Agricultural Wheel

The Agricultural Wheel was a cooperative alliance of farmers in the United States that existed from 1882 until 1889 when it merged with the National Farmers' Alliance to form the Farmers' and Laborers' Union of America. It was initially started by W. W. Tedford, farmer and school teacher, to improve farming conditions.

On February 15, 1882, during a period of depressed farm prices and drought, a group of nine Arkansas farmers led by W.W. Tetford, W. A. Suit and W. Taylor McBee met at the McBee Schoolhouse eight miles south of Des Arc in Prairie County in eastern Arkansas and formed the Wattensas Farmers' Club. The club vowed to improve the lives of farmers, improve their education and knowledge, and improve communications between them. Many Arkansas farmers were suffering under what they viewed as oppressive mortgages (known as anaconda mortgages) and were heavily in debt.

Within a short time it was suggested that the organization change its name. The choices were between "The Poor Man's Friend" and "The Agricultural Wheel" which was the name finally selected.

The situation did not improve in Arkansas that year and farmers were in such desperate straits that they called upon Governor Churchill to ask the legislature to postpone the collection of taxes.

By 1883 the organization consisted of over 500 members in Arkansas. At the organization's meeting in the spring a state Wheel was established and deputies were appointed to spread the word to neighboring states and seek to establish local wheels in those states.

In 1885 the Wheel absorbed the Brothers of Freedom, another Arkansas farm organization.

In 1886 delegates from Arkansas, Kentucky and Tennessee gathered at the town of Litchfield, Arkansas, to establish the National Agricultural Wheel and an official newspaper for the organization.

By the time of the 1887 meeting, the membership of the national organization was over 500,000 farmers from Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, Indian Territory, and Wisconsin.

The growing political clout of the organization led it to establish a political platform consisting of the following demands:

• Paying off the national debt
• Repeal of laws that favored capital over labor
• Preventing aliens from owning land
• Abolishing national banks
• Government operations on a cash basis
• Ending of agricultural futures trading
• Establishing a graduated income tax
• Prohibiting importation of foreign labor
• National ownership of transportation and communication
• Direct election of national politicians
• Free trade and removal of all import duties
• Establishment of a luxury tax
• Free public education
• No renewal of patents

In 1888 at the national meeting in Meridian, Mississippi a merger between the Wheel and the Farmers' Alliance was proposed. The two organizations met jointly in 1889 in Birmingham, Alabama and merged that same year.

Among farmers' organizations of the period the Wheel was remarkable for refusal to hold segregated meetings, a policy it held until merger with the Farmers' Alliance.

Garland E. Bayliss, a native Arkansan and retired historian at Texas A&M University in College Station, wrote a dissertation in 1972 through the University of Texas at Austin entitled Public Affairs in Arkansas, 1874-1896, which includes a study of the Agricultural Wheel.^[1]

References

1. ^ "Agricultural Wheel". encyclopediaofarkansas.net. http://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/encyclopedia/entry-detail.aspx?entryID=2091. Retrieved June 25, 2010. 

External links

• Agricultural Wheel from the Encyclopedia of Arkansas History and Culture
• Agricultural Wheel from the Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture