oration of their demands into the platforms
and the nomination of candidates who agreed to support those demands.
The result was the control of the legislatures of five Southern
States by members or supporters of the order and the election of three
governors, one United States Senator, and forty-four Congressmen who
championed the principles of the Alliance. In the West the Alliance
worked by itself and, instead of dominating an old party, created a
new one. It is true that the order did not formally become a political
party; but its officers took the lead in organizing People's,
Independent, or Industrial parties in the different States, the
membership of which was nearly identical with that of the Alliance. Nor
was the farmer alone in his efforts. Throughout the whole country the
prices of manufactured articles had suddenly risen, and popular opinion,
fastening upon the McKinley tariff as the cause, manifested itself in a
widespread desire to punish the Republican party.

The events of 1890 constituted not only a political revolt but a social
upheaval in the West. Nowhere was the overturn more complete than in
Kansas. If the West in general was uneasy, Kansas yeas in the throes of
a mighty convulsion; it was swept as by the combination of a tornado and
a prairie fire. As a sympathetic commentator of later days puts it, "It
was a religious revival, a crusade, a pentecost of politics in which a
tongue of flame sat upon every man, and each spake as the spirit gave
him utterance."* All over the State, meetings were held in schoolhouses,
churches, and public halls. Alliance picnics were all-day expositions
of the doctrines of the People's Party. Up and down the State, and from
Kansas City to Sharon Springs, Mary Elizabeth Lease, "Sockless" Jerry
Simpson, Anna L. Diggs, William A. Peffer, Cyrus Corning, and twice a
score more, were in constant demand for lectures, while lesser lights
illumined the dark places when the stars of the first magnitude were
scintillating elsewhere.

* Elizabeth N. Barr, "The Populist Uprising", in William E.
Connelly's "Standard History of Kansas and Kansans", vol.
II, p. 1148.

Mrs. Lease, who is reported to have made 160 speeches in the summer and
autumn of 1890, was a curiosity in American politics. Of Irish birth and
New York upbringing, she went to Kansas and, before she was twenty years
old, married Charles L. Lease. Twelve years later she was admitted
to the bar. At the t