I would have to disagree that the author initially is (subtly) making an argument. Lease's argument is the American frontier's men and women made huge sacrifices of blood and sweat in order to settle the 'great American desert' and turn it into a cultured West. In other words, Lease is arguing a valid point that America owes a debt to the frontier's settlers that should be paid in gratitude for having the will to achieve westward expansion, but instead is being unfairly taxed, in the form of high mortgages and foreclosures, by an oppressive government and economic system whose aims seems, at least to the author, to be the promotion of profit and loss instead of freedom and liberty. The author, Lease, makes another strong argument, primarily ethos based, that the current economic system is a new form of 'white slavery' as the typical citizen could ill afford not to be part of the corrupt Farmer's Alliance. Document 2 by Donnelly makes fairly similar arguments as Lease in regards to the Populist movement. It is in document 3 by Lewelling that is of particular interest. Lewelling makes the argument, or the observation rather, that the State should be subservient to its' people, but instead the people have become servants of the State. A very radical concept for its' day. This ideology of State versus individual, far left on the political spectrum, is still a major issue to this very day which is what makes such a document of significant historical relevance.
