Several of these related to labor issues highlighted by the 1886 <u>Great Southwest Strike</u> by the <u>Knights of Labor</u>, governmental land policy, and railroad regulation. The most controversial demands, however, related to monetary reform. Believing that significant relief from declining crop prices required the expansion of the currency supply, alliance farmers demanded that the government immediately use silver in addition to gold as legal tender in order to ease the contracted currency supply. They argued, however, that significant relief required a more radical revamping of the existing monetary system than entailed by "free silver"-the establishment of a fiat currency system wherein the government would issue "greenbacks" based on a predetermined per capita circulation volume, rather than on an inflexible metallic standard.
