%549. The Sherman Act.%--You remember that the attempt to enact a law for the free coinage of silver in 1878 led to the Bland-Allison Act, for the purchase of bullion and the coinage of at least $2,000,000 worth of silver each month. As this was not free coinage, the friends of silver made a second attempt, in 1886, to secure the desired legislation. This also failed. But in the summer of 1890, the silver men, having a majority of the Senate, passed a free-coinage bill (June 17), which the House rejected (June 25). A conference followed, and from this conference came a bill which was quickly enacted into a law and called the Sherman Act. It provided 1. That the Secretary of the Treasury should buy 4,500,000 ounces of silver each month. 2. That he should pay for the bullion with paper money called treasury notes. 3. That on demand of the holder the Secretary must redeem these notes in gold or silver. 4. After July 1, 1891, the silver need not be coined, but might be stored in the Treasury, and silver certificates issued. %550. The Farmers' Alliance%.--This legislation, combined with an agricultural depression and widespread discontent in the agricultural states, caused the defeat of the Republicans in the elections of 1890. The Democratic minority of 21 in the House of Representatives of the Fifty-first Congress was turned into a Democratic majority of 135 in the Fifty-second. Eight other members were elected by the Farmers' Alliance. For twenty years past the farmers in every great agricultural state had been organizing, under such names as Patrons of Husbandry, Farmers' League, the Grange, Patrons of Industry, Agricultural Wheel, Farmers' Alliance. Their object was to promote sociability, spread information concerning agriculture and the price of grain and cattle, and guard the interests and welfare of the farmer generally. By 1886 many of these began to unite, and the National Agricultural Wheel of the United States, the Farmers' Alliance and Cooperative Union of America, and several more came into existence. In 1889 the amalgamation was carried further still, and at a convention in St. Louis they were all practically united in the Farmers' Alliance and Industrial Union. The purpose of this alliance was political, and as its stronghold was Kansas, the contest began in that state in 1890. At a convention of Alliance men and Knights of Labor, a "People's Party" was formed, which elected a majority of the state legislature. Five out of seven Congressmen were secured, and one United States senator. Before Congress met (in December, 1891), another member of the House was elected elsewhere, and three more senators. The support of fifty other representatives was claimed. Greatly elated over this important footing, the Alliance men marked out a plan for congressional legislation. They demanded 1. A bill for the free and unlimited coinage of silver. 2. The subtreasury scheme. 3. A Land Mortgage Bill.