Loading summary
Transcript92 lines
- [00:00]
Toyota Customer
Dear Toyota, I need a word with you about your Crown family. I started driving one and suddenly I love traffic. No, really, rush hour is my happy place. Intentional wrong turns feel so right. I could sit in the comfort of my crown forever, basking in its elegance, feeling on top of the world. But you see how this is strange for me, right? Who gets excited about traffic? This is on you, Toyota.
- [00:24]
Holly Fry
And send the captivating Toyota Crown family Toyota. Let's go places.
- [00:30]
T-Mobile Representative
If you love your phone but not your carrier, just switch to T Mobile. You can keep your phone, keep your number and we'll help pay it off up to $800 per line. You can also use our savings calculator to compare our plans and streaming benefits against Verizon and AT&T. So switch and keep your phone, keep your number and keep more of your moolah. @t mobile.com up to 4 lines via virtual prepaid card.
- [00:52]
Holly Fry
Allow 15 days qualifying, unlock device, credit service port in 90 plus days with device and eligible carrier and timely redemption required. Card has no cash access and expires in six months.
- [01:01]
Jason Alexander
I'm Jason Alexander.
- [01:03]
Peter Tilden
And I'm Peter Tilden.
- [01:04]
Jason Alexander
And together our mission on the really.
- [01:06]
Peter Tilden
Know really podcast is to get the.
- [01:07]
Jason Alexander
True answers to life's baffling questions, like.
- [01:10]
Peter Tilden
Why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor, what's in the museum a failure, and does your dog truly love you? We have the answer.
- [01:16]
Jason Alexander
Go to reallynoreally.com and register to win.
- [01:19]
Peter Tilden
500, a guest spot on our podcast or a limited edition sign Jason Bobblehead the ReallyNoweely podcast.
- [01:25]
Jason Alexander
Follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [01:31]
Holly Fry
Welcome to Stuff youf Missed in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio. Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Fry.
- [01:45]
Tracy B. Wilson
And I'm Tracy B. Wilson.
- [01:47]
Holly Fry
I almost said I'm Holly Friday. I don't know what that's about. I literally had to pull myself back. But today we are talking about Mary Elizabeth Lees, and I will tell you up front, 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. All of that's true, and it makes her sound pretty cool, but it leaves out some really problematic parts of her story and ideology. Her story which also plays out during the Gilded Age, when, much like today, the difference between rich and poor in the U.S. 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 of politics and social structure in the US As a lot of the issues she spoke about and advocated for are things we are 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 sound bite from 1969. It was took me so by surprise.
- [03:16]
Tracy B. Wilson
So Mary Elizabeth Clyons was born September 11, 1853 in Ridgeway, Pennsylvania. Her father was Joseph P. Clyons and her mother was Mary Elizabeth Murray Clyons, and both of them were Irish 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.
- [03:55]
Holly Fry
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 serve as stand ins for military service. 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.
- [04:55]
Tracy B. Wilson
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 U.S. so Mary Elizabeth attended St. Elizabeth's Academy in Allegheny, New York, and graduated in 1868 at the age of 15. She taught in a school in Pennsylvania for two years before moving to Kansas in search of better wages for teachers. She had already shown an interest in the labor movement at that point. Even as a teen 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 St. Anne's Academy. And that was in the town of Osage Mission in Kansas.
- [05:45]
Holly Fry
Mary Elizabeth met a pharmacist clerk named Charles L. Lease. And the two of them married on January 30, 1873. 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.
- [06:50]
Tracy B. Wilson
Charles and Mary Elizabeth moved to Kingman County, Kansas, in early 1873. 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.
- [07:36]
Holly Fry
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 1874 in Texas, Charles found work at a pharmacy once again. This time he was working for Atchison's drugstore. 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 have pinned her law notes over her washtub so as she did her customers laundry, she could also study.
- [08:37]
Tracy B. Wilson
Atchison's drugstore provided the leases with more than an income for Charles. It was owned by Dr. Alexander Acheson, and he and his wife Sarah became a significant influence on Mary Elizabeth. Sarah Acheson 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.
- [09:20]
Holly Fry
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 1880, Mary and Charles also had a second child, Evelyn, and then a third child in 1883, 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 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.
- [10:23]
Tracy B. Wilson
After they moved back to Kingman county, the leases had a son named Ben Hur. Biographer Brook Spear Orr theorized that he was named after the character in the book which came out in 1880. Mary and Charles had two other babies during their time in Denison 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.
