The winter of 1877 and summer of 1878 were terrible seasons for the Chey-ennes. Their fall hunt had proved unsuccessful. Indians from other reserva-tions had hunted the ground over before them, and driven the buffalo off; and the Cheyennes made their way home again in straggling parties, destitute and hungry. Their agent reports that the result of this hunt has clearly proved that "in the future the Indian must rely on tilling the ground as the principal means of support; and if this conviction can be firmly established, the great-est obstacle to advancement in agriculture will be overcome. With the buffalo gone, and their pony herds being constantly decimated by the inroads of horse-thieves, they must soon adopt, in all its varieties, the way of the white man."

The ration allowed to these Indians is reported as being "reduced and insuffi-cient," and the small sums they have been able to earn by selling buffalo-hides are said to have been "of material assistance" to them in "supplementing" this ration. But in this year there have been sold only $657 worth of skins by the Cheyennes and Arapahoes together. In 1876 they sold $17,600 worth. Here is a failing off enough to cause very great suffering in a little community of five thousand people. But this was only the beginning of their troubles. The summer proved one of unusual heat. Extreme heat, chills and fever, and "a reduced and insufficient ration," all combined, resulted in an amount of sickness heart-rending to read of. "It is no exaggerated esti-mate," says the agent, "to place the number of sick people on the reservation at two thousand. Many deaths occurred which might have been obviated had there been a proper supply of anti-malarial remedies at hand. Hundreds applying for treatment have been refused medicine."

The Northern Cheyennes grew more and more restless and unhappy. "In council and elsewhere they profess an intense desire to be sent North, where they say they will settle down as the others have done," says the report; adding, with an obtuseness which is inexplicable, that "no difference has been made in the treatment of the Indians," but that the "compliance" of these Northern Cheyennes has been "of an entirely different nature from that of the other Indians," and that it may be "necessary in the future to compel what so far we have been unable to effect by kindness and appeal to their better natures."

If it is "an appeal to men's better natures" to remove them by force from a healthful Northern climate, which they love and thrive in, to a malarial South-ern one, where they are struck down by chills and fever—refuse them medi-cine which can combat chills and fever, and finally starve them—there in-deed, might be said to have been most forcible appeals made to the "better natures" of these Northern Cheyennes. What might have been predicted followed.

Early in the autumn, after this terrible summer, a band of some three hun-dred of these Northern Cheyennes took the desperate step of running off and attempting to make their way back to Dakota. They were pursued, fought desperately, but were finally overpowered, and surrendered. They surren-dered, however, only on the condition that they should be taken to Dakota. They were unanimous in declaring that they would rather die than go back to the Indian Territory. This was nothing more, in fact, than saying that they would rather die by bullets than of chills and fever and starvation.

These Indians were taken to Fort Robinson, Nebraska. Here they were con-

fined as prisoners of war, and held subject to the orders of the Department of the Interior. The department was informed of the Indians' determination never to be taken back alive to Indian Territory. The army officers in charge reiterated these statements, and implored the department to permit them to remain at the North; but it was of no avail. Orders came—explicit, repeat-ed, finally stern—insisting on the return of these Indians to their agency. The commanding officer at Fort Robinson has been censured severely for the course he pursued in his effort to carry out those orders. It is difficult to see what else he could have done, except to have resigned his post. He could not take three hundred Indians by sheer brute force and carry them hundreds of miles, especially when they were so desperate that they had broken up the iron stoves in their quarters, and wrought and twisted them into weapons with which to resist. He thought perhaps he could starve them into submis-sion. He stopped the issue of food; he also stopped the issue of fuel to them. It was midwinter; the mercury froze in that month at Fort Robinson. At the end of two days he asked the Indians to let their women and children come out that he might feed them. Not a woman would come out. On the night of the fourth day—or, according to some accounts, the sixth—these starving, freezing Indians broke prison, overpowered the guards, and fled, carrying their women and children with them. They held the pursuing troops at bay for several days; finally made a last stand in a deep ravine, and were shot down—men, women, and children together. Out of the whole band there were left alive some fifty women and children and seven men, who, having been confined in another part of the fort, had not had the good fortune to share in this outbreak and meet their death in the ravine. These, with their wives and children, were sent to Fort Leavenworth to be put in prison; the men to be tried for murders committed in their skirmishes in Kansas on their way to the north. Red Cloud, a Sioux chief, came to Fort Robinson immediately after this massacre and entreated to be allowed to take the Cheyenne widows and orphans into his tribe to be cared for. The Government, therefore, kindly permitted twenty-two Cheyenne widows and thirty-two Cheyenne children—many of them orphans—to be received into the band of the Ogallalla Sioux.

