Mary Elizabeth Lease

she is a mixed bag. In initial research on her, what I kept finding was most biographical sketches describe her in pretty positive terms, even though she was not universally beloved. She was a progressive political activist. She fought big business, she worked on behalf of the common man, particularly farmers, and she believed really strongly in the importance of third parties in the US political system. Oh that's true, and it makes her sound pretty cool, but it leaves out

some really proba aboutic parts of her story ideology. Her story which also plays out during the Gilded Age, when, much like today, the difference between rich and poor in the US very stark, very unbalanced, with just a handful of people holding the vast majority of the nation's wealth. But it also offers a glimpse into the repetitive nature of politics and social structure in the US as a lot of the issues she spoke about and advocated for are things we were hearing about all the time in

the news today. There is also a moment in this show where one of her detractors says something that sounds like you heard it on a SoundBite from nineteen sixty nine. It was took me so by surprise. So. Mary Elizabeth Cliens was born September eleventh, eighteen fifty three, in Ridgeway, Pennsylvania. Her father was Joseph P. Cleons and her mother was Mary Elizabeth Murray Clients, and both of them were i and had immigrated to the United States. Mary had two

older brothers who had been born in Ireland. They were Patrick and Daniel. The family had left their home country after Joseph had been involved in a conflict with British landowners. He had lost his tenant property during the famine and had also been instrumental in leading a revolt against the landowners, and that had made him a wanted man. During the US Civil War, which started when Mary was just eight, her father, Joseph, and her two brothers served in the

Union Army Joseph was drafted, but her brothers volunteered. Both of her brothers, one of whom was adopted, were killed in action, and Joseph is said to have starved to death while he was a prisoner of war. There is we should note some conflicting information about all of this because in some accounts, Joseph, Patrick and Daniel are said to have received money to service stand ins for military survice.

We've talked about this practice on the show before, where they would report in lieu of wealthy draftees who basically paid them to say, go be me for this conflict. Mary, after all of this had happened, believed that the war was entirely the fault of the Democratic Party and that it was the direct cause of her sorrow, and she grew up with a deep disdain for pretty much all Democrats. The Democrat Party at this point in history was generally

a party of wealthy, white slave owners. That's where we are in the arc of political parties in the US. So Mary Elizabeth attended Saint Elizabeth's Academy in Allegheny, New York, and graduated in eighteen sixty eight at the age of fifteen. She taught in a school in Pennsylvania for two years before moving to Kansas in search of better wages for teachers. She had already showed an interest in the labor movement at that point, even as a team fresh to the profession.

She had tried to get a teacher's union together at her first job, primarily because of poor pay clients. Got a teaching appointment in a Kansas Catholic school, which was Saint Anne's academy, and that was in the town of Osage Mission in Kansas. Mary Elizabeth met a pharmacist clerk named Charles L. Lease, and the two of them married on January thirtieth, eighteen seventy three. According to Charles's account,

it had been Mary who pursued him. He had not particularly been interested in courtship or marriage, and then she kind of inserted herself into his life. Because Mary was politically active before she met Charles, they had what was probably sort of a unique marriage for the time, one in which she and her husband were of differing political views, although it seems that Charles was a lot less passionate about his Democrat affiliation than Mary was about her ideologies.

Mary left her teaching job when she married Charles and she became a homemaker. Although that role did not particularly suit her, she started coming up with ways to stay mentally stimulated, and one of them was that she started writing. And among the works that she wrote during this time was a play that was put on at one of the local schools that imagined what the US might be like if it had been run by women. Charles and Mary Elizabeth moved to Kingman County, Kansas in early eighteen

seventy three. They got a plot of land through the Homestead Act and they started a farm there. They had borrowed money to set up the farm with everything that it needed, but they found that things were really rough going. After living a pretty comfortable life for their first several months of marriage, they found themselves living in a dugout house before they could get a sod house made. They also realized that farming is very difficult work. They were

not good at it. They did not produce anything to sell. They defaulted on their loans and the farm was repossessed. Just a year after they had ventured into farming, they had lost everything and moved to Denison, Texas. Yeah, I get the vibe, because farming will come up again that Mary had kind of a romantic idea of what it was to be a farmer. Even as she became very well acquainted with a lot of farmers, she really thought

