USA > Kansas > A standard history of Kansas and Kansans, Volume II > Part 60
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1. Resolved that we, the People's Convention of Cowley county, Kansas, assembled, are in favor of legislation in favor of the producing classes. We want government, national, state and county so administered that the producing classes shall have a just reward of their labor.
2. We are opposed to all trusts, especially the Winfield office trust.
3. We are unalterably opposed to ring domination in the selection of candidates for public office, or any other means by which the masses are
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ignored, and the dictates of corrupt schemers are forced upon the people in the guise of party loyalty.
4. We are in favor of legislation to reduce the salaries of county officers to a figure commensurate with any other job of equal respon- sibility.
5. We regard with pleasure the organization over the state, of the Farmer's Alliance.
6. We commend postmaster-general Wannamaker for his efforts to secure cheap telegraph facilities.
In the November election the People's ticket snowed the ring poli- ticians hopelessly under. The Winfield Courier, the Republican organ, poked its head out from under the debris and made the following observa- tions :
It was known that the Farmer's Alliance was a growing organization and would in all probability cut some figure in the result. But the unanimity with which it supported the People's ticket was not looked for. The cause of the "disturbance" is plainly shown by reference to the table of returns. In every locality where the Alliance was strong, the People's ticket had large majorities, and in every township where there was no Alliance, the usual vote was cast. The Alliance for this year at least has been handled as a very compact and orderly political machine. Whether this is to continue as its policy is not known.
The Courier did not have to wait long to find out. As quick as the results in Cowley County were known, inquiries came from all over the state to learn about the People's Party. "The way they did it in Cowley County," was on the lips of every reformer.
The Alliance at this time had very little in its creed that had not been propounded and expounded by the Greenbackers. The most complete set of resolutions found in print were those of the Jefferson County Alliance. This document contained the usual land, labor, tax, monetary and coinage planks. It also demanded a graduated income tax, and stretched the U. S. Senator election plank to include all national officers. The repeal of all laws not bearing equally upon capital and labor was demanded, the strict enforcement of all laws, the removal of unjust technicalities and discriminations, revision of tariff schedules to lay the heaviest burdens on luxuries, an equalization of all taxation to compel all classes to bear their just amount of the burdens of government, legislation to break up monopolies which operate to break up trade. Prohibition was favored, and education by a well regulated system of free schools. One of the planks was copied verbatim into the platform of the National Alliance which met at St. Louis the next December. It read :
Resolved that we demand the abolition of the national banks, the substitution of legal tender treasury notes in lieu of bank notes, issued in sufficient volume to do the business of the country on a cash system ; regulating the amount needed on a per capita basis, as the business inter- ests of the country expand, and that all money issued by the government shall be legal tender in payment of all debts both public and private.
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The Jefferson County Alliance also had a plank providing for the immediate removal of the tariff from any article which had been made the object of a combine, in order to establish a monopoly on such article and raise the price. According to this plan, as soon as a monopoly was formed on any article, the article went on the free list.
The National Alliances, both Northern and Southern met in St. Louis, December 3, 1889, and effected an organization with the Knights of Labor and a number of other farmers' and wage-workers' organizations. The platform adopted was of little importance, being a rehash of the Kansas local platforms, and not covering the situation as thoroughly as the resolutions of the Jefferson County Alliance. But the report of the committee on the money question was important, and was the basis of the sub-treasury plan as advocated by the Alliance and by the People's Party from that date until the movement was absorbed in bi-metalism in 1896. After calling attention to the needs of the farmers for a monetary system which would make them independent of the money sharks and enable them to hold their products for a fair price and market them gradually as demand should require instead of being compelled to market them as soon as harvested at a low figure fixed by those who control the currency of the country, in which case both producer and consumer is robbed, the committee recommended that the United States modify its present financial system.
1. So as to allow the free and unlimited coinage of silver, or the issue of silver certificates against an unlimited deposit of bullion.