An attempt was made by the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, in his Report for 1879, to show by tables and figures that these Indians

were not starving at the time of their flight from Indian Territo-ry. The attempt only redounded to his own disgrace; it be-ing proved, by the testimony given by a former clerk of the Indian Bureau before the Senate committee appointed to investigate the case of the Northern Cheyennes, that the commissioner had been guilty of absolute dishonesty in his estimates, and that the quantity of beef actually issued to the Cheyenne Agency was hundreds of pounds less than he had reported it, and that the Indians were actually, as they had claimed, "starving."

The testimony given before this committee by some of the Cheyenne prisoners themselves is heart-rending. One must have a callous heart who can read it unmoved.

When asked by Senator [John T.] Morgan [of Alabama], "Did you ever really suffer from hunger?" one of the chiefs re-plied. "We were always hungry; we never had enough. When they that were sick once in awhile felt as though they could eat something, we had nothing to give them."

"Did you not go out on the plains sometimes and hunt buffalo, with the consent of the agent?"

"We went out on a buffalo-hunt, and nearly starved while out; we could not find any buffalo hardly; we could hardly get back with our ponies; we had to kill a good many of our ponies to eat, to save ourselves from starving."

"How many children got sick and died?"

"Between the fall of 1877 and 1878 we lost fifty children.

A great many of our finest young men died, as well as

many women."

"Old Crow," a chief who served faithfully as Indian scout and ally under General [George] Crook [commander of Far Western troops since 1868] for years, said: "I did not feel like doing anything for awhile, because I had no heart. I did not want to be in this country. I was all the time wanting to get back to the better country where I was born, and where my children are buried, and where my mother and sister yet live. So I have laid in my lodge most of the time with nothing to think about but that, and the affair up north at Fort Robinson, and my relatives and friends who were killed there. But now I feel as

From A Century of Dishonor

Helen Hunt Jackson 1881

though, if I had a wagon and a horse or two, and some land, I would try to work. If I had something, so that I could do something, I might not think so much about these other things. As it is now, I feel as though I would just as soon be asleep with the rest."

The wife of one of the chiefs confined at Fort Leavenworth testified before the com-mittee as follows: "The main thing I complained of was that we didn't get enough to eat; my children nearly starved to death; then sickness came, and there was nothing good for them to eat; for a long time the most they had to eat was cornmeal and salt. Three or four children died every day for awhile, and that frightened us."

When asked if there were anything she would like to say to the committee, the poor woman replied: "I wish you would do what you can to get my husband released. I am very poor here, and do not know what is to become of me. If he were released he would come down here, and we would live together quietly, and do no harm to any-body, and make no trouble. But I should never get over my desire to get back north; I should always want to get back where my children were born, and died, and were buried. That country is better than this in every respect. There is plenty of good, cool water there—pure water—while here the water is not good. It is not hot there, nor so sickly. Are you going where my husband is? Can you tell when he is likely to be released?"…

It is stated also that there was not sufficient clothing to furnish each Indian with a warm suit of clothing, "as promised by the treaty," and that, "by reference

to official correspondence, the fact is established that the Cheyennes and Arapahoes are judged as having no legal rights to any lands, having forfeited their treaty reservation by a failure to settle thereon," and their "present reservation not having been, as yet, confirmed by Congress. Inasmuch as the Indians fully understood, and were assured that this reserva-tion was given to them in lieu of their treaty reservation, and have commenced farming in the belief that there was no uncertainty about the matter it is but common justice that defi-nite action be had at an early day, securing to them what is their right."

It would seem that there could be found nowhere in the melancholy record of the experienc-es of our Indians a more glaring instance of confused multiplication of injustices than this. The Cheyennes were pursued and slain for venturing to leave this very reservation, which, it appears, is not their reservation at all, and they have no legal right to it. Are there any words to fitly characterize such treatment as this from a great, powerful, rich nation, to a handful of helpless people?

Philip Wells was a mixed-blood Sioux who served as an interpreter for the

Army. He later recounted what he saw that Monday morning:

"I was interpreting for General Forsyth (Forsyth was actually a colonel) just before the battle of Wounded Knee, December 29, 1890. The captured Indians had been ordered to give up their arms, but Big Foot replied that his people had no arms. Forsyth said to me, 'Tell Big Foot he says the Indians have no arms, yet yesterday they were well armed when they surrendered. He is deceiving me. Tell him he need have no fear in giving up his arms, as I wish to treat him kindly.' Big Foot replied, 'They have no guns, except such as you have found.' Forsyth declared, 'You are lying to me in return for my

kindness.'

