Currency policy emerged as a hot topic in national politics, with politically active farmers and representatives of the fledgling national trade union movement endorsing a weak greenback-type currency as conducive to the needs of these groups as debtors. A looser currency supply was seen as a way of breaking the perceived stranglehold on the national economy held by banks and wealthy industrialists. Chief among these supporters of so-called "Greenbackism" was the National Labor Union (NLU), established in 1866. This and other groups began to turn to political action in 1870 in an effort to advance their political agenda, with an August 1870 convention calling for the establishment of the National Labor Reform Party.