to break the power of corporate monopolies. From 1890 it also included a demand for a national "Sub-Treasury Plan" calling for the establishment of a network of government-owned warehouses for the storage of non-perishable agricultural commodities, operated at minimal cost to participating farmers. Farmers would then be permitted to draw low interest loans of up to 80% of the value of warehoused goods, payable in U.S. Treasury notes, under the plan. The failure of the Democratic Party to endorse this initiative was instrumental in causing the Farmers' Alliance to become directly involved in partisan politics through an organization largely of its own making, the People's Party. The Southern Alliance also demanded reforms of currency, land ownership, and income tax policies. Meanwhile, the Northern Alliance stressed the demand for free coinage of large amounts of silver. Political activists in the movement also made attempts to unite the two Alliance organizations, along with the Knights of Labor and the Colored Farmers' National Alliance and Cooperative Union, into a common movement. The efforts and unification proved futile, however. Transition to the Populist movement As an economic movement, the Alliance had a very limited and short term success. Cotton brokers who had previously negotiated with individual farmers for ten bales at a time now needed to strike deals with the Alliance men for 1,000 bale sales. This solidarity was usually short-lived, however, and could not withstand the retaliation from the commodities brokers and railroads, who responded by boycotting the Alliance and eventually broke the power of the movement. The Alliance had never fielded its own political candidates. It preferred to work through the established Republican Party in the Midwest and Democratic Party in the South — although these often proved fickle in supporting the agenda of the Alliance. The Alliance failed as an economic movement, but it is regarded by historians as engendering a "movement culture" among the rural poor. This failure prompted an evolution of the Alliance into a political movement to field its own candidates in national elections. In 1889–1890, the Alliance was reborn as the People's Party (commonly known as the "Populists"), and included both Alliance men and Knights of Labor members from the industrialized Northeast. The Populists, who fielded national candidates in the 1892 election, essentially repeated all the demands of the Alliance in its platform. Elected officials James Cockrell, member of the Illinois House of Representatives from Marion County