During this time a medicine man, gaudily dressed and fan-tastically painted, executed the maneuvers of the ghost dance, raising and throwing dust into the air. He exclaimed 'Ha! Ha!' as he did so, meaning he was about to do some-thing terrible, and said, 'I have lived long enough,' meaning he would fight until he died. Turning to the young warriors who were squatted together, he said 'Do not fear, but let your hearts be strong. Many soldiers are about us and have many bullets, but I am assured their bullets cannot pene-trate us. The prairie is large, and their bullets will fly over the prairies and will not come toward us. If they do come toward us, they will float away like dust in the air.' I turned to Major Whitside and said, 'That man is making mischief,' and repeated what he had said. Whitside replied, 'Go direct to Colonel Forsyth and tell him about it,' which I did.

Forsyth and I went to the circle of warriors where he told me to tell the medicine man to sit down and keep quiet, but he paid no attention to the order. Forsyth repeated the order. Big Foot's brother-in-law answered, 'He will sit down when he gets around the

circle.' When the medicine man came to the end of the circle, he squatted down. A caval-ry sergeant exclaimed, 'There goes an Indian with a gun under his blanket!' Forsyth or-dered him to take the gun from the Indian, which he did. Whitside then said to me, 'Tell the Indians it is necessary that they be searched one at a time.' The young warriors paid no attention to what I told them. I heard someone on my left exclaim, 'Look out! Look out!' I saw five or six young warriors cast off their blankets and pull guns out from under them and brandish them in the air. One of the warriors shot into the soldiers, who were ordered to fire into the Indians. I looked in the direction of the medicine man. He or some other medicine man approached to within three or four feet of me with a long cheese knife, ground to a sharp point and raised to stab me. He stabbed me during the melee and nearly cut off my nose. I held him off until I could swing my rifle to hit him, which I did. I shot and killed him in self-defense.

Troop 'K' was drawn up between the tents of the women and children and the main body of the Indians, who had been summoned to deliver their arms. The Indians began firing into 'Troop K' to gain the canyon of Wounded Knee creek. In doing so they exposed their women and children to their own fire. Captain Wallace was killed at this time while standing in front of his troops. A bullet, striking him in the forehead, plowed away the top of his head. I started to pull off my nose, which was hung by the skin, but Lieutenant Guy Preston shouted, 'My God Man! Don't do that! That can be saved.' He then led me away from the scene of the trouble.

In 1890 a Paiute shaman named Wovoka (Pictured at left) started the Ghost Dance movement. He claimed that if all of the

tribes would do a tribal ghost dance then the Great Spirit would come to Earth, carry away the white man and return the

buffalo herds to the plains. The Ghost Dance spread throughout the reservations. Seeing a bunch of Indians dancing, the

army was called in. The conflict reached a head when the famous war chief Sitting Bull was arrested and killed during an

attempt to liberate him. During a powwow at Wounded Knee, army officers responded to a random gunshot by firing upon

largely unarmed Sioux. Three hundred Sioux were killed along with twenty-five soldiers. The Massacre at Wounded Knee

marked the end of Native resistance to American western expansion and the closing of the Frontier. In 1973 members of the

American Indian Movement retook Wounded Knee as an attempt to get the government to uphold the Sioux Treaty of 1868,

returning their lands in the Black Hills. It didn’t work. Wounded Knee was surrounded for seventy-one days until the Oglala

Sioux were driven from the town. Below is an eye-witness account of the original Massacre at Wounded Knee. Read the pas-

sage and answer the questions.

Ladies and Gentlemen:

