THE PEOPLE'S PARTY LAUNCHED 135 



Mrs. Lease, who is reported to have made 160 

 speeches in the summer and autumn of 1890, was a 

 curiosity in American politics. Of Irish birth and 

 New York upbringing, she went to Kansas and, be- 

 fore she was twenty years old, married Charles L. 

 Lease. Twelve years later she was admitted to the 

 bar. At the time of the campaign of 1890 she was 

 a tall, mannish-looking, but not unattractive wom- 

 an of thirty-seven years, the mother of four chil- 

 dren. She was characterized by her friends as re- 

 fined, magnetic, and witty; by her enemies of the 

 Republican party as a hard, unlovely shrew. The 

 hostile press made the most of popular prejudice 

 against a woman stump speaker and attempted by 

 ridicule and invective to drive her from the stage. 

 But Mrs. Lease continued to talk. She it was who 

 told the Kansas farmers that what they needed was 

 to "raise less corn and more HELL!" 



Wall Street owns the country [she proclaimed]. 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. . . . Money rules, 

 and our Vice-President is a London banker. Our laws 

 are the output of a system that clothes rascals in robes 

 and honesty in rags. The parties lie to us, and the 

 political speakers mislead us. We were told two years 

 ago to go to work and raise a big crop and that was all 



