Today, on the last day of Women's History Month, our world is a swirl of political and global crises, environmental disasters, and culture wars. But let's step away from the fray to celebrate the lives of two women who played pivotal roles on the stage of history. They had no mentors or role models, yet they met the moment. And thanks to their courage, they created groundbreaking new roles for generations of women to come.
Twenty-year-old Mary Elizabeth Lease left Pennsylvania in 1870, bound for a school-teaching job in St. Paul, Kansas. Three years later, she met and married a local pharmacy clerk, and they staked a 160-acre claim to farm near Kingman, Kansas.
But they lost their farm during the financial Panic of 1873, and moved to Denison, Texas in 1874, where she began studying law. Returning to Kingman with two children in tow. They tried farming again, but drought and grasshoppers got the best of them. They relocated to Wichita in 1883, where their fourth child was born. Lease earned income by taking in laundry. She also passed her final bar exam, and was admitted to the Kansas bar in 1885.
By 1887, Lease was traveling the Midwest as a paid lecturer, giving as many as eight stump speeches some days on behalf of the Farmers Alliance Movement. She became its best-known orator during an era when farmers were struggling to survive high mortgage interest, exorbitant railroad shipping rates, and bank foreclosures.
In 1890, Lincoln, Nebraska, Mayor Weir praised her gifted speaking, saying if her name wasn't Patrick Henry, it ought to be . . ." Indeed, she became known as "Patrick Henry in Petticoats."
Advocate for Women's Rights
In my early years as a farm magazine editor, I often was asked to speak at farm women's meetings. Invariably, I'd highlight Lease's famous admonition, "You farmers need to raise less corn and more hell." The quote still is widely attributed to her, although there isn't an abundance of evidence to support it.
I still like it. Lease clearly believed in challenging the status quo. She wouldn't have hesitated to violate public decorum or engage in the "unwomanly" behavior of using the word "hell".
Lease's advocacy for the underdog led her to the suffrage movement. She was unable to legally run for political office. But during the summer of 1890 she gave 160 speeches against the political campaign of U.S. Republican Senator John J. Ingalls (Kansas) who argued, "A woman could not and should not vote." Lease protested, saying, "political decisions had effects on the daily lives of women and children." (Ingalls did lose the election.)
Lease became a target of those who believed a woman's place was in the home. She "defied women's second-class citizenship," playing an early role in challenging stereotypes of women's societal and political roles.
In 1891, she spoke on behalf of women members of the Farmers Alliance Movement at the National Council of Women in Washington, D.C. She railed against the issues confronting farmers and advocated for labor unions in the face of corporate interests. Here's an excerpt:
"This is a nation of inconsistencies. The Puritans fleeing from oppression became oppressors. We fought England for our liberty and put chains on four million of blacks. We wiped out slavery and our tariff laws and national banks began a system of white wage slavery worse than the first. Wall Street owns the country. It is no longer a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, but a government of Wall Street, by Wall Street, and for Wall Street. The great common people of this country are slaves, and monopoly is the master. . .
We were told two years ago to go to work and raise a big crop. . . We went to work and plowed and planted; the rains fell, the sun shone, nature smiled, and we raised the big crop that they told us to; and what came of it? Eight-cent corn, ten-cent oats, two-cent beef, and no price at all for butter and eggs-that’s what came of it. The politicians said we suffered from overproduction... We will stand by our homes and stay by our fireside by force if necessary, and we will not pay our debts to the loan-shark companies until the government pays its debts to us. . . "
Lease, a farmer's daughter, farmer's wife, and a champion of farmers, eventually left the Populist Party (the former Farmers Alliance Movement) because it didn't support a woman's right to vote. Unsurprisingly, her activism had ended her marriage by 1902. She moved to New York City, where she worked as a journalist, reporting for Joseph Pulitzer and the New York World. But she lived to see the launch of many New Deal reforms. In 1933, looking back on her early days as an activist, she concluded, "The seed we sowed out in Kansas did not fall on barren ground."