I propose to talk to you to-night of the Crime of Poverty. I cannot, in a short time, hope to convince you of much; but the thing of things I should like to show you is that poverty is a crime. I do not mean that it is a crime to be poor. Murder is a crime; but it is not a crime to be murdered; and a man who is in poverty, I look upon, not as a criminal in himself, so much as the victim of a crime for which others, as well perhaps as himself, are responsible. That poverty is a curse, the bitterest of curses, we all know. Carlyle was right when he said that the hell of which Englishmen are most afraid is the hell of poverty; and this is true, not of Englishmen alone, but of people all over the civilised world, no matter what their na-tionality. It is to escape this hell that we strive and strain and struggle; and work on often-times in blind habit long after the necessity for work is gone. The curse born of poverty is not confined to the poor alone; it runs through all classes, even to the very rich. They, too, suffer; they must suffer; for there cannot be suffering in a community from which any class can totally escape. The vice, the crime, the ignorance, the meanness born of poverty, poison, so to speak, the very air which rich and poor alike must breathe. Poverty is the mother of ignorance, the breeder of crime. I walked down one of your streets this morning, and I saw three men going along with their hands chained together. I knew for cer-tain that those men were not rich men; and, although I do not know the offence for which they were carried in chains through your streets, this I think I can safely say, that, if you trace it up you will find it in some way to spring from poverty. Nine tenths of hu-man misery, I think you will find, if you look, to be due to poverty. If a man chooses to be poor, he commits no crime in being poor, provided his poverty hurts no one but himself. If a man has others dependent upon him; if there are a wife and children whom it is his duty to support, then, if he voluntarily chooses poverty, it is a crime—aye, and I think that, in most cases, the men who have no one to support but themselves are men that are shirking their duty. A woman comes into the world for every man; and for every man who lives a single life, caring only for himself, there is some woman who is deprived of her natural supporter. But while a man who chooses to be poor cannot be charged with crime, it is certainly a crime to force poverty on others. And it seems to me clear that the great majority of those who suffer from poverty are poor not from their own particular faults, but because of conditions imposed by society at large. Therefore I hold that poverty is a crime—not an individual crime, but a social crime, a crime for which we all, poor as well as rich, are responsible. ..

...If poverty is appointed by the power which is above us all, then it is no crime; but if poverty is unnecessary, then it is a crime for which society is responsible and for which society must suffer. I hold, and I think no one who looks at the facts can fail to see, that poverty is utterly unnecessary. It is not by the decree of the Almighty, but it is because of our own injus-tice, our own selfishness, our own ignorance, that this scourge, worse than any pesti-lence, ravages our civilisation, bringing want and suffering and degradation, destroying souls as well as bodies. Look over the world, in this heyday of nineteenth century civili-sation. In every civilised country under the sun you will find men and women whose con-dition is worse than that of the savage: men and women and little children with whom the veriest savage could not afford to exchange. Even in this new city of yours with virgin soil around you, you have had this winter to institute a relief society. Your roads have been filled with tramps, fifteen, I am told, at one time taking shelter in a round-house here. As here, so everywhere; and poverty is deepest where wealth most abounds. What more unnatural than this? There is nothing in nature like this poverty which to-day curses us. We see rapine in nature; we see one species destroying another; but as a general thing animals do not feed on their own kind; and, wherever we see one kind enjoying plenty, all creatures of that kind share it. No man, I think, ever saw a herd of buffalo, of which a few were fat and the great majority lean. No man ever saw a flock of birds, of which two or three were swimming in grease and the others all skin and bone. Nor in savage life is there anything like the poverty that festers in our civilisation. In a rude state of society there are seasons of want, seasons when people starve; but they are seasons when the earth has refused to yield her increase, when the rain has not

fallen from the heavens, or when the land has been swept by some foe—not when there is plenty. And yet the peculi-ar characteristic of this modern poverty of ours is that it is deepest where wealth most abounds.

From The Crime of Poverty

Henry George, 1885

In the late 19th century, Henry George was one of

the most famous people of his time. Though largely

unheard of today, his name rivaled that of Thomas

A. Edison and Mark Twain. George was a mostly self

taught economist who believed in free markets, but

also equal access to resources and opportunity. He

was repulsed by the poverty he saw all around him.

Recognizing that poverty was the result of a concen-

tration of wealth in the hands of a few “rent hold-

ers.” George believed that eliminating taxes on eve-

rything except the unimproved value of land was the

most fair way to redistribute wealth without bur-

dening the economy.

". . .a man of wealth who had accumulated a fortune here resolved to give New Yorkers a sensation, to give them a ban-quet which should exceed in luxury and expense anything before seen in this country. As he expressed it, ‘I knew it would be a folly, a piece of un-heard-of extravagance, but as the United States govern-ment had just refunded me ten thousand dollars, exacted from me for duties upon importations (which, being excessive, I had petitioned to be returned me, and had quite unexpectedly received this sum back), I resolved to appropriate it to giving a banquet that would always be remembered.’