- [10:58]
Holly Fry
Mary became involved with the Knights of Labor, which had been founded in 1869 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 and the ways that banking and industrial companies actively harmed the nation's farmers with their policies.
- [11:46]
Tracy B. Wilson
We'll talk about another significant step in Mary's activism after we pause for a sponsor break.
- [11:55]
Jason Alexander
I'm Jason Alexander.
- [11:56]
Peter Tilden
And I'm Peter Tilden, and together on the really Know really podcast, our mission.
- [12:01]
Jason Alexander
Is to get the true answers to life's best baffling questions, like why they.
- [12:04]
Peter Tilden
Refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor.
- [12:08]
Jason Alexander
We got the answer.
- [12:09]
Peter Tilden
Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer, and you never know who's going to drop by.
- [12:27]
Jason Alexander
Mr. Bryan Cranston is with us.
- [12:29]
Peter Tilden
How are you? Hello, my friend Wayne Knight. About Jurassic Park.
- [12:32]
Jason Alexander
Wayne Knight, welcome to really no really, Sir. Bless you all.
- [12:36]
Peter Tilden
Hello Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging.
- [12:40]
Jason Alexander
Really?
- [12:41]
Holly Fry
That's the opening.
- [12:42]
Jason Alexander
Really? No really? Yeah, really? No really. Go to reallynoreally.com and register to win.
- [12:47]
Peter Tilden
500, a guest spot on our podcast or a limited edition sign Jason Bobblehead.
- [12:51]
Jason Alexander
It's called really no really? And you can find it on the iHeartRadio app on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast.
- [13:06]
Holly Fry
In 1888, Mary's involvement in activism kind of shifted into high gear when she attended the Union Labor Party 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 in line with her ideology. Lease actually ran for office as a member of the Union Labor Party. At the convention in 1888, 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.
- [13:57]
Tracy B. Wilson
After the election, Lease 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 Farmers 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 Farmers alliance wasn't a political party. It was a protest group and an agrarian movement.
- [14:44]
Holly Fry
As Mary Lisa's involvement in activism with the Farmers alliance was heating up, she gained a very powerful enemy in Kansas, Republican Senator John James Ingalls. Ingalls was anti suffrage, and he made statements about activists that truly sound exactly like conservative rhetoric in the 1960s. 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 unsexed of both sexes, human capons and epicenes. That sounds like he's like you hippies.
- [15:23]
Tracy B. Wilson
Yeah, maybe without the capons and epicense part. It does sound like he's talking about hippies.
- [15:32]
Holly Fry
He and his wife made a lot of public comments about Mary Leese being unladylike 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 Ingalls 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 exam in Kansas in 1889. And at that point, she and another woman named Mary Merrill opened a law practice together.
- [16:24]
Tracy B. Wilson
During the 1890 election cycle, Mary campaigned hard. She made more than 160 speeches. Ingalls was up for reelection, and she and the Farmers alliance were very 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 Ingalls 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.
- [17:19]
Holly Fry
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 US 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 oppressors. We fought England for our liberty and put chains on 4 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 in robes and honesty in rags. The political parties lie to us and the political speakers mislead us.
- [18:41]
Tracy B. Wilson
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 overproduced 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 10,000 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.
- [19:39]
Holly Fry
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.
- [20:01]
Tracy B. Wilson
Mary's rhetoric in 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 Farmers alliance picnic that was held in August of 1890 that described an estimated 10,000 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.
- [20:36]
Holly Fry
Yeah, I ran across that after I had seen several instances of people talking about the crowd she drew and saying, like, there were instances where 10,000 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 1892, the Farmers alliance, which had realized that their political influence would always be limited if they couldn't act, 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 1892, 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.
- [21:34]
Tracy B. Wilson
In 1893, 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.
- [22:16]
Holly Fry
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 specialty schools. She ran into problems in working with Kansas Governor Lorenzo Lewelling, who had actually been the one that appointed her to that job. The two of them butted 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 Lis 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.
- [23:27]
Tracy B. Wilson
Llewellyn grew so irritated and frustrated with Mary and her furious pronouncements about his politics that he tried to have her removed 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. Llewelling's office even circulated rumors that she and presidential candidate Weaver had an affair on the campaign trail, and lease 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.
- [24:10]
Holly Fry
Yeah, there were a lot of other allegations in the midst of all of that mudslinging, 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 tarnished the party's reputation. This in turn led to poor support for the party in the 1894 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.