2. That the system of using certain banks as United States deposi- tories be abolished, and in place of said system, establish in every county in each of the states that offers for sale during one year $500,000 worth of farm products,-ineluding wheat, corn, oats, barley, rye, rice, tobacco, cotton, wool, and sugar, all together-a sub-treasury office, which shall have in connection with it such warehouses or elevators as are necessary for careful storing and preserving such agricultural products as are offered for storage ; and it should be the duty of such sub-treasury depart- ment to receive such agricultural products as are offered for storage, and make a careful examination of such prodnets, and class the same as to quality, and give a certificate of deposit showing the amount and quality, and that United States legal tender paper money equal to eighty percent of the local current value of the products has been advanced on the same. on interest at the rate of one percent per annum, on condition that the owner, or such person as he may anthorize will redeem the agricultural prodnet within twelve months of the date of the certificate, or the trustee will sell the same at public anction to the highest bidder for the purpose of satisfying the debt.
Besides the one percent interest, the sub-treasurer should be allowed to charge a trifle for handling and storage, and a reasonable amount for insurance, but the premises necessary for conducting the business should be secured by the various counties donating the land, and the general government building the very best modern buildings, fire-proof and sub- stantial. With this method in vogue the farmer, when his produce was harvested, would place it in storage where it would be perfectly safe, and he would secure four-fifths of its value to supply his pressing neces- sity for money, at one percent per annum. Ile would negotiate and sell his warehouse or elevator certificates whenever the current price suited
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him, receiving from the person to whom he sold only the difference between the price agreed upon and the amount paid by the sub-treasurer. When, however, these storage certificates reached the hand of the miller, or factory or other consumer, he, to get the produet would have to return the money advanced together with the interest on the same and the storage and insurance charged on the product.
This is no new or untried seheme; it is safe and conservative; it harmonizes and carries out the system already in vogue on a really safer plan, because the produets of the country, that must be consumed every year, are really the very best security in the world, and with more justice to society at large.
For a precedent as to the practicability of the plan, the committee refers us to the action of the French Government, which saved the country from ruin in 1848 by adopting this very system. A terrible panic was in progress which threatened the existence of the nation. The gov- ernment opened up storehouses for the reception of all kinds of goods and produce. Money was put into circulation, business began to thrive and in two months a normal condition had been restored.
This sub-treasury was the most important thing in the Populist doctrine which had not been advanced by other Third Parties to any great extent.
A state meeting of the Alliance met at Newton, December 16, but nothing of importance in a political way was done. Shortly after the first of the year President Clover called a meeting of the presidents of the County Alliances to assemble in Topeka, March 25, 1890. In the meantime a convention was held at Emporia, March 5, at which the fol- lowing State organizations were represented: The Farmers' Alliance, the Farmers' Mutual Benefit Association, the Industrial Union, the Grange, and the Knights of Labor. They formed themselves into the Farmers' Alliance and Industrial Union, and adopted a set of resolutions which were essentially the same as those of the Jefferson County and Cowley County organizations, with the following additions: Free sugar was asked for (with a bounty to home producers equal to the present tariff). The sub-treasury plan was heartily endorsed, and any further extension of eredit to the railroads was opposed as well as the voting of bonds to railroads. Legislation against usurious interest was demanded, also the State-publication of school text-books and the adoption of the Australian ballot system. A plan was drawn up to have lectures pre- pared upon each one of the entire set of resolutions. These lectures were used upon the platform, in the reform press, and printed in pamphlet form for distribution.
The county presidents met pursuant to call on March 25. They drew up a whole volume of resolutions, thoroughly canvassing the economie conditions in every detail. The fact that Kansas corn was stacked along the railroad tracks like cordwood was ealled to the attention of Congress, and a law to allow free trade with Mexico was demanded, especially pro- testing against the tariff on silver ore, which provoked retaliatory meas- ures on the part of the Mexican government against Kansas meat and farm produce. Congress was asked to put some of the Government
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money into circulation to help the laborers, suggesting the building of a double track, trans-continental railroad.