Accordingly he went to Charles Delmonico, who in turn went to his cuisine classique to see how they could possibly spend this sum on this feast. Success crowned their efforts. The sum in such skillful hands soon melted away, and a banquet was given of such beau-ty and magnificence that even New Yorkers, ac-customed as they were to every species of novel expenditure, were astonished at its lavishness, its luxury. The banquet was given at Del-monico's in Fourteenth Street. There were seventy-two guests in the large ball-room looking on Fifth Avenue.

The table covered the whole length and breadth of the room, only leaving a passageway for the waiters to pass around it. It was a long extended oval table, and every inch of it was covered with flowers, excepting a space in the center, left for a lake, and a border around the table for the plates. This lake was indeed a work of art; it was an oval pond, thirty feet in length, by nearly the width of the table, enclosed by a delicate golden wire network reaching from table to ceiling, making the whole one grand cage; four superb swans, brought from Prospect Park, swam in it, surrounded by high banks of flowers of every species and variety, which pre-vented them from splashing the water on the table.

There were hills and dales; the modest little violet carpeting the valleys, and other bolder sorts climbing up and covering the tops of those miniature mountains. Then, all around the enclosure and in fact above the entire table, hung little golden cages with fine song-sters who filled the room with their melody, occasionally interrupted by the splash-ing of the waters of the lake by the swans and the cooing of these noble birds and at one time by a fierce combat between these stately, graceful, gliding white creatures.

The surface of the whole table, by clever art, was one unbroken series of undulations, rising and falling like the billows of the sea, but all clothed and carpeted with every form of blossom. It seemed like the abode of fairies, and when surrounding this fairyland with lovely young American woman-hood, you had indeed an unequaled scene of enchant-ment.

But this was not to be alone a feast for the eye; all that art could do, all that the cleverest men could devise to spread before the guests, such a feast as the gods should enjoy, was done, and so well done that all present felt, in the way of feasting, that man could do no more! The wines were perfect. . .Then soft music stole over one's senses; lovely women's eyes sparkled with delight at the beauty of their surroundings, and I felt that the fair be-ing who sat next to me would have graced Alexander's feast."

"That ignorance plays its part, as well as poverty and bad hygienic surroundings, in the sac-

rifice of life is of course inevitable. They go usually hand in hand.

A message came one day last spring summoning me to a Mott Street tenement in which lay

a child dying from some unknown disease. With the 'charity doctor' I found the patient on

the top floor stretched upon two chairs in a dreadfully stifling room. She was gasping in the

agony of peritonitis that had already written its death-sentence on her wan and pinched

face. The whole family, father, mother, and four ragged children, sat around looking on

with the stony resignation of helpless despair that had long since given up the fight against

fate as useless.

A glance around the wretched room left no doubt as to the cause of the child's condition.

'Improper nourishment', said the doctor, which, translated to suit the place, meant starva-

tion.

The father's hands were crippled from lead poisoning. He had not been able to work for a

year. A contagious disease of the eyes, too long neglected, had made the mother and one

of the boys nearly blind. The children cried with hunger. They had not broken their fast

that day and it was then near noon. For months the family had subsisted on two dollars a

week from the priest, and a few loaves and a piece of corned beef which the sisters sent

them on Saturday.

The doctor gave direction for the treatment of the child, knowing that it was possible only

to alleviate its sufferings until death should end them, and left some money for food for

the rest.

An hour later, when I returned, I found them feeding the dying child with ginger ale,

bought for two cents a bottle at the peddler's cart down the street. A pitying neighbor had

proposed it as the one thing she could think of as likely to make the child forget its misery.

There was enough in the bottle to go round to the rest of the family. In fact, the wake had

already begun; before night it was under way in dead earnest."

Two Perspectives on the Gilded Age From How the Other Half Lives

Riis Jacob, (1891)

From Society as I Have Found it

McAllister, Ward, (1890).

Gini Coefficient is the level of

inequality in a society. The

higher the Gini, the greater the

inequality, or the gap between

the highest income earners and

the lowest income earners.

Here is the line of battle. We care not upon which issue they force the fight. We are pre-

pared to meet them on either issue or on both. If they tell us that the gold standard is

the standard of civilization, we reply to them that this, the most enlightened of all na-

tions of the earth, has never declared for a gold standard, and both the parties this year

are declaring against it. If the gold standard is the standard of civilization, why, my

friends, should we not have it? So if they come to meet us on that, we can present the

history of our nation. More than that, we can tell them this, that they will search the

pages of history in vain to find a single instance in which the common people of any land

ever declared themselves in favor of a gold standard. They can find where the holders of

fixed investments have.

