Page:Autobiographies and portraits of the President, cabinet, Supreme court, and Fifty-fifth Congress (IA autobiographiesp02neal).pdf/83

 MARION BUTLER

, of Elliot, Sampson County, was born on a farm in Honeycutts Township, Sampson County, N. C., May 20, 1863; was prepared for college by his mother and at a neighboring academy, but chiefly by his mother; graduated at the University of North Carolina in 1885; began the study of law, but was called home, being the eldest boy, by the sudden death of his father, to run the farm and to look after the education of his younger brothers and sisters, and taught at a neighboring academy for three years; in 1888 he joined the Farmers' Alliance and bought the Clinton Caucasian; was elected to the State senate in 1890; was the leader of the Alliance forces in that body; was chairman of the joint committee on railroad commission, and succeeded in passing the present railroad-commission law of North Carolina and in securing a number of other needed reforms; was elected president of the State Farmers' Alliance in 1891 and reëlected in 1892; was elected vice-president of the National Farmers' Alliance and Industrial Union in 1898 and elected president of that organization in 1894; immediately after adjournment of the Chicago convention in 1892 he publicly declared that he would not support Grover Cleveland, and at once severed his connection with the Democratic party and went to work to organize and build up the People's party; in the winter of 1898-94 he conceived the plan of campaign which resulted in such a triumphant success at the fall