Background
Mary Elizabeth Clyens was born in 1853 in Ridgway, Pennsylvania, United States of Irish parents - Joseph P. and Mary Elizabeth (Murray) Clyens. The family moved to Kansas, probably in 1870.
Mary Elizabeth Clyens was born in 1853 in Ridgway, Pennsylvania, United States of Irish parents - Joseph P. and Mary Elizabeth (Murray) Clyens. The family moved to Kansas, probably in 1870.
She was educated in Allegany County, New York.
In 1885 Lease was admitted to the bar and entered public life.
In 1888 she spoke before the state convention of the Union Labor party and was the party's candidate for county office long before women were eligible to vote. Lease was an effective campaigner for the candidates of the Farmers' Alliance-People's party during the 1890 election, making over 160 speeches. During the campaign she was often mistakenly called Mary Ellen, and her enemies dubbed her "Mary Yellin. "
Lease was active in the presidential campaign of 1892, accompanying Populist candidate James Baird Weaver on a disastrous tour of the South. In Minnesota and Nevada she made eight speeches a day.
When the Populists gained control of the administration of Kansas, she was named president of the State Board of Charities in 1893. She feuded with the governor and was removed from office but was reinstated by the Kansas Supreme Court.
In 1896 Lease was a leader of the antifusion faction in the Populist party, which fought a merger with the Democrats, who supported the presidential candidacy of William Jennings Bryan. She lost the fight at the national convention but immediately joined the staff of the New York World to campaign against the Democratic candidate.
Lease turned to writing articles and poetry for magazines and published a book, The Problem of Civilization Solved. She continued to champion reform-woman's suffrage, prohibition, evolution, and birth control. She supported Theodore Roosevelt's presidential campaign.
She retired from public life in 1921. Ten years later she bought a farm in Sullivan County, New York, where she died in 1933.
In 1888, she began to work for the Union Labor Party, a forerunner of the People's party in Kansas. From there she became involved in the movement that would become the Populist Party. By 1896, Lease had become alienated from the Populist Party.
She was a zealous agitator for equality and opportunity and spoke on behalf of the Irish National League with a flaming tirade on the subject of "Ireland and Irishmen. " She was also involved in African American suffrage. Lease supported Kansas farmers against high mortgage interest and railroad rates.
Quotations:
"What you farmers need to do is raise less corn and more Hell. "
"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. Our laws are the output of a system which clothes rascals in robes and honesty in rags. "
She married Charles L. Lease, a pharmacist, in 1873. The couple soon moved to Texas, where three of their four children were born. Returning to Kansas in the early 1880s, the family settled in Wichita. She divorced her husband in 1902.