Mr. Carlisle said in 1878 that this was a struggle between the idle holders of idle capital

and the struggling masses who produce the wealth and pay the taxes of the country; and

my friends, it is simply a question that we shall decide upon which side shall the Demo-

cratic Party fight. Upon the side of the idle holders of idle capital, or upon the side of the

struggling masses? That is the question that the party must answer first; and then it must

be answered by each individual hereafter. The sympathies of the Democratic Par-

ty, as described by the platform, are on the side of the struggling masses, who

have ever been the foundation of the Democratic Party.

There are two ideas of government. There are those who believe that if you just

legislate to make the well-to-do prosperous, that their prosperity will leak

through on those below. The Democratic idea has been that if you legislate to

make the masses prosperous their prosperity will find its way up and through

every class that rests upon it.

You come to us and tell us that the great cities are in favor of the gold standard. I

tell you that the great cities rest upon these broad and fertile prairies. Burn down

your cities and leave our farms, and your cities will spring up again as if by magic.

But destroy our farms and the grass will grow in the streets of every city in the

country.

My friends, we shall declare that this nation is able to legislate for its own people

on every question without waiting for the aid or consent of any other nation on

earth, and upon that issue we expect to carry every single state in the Union.

I shall not slander the fair state of Massachusetts nor the state of New York by

From Cross of Gold Speech

William Jenning Bryan, July 9 1896

saying that when citizens are confronted with the proposition, “Is this nation able to attend to

its own business?”—I will not slander either one by saying that the people of those states will

declare our helpless impotency as a nation to attend to our own business. It is the issue of

1776 over again. Our ancestors, when but 3 million, had the courage to declare their political

independence of every other nation upon earth. Shall we, their descendants, when we have

grown to 70 million, declare that we are less independent than our forefathers? No, my

friends, it will never be the judgment of this people. Therefore, we care not upon what lines

the battle is fought. If they say bimetallism is good but we cannot have it till some nation

helps us, we reply that, instead of having a gold standard because England has, we shall re-

store bimetallism, and then let England have bimetallism because the United States have.

If they dare to come out in the open field and defend the gold standard as a good thing, we

shall fight them to the uttermost, having behind us the producing masses of the nation and

the world. Having behind us the commercial interests and the laboring interests and all the

toiling masses, we shall answer

their demands for a gold stand-

ard by saying to them, you shall

not press down upon the brow

of labor this crown of thorns.

You shall not crucify mankind

upon a cross of gold.

If God were to give me my choice to live in any age of the world that has flown, or in any age of the world yet to be, I would say, O God, let me live here and now, in this day and age of the world's history.

For we are living in a grand and wonderful time-a time when old ideas, traditions and cus-toms have broken loose from their moorings and are hopelessly adrift on the great shore-less, boundless sea of human thought-a time when the gray old world begins to dimly com-prehend that there is no difference between the brain of an intelligent woman and the brain of an intelligent man; no difference between the soul-power or brainpower that nerved the arm of Charlotte Corday to deeds of heroic patriotism and the soul-power or brain-power that swayed old John Brown behind his death dealing barricade at Ossawattomie. We are living in an age of thought. The mighty dynamite of thought is upheaving the social and po-litical structure and stirring the hearts of men from centre to circumference. Men, women and children are in commotion, discussing the mighty problems of the day. The agricultural classes, loyal and patriotic, slow to act and slow to think, are to-day thinking for themselves; and their thought has crystallized into action. Organization is the key-note to a mighty movement among the masses which is the protest of the patient burden-bearers of the nation against years of economic and political supersti-tion...

Yet, after all our years of toil and privation, dangers and hardships upon the Western frontier, monopoly is taking our homes from us by an infa-mous system of mortgage foreclosure, the most infamous that has ever disgraced the statutes of a civilized nation. It, takes from us at the rate of five hundred a month the homes that represent the best years of our life, our toil, our hopes, our happiness. How did it happen? The govern-ment, at the bid of Wall Street, repudiated its contracts with the people; the circulating medium was contracted in the interest of Shylock from $54 per capita to less than $8 per capita; or, as Senator [Preston] Plumb [of Kansas] tells us, "Our debts were increased, while the means to pay them was decreased;" or as grand Senator [William Morris] Stewart [of Nevada] puts it, "For twenty years the market value of the dollar has gone up and the market value of labor has gone down, till to-day the American laborer, in bitterness and wrath, asks which is the worst-the black slavery that has gone or the white slavery that has come?"

