The complaints of the westerner naturally found expression in the agricultural organizations which already existed in many parts of the country. The Grange had attacked some of the farmer's problems, but interest in it as a political agency had died out. The National Farmers' Alliance of 1880 and the National Farmers' Alliance and Industrial Union somewhat later were both preceded and followed by many smaller societies. Altogether their combined membership began to mount into the millions. When, therefore, the Alliances began to turn away from the mere discussion of agricultural grievances and toward the betterment of conditions by means of legislation, and when their principles began to be taken up by discontented labor organizations, it looked as if they might constitute a force to be reckoned with. The remedies which the Alliances suggested for current ills were definite. Fundamentally they believed that the government, state and federal, could remedy the economic distresses of the people and that it ought to do so. At the present day such a suggestion seems commonplace enough, but in the eighties the dominant theory was individualism--each man for himself and let economic law remedy injustices--and the Alliance program seemed like dreaded "socialism." The counterpart of the demand for larger governmental activity was a call for the greater participation of the people in the operation of the machinery of legislation. This lay back of the demand for the initiative, the referendum, and the popular election of senators. Currency ills could be remedied, the farmers believed, by a national currency which should be issued by the federal government only--not by national banks. They desired the free coinage of silver and gold until the amount in circulation should reach fifty dollars per capita. Lesser recommendations were for an income tax and postal savings banks. In relation to the transportation system, they declared that "the time has come when the railroad corporations will either own the people or the people must own the railroads." In order to prevent the waste of the public land and to stop its being held for speculative purposes, they urged that none be allowed to remain in the hands of aliens and that all be taken away from the railroads and corporations which was in excess of actual needs.