Women of the Frontier

by Brandon Marie Miller

  But the promise of owning land still beckoned, and when the economy improved, the Leases moved back to Kansas. This second attempt at farming proved no better than the first; they lived in debt, always on the brink of ruin. Mary later looked back on those years and recalled, “I lived in the very midst of the desert, solitary, desolate, with no society save my children and no companions but our lonely thoughts. It was an awful life, dreary, monotonous, hard, bleak, and uninspiring.”20 Faced with failure again, the family moved to Wichita where Charles found work.

  Railroads played a huge part in the farmers’ plight. The government had handed railroad companies millions of acres of free land. The railroads campaigned for settlers and immigrants, promising land and prosperity. What they really offered was land so poor it could never grow a good crop—and they offered it at high prices. The railroad companies also controlled all transportation and charged farmers huge freight rates to ship their grain. They could charge high prices to store the grain as well, both before and after it shipped. Farmers’ pleas to congressmen, senators, and governors to ease the prices charged by these monopolies fell on deaf ears. The railroad owners, with deep pockets for bribes and perks, controlled many politicians.

  In Wichita, Mary put her education and her quick, argumentative mind to work. She trained to become a lawyer, “reading” law under the supervision of an established lawyer. At the same time, she gave birth to another son, named Ben Hur, raised and educated her children, cleaned house, and did the laundry, baking, cooking, and mending. She also washed clothes for her neighbors at 50 cents a day. She tacked legal papers onto the wall above her washtubs and studied while she worked.

  Mary passed the Kansas bar examination and advertised in the Wichita Eagle: Would any women like to join forces for sharing education and good works? She gathered a little group, named the Hypatia Club after a female philosopher of ancient Greece, to discuss women’s voting rights and other issues.

  Mary’s political philosophy quickly evolved through the prism of her own experiences. Had they failed at farming in part because of the greed of the railroads and loan companies? Had the good land been gobbled up by the railroads, leaving nothing for the poor farmer? Why did they have to pay a crushing interest rate on their loans? Congress had created the railroad beast. Congress had let a few get rich at the expense of millions of poor farmers and workers, and Mary blamed both political parties for failing the American people.

  Mary made an impression. People described her dignity, her bearing, her shining eyes. She wore an air of distinction as finely as her tailored dresses. She commanded people with her presence, but what most captured people was Mary Lease’s voice. One newspaperman later recalled, “The man or woman who did not halt in wonder at the sound of her voice had no music in his soul…. It was contralto, rich, even mellow, of a quality beyond that possessed by any of the great actresses of my knowledge.”21 Mary’s speech could ring with humor or scorn, and people took notice of what she said. In honor of Saint Patrick’s Day in March 1886, she made her first public lecture, an audience-pleasing appeal for Irish liberty, sprinkled with Irish poetry and harsh words for British imperialism.

  Mary immersed herself more and more in local affairs. She promoted school hygiene, the vote for women, and farmers’ issues. As she warmed to her political causes, she spared no one from her sharp tongue. She irked some people by the mere fact that she called herself Mary Lease, instead of Mrs. Charles Lease, as they felt a well-bred lady should do. But she got results. The Kansas State Legislature became the first in the country to grant women the right to vote in city and town elections.

  The 1880s submerged many farmers and laborers in further misery. Low wages left little for emergencies; people needed small loans just to pay off doctor’s bills. Harsh winters killed cattle and sheep, and blazing dry summers withered crops in the fields. Defeated, many abandoned their farms, hoping to escape starvation. The Leases, a family of six, struggled too, though Charles at least earned a wage to feed his family. Mary took in boarders to help pay the mortgage. By 1888, an election year, bitterness swept over much of the country. Why did politicians do nothing to ease the suffering of the very people who had elected them to office?

  Men mostly ignored the political efforts of Mary and her Hypatia group, but Mary had turned a corner. Women might lack the vote, but they could write, they could speak, they could organize, and they could be heard. For Mary, winning the vote became only a piece of the puzzle in the quest for human rights. She prepared to turn her back on the Democrats and Republicans who had failed the working poor, and support a new political party—one filled with radical ideas to sweep change into American government.

  The Knights of Labor, the first general labor organization, admitted women to membership, and Mary Lease joined. But the Knights of Labor shunned political involvement, while Mary believed political change created social change. She also joined the Union Labor Party, which supported government ownership of the railroads, government irrigation programs for farmers, and laws against child labor.

  Mary Lease made her first political speech to the Wichita Union Labor Party and discovered her rare talent to “put my whole soul in my speech.” The first applause hooked Mary, and she became determined to use her speaking in “the cause of right.” Her speeches mingled wit and sarcasm with bits of Shakespeare and Emerson, enthralling her listeners.

  The Union Labor Party pushed Mary to the forefront as they planned their platform for the 1888 elections. They called for votes for women, an income tax that taxed the rich more than the poor, and the direct election by the people of US senators. Across Kansas, Mary spoke against the Republican government that controlled the state, the loan companies that charged high interest rates, and the railroad monopolies. She also successfully navigated the Knights of Labor into the political arena. Mary differed from many women, even those seeking the vote—she wanted to have a say in politics, say who could run for office, and maybe even run for office herself.

