Farmers' State Alliance of South Carolina
Collection
Identifier: Mss-0050
This collection contains financial and membership quarterly reports from county alliances and the sub-alliances within each county. Some of thse reports detail problems which resulted in the rejection or expulsion of individual members. Correspondence includes confidential letters concerning internal problems, receipts, requests of record-keeping outfits, and narrative reports. The records also include some printed materials, advertisements, lists of sub-alliances, lists of delegates elected to state and county alliance meetings. There are copies of various constitutions and charters, the charters having been returned for corrections. Account books, membership rolls, a few scattered death records and disbursement warrant stubs comprise seven oversize boxes. Several issues of the Alliance's semi-monthly agricultural journal, The Cotton Plant, which had been removed from this collection, have been returned to it.
One of the most important items in this collection is a volume of original minutes of the Farmers' State Alliance of South Carolina beginning with the organizational meeting July 11, 1888 through to 1898. The collection also has a carbon typescript of this volume prepared under the Works Project Administration at the University of South Carolina in 1936. These minutes include the president's annual messages.
The alliance opened its sixth annual meeting at Clemson College on July 26, 1893 before moving on to Walhalla for the remainder of the session. Clemson Professor J. S. Newman delivered an address, "The Means and Methods of Agriculture." Elections of officers, committee reports, and resolutions were a part of the annual meeting minutes. A single copy of the 1903 annual meeting minutes indicated that the alliance was very weak and that the Courts had ordered that their Exchange Fund of some $17,000.00 be returned to those who gave it. This publication is the latest official information contained in this collection. The successful adoption of some of the measures advocated by the Alliance as well as the return to better prices for farm products during the 1900s tended to weaken the Alliance which ceased to be
an active force in South Carolina agriculture by the early 1900s.
The National Farmers' Alliance (1880) is the name commonly given to two groups that were a part of the agrarian movement which swept the United States late in the nineteenth century. This more militant movement followed the decline of the Grange as farmers continued to suffer from depressed crop prices, tight money policies, and the monopolistic power of railroads.
In the South, the dominant agricultural society was the National Farmers' Alliance and Industrial Union/Cooperative Union of America. In South Carolina, several earlier organizations, the State Agricultural and Mechanical Society (1869), the State Grange or Patrons of Husbandry (1872), and the Farmers' Association (1886), preceded the July 11, 1888 organization of the Farmers' State Alliance of South Carolina under the parent organization, the National Farmers' Alliance and Co-operative Union of America.
By 1890, more than one million farmers had become members of the Alliance. This non-partisan organization established cooperatives, arranged social gatherings, and disseminated agricultural and economic information. More important, they
influenced legislation such as the Interstate Commerce Act. Although non-partisan, the organization aggressively lobbied for the betterment of the farmer by means of resolutions and petitions, as well as by supporting candidates without regard to political affiliation. In other parts of the country, such as in Minnesota in 1891, independent farmer's parties made their appearance. Benjamin Ryan Tillman, candidate for governor in 1890 Democratic primary, articulated the South Carolina Farmer's Association's demands for such reforms as a separate school for agricultural education, more farmer representation on the Board of Trustees of what now is the University of South Carolina, enlargement of the State Board of Agriculture, and transfer of fertilizer fees to the new agricultural college.
Tillman also adopted many of the Alliance's positions regarding the regulation of utilities and the banking industry, taxation of all forms of wealth such as the
income tax and efforts to halt the exploitation of the farmer by large corporations. The Farmers' State Alliance of South Carolina did not collectively support Tillman because the Alliance also had many opponents of Tillman amoung its membership. Some of the state Alliances's goals saw their fruition under the administration of Tillman and his immediate successors.
6 Cubic Feet (Including 7 volumes)
English
Dr. William Hayne Mills, a Clemson faculty member during the 1930s, was instrumental in obtaining this material from Joseph Wightman Reid, for many years Secretary of the South Carolina State Grange, E. M. Livingston and Mrs. Fred Patterson. The organization of the State Alliance followed that of the Patrons of Husbandry, the "Grange," a collection also held by this library. These two collections, together with the library's Benjamin Ryan Tillman collection, provide information about agriculture, economic conditions, education, and politics in South Carolina between 1872 and 1927.
Dr. William Hayne Mills, Clemson faculty member during the 1930s, was instrumental in obtaining this material as well as other historical records.
James, William Apollos; E.M. Livingston; Mrs. Fred Patterson; Joseph Wightman Reid.
This collection was formerly cataloged BB6.5/F234.
The register was prepared by Berniece Holt, Manuscript Curator Specialist, in 1984.
Part of the Clemson University Libraries Special Collections and Archives Repository