that was going to be a great life. Mary was pregnant when they made this move to Denison, and she gave birth to their first child, Charles Henry, in late eighteen seventy four. In Texas, Charles found work at a pharmacy once again. This time he was working for Atchison's drug Store, and to help make ends meet, Mary Elizabeth worked as a washerwoman, and during this time she also started studying law. Now this was not a case where

she attended law school. Rather, she apprenticed with the law firm of Aldrich and Brown and she studied law there. Apprentices who learned in this manner were allowed to sit for the bar exam, and Mary is said to pinned her law notes over her washtub, so as she did her customer's laundry, she could also study. Attison's drugstore provided the leases with more than an income for Charles. It was owned by doctor Alexander Atchison, and he and his wife,

Sarah became a significant influence on Mary Elizabeth. Sarah Atchison was active in the temperance movement, and she recruited Mary Elizabeth into that cause. Mary Elizabeth joined the Women's Christian Temperance Union and started giving speeches to promote temperance. She was really good at this. Many years later, The New York Times would write of Mary quote, she had a resounding voice and a knack for forceful phraseology that carried conviction and enthusiasm. So that voice and her use of

it would really define the rest of her life. Charles, meanwhile, was trying to improve their finances by flipping lots. He recognized that Dennison was growing, and so he would purchase empty lots when they came available, and then he would sell those lots at a markup as the town expanded. In eighteen eighty Mary and Charles also had a second child, Evelyn, and then a third child in eighteen eighty three. That was their daughter, Grace. After almost a decade in Denison,

Mary and Charles moved back to Kingman County, Kansas. They didn't completely leave Denison behind, though at least not financially, because Charles continued to be active in the real estate market there for years. They had decided to try to farm again in Kansas. This time they went with the route of renting a house with land instead of taking

on property. They didn't have a whole lot greater success the second time than they had the first, though, although they apparently did a little bit better in terms of producing an actual corn crop, it still didn't make them very much money. After they moved back to Kingman County, the Leases had a son named Ben Herr. Biographer Brookspear or theat we arised that he was named after the character in the book, which came out in eighteen eighty.

Mary and Charles had two other babies during their time in Dennison who did not survive their infancy. The family moved from their failed second farm to Wichita, and over time Mary used her growing circle in Wichita society to talk to other women about things like temperance and suffrage, and soon she was a leading voice in women's activism circles.

Mary became involved with the Knights of Labor, which had been founded in eighteen sixty nine to advocate for reforms in labor practices, including things like an eight hour workday, ending child labor, and also ending the use of incarcerated

people as laborers as well as other reforms. Unlike a lot of other organizations, the Knights of Labor also advocated for women's suffrage and labor equality, and through this group, Mary was engaged as a speaker, and that was something that brought her in contact with a lot of other activists of note, including Susan B. Anthony. Mary often invoked her own experiences when she talked about issues like class inequality in the ways that banking and industrial companies actively

harmed the nation's farmers with their policies. We'll talk about another significant step and Mary's activism after we pause for a sponsor break. In eighteen eighty eight, Mary's involvement in activism kind of shifted into high gear when she attended the Union Labor Party's state convention. She had been aligned with the Republican Party prior to that, but the party's stance on tariffs as good for the economy and their lack of support for farmers had soured her opinion of

the organization. In contrast, the Union Labor Party wanted a financial structure for the country that was beneficial to the people actually doing the work, so it was very much much in line with her ideology. Lease actually ran for

office as a member of the Union Labor Party. At the convention in eighteen eighty eight, she was chosen as the Union Labor candidate for superintendent of Sedgwick County Schools, although neither she nor the other candidates that the Union Labor Party put forth for various offices fared well at all in the election. After the election, Lee stayed active in the Union Labor Party and even edited its newspaper.

Before the end of the decade, though Mary moved to the Farmers Alliance, which had started in Texas almost two decades earlier. She wasn't eligible for membership in the Farmer's Alliance because she was not considered to be part of a farming family, but she was welcomed as a participant, and her involvement really drove the membership numbers way up.

