and corporate power, in the states, in the nation, could use its money to still get what it wanted." The Alliances were not getting real power, but they were spreading new ideas and a new spirit. Now, as a political party, they became the People's party {or Populist party}, and met in convention in 1890 in Topeka, Kansas. The great Populist orator from that state, Mary Ellen Lease, told an enthusiastic crowd: 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…. Our laws are the output of a system which clothes rascals in robes and honesty in rags…. the politicians said we suffered from overproduction. Overproduction, when 10,000 little children … starve to death every year in the U.S. and over 100,000 shop girls in New York are forced to sell their virtue for bread…. There
( Howard Zinn )
[ A People's History of the ]
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