Mary Lease and the Farmers Alliance, by Arieh Sclar

Madame President and Fellow Citizens:

Do you wonder the women are joining the Alliance? I wonder if there is a woman in all this broad land who can afford to stay out of the Alliance. Our loyal, white-ribbon women should be heart and hand in this Farmers' Alliance movement, for the men whom we have sent to represent us are the only men in the councils of this nation who have not been elected on a liquor platform; and I want to say here, with exultant pride, that the five farmer Congressmen and the United States Senator we have sent up from Kansas—the liquor traffic, Wall Street, “nor the gates of hell shall not prevail against them”…It would sound boastful were I to detail to you the active, earnest part the Kansas women took in the recent campaign.

- Mary Elizabeth Lease, speech to the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (1890)

1. What campaign does Lease refer to in her speech? Explain its importance to American politics during the Gilded Age.

2. From the speech, is it clear who Lease would have supported in the 1896 presidential election? Explain your answer.

3. What is the tone of Lease’s speech? Would Lease have been satisfied with the direction of the farmer’s movement from 1890-1897? Provide two specific examples as evidence to your answer.