134 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE 



opinion, fastening upon the McKinley tariff as the 

 cause, manifested itself in a widespread desire to 

 punish the Republican party. 



The events of 1890 constituted not only a politi- 

 cal revolt but a social upheaval in the West. No- 

 where was the overturn more complete than in 

 Kansas. If the West in general was uneasy, Kan- 

 sas was in the throes of a mighty convulsion; it was 

 swept as by the combination of a tornado and a 

 prairie fire. As a sympathetic commentator of 

 later days puts it, "It was a religious revival, a 

 crusade, a pentecost of politics in which a tongue 

 of flame sat upon every man, and each spake as the 

 spirit gave him utterance." 1 All over the State, 

 meetings were held in schoolhouses, churches, and 

 public halls. Alliance picnics were all-day exposi- 

 tions of the doctrines of the People's Party. Up 

 and down the State, and from Kansas City to 

 Sharon Springs, Mary Elizabeth Lease, "Sockless" 

 Jerry Simpson, Anna L. Diggs, William A. Peffer. 

 Cyrus Corning, and twice a score more, were ia 

 constant demand for lectures, while lesser lights il- 

 lumined the dark places when the stars of the first 

 magnitude were scintillating elsewhere. 



1 Elizabeth N. Barr, The Populist Uprising, in William E. Con- 

 nelly's Standard History of Kansas and Kansans, vol. u, p. 1148. 



