dition in which protest was essential: "It began among people who possessed, as part of their birthright, cultures of protest---patterns of thought and action growing out of their own history on the land" (50). The farmers saw themselves and their products as essential to the survival of the nation, and they were determined not to be taken advantage of. The Great Strike of 1877 and the formation of the Farmers' Alliances were major results of this determined protest.
By 1887 these alliances began to come together in a cooperative union, as Chapter 3 explains. To the farmers, the powers of monopoly and capital were enemies which could only be fought with complete cooperation. One observer declared that "co-operation . . . will place a limit to the encroachments of organized monopoly, and will [allow] the mortgage-burdened farmers [to] assert th
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