Lease, Mary Elizabeth (1853-1933), was an American orator and reformer. She helped establish the Populist Party, a national political party (see Populism ).
Lease was born on Sept. 11, 1853, in Ridgway, Pennsylvania. She moved to Kansas in 1870 and became active in the Farmers’ Alliance movement there. Debt-ridden Midwestern farmers established the movement to protest against bank and railroad monopolies, and Lease forcefully voiced their complaints. In 1891 and 1892, she worked with the Farmers’ Alliance, the Knights of Labor, and other groups to form the Populist Party. Lease seconded the nomination of James B. Weaver for president at the party’s nominating convention in 1892, and Weaver became the Populist presidential candidate that year. Lease urged such Populist programs as government ownership of railroads and free coinage of silver (see Free silver ).
Lease left the Populist Party in 1896 because it supported William Jennings Bryan, the Democratic candidate for president. She continued to work for women’s suffrage (right to vote) and other reforms. Lease discussed her views on politics and reform in her book The Problem of Civilization Solved (1895). She died on Oct. 29, 1933.
