Lease, Mary Elizabeth (1853–1933)

US political activist and lawyer. Her most famous work, The Problem of Civilization Solved (1895), contained elements of both Marxism and racism. A fiery, uncompromising figure, she frequently feuded with other activists, and after the election of 1896, moved to New York City, where she was a political writer for the World and practised law on the Lower East Side. She allied herself briefly with the Theosophists, and, for a time, with Christian Science, and she was a member of the Socialist Party from 1899.

She was born Mary Elizabeth Clyens in Ridgway, Pennsylvania. Eventually settling with her family in Wichita, Kansas, she passed the bar, lectured on women's suffrage and farmers' welfare, and campaigned widely for the People's Party in the 1890s, urging American farmers to ‘raise less corn and more hell’.