Mary
Clyens, the daughter of Irish immigrants,
was born in 1850. Both her father and older brother joined the Union
Army during
the American Civil War. Her brother
was killed and her father died in Andersonville
Prison.
In
1870 she moved to Kansas to teach at a Catholic mission school. Soon
afterwards she married Charles Lease, a local shop owner. His business
was destroyed in the financial crisis of 1873 and the couple moved
to Texas.
Mary
Lease became involved in politics and was an active supporter of prohibition
and women's suffrage. She joined the Women's
Temperance Union, the Farmers' Alliance and the Populist
Party. She obtained a national reputation as an outstanding orator
and between 1890 and 1896 she toured the country making speeches.
In the 1896 presidential election the leaders of the Populist Party
entered into talks with William J. Bryan,
the proposed Democratic Party candidate.
They thought they had an agreement that Watson would become Bryan's
running mate. After giving their support to Bryan he announced that
Arthur Sewall, a conservative politician with a record of hostility
towards trade unions, would be his vice presidential choice.
This created a split in the Populist Party, some refused to support
Bryan whereas Lease reluctantly campaigned for him. However, in her
campaign speeches she declared her support for socialism
and rejected many of of Bryan's policies.
The
defeat of William J. Bryan severely damaged
the Populist Party. While Populists continued to hold power in a few
Western states, the party ceased to be a factor in national politics.
Lease
divorced her husband and moved to New York
City. She joined the Socialist Party
and campaigned for Eugene V. Debs when he
ran for president in 1908. Mary Lease died in 1933.
(1)
Ignatius Donnelly, The Representative (10th June, 1896)
Mrs. Lease,
on June 3, made a grand speech of two and a half hours, before an
immense crowd at Dodge Center. The next night she addressed an extemproized
meeting at Kasson. Steps should be taken to keep her in Minnesota
until election day, if it is possible. She makes hundreds of votes
wherever she speaks. The only danger is of break-down. She is over-zealous
and forgets herself in her earnestness. Our friends must not let her
work herself to death. See that she is well entertained and has plenty
of rest between speeches.
(2)
Annie Diggs, Arena
Magazine (July, 1892)
Mrs. Lease
was educated a Catholic, but thought herself out of that communion,
and is now not over-weighted with reverence for the clergy of any
sect. She not infrequently rouses their ire by her stinging taunts
as to their divergence from the path marked out by their professed
Master, whose first concern was for the poor and needy.
In the campaign of 1890
she made speeches so full of fiery eloquence, of righteous wrath,
and fierce denunciation of the oppressors, that she became the delight
of the people of the new party and the detestation of the followers
of the old. Seldom, if ever, was a woman so vilified and so misrepresented
by malignant newspaper attacks. A woman of other quality would have
sunk under the avalanche. She was quite competent to cope with all
that was visited upon her. Indeed, the abuse did her much service.
The people but loved her the more for the enemies she made.
Her chiefest distinguishing
gift is her powerful voice; deep and resonant, its effect is startling
and controlling. Her speeches are philippics. She hurls sentences
as Jove hurled thunderbolts.
(3)
Mary Lease, speech at Cooper Union Hall (12th August, 1896)
I accept this splendid
greeting from this splendid audience in evidence that there is no
Mason and Dixon's line between the East and the West. I accept it
as an evidence of the fact that the people of the East and West are
battling for a common cause against a common foe. Not since the bleeding
years of the war have party lines been so nearly obliterated, and
the obedience to party leaders so refused as at the present time.
The heart of the nation is aroused, and Principle and not Self is
the watchword. The great heart of the nation beats response to patriotism,
and the nation is safe.
We stand today at the beginning
of one of those revolutionary periods that mark an advance of the
race. We stand at a period that marks a reformation. All history is
illustrated by the fact that new liberties cannot exist with old tyrannies.
New ideals ever seek new manifestations. The ideals of Christ could
not live under the tyrannies of the Roman government. The ideals of
the founders of this Government could not exist under the tyrannies
of royal rule.
The grand principles of
Socialism and the brotherhood of man cannot live under old forms of
tyranny - neither under the forms of Old-World tyranny nor of British
gold.
Yet today our splendid
theory of government is confronted by a great peril. We have become
blind to evils that menace us. We are confronted with glutted markets
and idle labor. It is a condition that makes it possible for a few
men to become landlords of a proud city like this while God's poor
are packed in the slums. Such a condition is not only a menace to
Republican institutions, but a travesty upon the gospel of Jesus Christ.
It makes it possible, too,
for an American to pay $10,000,000 for the cast-off, disreputable
rags of old world royalty, for the scion of a house that boasts the
blood of a Jeffreys and a Marlborough. It is a disgrace to our nation.
A condition by which the
wealth accumulated by the common people is poured into lard tubs and
oil wells, to enable Mr. Rockefeller to found a college and Mr. Whitney
to buy a diamond tiara for his daughter is a disgrace to the country.
