The small farmers struggled against the Bourbon control of politics and the credit lien system, which seemed to keep them forever in debts. The Populist movement failed to attract the large following in Mississippi that it did in Alabama, Georgia and other Southern states. Mississippi did produce some Populist spokesmen, such as newspaper editor Frank Burkitt, but poor farmers, white and black, refused to follow the leadership of the Farmers' Alliance. Few farmers were willing to support the sub-treasury plan, the Alliance's plan to aid farmers by providing low-cost federal loans secured by crops. The Democratic Party machine, the increasing activism of the National Grange, and effective disenfranchisement of most black voters and many poor whites after 1890 under provisions of the new constitution, designed to "exclude the Negro" and help the Democrats in "keeping the Negro down", according to its drafters, meant the failure of Mississippi populism. The constitution required payment of a poll tax for voter registration, which many poor people could not afford. The voter rolls dropped dramatically, and white Democrats secured a hold on power in the state. By the birth of the People's Party in 1892, Mississippi populism was too weak to play a major role. According to Democrat James K. Vardaman, Mississippi's governor, the purpose of the 1890 constitution was "to eliminate the nigger from politics."