A petition was drawn up to be circulated among Alliance people asking Congress to pass a law authorizing the loaning of money to farm- ers on their land at 4 per cent per annum. A lecture bureau was pro- vided for to carry the economie doctrines to the people, resolutions were passed against Senator John J. Ingalls, who had by this time ceased to be a representative of the people, and the following demands were made :
A legislative enactment apportioning the shrinkage of farm values that are under mortgage obligations, by reason of the circulating medium or other unjust legislation, between the mortgagor and the mortgagee, according to their respective interest, at the time the mortgage was drawn. The election of United States Senators and of railroad com- missioners by direct vote of the people. That Congress appoint a committee to investigate the original bill relating to national bonds, for the purpose of ascertaining whether the word "for" was erased and the word "after" substituted making the bonds payable with the premium of 28 to 30 percent. A constitutional amendment to be sub- mitted to the people of Kansas allowing legislative enactment exempt- ing homesteads occupied by their owners from taxation in whole or in part, and that a cumulative system of taxation be levied upon lands held for speculative purposes by non-residents, aliens, or corporations in proportion to increase of valuation.
The following resolution suggestive of political action was passed :
Resolved that we will no longer divide on party lines, and will only cast our votes for candidates of the people, by the people and for the people.
This conclusion was arrived at after reviewing the failure of the Legislature to pass laws for the relief of the farmers and laboring people, and the laws they passed in direct opposition to the interests of these two classes.
The cumulative land tax mentioned in the resolutions savored of Henry George. It provided for the lowest possible rate on the first $1,000 of property, after which one-tenth of a per cent of the tax on original $1,000 should be added for each thousand up to $10,000. In this way the second thousand would be taxed at 1.1 times the original, the third at one and one-fifth, the fourth at one and three-tenths, and so on. On values exceeding $10,000 and up to $100,000, one-tenth should be added to each succeeding $10,000, based on the tax assessed on the original $10,000. This went on in the same manner, basing the taxes of each succeeding $100,000 on the original $100,000 and adding a tenth.
The graduated income tax was on the same plan. 'The income tax was to get at the holder of mortgages and bonds to make him bear liis part of the burdens of government and the land tax was calculated to make it unprofitable to hold land for speculation which people needed for homes and to do away with the land capitalist getting rich on the labor of the people who were building up the country and making his land valuable.
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IX
ORGANIZATION OF STATE PEOPLE'S PARTY
The convention which formed the People's Party of Kansas was called to order in Topeka, June 12, 1890, by John F. Willits, of Jefferson County, who was probably in a large measure responsible for the Jeffer- son County Alliance platform. It was a meeting for all those who had decided to fall away from the old parties and was attended by forty-one delegates of the Farmers' Alliance and Industrial Union, ten of the Mutual Benefit Association, and seven Patrons of Husbandry, twenty- eight Knights of Labor, and four from the Single Tax clubs.
A resolution to place a full state and congressional ticket in the field was passed unanimously, and the name of the People's Party was offi- cially adopted. The St. Louis platform of December, 1889, was taken as the basis of political principles. One man from each Congressional dis- trict made up the State Central Committee as follows: S. C. Rightmire, of Pottawatomie county; Z. T. Stevenson, of Cedar Junction; S. W. Chase, of Winfield; Charles Drake, Council Grove; G. W. King, Solomon City ; Joseph Darling, Norton; E. M. Black. Sterling. One of the leaders of this convention, of course, was B. H. Clover. Among the resolutions was one refusing to vote for any of their number who would accept a nomination from either of the old parties, one demanding the abrogation of all laws not bearing equally on capital and labor, and one demanding that all honorably discharged soldiers, their widows and orphans be pen- sioned, and that all pledges made to them by the Government be complied with as fully as in the case of bond-holders.