- [25:01]
Tracy B. Wilson
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.
- [25:19]
Jason Alexander
I'm Jason Alexander.
- [25:20]
Peter Tilden
And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the really no really podcast.
- [25:24]
Jason Alexander
Our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions, like why.
- [25:28]
Peter Tilden
They refused to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor.
- [25:32]
Jason Alexander
We got the answer.
- [25:33]
Peter Tilden
Will space junk block your cell signal? The the astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's gonna drop by.
- [25:51]
Jason Alexander
Mr. Bryan Cranston is with us.
- [25:52]
Peter Tilden
How are you?
- [25:53]
Jason Alexander
Hello.
- [25:53]
Peter Tilden
My friend Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park.
- [25:56]
Jason Alexander
Wayne Knight, welcome to really no really, sir. Bless you all.
- [25:59]
Peter Tilden
Hello Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging.
- [26:04]
Jason Alexander
Really? That's the opening really? No really? Yeah, really no really. Go to reallynoreally.com and register to win.
- [26:11]
Peter Tilden
$500 a guest spot on our podcast or a limited edition sign Jason Bobblehead.
- [26:15]
Jason Alexander
It's called really no really and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [26:30]
Holly Fry
In 1895, Mary published a book titled the Problem of Civilization Solved. Just pretty bold, yeah. 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 pauperism 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 paupers. But Europe's system of dumping its pauperized class upon our shores has done more. An ever increasing swarm of dependents 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 begg 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.
- [27:42]
Tracy B. Wilson
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, deadbeats 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 and the 40 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, an inarticulate cry from the depths of their destitution and debasement is unheeded, if not unheard.
- [28:48]
Holly Fry
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 supreme 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 overpopulation. 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 debased degradation of the Negro and Oriental calls in thunder tones 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 50 million white families as planters on estates of 200 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 sink 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 arch of western supremacy.
- [31:42]
Tracy B. Wilson
In 1896, Lise 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 Mrs. Mary Elizabeth Lease has arrived in this city and that she is to address public audiences on behalf of Mr. Bryan and the 53 cent silver standard that Bryan was William Jennings Bryan. And while Mary certainly didn't want to join the Democratic party, she did support Bryan in regards to his stance on establishing a silver standard, as famously stated in his cross of gold speech at the democratic convention in 1896. 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.
- [33:01]
Holly Fry
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 Marion Charles had defaulted on in Kansas, having spoken with someone at the Jarvis Conklin Mortgage Trust Company. And the Times 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.
- [34:16]
Tracy B. Wilson
When Mary moved to New York with the children in 1896, 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 that a 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 seem to have maintained a pretty cordial relationship, although they did divorce in 1902.
- [35:07]
Holly Fry
In 1912, 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 1914, 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.
- [36:01]
Tracy B. Wilson
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 1930, when she moved to Long Eddy, New York, on the Delaware River.
- [36:21]
Holly Fry
Mary Elizabeth Lease died on October 29, 1933, in Calico, New York, from complications of a leg infection. She was 80 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, banks, 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.
- [37:01]
Tracy B. Wilson
Right?
- [37:02]
Holly Fry
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 Kitty Talk. This is from our listener Kelsey, and it's a short email, but it is adorable, Kelsey writes. Just dropping a line to wish you a merry, 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 in bleak midwinter and all through the year. Jack is an adorable orange creamsicle baby. Oh his little feets. He's so cute. He's so cute. And I also want to give a shout out to Katherine, who shared her adorable orange tabby on Twitter and is pretty insistent that he is not one of the smart ones. No, 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@historypodcastheartradio.com you can also subscribe to the podcast on the iHeartRadio app or anywhere it is that you listen to your favorite shows.
- [38:39]
Tracy B. Wilson
Stuff youf Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio from more podcasts from iHeartRadio. Visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
- [38:55]
Jason Alexander
I'm Jason Alexander.
- [38:56]
Peter Tilden
And I'm Peter Tilden, and together our mission on the really Know really podcast.
- [39:00]
Jason Alexander
Is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions, like why the bathroom.
- [39:05]
Peter Tilden
Door doesn't go all the way to the floor, what's in the museum of failure, and does your dog truly love you? We have the answer.
- [39:10]
Jason Alexander
Go to reallynoreally.com and register to win.
- [39:13]
Peter Tilden
500 a guest spot on our podcast or a limited edition sign. Jason Bobblehead the Really Noely Podcast.
- [39:18]
Jason Alexander
Follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.