The Mankato free press. [volume] (Mankato, Blue Earth County, Minn.) 1879-1924, 1892-10-28
MRS. LEASES ADDRESS.
This Eloquent Lady Pounds The Old
Parties Impartially.

PaftleS ImpafulalIy.
The opera house was filled to doors
Tuesday night by an audience COM
posed mainly of Republicans and
Democrats, with goodly sprinkling
of ladies. The exercises began prompt
ly at eight o'clock, when Mrs. S. q.
Stevens was introduced and read an
interesting article from manuscript,
in which she dealt with the public
school system. She said that the flag
should be raised from every school
house. The public schools are Ameri-
canizing and are most Democratic,
She urged that the schools and espe-
cially the selection of teachers and
officers be kept out of politics.
A. M. Morrison then introduced
Mrs. Mary e. Lease, saying that the
Jay Gould press had conveyed the
startling information that she had
deserted the Peoples party and Joined
the Republicans. She is here and
will tell US all about it. l introduce
the Queen Mary of the reform move
ment.
Mrs. Lease spoke for an hour and a
half in an eloquent manner and was
roundly applauded by the Democrats
when she hit the Republicans, and
visa versa. She possesses powerful
voice, a splendid flow of language, land
an impressive manner, and has no diff
ficulty in holding the closest atten-
tion of her audiences. The points
which she made were those which all
speakers of her party use, playing up
on discomfort. \ She made not one
single reference to Donnelly, strange
as that may seem to some. She open
ed by saying that ga couch of sorrow
makes all the world akin" Tonight,
in the White House at Washington an
anguished husband and sorrowing
children are gathered around the bier
of loved one. Believing that she
who lies dead filled her post well,
while she died too soon for those who
loved her, it was not to soon for her
entrance into the Elysian fields OF
happiness and rest.
We are living in an age of ideas; the
age of force is past.
A few years ago woman speaker,
politician, lawyer or doctor was I'M
known, but they are now frequent.
There are one hundred and twenty
six legal firms composed of wo-
men, and every town has its woman
M. d. who can kill or cure as well as
man M. d. Our schools should be out
of politics and when a community has
successful woman county superln-
tendent she should be sent back to
the Office again and again. Men have
been considering women out Of place
in politics. Twenty-Five years ago we
women came from the east with our
husbands and through privations and
struggles helped them secure homes.
We now see our homes being lost by
the most Infamous system of mortgage
foreclosure that ever disgraced a ma
tion from the earliest civilization
down to the present. We are now the
greatest tenant farming nation on
the face of the earth. 1t is time the
women took hand in the matter.
We are now in the midst of politi-
cal and social upheavel, the greatest
ever known in the history of the ma
tion. No such uprising of the common
people ever occurred. The late war
was for the emancipation of chattel
slavery, in which 100000 black peo-
pie were involved. Today we are
fighting for the emancipation of 49,
100000 people, black and white, from
industrial slavery, for the preserva-
tion of our blood bought liberties.
Blind indeed must he be who cannot
read the handwriting on the wall of
nations, for both political parties, the
words Weighed in the balance and
found wanting"
The new party represents the prin-
ciples of Jeffersonian simplicity and
the gloriousness of Lincoln. For
thirty years stock jobbers, land pirates,
conspirators, ETC., have knocked at
the door of Congress and all that they
have asked has been granted, while
we find the land strewn with wrecks
of failures and unrequited toll There
are 10000 men in possession of one
half of the accumulated wealth of
this nation. Trusts and combines
control every necessity of life. Trade
and commerce lies stagnant because
of the ever decreasing volume of mon
ey. You men are bowling down to
party idolatry, you have collars on
your neck stamped with some mans
name. You send men to congress
whom the old prophets would send to
hell.
During the gigantic transportation
$780, 900 square miles of land has been
given away in thirty years in land
grants. Way back in childhood's
day we used to sing that Unce Sam