We've already said she was a compelling speaker, but she also offered women in farm communities a glimpse at ways that they could be politically active, and a lot of that growth came from women joining the movement. The Farmer's Alliance wasn't a political party. It was a protest group and an agrarian movement. As Mary Leesa's involvement in activism with the Farmer's Alliance was heating up, she gained a very powerful enemy in Kansas Republican Senator John James Ingalls.

Ingles was anti suffrage, and he made statements about activists that truly sound exactly like conservative rhetoric in the nineteen sixties. This is what I mentioned at the top of the show. He said of women's suffrage that it was quote that obscene dogma whose advocates are long haired men and short haired women, the unsext of both sexes, human capons and episscenes. That sounds like he's like you hippies. Yeah, maybe without the capons and epissenes part, it does sound like he's

talking about hippies. He and his wife made a lot of public comments about Mary Lease being a ladylike and insinuating that she was quite vulgar by the way. It wasn't like she was out there swearing. She just was very, very direct and very vocal, and that was not cool for women in their eyes. Mary as a consequence, made it her mission to publicly criticize Ingles for his stance,

and the entire Republican party along with him. The two of them traded barbs in the press, and it made big news every time one of them said something about the other. And as this was all playing out, although she was really busy as an activist and she was still a full time mom, Mary was able to complete her law studies and she passed the bar examine Kansas in eighteen eighty nine, and at that point she and another woman named Mary Merrill opened a law practice together.

During the eighteen ninety election cycle, Mary campaigned hard. She made more than one hundred and sixty speeches. Ingles was up for reelection, and she and the Farmer's Alliance were focused on making sure he was defeated. In her speeches, she talked about how he and other Republicans were ensuring that wealth inequality was the standard, with a small group

of men controlling most of the money in Kansas. Some of her rhetoric regarding Ingles would be perceived as dangerously close to a threat of physical violence today, likening their vote to pulling a trigger to take out the mark. When Senator John Ingalls was ultimately defeated in the election, which took a long time due to legal tie ups over certification. Mary openly stated that she was the reason why he had lost. This was probably true, at least

to a degree. One of Lisa's most famous speeches during this time is often referred to by the title wall Street owns the Country, although you will sometimes also see it referred to by other names. And in this speech she denounced the entire setup of the USA economy. This is a really good example of the kinds of things, she said, so I want to include a lot of it. That speech opens with quote, this is a nation of inconsistencies.

The Puritans, fleeing from oppression, became oppressers. We fought England for our liberty and put chains on four million of blacks. We wiped out slavery and our tariff laws, and national banks began a system of white wage slavery worse than the first. Wall Street owns the Country. It is no longer a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, but a government of wall Street, by

wall Street, and for wall Street. The great common people of this country are slaves, and monopoly is the master. The West and South are bound and prostrate before the manufacturing East. Money rules, and our vice president is a London banker. Our laws are the output of a system which clothes rascals and robes, and honesty in the political parties lie to us, and the political speakers mislead us.

The speech continues by noting that farmers were told they just needed to produce a good crop, but when they all managed to do so, they were told they had over produced and thus their various products like corn, beef, and eggs would be devalued. She notes that they were told that there was too much product, but according to the statistics, there were ten thousand kids starving in the US every year. She finished with a threat quote, we

want money, land and transportation. We want the abolition of the national banks, and we want the power to make loans direct from the government. We want the foreclosure system wiped out. We will stand by our homes and stay by our fireside, by force if necessary, and we will not pay our debts to the loan shark companies until the government pays its debt to us. The people are at bay. Let the bloodhounds of money who dogged us

thus far beware. There is also another quote that's attributed to Mary during this phase of her activism, in which she was alleged to have told farmers in Kansas to quote, raise less corn and more hell. This is something that still gets repeated today. But she did not say it, And when asked about the quote, Mary said that no, she hadn't said it, but she did think it was

pretty good advice. Mary's rhetoric and her speeches roused a lot of people, but by its very nature it also turned off a lot of people, even in the groups

she's most associated with. For example, the Daily Kansas People and other papers ran an account of the Farmer's Alliance picnic that was held in August of eighteen ninety that described an estimated ten thousand attendees, but also notes after mentioning that M. W. Wilkins and Mary E. Lease were speakers, quote the speeches were of intolerable length and were not

very well received. Yeah. I ran across that after I had seen several instances of people talking about the crowds she drew and saying like there were instances where ten thousand people at a time came to see her speak, and it's like, well, they were there for a picnic, and they also didn't all seem to really like it.

