In 1891 Nelson A. Dunning wrote a monograph titled The Farmers’ Alliance History and Agricultural Digest. One of the chapters he included in his history of the Farmers’ Alliance was a letter from Mrs. Bettie Gay of Columbus, Texas, a member of the Texas Farmers’ Alliance. Gay used the Texas Farmers’ Alliance as a political platform for the advancement of women. As a widow and working farmer herself, Gay worked tirelessly to mobilize women to help support the Farmers’ Alliance both in numbers and financially. She also advocated for women to improve their status in society through education. Gay saw the alliance as a redeemer of women by allowing women to develop intellectual interests and involvement in political activity. She strongly believed women could have a reforming influence in the alliance as well as American society. Through her own experience as a farmer and her witness of women in the labor force, Gay felt reform was needed to elevate women from their conventional roles. She felt the social system kept women uneducated, which inherently caused poverty and suffering. Therefore, she deduced that women needed both education and the right to vote in order to reform the “enslaved condition” of women.