scattered between more than 1200 local groups, known as "Sub-Alliances." During the early 1880s this Texas Farmers' State Alliance was considered to be a loose part of the Northern Alliance organization. Owing to the lack of dues of the national group in this period, such a relationship was more theoretical than practical. The adoption of a dues system in the middle part of the decade forced the Texas group to closely consider its organizational affiliation. Charles W. Macune, the son of a Methodist preacher, emerged as the leader of this Texas organization when he was elected Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Texas organization in 1886. Macune immediately stifled an impending split of the organization threatened by a faction inside the Texas Alliance pushing to launch the group as an independent political party. He then united the group around a vision of organizational independence from the Northern Alliance coupled with a program of active expansion. As a first step towards this end, Macune negotiated a merger with the Louisiana Farmers' Union, a group established in 1880 and transformed into a secret society in 1885. The groups were joined under a new name, the National Farmers' Alliance and Cooperative Union of America. This was one of the first steps in unifying farmers along the American cotton belt. The demands of the Southern Alliance were similar to those of its northern counterpart. They pressed for abolition of national banks and monopolies, free coinage of silver, issuance of paper money (Greenback or Fiat money), loans on land, establishment of sub-treasuries, income tax acts, and revision of tariffs. In 1889 the National Farmers' Alliance and Cooperative Union united with a large rival organization known as the Agricultural Wheel to form a new group called the National Farmers' and Laborers' Union of America. Negotiations were begun to further unify forces by joining this newly expanded Southern Alliance with its Northern Alliance counterpart. While merger of the two organizations would have created a larger and more powerful organization, unity was stalled over terms of the union, including the composition of the governing bodies, divergent views on non-white membership, and disagreement over program owing to divergence between Southern and Northern farmers' economic interests. At its December 1889 convention in St. Louis, the National Farmers' and Laborers' Union of America changed its name again, this time to the National Farmers' Alliance and Industrial Union — the name