Do you wonder the women are joining the Alliance? I wonder if there is a woman in all this broad land who can afford to stay out of the Alliance. Our loyal, white-ribbon women should be heart and hand in this Farm-ers' Alliance movement, for the men whom we have sent to represent us are the only men in the councils of this nation who have not been elected on a liquor platform; and I want to say here, with exultant pride, that the five farmer Congressmen and the United States Senator we

From Speech to the Women's Christian Tem-

perance Union

Mary Elizabeth Lease, 1890

have sent up from Kansas-the liquor traffic, Wall Street, "nor the gates of hell shall not prevail against them."

It would sound boastful were I to detail to you the active, earnest part the Kansas women took in the recent campaign. A Republican majority of 82,000 was reduced to less than 8,000 when we elected 97 representatives, 5 out of 7 Congressmen, and a United States Senator, for to the women of Kansas belongs the credit of defeating John J. Ingalls; He is feeling badly about it yet, too, for he said to-day that "women and Indians were the only class that would scalp a dead man." I rejoice that he realises that he is politically dead.

I might weary you to tell you in detail how the Alliance women found time from cares of home and children to prepare the tempting, generous viands for the Alliance picnic dinners; where hungry thou-sands and tens of thousands gathered in the forests and groves to listen to the words of impassioned oratory, ofttimes from woman's lips, that nerved the men of Kansas to forget their party prejudice and vote for "Mollie and the babies." And not only did they find their way to the voters' hearts, through their stomachs, but they sang their way as well. I hold here a book of Alliance songs, com-posed and set to music by an Alliance woman, Mrs. Florence Olmstead of Butler County, Kan., that did much toward moulding public sentiment. Alliance Glee Clubs composed of women, gave us such stirring melodies as the nation has not heard since the Tippecanoe and Tyler campaign of 1840. And while I am individualizing, let me call your attention to a book written also by an Alliance woman. I wish a copy of it could be placed in the hands of every woman in this land. "The Fate of a Fool" is written by Mrs. Emma G. Curtis of Colorado. This book in the hands of women would teach them to be just and generous toward women, and help them to forgive and condone in each other the sins so sweetly forgiven when committed by men.

Let no one for a moment believe that this uprising and federation of the people is but a passing epi-sode in politics. It is a religious as well as a political movement, for we seek to put into practical operation the teachings and precepts of Jesus of Nazareth. We seek to enact justice and equity between man and man. We seek to bring the nation back to the constitutional liberties guaran-teed us by our forefathers. The voice that is coming up to day from the mystic chords of the American heart is the same voice that Lincoln heard blending with the guns of Fort Sumter and the Wilderness, and it is breaking into a clarion cry to-day that will be heard around the world.

Crowns will fall, thrones will tremble, kingdoms will disappear, the divine right of kings and the divine right of capital will fade away like the mists of the morning when the Angel of Liberty shall kindle the fires of justice in the hearts of men. "Exact justice to all, special privileges to none." No more millionaires, and no more paupers; no more gold kings, silver kings and oil kings, and no more little waifs of humanity starving for a crust of bread. No more gaunt faced, hollow-eyed girls in the factories, and no more little boys reared in poverty and crime for the penitentiaries and the gallows. But we shall have the golden age of which Isaiah sang and the prophets have so long foretold; when the farmers shall be prosper-ous and happy, dwelling under their own vine and fig tree; when the laborer shall have that for which he toils; when occupancy and use shall be the only title to land, and every one shall obey the divine injunction, "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread." When men shall be just and generous, little less than gods, and women shall be just and charita-ble toward each other, little less than angels; when we shall have not a government of the people by capitalists, but a government of the peo-

The problem of our age is the administration of wealth, so that the ties of brotherhood may still bind together the rich and poor in harmonious relationship. The conditions of human life have not only been

changed, but revolutionized, within the past few hun-dred years. In former days there was little difference between the dwelling, dress, food, and environment of the chief and those of his retainers. The contrast between the palace of the millionaire and the cottage of the laborer with us to­day measures the change which has come with civilization.

This change, however, is not to be deplored, but wel-comed as highly beneficial. It is well, nay, essential for the progress of the race that the houses of some should be homes for all that is highest and best in literature and the arts, and for all the refinements of civilization, rather than that none should be so. Much

better this great irregularity than universal squalor. Without wealth there can be no Maecenas [Note: a rich Roman patron of the arts]. The "good old times" were not good old times. Neither master nor servant was as well situated then as to day. A relapse to old conditions would be disastrous to both-not the least so to him who serves-and

would sweep away civilization with it.