In eighteen ninety two, the Farmers Alliance, which had realized that their political influence would always be limited if they couldn't actually put candidates on ballots, formed the Populist Party officially, and Mary was of course a major player in the Populist Party, and it was within that group that she

got the nickname the People's Joan of Arc. When James Weaver ran for president as the Populist candidate in eighteen ninety two, Mary traveled the campaign trail with him, and Weaver was amazed at the way that Lease was received by people on the campaign trail. He described her in the ways you would describe like a rock star walking

into an auditorium today. In eighteen ninety three, she briefly ran for senator, but papers reported in January of that year that she had chosen to withdraw from the race. Some accounts noted that it was quote in the interest of harmony. Her candidacy had caused so much debate even

among the people who supported her. There were concerns that she would be polarizing in a way that would lose the Populist Party votes, or that even people who agreed with her politics wouldn't vote for her because she was a woman. She was also relentlessly attacked by her rivals who suggested that no woman would have the constitution to

handle public office. That same year, Mary also had a very public conflict in Kansas after she became president of the Kansas Board of Charities, and that was an appointment she received just after she withdrew from the Senate race. In this role, which oversaw a mix of asylums, homes for the poor, and special schools, she ran into problems in working with Kansas Governor Lorenzo Llewelling, who had actually

been the one that appointed her to that job. The two of them butt heads over a number of things, including connections to the Democratic Party. Llewellyn had run as a Populist Democrat under the Populist Democrat coalition, and Lese hated this. She did not believe in the two parties fusing, and she was completely comfortable being very vocal about it and also saying that she simply did not want to work with anyone who had been elected as a fusion candidate.

She also got really mad when Llewelling appointed Democrats to the Board of Charities, not only because of their political affiliation, but also because she thought that she was supposed to be the only one who could make decisions on who was going to be on the board. Llewelling grew so irritated and frustrated with Mary and her furious pronouncements about his politics that he tried to have her moved from her role with the Board of Charities. This proved to

be more difficult than he had anticipated, though. Mary fought him tooth and nail in his efforts to take her out of her position, and things got really ugly. Llew Welling's office even circulated rumors that she and presidential candidate Weaver had an affair on the campaign trail, and Lese accused Llewelling of things like having taken bribes from the railroads. The conflict ended up in front of the Kansas Supreme Court,

and Mary emerged victorious. Yeah, there were a lot of other allegations in the midst of all of that mud slinging, but those were like the two big ones. Although Mary had been legally vindicated at this point, her political standing

really faltered in the wake of the Court's decision. People really started to consider that she was so staunchly dug in on her views that she could never compromise or really work with others, and because she was seen as one of the primary voices of the Populist Party, that meant that shifting opinions about her also turnished the party's reputation.

This in turn led to poor support for the party in the eighteen ninety four election, and the party was unable to secure even a single office that it had run a candidate for. Although the political party tried to recapture its momentum, it kind of sputtered out before the century ended. Coming up, we're going to talk about Mary's book, which was kind of a rambling pastiche of socio political

ideas and spoiler alert, it's got some problems. We'll get into it after we hear from the sponsors that keep the show going. In eighteen ninety five, Mary published a book titled The Problem of Civilization Solved Just Pretty Bold. In it, she examines the rising numbers of the lowest income classes in the United States and she explains what

she feels are the causes of this problem. She does so this way, quote, the tide of poperism is steadily rising, and we are rapidly approaching the condition of Europe in the last century. Class legislation has done much to swell the list of America's poppers, but Europe's system of dumping its poperized class upon our shores has done more. An

ever increasing swarm of dependence are with us. The cause can be traced to class legislation and militarism, the one the curse of our free institutions, and the other the bane of European civilization. The remedy lies not in doling out alms to humanity until the recipients of charity become chronic beggars, but in first removing the cause of extreme poverty by giving every toiler access to the soil, making the ballot the key to unlock the garner where his

birthright lies. The solution she puts forward in this writing to pull people out of poverty is offering them land to work on with the potential to earn its ownership. Quote.