Once we made it our boast
that this nation was not founded upon any class distinction. But now
we are not only buying diamonds for their wives and daughters and
selling our children to titled debauchees, but we are setting aside
our Constitution and establishing a gold standard to help the fortunes
of our hereditary foe.
Today, a determined and
systematic effort is being made by our financiers to perpetuate a
gold standard. Every influence that moulds public opinion has been
bought up, and the great dailies in the employ of the gold syndicate
have fallen into line. The whole power of the government administration
is being used to deceive the people. We hear sound money and honest
dollar applied to the most dishonest money that ever cursed a nation
or enslaved a people. What right has McKinley or Whitney to delegate
our constitutional right to coin money to England or any other nation?"
An organized effort is
making to deceive the people. There are two great enemies of thought
and progress, the aristocracy of royalty and the aristocracy of gold.
Long ago, the aristocracy of royalty came to a common plane with the
common people by the discovery of gunpowder, and the two met on a
common field. Where is the respect of old for royalty? Even the English
speak of their sovereign, Queen Victoria as being made not of common
clay, but of common mud. The aristocracy of royalty is dying out.
But here in this country
we find in place of an aristocracy of royalty an aristocracy of wealth.
Far more dangerous to the race is it than the aristocracy of royalty.
It is the aristocracy of gold that disintegrates society, destroys
individuals and has ruined the proudest nations. It has called Rothschild's
agent here to make the platform of the Republican party.
(4)
New
York Herald Tribune (13th August, 1896)
Charmed by the seductive
oratory of Mrs. Mary Elizabeth Lease, the free silver mass-meeting
at Cooper Union last night nursed itself into all the semblance of
a Socialistic gathering. From the beginning to the end, from the first
sentence of introduction until the Kansas woman had concluded in a
sonorous period, Socialism predominated. Every mention of gold or
wealth was greeted with shouts and jeers, and the names of Whitney
and Cleveland, of Vanderbilt and Rothschild were hailed with hisses
and cat-calls.
As advertised, the meeting
was under the guidance of the Social Reform Club, an organization
that has the worthy object of bettering the fortunes of the worker.
As advertised, the meeting was in the cause of free silver. But the
predominance of the Socialists more than once overcame this, and the
currency question was forgotten while the orators spoke at length
upon Socialistic beliefs.
It does
not necessarily follow because Mrs. Lease somewhat unsexed herself
by her indulgence in turbulent and inflammatory discourse at Cooper
Union that all women are unfitted by Nature to participate in the
excitement of political contests or to have a voice in the calm and
deliberate discussions which ought always to attend upon the settlement
of grave and serious governmental problems. We might as well say that
the similarly wild and reckless outgivings of the Tillmans and Altgelds
demonstrated the unfitness of the sterner sex for self-government.
But there is this to be said, of which there can be no denial, that
Mrs. Lease upon the political platform or stump, uttering invectives
more than masculine, and appealing to the brutal passions of the mob
rather than to the calm sense of reasoning men and women, must be
treated the same as any other mob leader, male or female. She cannot
shelter herself behind her sex while appealing to bloodthirsty passions
and inciting lawless riot.
Mrs. Lease
is representative of the party - we will not call it Democratic -
which presents Mr. Bryan as a candidate. In the principles she avows,
and the policies she advocates, in the coarse vigor of her speech
and the startling aggressiveness of her manner, she is in the highest
degree the best and truest exponent of the Bryan platform and party.
In the extravagance of her language, the wantonness and recklessness
with which she appealed to class hatred, pointing out by name as the
proper objects of popular vengeance good and honorable citizens whose
only offence is the possession of property accumulated honestly under
the laws, she may have seemed to be in advance of her party. But only
a step; just enough to bring out with clearness and distinctness the
real spirit and purpose of the revolutionists and Anarchists who are
bent on the destruction of public credit and the overthrow of social
order. A step behind this raging virago, foaming with fury and blazing
with wrath, is the wild mob of levellers eager for the general distribution
of spoils; behind them the Terror, with its bloody bacchanals and
merciless savagery.
(5)
Franklin Matthews, Leslie's Weekly (10th September, 1896)
One need
talk with Mrs. Lease only ten minutes to observe certain things: She
is self-confident, and also thoroughly impressed with herself. She
enjoys the fire of hot opposition. She "poses" even in private
conversation. Mrs. Lease is earnest, absolutely fearless, but uppermost
in all her thoughts and deeds seems to be Mrs. Lease, and after that
her cause. When she makes a statement that needs backing she can give,
off-hand, the section, clause, paragraph, and line of the Constitution;
she can quote by the paragraph from this or that Supreme Court decision;
she can repeat what this or that man said in the United States Senate
thirty, forty, fifty years ago. If you have only a few fundamental
and even correct notions about the gold side of this money question
- all that is necessary for any ordinary and intelligent man to have
- you had better keep away from Mrs. Lease, for she will throw you
by a simple twist of her thumb - or perhaps I had better say twist
of her tongue.
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