Colorado, as interest spread westward. New national principles were composed and mailed out to the entire readership of Western Rural and a 5th Convention was successfully held in November 1886. A system of dues was established, thereby funding and energizing the state organizations. The program of the organization became steadily more radical in this interval, including demands for government ownership of one or more of the intercontinental railroad lines as well as for unlimited coinage of silver at its historic ratio to gold. Connections began to be forged with the Knights of Labor, the leading industrial trade union organization of the day. Ten state organizations were fully functioning by 1890 and new members flooded into the Farmers' Alliance at the rate of 1,000 per week. Kansas alone boasted 130,000 members, closely followed by Nebraska, the Dakotas, and Minnesota, and the national office optimistically projected 2 million members in the near future. The idea emerged to put this enthusiastic and growing membership to work to advance the group's goals through a political organization. The Southern Alliance The roots of the National Farmers' Alliance and Industrial Union, commonly known as the "Southern Alliance," dated back to approximately 1875, when a group of ranchers in Lampasas County, Texas organized as a Texas Alliance as a means of cooperating to apprehend horse thieves, round up stray animals, and cooperatively purchase large stores of supplies. This group gradually moved into more extensive action in response to the perceived abuses towards smaller operators engaged in by land speculators and massive cattle operations. The organization grew and was organized on a statewide basis in 1878 but was almost immediately killed when it attempted to enter the political field and was torn asunder by antagonistic factions favoring the Democratic and Greenback parties. In 1879 the influence of the Northern Alliance made itself felt in Parker County, Texas when a new group was established there by a former member of the Lampasas County Alliance group. The Northern Alliance's constitution and its precedent of non-partisan activity were closely followed and in short order a dozen local groups had been established upon that model. This Texas group was incorporated in 1880 as the "Farmers' State Alliance" and it subsequently expanded throughout the Central and Northern parts of the state and into the neighboring Indian Territory (today's Oklahoma). By the end of 1885 this growing organization claimed a membership of approximately 50,000,