A nominating convention was called for August 13, and met pursuant to order in Representative Hall. The scorn of the Republican press changed to anger and righteous indignation that treason should be hatched in such a sacred place as the hall in which the people's rights were usually bartered away. An avalanche of abuse and criticism descended from the seats of the high and mighty upon this bunch of moss backed reformers as they were termed. However, a platform which covered the points already repeated in former meetings, was adopted and a State ticket nominated as follows: For Chief Justice, W. F. Right- mire; Governor, John F. Willits; Lieutenant Governor, A. C. Shinn; Secretary of State, R. S. Osborne; Treasurer, W. H. Biddle; Attorney General, J. N. Ives, State Superintendent of Public Instruction, Miss Fannie McCormick; State Anditor, Rev. B. F. Foster (colored). A motion to make Judge William A. Peffer the candidate for United States Senator was lost. The nominees for Congress were, in the order of the districts, as follows: L. C. Clark, A. F. Allen, Benj. H. Clover, J G. Otis, John Davis, William Baker, and Jerry A. Simpson.
Headquarters for the People's Party were opened in Topeka, in the Crawford Building, at Fifth and Jackson streets. Willits was sneceeded as chairman by S. W. Chase. Mr. Randolph, of Lyon, became secretary, and the war was on.
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THE CRUSADE OF 1890
The upheaval that took place in Kansas in the summer and fall of 1890, can hardly be diagnosed as a political campaign. 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. For Mary E. Lease. Jerry Simpson, Anna L. Diggs, S. N.
MRS. MARY ELIZABETH LEASE
Į Copy by Willard of Portrait in Library of Kansas State Historical Society ]
Wood, Judge W. A. Peffer, Fred Close. Ralph Beaumont, Cyrus Corning. Prof. Vincent, JJudge Rightmire, and a half a hundred others who lectured up and down the land, were not the only people who could talk on the issues of the day. The farmers, the country merchants, the cattle-herders, they of the long chin-whiskers, and they of the broad- brimmed hats and heavy boots, had also heard the word and could preach the gospel of Populism. The dragon's teeth were sprouting in every nook and corner of the State. Women with skins tanned to parch- ment by the hot winds. with bony hands of toil and elad in faded calico,
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could talk in meeting, and could talk right straight to the point. Six years later William Allen White, in his famous "What's the matter with Kansas?" reviled these people for pretending to know anything, seeing that they didn't wear white collars. But these people were not roughnecks or boors or even escaped lunatics. Many of them were as well educated in their youth as Mr. White; and, anyway, the Emporia sage neglected to state what mysterious power lurks in the bosom of a white shirt that it is able to confer intellect upon its wearer.
The meetings were at first held in school-houses. Here the railroads, the trusts, the questions of finance, mortgages, and usury were discussed till long after midnight. Over and over the people heard these things, but they never heard them enough. The meetings grew bigger and bigger, till no buildings could be found to house the crowds which drove for miles and miles to hear their orators who were fast gaining national fame. All-day picnics were held and people came by the thousands, some of the crowds being reported as ten, twenty, and twenty-five thousand, who had come to hear the tidings of great joy. They came charged with Populism, and the speakers had merely to turn on the current to produce the electric display of enthusiasmn. Everybody took part in these gather- ings. The speaking was preceded by a parade with banners on which mottoes and legends were inscribed. There were characterizations, playlets, brass bands, songs and cheers. Songs were one of the charac- teristics of Populism. Everybody that wasn't an orator was a poet, and there was no dearth of musicians to adapt a tune, or of women to sing. Many of the songs were written to well known tunes. These songs were gathered into books of which tens of thousands were sold. Another characteristic of the times was the large number of women who took part. The Alliance received the women to membership, and the Populist party tried to give them suffrage, and many of them felt that it was the only party they could call their own. Mrs. Lease, of course, was the leader, with Mrs. Annie L. Diggs a close second. Mrs. Diggs did not make so much noise, but the work which she did was just as able and effective. Other lecturers were Helen Ganger and Mrs. Farmer Smith.