  When longtime Kansas senator John Ingalls brushed Mary aside—”Women have no place in politics,” he said—she took those as fighting words. And though the Union Labor Party showed poorly in the election, Mary Lease had ignited a spark in Kansas. The party opened a reform newspaper, the Independent, to kindle the fire, with Mary at the helm. “In sending out to the world a journal devoted to reform, truth, and justice, I am fully aware of the responsibility I have assumed and the unpopularity of the task I have undertaken. While I expect ridicule and criticism,” she assured readers, “I do not fear either.”22

  Across the Western prairies and a few Southern states like Georgia, reformers and radicals joined with the Farmers’ Alliance movement to form a new political entity called the People’s Party. Soon known as the Populists, they pledged to run candidates for state offices in the 1890 elections.

  One rallying point was that banks borrowed money at 2 percent interest but turned around and charged farmers as much as 11 percent interest on loans. Populists wanted farmers to have direct, low-interest loans from the government. They also wanted an end to the railroads’ monopoly to set exorbitant prices for grain storage and freight charges.

  The harvest of 1889 yielded a perfect crop of Kansas corn, but farmers could only sell their corn for 10 cents a bushel—less than it had cost to raise it. In Chicago, corn sold for 50 cents a bushel, with the profits going to the railroads and grain merchants. Meanwhile, the city’s poor could not afford grain. Politicians blamed and insulted farmers. “What is needed,” said Senator Ingalls, “is some legislation that will give brains to the brainless, thrift to the thriftless, industry [work] to the irresolute, and discernment to the fools.”23

  Mary Lease traveled like a whirlwind across Kansas that summer of 1890, delivering 160 speeches urging people to action. “When I get through with the silk-hatted easterners they will know that the Kansas prairies are on fire!” she thundered.24 Thousands flocked to hear her message, and when she raised her arms and exho
rted the crowds to raise less corn and more hell, people cheered.

  “Wall Street owns the country,” she informed her audience. “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 [political] parties lie to us and the political speakers mislead us.”

  The farmers and the farmers’ wives loved Mary. “We were told two years ago to go to work and raise a big crop, that was all we needed,” she cried. “We went to work and plowed and planted; the rains fell, the sun shone, nature smiled, and we raised the big crop that they told us to; and what came of it? Eight-cent corn, ten-cent oats, two-cent beef and no price at all for butter and eggs—that’s what came of it.”

  “The politicians said we suffered from overproduction. Overproduction,” she asked, “when 10,000 little children, so statistics tell us, starve to death every year in the United States, and over 100,000 shopgirls in New York are forced to sell their virtue for the bread their niggardly wages deny them.”

  Mary listed the peoples’ demands: “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,” she urged them, “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 debts to us. The people are at bay.” She warned, “Let the bloodhounds of money who dogged us thus far beware.”25

  As the elections neared, party newspapers attacked Mary, branding her as “a miserable caricature of womanhood, hideously ugly in features and foul of tongue.” “In a month the … goggle-eyed nightmare will be out of a job,” predicted one paper.26 They changed her middle name to Ellen, which rhymed with “yellin,’” and eventually they attacked her through her children.

  On November 4, the nation voted, and the next day Republicans and Democrats took note. For the first time, a third party, the Populists, had gained governors and control of state legislatures, including that of Kansas, and Populist congressmen were headed to Washington. Longtime Kansas senator John Ingalls, who’d scorned Mary’s political efforts, lost his seat. A Republican newspaper lamented on the disaster, “As usual, there was a woman in the case … Mrs. Lease.”27 The Populists looked ahead to the presidential election of 1892 with rising hope.

  Mary did her part to swell the Populists’ momentum. She visited Georgia, a populist stronghold, and plainly declared people could call her whatever they wished—an anarchist, a socialist, a communist. “I hold to the theory that if one man has not enough to eat three times a day and another man has $25,000,000, that last man has something that belongs to the first.”28 To the WCTU, she pleaded for “no more millionaires, and no more paupers, … and no more little waifs of humanity starving for a crust of bread. No more gaunt-faced, hollow-eyed girls in factories, and no more little boys reared in poverty and crime for the penitentiaries and the gallows.”29 She also spoke before the National Council of Women, championing the cause of female suffrage.

  In July 1892, Mary attended the Populist Party convention in Omaha. She helped shape the party platform which supported the right of workers to form unions and called for government ownership of the railroads, telephones, and telegraphs. Populists demanded money reform and the right of the people to borrow directly from the government at low rates. They wanted a graduated income tax, return to the government of railroad land not used by the railroads, an eight-hour workday for industry, direct election of US senators by the voters, and the right of voters to propose laws and vote on laws through referendums. One plank was missing from the platform, however—voting rights for women. Mary went along with this for the sake of party unity; others feared this controversial plank might cost the Populists votes in the election. Mary made the speech seconding the motion to nominate General James Weaver as the Populist candidate for president.

