United States History!!!!!
Oliver H. Kelley and Mary E. Lease
Oliver H. Kelley
He was born in Boston. He moved to the Minnesota frontier in 1849, where he became a farmer. In 1864, he got a job as a clerk for the United States Bureau of Agriculture and traveled the Eastern and Southern United States following the American Civil War. He felt a great need to gather together farmers and their families to rebuild America as he once knew it, and thought an organization of fraternal strength would best serve the needs of the farm families.
As he traveled throughout the country,
Kelley built partnerships that developed into the seven original founders of the Order of Patrons of Husbandry. On November 15, 1867, he laid the groundwork to build a new foundation for American agriculture through the organization of the Grange, of which he was the first secretary until he resigned in 1878.
Mary E. Lease
Mary Elizabeth Lease was who supposedly advised Kansas farmers to "raise less corn and more hell," She was born Mary Clyens to Irish immigrant parents in Pennsylvania in 1850. In her later years, she claimed she had been born in 1853. Mary Elizabeth Lease was a struggling Kansas farmer and mother of four. She was a prominent Alliance leader and speaker During that time, farmers interested in combating the railroads' economic control of the Midwestern states formed the National Farmers' Alliance in the 1880s. She Spoke out against high shipping costs, outrageous tariffs, and high mortgage rates, the organization quickly garnered significant memberships in Illinois, Kansas, Nebraska, the Dakotas, and Minnesota, among other states. Women, actively involved in farm life, were also actively involved in the movement. An important figure in the Populist movement, Lease was engaged as an orator across the nation.
This selection is taken from a speech Lease gave in 1891 to the National Council of Women of the United States. A radical speaker—she reportedly
urged farmers to "raise less corn and more hell"—Lease argued here for political solidarity in the face of corporate interests. In this speech she stressed Christian-based revolutionary thinking and urged her listeners to become actively involved in the fight against unjust tariffs and oppressive taxation.
Work Cite:
National Grange of the Order of Patrons of Husbandry
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/oliver-kelley-organizes-the-grange
http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Oliver_Hudson_Kelley.aspx#2
http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G2-3401804759.html
http://www.kancoll.org/khq/1968/68_2_clanton.htm
