People's Pilot, Volume 2, Number 27, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 December 1892 — MARY E. LEASE. [ARTICLE]

MARY E. LEASE.

A Grave Injustice la Using Perpetrated in the Treatment Accorded Her From Certain Quarters. In the circulation of the scandalously unfair rumors and reports concerning the supposed treachery of Mra Mary E. Lease to the people’s cause, a grave and cruel injustice is being perpetrated against a patriotic stateswoman and true populist, whose only crime seems to have been that she refused to crucify Truth between the thieves Fusion and Policy. These rumors and reports seem to be founded upon two conditions precedent: First, an inability to properly distinguish between the wheat and the chaff—the true and the false; second, tho state of feeling which must necessarily result from suoh a “covenant with death and league with hell” os an alliance between the people's and the democratic parties Let us briefly examine and review the facts in the case. There are two distinct stumbling blocks or causes of offense, the improper blending together of which is responsible for much of the misapprehension that seems to exist First—There was a very short Associated Press item, purporting to give an outline of an interview with Mrs. Lease, in which was promulgated the silly lie that because of tho reception given to Gen. Weaver in Georgia and the south generally, Mrs. Lease had advised the populists of Kansas to vote for Harrison rather than Weaver, for fear of assisting Cleveland by the latter course. Of course every well informed populist knew that Mra Lease had given no Buch advice, but that she advocated the destruction of both the old parties. This lie she promptly denied in the following telegram, which was sent broadcast over the northwest: Mount plkahant. la.. Oot. 17.—The special giving tho news to the press In regard to an interview In which I am reported to have advised the populists "to vote for Harrison," or that "a vote for Weaver was a vote for Cleveland," is unqualifiedly false I would oonslder it a public calamity for either Harrison or Cleveland to be elected. Mas. M. It Lhasa Right here it should be born in mind that the interview referred to in th* foregoing telegram was not the celebrated Inter Ocean interview, to a consideration of which we now proceed. The Inter Ocean interview, in the form published in that journal, undoubtedly lost the populists some votes la the northwest and probably caused the losa of Nebraska, in which state an analysis of the vote shows that enough democrats voted the republican ticket to defeat the populists. The Inter Ocean interview may be divided into two parts, to-wit: The genuine and the bogus; the false and the true; Mrs Lease’s utterances and the utterances of the republican national committee. That portion of the interview which denounced in scathing terms modern democracy, os exemplified in the southern states, and depicted in burning language the fraudulent, intolerant and outrageous character of southern democrats was genuine, and in thus denouncing the southern democrats Mra. Lease was but acting th» part of a true patriot, who scorned to condone treason against the bulwarks of a free government for the sake of party policy. Her words would have found a responsive echo in the hearts of the populists in the northwest had it not been for the moral turpitude and cowardice which was the logical offspring of the unholy alliance entered into by the populists and the democratic party. In thus arraigning the southern democracy Mra Lease was right, both morally and politically, and they are wrong who, for this reason* denounce or condemn her. The bogus, mendacious portion of the interview, injected therein by republican trickery, is that portion in which Mra. Lease is made to speak of Senator Peffer as a “skulking poltroon” and declare that the people’s party had no existence in the south and that populists should vote for Harrison, in order to destroy the democratic party. This portibn of the interview Mrs. Lease repudiated over and over again and yet certain reform journalists seem to be unable to separate the wheat from the chaff, hut continue to hold Mra. Lease responsible for the entire interview as published in the Inter Ocean. This is unfair and does gross injustice to Mra. Lease, than whom no more able advocate, or true exponent of populist principles lives to-day in the United States. Brethren, let us remember that “now abideth faith, hope and charity, these three; but the greatest of thsse is charity.” Geobgk C. Wabd. —lt is reported that the Boston Herald made a careful canvass of the, membership of the new house of representatives and found a majority of S 3 against free silver coinage.