The Mankato free press. [volume] (Mankato, Blue Earth County, Minn.) 1879-1924, 1892-10-28
SHE WOULD UPSET AFFAIRS.

| ldSb July uHueT Uue guidance OF LIZ
Donnelly declared this country to b,
on the verge of moral, material ant
political ruin, and Tuesday night at
Opera house Mrs. Mary E. Lease, Of
Kansas, stood upon that verge an6
peered into the dark abyss and from
it's most remote recesses drew forth
the blacklist pictures that words car
paint, Mrs. Lease is good speaker
and is possessed of a fund of wit
which she used to amuse her audience
in the midst Of the horrors she pic
lures. Facts do not trouble her at al
when she wishes to make point, AND
she brushes,them aside as if they were
cobwebs To her mind all the legisla
tion enacted during the past twenty
five years is the result of a grand con
spiracy upon the part of few rich men
who have thus tramped upon the
rights of the people. Evidently the
speaker has very poor idea of the in.
teIligence of the American people, il
she thinks she can ever make
them believe such stuff. 1t cannot
be said that her remarks in regard to
the government were calculated to
have the best effect upon the young
and inspire within them respect not
only for our government, but for gov
eminent of every kind, for her entire
speech was TRADE against the gov
eminent and affairs as they exist to-
day, which she would tear down and
there she stopped. AS to what they
would substitute therefor she said
nothing. The only remedy she had
for evils she painted was free silver,
government ownership of railroads,
and the sub-treasury scheme. The
inference to be taken from her re-
marks was, that could these three
things be accomplished, the ills which
prey upon human life would disap-
pear, the millionaires would cease
from troubling, and universal pros
perity would abound. There was one
fatal defect in Mrs. Leases reasoning,
as there is in that of all the calamity
ties, in that she took no note of the
difference in the ability of men and
women, and the effect that a success
sion of crop failures may have upon
section of our country.
She declared the purpose of the PEG
pies party was to bring the govern
ment back to the princinles of Jeffer-
son and Lincoln. 1t is somewhat cur
ious that after some great man, who
has taken prominent part in the af-
fairs, dies and few years have passed,
we begin to hear that the government
has slipped away from the position it
occupied when he was alive. Jefferson
and Lincoln never stood upon the wild
schemes proposed by the Populists,
and would have dismissed their plat
form upon the first reading.
Talking upon the money question
she said there was not money enough
in the country to transact the bust
ness with and that the volu me was
constantly being contracted. Had she
taken pains to inform herself upon
this subject, she would have found
that instead of contracting, the vol
ume of our circulation was never as
large as it is today, and that there is
being added thereto between 5O,OOO,-
900 and S1OO,OOO,OOO annually.
The railway land grants came in for
her most severe attack, which she de-
clared was robbery of the peoples
inheritance. Now whatever position
the people may take upon that ques-
tion today, the land grant system was
Thought at that time to be the proper
course to pursue. Miles away from
the centers of civilization, those lands
were worthless, and the settler who
would have had the hardwood to have
settled upon them, would have passed
through a harder life than he has
at present. Today they are valuable
because they are brought, as it were,
at the very door Of the great mass of
consumers. Not one person who bowls
about land grants today would live in
the western country in which they are
situated, if the railroads which were
thus enabled to be built, were remov-
ed. If the land grant system was a
mistake it was the mistake of a peo-
pie, and not conspiracy to rob the
nation, as Mrs. Lease would have her
audience believe.
No one will deny but that there are
many ills which the people suffer,
which ought to be corrected. Some of
them can possibly be removed by leg
islation and that legislation will pro-
badly be forthcoming in the future as
it has in the past, when there is gen.
eral demand for it upon the part of
the people. But many of these ills
must be solved each man for himself,
and all the legislation that could be
placed upon our statute books would
not change his mental qualities, nor
serve to make his pathway less rough.