The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 48, July 1944 - April, 1945 Page: 350
617 p. : ill., maps, ports. ; 24 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Southwestern Historical Quarterly
centered in thefts and estrays; and even in these vital matters
to compel cooperation the State Alliance had to refuse 'epre-
sentation to lodges failing to report estrays and the marks
and brands of their members. A regular part of the Alliance
meetings was the reading of estray lists. A member paid
fifty cents per head for stock thus recovered."3
Lawless characters, the object of Alliance vigilance, advised
immigrants to avoid counties dominated by Alliancemen,
asserting that the order was a ring of murderers and
thieves. The Weatherford Times, jealous of the Alliance for
selecting its rival, the Weatherford Herald, as its organ, printed
some of these accusations. Fifteen Patrons invited the public,
public officials, and newsmen to an open meeting held on July
7, 1881. Fifty-seven Alliancemen and 200 citizens met in
the Weatherford courthouse, and the order promised to expel
any member guilty of the least lawlessness. It received an en-
thusiastic acquittal, and the Times was scathingly denounced
by several public officials, including Congressman S. W. T.
Lanham. This moral victory led the Patrons to revise their
organizing campaign to dispel the belief that the Alliance
was a secret political party and to overcome the general in-
credulity toward farm organizations caused by the decline of
the Grange.24 Andrew Dunlap, a Scottish-born farmer of Wise
County, and W. L. Garvin were elected president and vice-
president.25 The panic of 1879 forced the Patrons to financial
cooperation; they selected certain Weatherford merchants with
whom to deal and organized county Alliances to coordinate
their efforts. The cooperative feature in the middle eighties
supplanted the interest in thieves and partly explains the in-
crease in activity and membership in 1882, when the Patrons
adopted the Jacksboro Rural Citizen as their organ in February,
revised the brand and estray system, limited membership to
whites because the order was a "social institution," combined
the three degrees into one to prevent a privileged group at the
top from getting control, and tried to sell cotton through the
Texas Co6perative Association, which was the marketing and
23"Proceedings of the . . . Alliance," June 12, 1880, and July 16, 1880,
in Dunning (ed.), Farmers' Alliance, 23-25.
24"Proceedings of the . . . Alliance," February 8, 1881, in ibid., 32;
Garvin and Daws, History, 23-31, 141; A. J. Rose's Pocket Notebook, 1881,
and J. M. Kirk to Rose, September 28, 1881, in Rose Papers.
25Dunning (ed.), Farmers' Alliance, 34; Garvin and Daws, History, 35.350
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 48, July 1944 - April, 1945, periodical, 1945; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth146055/m1/394/: accessed May 4, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.