We start, then, with a condition of affairs under which the best interests of the race are promoted, but which inevitably gives wealth to the few. Thus far, accepting conditions as they exist, the situa-tion can be surveyed and pronounced good. The question then arises-and, if the foregoing be cor-

rect, it is the only question with which we have to deal-What is the proper mode of administering

wealth after the laws upon which civilization is founded have thrown it into the hands of the few? And it is of this great question that I believe I of-fer the true solution. It will be understood that

fortunes are here spoken of, not moderate sums saved by many years of effort, the returns from which are required for the comfortable maintenance and education of families. This is not wealth, but only competence, which it should be the aim of all to ac-quire.

There are but three modes in which surplus wealth

can be disposed of. It can be left to the families of the

decedents; or it can be bequeathed for public purpos-

es; or, finally, it can be administered during their lives by its possessors. Under the first and second modes most of the wealth of the world that has reached the few has hitherto been applied. Let us in

turn consider each of these modes. The first is the most injudicious. In monarchial countries, the es-tates and the greatest portion of the wealth are left to the first son, that the vanity of the parent may be gratified by the thought that his name and title are to descend to succeeding generations unimpaired. The condition of this class in Europe to­day teaches

the futility of such hopes or ambitions. The succes-sors have become impoverished through their follies or from the fall in the value of land. Why should men leave great fortunes to their children? If this is done from affection, is it not misguided affection? Obser-vation teaches that, generally speaking, it is not well

for the children that they should be so burdened. Neither is it well for the state. Beyond providing for the wife and daughters moderate sources of income, and very moderate allowances indeed, if any, for the sons, men may well hesitate, for it is no longer ques-tionable that great sums bequeathed oftener work more for the injury than for the good of the recipi-

ents. Wise men will soon conclude that, for the best interests of the members of their families and of the state, such be-quests are an im-proper use of their

means.

As to the second mode, that of leav-ing wealth at death for public uses, it may be said that

this is only a means for the disposal of

wealth, pro-vided a man is content to wait until he is dead before

it becomes of much good in the world.

The cases are not few in which the real object sought by the testator is not attained, nor are they few in which his real wishes are thwarted.

The growing disposition to tax more and more heavi-

ly large estates left at death is a cheering indication of the growth of a salutary change in public opinion.

Of all forms of taxation, this seems the wisest. Men who continue hoarding great sums all their lives, the proper use of which for public ends would work good to the community, should be made to feel that the

community, in the form of the state, cannot thus be deprived of its proper share. By taxing estates heavi-ly at death, the state marks its condemnation of the selfish millionaire's unworthy life.

This policy would work powerfully to induce the rich man to attend to the administration of wealth during his life, which is the end that society should always

have in view, as being that by far most fruitful for the people.

There remains, then, only one mode of using great fortunes: but in this way we have the true antidote for the temporary unequal distribution of wealth, the reconciliation of the rich and the poor-a reign of har-

mony-another ideal, differing, indeed from that of the Communist in requiring only the further evolution of existing conditions, not the total overthrow of our civilization. It is founded upon the present most in-tense individualism, and the race is prepared to put it in practice by degrees whenever it pleases. Under its sway we shall have an ideal state, in which the

surplus wealth of the few will become, in the best sense, the property of the many, because adminis-tered for the common good, and this wealth, passing through the hands of the few, can be made a much more potent force for the elevation of our race than if it had been distributed in small sums to the people themselves. Even the poorest can be made to see

this, and to agree that great sums gathered by some of their fellow­citizens and spent for public purposes, from which the masses reap the principal benefit, are more valuable to them than if scattered among them through the course of many years in trifling amounts.

This, then, is held to be the duty of the man of Wealth: First, to set an example of modest, unosten-tatious living, shunning display or extravagance; to provide moderately for the legitimate wants of those dependent upon him; and after doing so to consider all surplus revenues which come to him simply as trust funds, which he is called upon to administer,

and strictly bound as a matter of duty to administer in the manner which, in his judgment, is best calcu-lated to produce the most beneficial result for the community-the man of wealth thus becoming the sole agent and trustee for his poorer brethren, bring-ing to their service his superior wisdom, experience, and ability to administer-doing for them better than

they would or could do for themselves.

On Wealth

Andrew Carnegie 1889

Andrew Carnegie was a true rags to

riches story. Starting out as a poor

immigrant, he became one of the

wealthiest men in the world as a

steel industry mogul.