Wall Street Owns The Country, Mary Elizabeth Lease, 1890 - As True Today As Then

[mother earth]

Wall Street Owns The Country

A Speech by Mary Elizabeth Lease (circa 1890)

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. The West and South are bound and prostrate before the manufacturing East. Money rules, and our Vice-President is a London banker. Our laws are the output of a system which clothes rascals in robes and honesty in rags. The [political] parties lie to us and the political speakers mislead us. We were told two years ago to go to work and raise a big crop, that was all we needed. 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. Overproduction, when 10,000 little children, so statistics tell us, starve to death every year in the United States, and over 100,000 shopgirls in New York are forced to sell their virtue for the bread their niggardly wages deny them... We want money, land and transportation. We want the abolition of the National Banks, and we want the power to make loans direct from the government. We want the foreclosure system wiped out... 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. The people are at bay; let the bloodhounds of money who dogged us thus far beware.

[shenmue]

1. Brilliant

Could have been written this week.

[JaneyVee]

2. Goldman Sachs wins every election.

[Demo_Chris]

5. No no no... it's different when WE win. nt

[maindawg]

3. They did not listen then

And they are not listening now.

[Egalitarian Thug]

4. They did, in fact listen, and that's what triggered the backlash.

We're living through the repeat right now.

[maindawg]

8. good heavens

My power went out two seconds after I posted that.
What happened in 1898 was a guy we like to call the trust buster.
Elizabeth Warren is our modern day equivalent. Alas, I do not believe that Hillary will be that,for us.
I am worried.

[Egalitarian Thug]

10. I'm sure that wasn't a sign. I hope the good Senator is only one of many to come. n/t

[socialist_n_TN]

11. And the reforms of the "trust buster" were mostly rolled back......

by the 20s. And other capitalist scams replaced them. Just like the FDR reforms of capitalism were rolled back after 1980 or so. THIS IS A CONTINUING PATTERN. And this is why reforming capitalism will NEVER work over the long term.

[maindawg]

13. Doomed to pendulum of politics.

I suppose that is the cost of freedom.

[LiberalEsto]

6. Mary Lease, Populist

http://www.kshs.org/kansapedia/mary-elizabeth-lease/12128

From site at link:

"By 1890, her involvement in the growing revolt of Kansas farmers against high mortgage interest and railroad rates had placed her in the forefront of the People's (Populist) Party, and she traveled all over Kansas as well as the Far West and the South for the cause. She was a powerful and emotional speaker; Emporia editor William Allen White, who did not share her political views, wrote on one occasion that "she could recite the multiplication table and set a crowd hooting and harrahing at her will.""

[mother earth]

7. For the purpose of clarity of politics from that era:

A supporter of Populism, a political philosophy urging social and political system change that favors "the people" over "the elites", or favors the common people over the rich and wealthy business owners.

[El_Johns]

9. So weird -- I was just reading about her yesterday.

[socialist_n_TN]

12. "As True Today As Then".........

And the reason is because it's systemic. It's capitalism.