A cabbage garden or potato patch with the incentive of proprietorship and compensation, will keep drunkards from tippling, dead beats from mendacity, criminals from crime, and prove not only the source of health, happiness, and honesty as well as a source of revenue to the commonwealth, but a panacea also for tough sinners, where soap and water, sunshine and air, work and play will take the place of the seven sacraments. In the forty days, fast on fish and eggs, it

is time for earnest men and women to act. Never were needs so pressing and deeds so necessary as today. Gigantic want and gigantic wealth step side by side. But the cry of the untaught, uncomforted millions, sending forth like tortured beasts, and inner articulate cry from the depths of their destitution and debasement, is unheeded, if not unheard. So if all of this rhetoric sounds a little bit sketchy to you, rest assured it gets a whole lot worse.

And it really gets outright racist and white supremacist. And this is a racism that is completely slathered in white saviorism. She notes that one of the things that is damaging people is over population. So the population, by which she really means the white population, should spread out by taking land from other people. Note as we go into this

that this quote has some very outdated language. Quote the homeless condition of the highly enlightened Caucasian and the debase degradation of the Negro and Oriental calls in thundertones to Heaven for a great readjustment of the social condition of mankind. Europe and America are on the eye of a dire revolution, before which all modern civilization may go down to ruin in blood and fire, or perish more slowly beneath the

iron hoofs of Russian despotism. Between the dreaded modern goth of Russian supremacy or Universal Empire, and the vandalism of the British financial system which threatens to enslave the industrial world,

our civilization cannot long survive. The only hope of averting this universal reign of terror lies in inaugurating the most stupendous migration of races the world has ever known, and thereby relieve the congested centers of the world's population of half their inhabitants and provide free homes for half of mankind. This can be done by colonizing the tropics in America and Africa with fifty million white families as planters on estates of two hundred acres each with three families of

Negroes or Orientals as tillers of the soil. Through all the vicissitudes of time, the Caucasian has arisen to the moral and intellectual supremacy of the world. Until now this favored race is fitted with the stewardship of the earth

and emancipation from manual labor. The era has arrived when the Caucasian must either sync to barbarism or become the planter by occupancy of the tropics and the professional man and business manager for the inferior races, the Oriental and Negro are in a pitiable condition of ignorance, destitution, and misery from a lack of proper encouragement and a just

and intelligent supervision of their efforts. Cannot the resources and genius of Christendom rescue civilizations from its perils by tropical colonization. She says a lot more. Of course, She mentions, for example, how dangerous it would be if Russia were to diminish Britain's power in India, even though she doesn't love Britain, because that would undermine the art of Western supremacy. In eighteen ninety six, Lese moved to New York City, where she took on a number of roles that gave her

an expanded platform. She started writing for the New York World and became an editor for the National Encyclopedia of American Biography. Mary's advocacy had made her famous, and her arrival in the city was reported in the New York Times in an article that opened with quote, we noticed that missus Mary Elizabeth Lease has arrived in this city, and that she is to address public audiences on behalf of mister Brian and the fifty three cent silver standard.

That Brian was William Jennings Brian, and while Mary certainly didn't want to join the Democratic Party, she did support Brian in regards to his stance on establishing a silver standard, as famously stated in his Cross of Gold speech at

the Democratic Convention in eighteen ninety six. In it, Brian concluded his argument for bimetallism with quote, having behind us the producing masses of this nation and the world, supported by the commercial interests, the laboring interests, and the toilers everywhere, we will answer their demand for a gold standard by saying to them, you shall not press down upon the brow of labor, this crown of thorns. You shall not

crucify mankind upon a cross of gold. So that article in the New York Times that mentioned that they had noticed she had arrived in New York was not complimentary of Mary. It featured a quote that she gave to the press, which was quote, we out West think it's time for a financial system of our own without the interference of European money lenders. Some people in the West think the East is acting very selfishly. It is the debtor party that is going to elect Brian and Sewell.