Farm Woman Fights Unfair Law
Four decades later, Doris Royal, a 50-year-old Springfield, Nebraska, farm woman became another catalyst for reform. Following several years of rising inflation, the rate doubled to 8.8% in 1973. Federal estate taxes became a nationwide issue. She and her husband Lloyd attended an estate planning seminar offered by the Cooperative Extension Service where she learned for the first time about "the widow's tax".
It landed most heavily on spouses who owned their property in joint tenancy, holding them liable for 100% of any estate taxes due. The law didn't recognize a wife's "nonworking" contribution to the estate unless she could verify her "material participation" and provide proof of her labor's monetary value. A woman's farm work was considered part of her "marital duties".
By 1975, the Royals had been married for 31 years. Exhausted after a 12-hour day of helping her husband throw hay to the cattle and feed the hogs during an historic January blizzard, she asked him, "Do you realize I haven't contributed a dime to this farm today according to the IRS?"
She launched a grassroots campaign from her kitchen table to change the law. Two neighboring farm women eventually joined her to help stuff, address, and stamp envelopes asking for petition signatures.
Royal took pains to assure other farm women that her cause "was not an Equal Rights Amendment issue." Her petition was focused on all women, feminists or not, Democrats as well as Republicans. She won over several influential congressman who helped her along the way.
I met Doris Royal in 1976, when I traveled with her to Washington, D.C. after persuading Farm Wife News, the national magazine I wrote for, to cover her travel costs there. She told me this trip would be "a matter of just walking the halls, hoping to get my foot in the doors."
We also attended the National Commission on Observance of International Women's Year program at the White House East Garden on the following day. Its 382-page report recommended estate tax reform, mentioning Royal by name. She had a few minutes to speak with President Ford afterwards.
She brought three cardboard apple boxes with 130,051 signed petitions and testified on the issue at the House Ways and Means and the Senate Finance Committees.
Ford proposed estate tax reform in his State of the Union address in 1976. The Tax Reform Act of 1975 raised the marital exemption, and he signed it into law. But it didn't abolish the widow's tax, so Royal continued her lobbying. Subsequent legislature was signed by President Carter. It still didn't abolish the widow's tax. Finally, in August 1981, the Economic Recovery Tax, signed by President Ronald Reagan, resolved the issue.
Royal spent an estimated $500 for each of her 18 trips to Washington, D.C. to advance this cause. Eventually she gathered 231,261 petition signatures.
In 1981, I was thrilled to congratulate her at the American Agricultural Editors' Association where she was presented the Distinguished Service Award for her estate tax reform efforts. She reflected on her cause, "There were many times, of course, when I became discouraged. Many things were left undone because I was too busy fighting my estate tax battle. I had no organization or government agency funding me. But when I felt I was not capable of handling the job I had created for myself, I would receive letters telling of the hardship this law had created. About the time I would feel as if I had spent all I could, someone would send a book of stamps, with a note, saying 'God Bless You, Doris Royal. What would we do without people like you?' And off I would go again."
The Rest of the Story
In 2022, a college friend living in Kansas City read a reference to Doris Royal posted on my Facebook page. She messaged me that Doris was her son-in-law's grandma. I reconnected with Doris, sending her a letter and photos from the 1976 magazine story.
Six weeks ago, my friend told me Doris passed away in Omaha, Nebraska, at the age of 97. She never sought the limelight again, and her children and grandchildren knew only bits and pieces of her legislative efforts more than 30 years ago. Would I send the family copies of stories I had written about her through the years? Next week, I'll send about a dozen stories, from 1976 to 1991. I'll keep looking for more.
It's a timely reminder during Women's History Month. Women's stories often are missing from history. . . excluded, erased, obscured, diminished, and too often, forgotten. In fact, historians estimate that women's stories make up only 0.5 percent of recorded history.
Today we've witnessed how easily women's rights and autonomy can be eroded. We can't take the accomplishments of our trailblazing foremothers for granted, or overlook their achievements. Their stories must survive to inspire the next generation to follow in their footsteps and emulate their strength. Where would we be without them today?
Representation matters. I'm doing my part to record and pass on these stories. We all need to do our share, making sure the stories of women aren't lost or written out of the historical narrative.
The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any.
—Alice Walker
This is a great reminder Cheryl. Thanks for all your work on womens’ issues!!
👍👍👍