When Tillman spoke at Bennettsville, he was not widely known except as the brother of Congressman George Tillman. Ben Tillman called for the state government to do more for farmers, and blamed politicians and lawyers in the pay of financial interests for agricultural problems, including the crop lien system that left many farmers struggling to pay bills. He assailed his listeners for letting themselves be duped by hostile interests, and told of the farmer who was elected to the legislature, only to be dazzled and seduced by the elite. According to an account the next day in the "Columbia Daily Register", Tillman's speech "electrified the assembly and was the sensation of the meeting". Lindsey Perkins, in his journal article on Tillman's oratory, wrote that "Tillman's losses in the agricultural depression of 1883–1898 forced him to begin thinking and planning economic reforms. The result was Bennettsville." Tillman later stated that he began his advocacy after a few bad years in the early 1880s forced him to sell some of his land. The speech was printed in several newspapers, and Tillman began to receive more invitations to speak. According to Zach McGhee in his 1906 article on Tillman, "from that day to this he has been the most conspicuous figure in South Carolina".