Mary E. Lease, The Money Question, (1892)

Mary E. Lease was an activist who often made speeches in support of Populism. Living at a time when men, for the most part, dominated, put Lease fairly low on the totem pole of power in society. Thus, with the emergence of the Populist movement, she jumped at the opportunity to fight for change as well as for rights that she believed she deserved. In her speech, “The Money Question,” she criticized the nation as being inconsistent. More importantly, she provided an insight into how the economy during the industrial 1890’s was operating and what it meant to the more agricultural parts of the country. It was a speech meant to motivate farmers, and other Populist movement supporters, and open their eyes to the fact that change must be sought with the way the nation was functioning at the time. In it she said, “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.” With statements like these, she argued that money had taken control of the country, which put the common people, like farmers, on the back burner. The nation was beginning to revolve around monopolies and Wall Street, which led to “the people” being mistreated, and a faulty society of the overly rich and the desperately poor. She likens farmers, who worked strenuously to grow crops, to slaves because they were cheated out of the money they deserved by a system where they had relatively no say on how much they could sell their crops for. Ultimately, it seems as though the Gilded Age and industrialization brought much growth to parts of the East, but left the agriculture-based South struggling and underrepresented, thus the development of the Populist movement.