  Again, Mary Lease stood as a prominent voice for the Populist movement. She campaigned tirelessly, urging farmers and laborers to band together against big business and mainstream politicians. She swept across the Western states, speaking to crowds numbering in the thousands. Noted candidate Weaver, “She is an orator of marvelous power…. Her hold upon the laboring people was something wonderful. They almost worshipped her from one end of the country to the other.”30

  Mary Lease headed into the heart of the South to states like Georgia, Virginia, and Tennessee, where she hoped to sever the ties binding white voters to the Democratic Party. But here, whipped up by Democratic papers, the crowds heckled and threatened the Populist speakers. People pelted Mary with eggs. Southern papers attacked General Weaver, who’d served in the Union army, as a war criminal.

  Fearing a loss of power, Southern Democrats even threatened to lynch the Populists. A Tennessee paper made the case: “John Brown came from Kansas to the South to assassinate all slaveholders. Now, Mrs. Lease comes South, from the same state, with the declaration that the Negro should be made the equal of the white man, and that all difference between the sexes should be obliterated. Great God! What next from Kansas?”31

  Though many populist candidates failed in the November 1892 elections, Kansas, thanks in part to Mary’s efforts, voted Populist for president. But Populists in the South and East went down in defeat, hurt by intimidation and the fact that factory workers did not band together with farmers.

  Many people hoped the Kansas legislature would appoint Mary to take the vacant seat of Senator Preston Plumb. Letters poured in supporting Mary’s appointment as the first female senator. But if the Populists hoped to pass any of their reforms, they needed to join with Democrats to gain a majority over Republicans. Mary hadn’t spared Democrats in her speeches, and the party retaliated by forcing through a Democratic judge to fill the Senate seat.

  Mary felt restless, not sure about this new marriage with the Democrats. She feared the Populists would lose their hard edge, giving up reform for the sake of keeping themselves in office. For Mary Lease, this was no time to keep silent. Both 1893 and 1894 brought further economic disaster to the country. Armed troops clashed with striking railroad workers in Chicago. Factories closed. Homeless and jobless people wandered the land.

  In Boston, Mary galvanized a throng of unemployed people, reminding them, “What we want is justice for all and special privileges for none…. Instead of bankers and lawyers for legislators get your representatives from the laboring classes…. It is the duty of the government you defend in war to feed you in time of peace.”32 In midterm elections, angry people again turned their backs on Republicans and Democrats and voted Populist in state and local elections. Would the presidential election of 1896 finally see a people’s movement?

  Instead, the Democrats determined to pick off Populist voters by adopting some Populist planks. This included the cry for ”free silver,” a plan to coin or print supplies of money backed by silver rather than gold. They hoped “cheap money” would mean more cash in the pockets of the poor. Democrats used their free-silver platform to lure Populist voters to the party. The Populist Party splintered—should they fuse with the Democrats or stand on their own?

  Mary stood for going it alone, much to the disbelief of many Populist leaders. At the national convention, just as Mary prepared to speak, the lights went out; the hall’s darkness swallowed her voice. The party she had helped found and promote with every fiber of her being had turned out the lights and decided to merge with the Democrats. Meanwhile, the Democrats abandoned much of the Populist platform except for the free-silver movement. Mary followed through campaigning for Democratic candidate William Jennings Bryan, but the Democrats lost the election. The Populist Party had been broken.

  A political creature, Mary spent the years after 1896 working as a journalist and lecturer, keeping her causes alive and a small income flowing. She left Kansas for New Yor
k, and she left her husband. With son Charley handling her bookings, she toured the nation, and people turned out in droves to hear her. Joseph Pulitzer hired her to write about politics for the New York World. She pulled no punches, clearly still angry at the Democrats who’d swallowed the Populist Party whole.

  Mary remained a fighting radical until the end of her days. She offered poor clients free legal advice. She drummed home the Populist message and spoke about peace, birth control, and women’s rights. She penned magazine articles. She put all four of her children through college. She supported politicians seeking change: Eugene Debs for the Socialist Party, Theodore Roosevelt in his third party run with the Progressive Party, and Democratic reformer Woodrow Wilson.

  Before her death in October 1933, Mary Lease saw many of the causes she’d fought to win for 25 years come to pass, including government regulation of the railroads. The graduated income tax became law in 1913, as well as the direct election of US senators. In 1920 the 19th Amendment granted women the right to vote. Mary Lease must have felt satisfaction, if not vindication. As she’d once said, “My work was not in vain…. The seeds we sowed out in Kansas did not fall on barren ground.”33

  Carry Nation

  “Hatchetation” Against the Devil’s Brew

  People, especially Easterners, easily turned Carry Nation into a caricature. Past the age of 50 (an age when “proper” females melted away into the wallpaper), Carry stood out. She crusaded in unfashionable dress while berating women for wearing dead birds on their hats, she preached, and she snatched cigarettes from the lips of surprised males. But what really panicked people about Carry Nation—especially saloon keepers—was the hatchet gleaming in her hands and the fearless glint in her eyes.