slave-based large-scale agriculture of the pre-war years. Now it would be small-scale agrarian enterprise that would proliferate and the emergence of the so-called "share system" or "cropping system," in which non-landowners paid rent for the use of the land they farmed in the form of a fixed percentage of the output generated. This system in theory served the needs of landowners and poor farmers alike, as the sharecroppers would have the incentive to produce more and benefit from increased output while landowners would be provided with a labor source to produce upon the land they held without the necessity of paying cash wages. In practice, however, a system of virtual slavery emerged, in which poor whites and freed blacks became enmeshed in the usury of merchants and landowners providing essential supplies on credit. A crop-lien system emerged in which future crops would be mortgaged to merchants or landowners (often one and the same) in exchange for credit for current purchases. Written contracts made these loans legally enforceable and those so enmeshed frequently found themselves forced to pay inflated prices at high rates of interest. If the value of the credit exceeded the cash value of the crop, the arrangement was automatically rolled over for another year and a never-ending cycle amounting to a condition of perpetual servitude resulted. Moreover, this crop-lien system contributed to the establishment of a cotton monoculture, as merchants demanded this easily storable, readily marketable commodity to be produced for the satisfaction of debt. Not accidentally, the requirement by merchants for cotton production made production of adequate food and fodder for sustenance virtually impossible, further deepening the debt of the farmer to his merchant-creditor. A sense of deep discontent with the current state of affairs was felt by the small-holding and tenant farmers of the South. Organizational histories The Northern Alliance The National Farmers' Alliance, commonly known as the "Northern Alliance," was established on March 21, 1877, by a group of members of the Grange movement from New York state. The group sought to organize in order to fight what they deemed the unfair practices of the railroad transportation mill, for the reform of the tax system, and for the legalization of Grange-sponsored insurance companies. This first organization proved largely ineffectual but does seem to have provided the inspiration for the first effective Alliance group, which was established on April 15, 1880, by newspaper editor Milton George