Mrs. Mary Elizabeth Lease, erroneously called Mary Ellen Lease, was born in county Monaghan, in the northern part of Ireland, instead of in Ridgeway, Pennsylvania, where her parents settled when she was a child. She was educated in New York State, and came to Kansas, where she was married at the Osage Mission to Charles L. Lease, January 30, 1873. She lacked from January to September 11, of being twenty years of age at that time. Twelve years later, she was admitted to the bar. In 1888 she made her first public speech in the Union Labor Convention. She went on with the people's work in the Alliances until 1890, when she was given a place in the Populist lecture bureau, and was more in demand than any other speaker. She made 160 speeches during the summer and fall, to immense audiences. As is usual with a woman who takes up an issue, she was bitterly assailed, reviled and ridiculed by the opposition. The Republican press made no attempt to meet her arguments; it confined its efforts to publishing untruths about her
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personality. Mrs. Lease was at that time a tall, slender, good-looking woman of thirty-seven years. She lived in Wichita with her husband and four children. She was refined and magnetic, and her ready wit took care of her under all circumstances. She had a short cut to most objective points, and her rough-hewed thrusts, while carrying the truth home with foree, laid her open to attacks from her enemies. She pointed from the starving thousands of Chicago to the useless eorn piled high along the railroad tracks, in the cribs and in stacks on the ground, and being burned for fuel, and wishing to impress the people with the central fact that this condition existed because they allowed it to-because they had been spending their time raising corn and paying no attention to what kind of laws were being made, and what was being done at legis- lative halls, Mrs. Lease said: "What you farmers need to do is to raise less corn and more HELL."
This was a joyful sound in the ears of the debt-ridden multitudes, who had broken their backs plowing and hoeing only to be corn-poor. It was the rallying ery of revolution. It was repeated over and over again in all its possible variations at the school-house meetings all over Kansas. Of course Mrs. Lease was bitterly attacked for such a state- ment by the Republicans. William Allen White mentions it in his article on "What's the Matter with Kansas." But even Mr. White will have to admit that, according to all the information we have on the subjeet, the produet recommended by "The Lady Orator of the West" is superior to corn for heating purposes.
In a graphie manner Mrs. Lease would pieture accumulated wealth on one hand and the 90,000 working people living out of the garbage cans in Chicago. She flayed Senator Ingalls to the queen's taste as a "dishonest, soulless, shameless charlatan." The following is the sub- stance of one of her speeches:
This is a nation of inconsistencies. The Puritans fleeing from op- pression beeame in turn oppressors. We fought England for our liberty and put ehains on four millions of blacks. We wiped out slavery and by 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 elothes 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, that was all we needed. 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 eame of it? Eight-cent corn, ten-cent oats. two-cent beef and no price at all for butter and eggs -that's what eame of it. Then the politicians said we suffered from over-production. Over-production, when 10,000 little children, so statis- tics tell us. starve to death every year in the United States, and over 100,000 shop-girls in New York are forced to sell their virtue for the bread their niggardly wages deny them. Tariff is not the paramount
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question. The main question is the money question. John J. Ingalls never smelled gunpowder in all his cowardly life. His war record is confined to the court-marshalling of a chicken thief. Kansas suffers from two great robbers, the Santa Fe Railroad and the loan companies. The common people are robbed to enrich their masters. There are 30,000 millionaires in the United States. Go home and figure out how many paupers you must have to make one millionaire with the circula- tion only $10 per capita. There are thirty men in the United States whose aggregate wealth is over one and one-half billion dollars. There are half a million men looking for work. There are 60,000 soldiers of the Union in poor houses, but no bondholders. It would have been better if Congress had voted pensions to those 60,000 paupers who wore the blue and dyed it red with their blood in the country's defense than to have voted to make the banker's bonds non-taxable, and payable, interest and principal, in gold. We want money, land and transporta- tion. We want the abolition of the National Banks, and we want the power to make loans direet from the Government. We want the accursed foreclosure system wiped out. Land equal to a tract thirty miles wide and ninety miles long has been foreclosed and bought in by loan com- panies of Kansas in a year. We will stand by our homes and stay by our firesides 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, let the blood-hounds of money who have dogged us thus far beware.
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