Luna Sanford Kellie (1857–1940) grew up in Minnesota and Missouri. Her father worked in farming and railroad construction. After her mother died of typhoid fever in 1873, sixteen-year-old Luna managed the household and cared for her four younger brothers and sisters. She soon married a young Canadian, J. T. Kellie, and Luna’s father persuaded them to move out to Nebraska with him and stake farming claims, bringing their baby William (the first of eleven children). The family struggled to get by and in 1884 lost their homestead, though they continued to farm in different locations on rented land. Several of their children died amid drought and hardship on the plains.
Both J. T. and Luna became active in the local Farmers Alliance. Initially shy about stepping out of a “woman’s place,” eventually Luna served as secretary of the Nebraska Alliance and editor of a Populist newspaper. In January 1894, Kellie was asked to speak at a convention of the Nebraska Farmers’ Alliance. What follows is an excerpt from her speech, to which the audience responded enthusiastically and which several Populist newspapers later reprinted.
There are those who think . . . that while the bankers of the state keep up their organization with the avowed purpose of “better influencing legislation” on their behalf, while the merchants, manufacturers, lawyers, doctors, men of every trade or profession, find it to their interest to keep up organizations to aid each other and look after their political welfare, the agriculturalists of the state and nation have no interest in common [and] should leave their financial political business for office-seeking politicians to look after. It grieves us to think how little has been accomplished by the Alliance compared with all that is necessary to be done before the farmers of the state obtain anything like justice. At times we grow weary and discouraged when we realize that the work of the Alliance is hardly begun, and that after the weary years of toil of the best men and women of the state we have hardly taken a step on the road to industrial freedom. We know that although we may not arrive there our children will enter into the promised land, and we can make their trials fewer and lighter, even if we live not to see the full light of freedom for mankind. . . .
The condition of the farmers of the state has changed greatly in the last three years. Then the abolishment of high rates of interest on money and reduction of freight rates was all the average Alliance member desired. Thousands of farmers who would have preserved their homes if they could have obtained that relief . . . have now had the mortgage cleared off their farms by the sheriff and are today without a home, and they now demand that occupancy and use shall be the sole title of land.
So with the transportation question. While a slight reduction would have satisfied three years ago, the people now know that they have the constitutional right to take the railroads, under right of eminent domain and run them at cost in the interest of all the people; and never again will any party arouse any enthusiasm among them who advocate less. . . .
If we wish the farmers to join and keep up this society we must convince them each and every one that it will benefit him individually. We should take a decided step forward in co-operative work. We can compel the building of a cooperative [rail]road to the Gulf. We can get an agent to contract the crops of the state at foreign markets for better prices. We can by ordering machinery, flour, coal, etc., in large quantities get greatly reduced prices; . . . then each member can soon receive a benefit and a new impetus be given. . . .
There is a large class (yearly becoming larger) who put no faith in political organizations of any class, as regards benefiting the toilers. They think as soon as the party attains power politicians will crowd to the front who care only for the “spoils of office,” and the wishes of the voters will be ignored. The Alliance must make it its future work to educate this class to demand the Referendum and direct legislation. It is an excellent time to show the folly of placing . . . power in the hands of a corrupt governor and president.
If this is to become a government by the people, they must have the right to initiate new laws and not have important questions tabled by a committee appointed by some scoundrel in the shape of a speaker. No power higher than the vote or veto of the people can exist in a free country. The Nebraska farmers and toilers whose productive labor has made the state all it is, whose labor will make it all it ever will become, should stand up for Nebraska.
Source: Excerpts from “Stand Up for Nebraska” from A Prairie Populist: The Memoirs of Luna Kellie, edited by Jane Taylor Nelsen. Copyright © 1992 by the University of Iowa Press. Used by permission of the University of Iowa Press.
Evaluating the Evidence