But the paper had dug up information on that mortgage that Mary and Charles had defaulted on in Kansas, having spoken with someone at the Jervis Conklin Mortgage trust company, and the Times We're referred to this mortgage in question as quote, a matter of legitimate public interest, and it insinuates that Mary and other Populists were basically trying to cheat the system by never paying back money they borrowed and then claiming that this was because the odds had

been stacked against them. This is an example of how the overall conflict regarding the Populist Party was playing out on the public stage. Mary and other members of the party were lobbying for legislation against predatory lending practices, while their opponents responded that farmers had basically just been bad at business. When Mary moved to New York with the children in eighteen ninety six, she had done so without Charles,

and the couple started living separately. At that point. The press had hinted for a long time that their marriage must be trouble. There were insinuations the woman like Mary couldn't be a good wife, along with other barbs at both her and Charles. There had also been a distance growing between them, some of which was just a matter

of logistics. Mary was in demand as an orator and so she wasn't home a lot of the time, and it does seem that her activism made Charles uncomfortable over time, especially as her fame grew and she was often embroiled in very public feuds with prominent people. The two of them seemed to have maintained a pretty cordial relationship, although they did divorce in nineteen oh two. In nineteen twelve, Mary joined the Bull Moose Party, and she spoke at

rallies supporting Teddy Roosevelt's campaign that year. By this time, she had nothing positive to say about the Democratic or Republican parties. She called the Democrats a political putrescence, and she referred to the Republican Party as quote the slave of the money power. But she felt like Roosevelt aligned with what she had advocated for as a populist, and she even stated to the press that quote Rooseveltism spells populism.

But she didn't stick with Roosevelt, and by nineteen fourteen she was critical of the party, claiming that it had stolen its entire platform from the populists, and she claimed that she had not been paid her speaker's fees by Roosevelt's campaign. So she made a switch to supporting Woodrow Wilson, but that didn't last, largely because he was really not a supporter of women's suffrage. As the nineteen teens wound down,

so did Mary. She retired from political life by the end of the decade, although she was still involved in various reform movements, especially in support of women's interests. She lived in Brooklyn until nineteen thirty, when she moved to Long Eddy, New York, on the Delaware River. Mary Elizabeth Lease died on October twenty ninth, nineteen thirty three, in Callicoon,

New York from complications of a leg infection. She was eighty years old at the time, and as her obituary in The New York Times noted, quote, the populists were fighting for direct election of senators, postal savings bank, government control of railways, federal supervision of corporations, the initiative and referendum, the income tax, woman suffrage, prohibition, and free silver. She lived to see every one of those planks except the last,

put into effect, to varying degrees of success. Right. That is what is kind of a very abbreviated version of Mary Elizabeth Lease, because she was so publicly active that there is a lot of documentation of not only just what she said, but how people perceived her, which was not always great. We can talk about some of that on behind the scenes, as well as that really problematic yearn for colonization. But before that we'll have adorable kiddie talk.

This is from our listener Kelsey and it's a short email, but it is adorable. Kelsey Rights just dropping a line to issue a Mary Festive season and grace your inbox with an image of my cat assistant Jack. He was desperate to help with baking, but had to settle for early morning coloring and podcast listening with gratitude for all you do to educate and entertain us huddled masses and bleak midwinter and all through the year. Jack is an

adorable orange creamsicle baby. Oh his little feats. He's so cute. He's so cute. And I also want to give a shout out to Catherine who shared her adorable orange tabby on Twitter. And it's pretty insistent that he is not one of the smart ones. But he's adorable and he looks sweet as pie. So thank you, thank you, thank you. If you would like to write to us, you could

do so at History Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. You can also subscribe to the podcast on the iHeartRadio app or anywhere it is that you listen to your favorite shows. Stuff You mus and History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.