in 1878 a Grand State Alliance was
organized. Some one connected with this movement must have been familiar
with the Grange, for the Declaration of Purposes adopted by the State
Alliance in 1880 is but a crude paraphrase of the declaration adopted by
the earlier order at St. Louis in 1874. These promising beginnings were
quickly wrecked by political dissension, particularly in connection
with the Greenback movement, and the first State Alliance held its
last meeting in 1879. In that year, however, a member of the order
who removed to Poolville in Parker County, Texas, organized there a
distinctly non-partisan alliance. From this new center the movement
spread more rapidly; a second Grand State Alliance was organized; and
the order grew with such rapidity that by 1886 there were nearly three
thousand local lodges in the State. The social aspect was prominent in
the Alliance movement in Texas from the beginning. Women were admitted
to full membership, and negroes were excluded. In 1882 the three degrees
of the ritual were combined into one so that all members might be on the
same footing.

The early minutes of the State Alliance indicate that the rounding up
of estrays was the most important practical feature of the order at that
time, but in a few years this was overshadowed by cooperation. Trade
agreements were made