Coxey's Army
Encyclopedia
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, led by the populist
Populism
Populism can be defined as an ideology, political philosophy, or type of discourse. Generally, a common theme compares "the people" against "the elite", and urges social and political system changes. It can also be defined as a rhetorical style employed by members of various political or social...
Jacob Coxey. They marched on Washington D.C. in 1894, the second year of a four-year economic depression that was the worst in United States history to that time. Officially named the Army of the Commonweal in Christ, its nickname came from its leader and was more enduring. It was the first significant popular protest march on Washington and the expression "Enough food to feed Coxey's Army" originates from this march.
First march
The purpose of the march was to protest the unemployment caused by the Panic of 1893Panic of 1893
The Panic of 1893 was a serious economic depression in the United States that began in 1893. Similar to the Panic of 1873, this panic was marked by the collapse of railroad overbuilding and shaky railroad financing which set off a series of bank failures...
and to lobby for the government to create jobs which would involve building road
Road
A road is a thoroughfare, route, or way on land between two places, which typically has been paved or otherwise improved to allow travel by some conveyance, including a horse, cart, or motor vehicle. Roads consist of one, or sometimes two, roadways each with one or more lanes and also any...
s and other public works
Public works
Public works are a broad category of projects, financed and constructed by the government, for recreational, employment, and health and safety uses in the greater community...
improvements, with workers paid in paper currency which would expand the currency in circulation, consistent with populist ideology. The march originated with 100 men in Massillon, Ohio
Massillon, Ohio
Massillon is a city located in Stark County in the U.S. state of Ohio, approximately 8 miles to the west of Canton, Ohio, 20 miles south of Akron, Ohio, and 50 miles south of Cleveland, Ohio. The population was 32,149 at the 2010 census....
on March 25, 1894, passing through Pittsburgh, Becks Run
Becks Run
Becks Run is a tributary of the Monongahela River. As an urban stream, it is heavily polluted, receiving combined sewer outflow from Carrick and Mount Oliver, Pennsylvania. There is a waterfall on a tributary, just downstream from a slate dump, near the intersection of Wagner Avenue and Mountain...
and Homestead, Pennsylvania
Homestead, Pennsylvania
Homestead is a borough in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, USA, in the "Mon Valley," southeast of downtown Pittsburgh and directly across the river from the city limit line. The borough is known for the Homestead Strike of 1892, an important event in the history of labor relations in the United...
in April.
The Army's western section received the nickname Kelly's Army, after California leader "General" Charles T. Kelly. Although larger at its beginning, few members of Kelly's Army made it past the Ohio River
Ohio River
The Ohio River is the largest tributary, by volume, of the Mississippi River. At the confluence, the Ohio is even bigger than the Mississippi and, thus, is hydrologically the main stream of the whole river system, including the Allegheny River further upstream...
. Various groups from around the country gathered to join the march, and its number had grown to 500 with more on the way from further west when it reached Washington on April 30, 1894. The 260 acres (1.1 km²) Shreve farm site at current day Colmar Manor, Maryland
Colmar Manor, Maryland
Colmar Manor is a town located in Prince George's County, Maryland. As of the 2000 census, the town had a total population of 1,257. As the town developed at the beginning of the 20th century, it assumed a name derived from its proximity to the District of Columbia—the first syllable of Columbia...
was used by the 6,000 jobless men as a camp site. Coxey and other leaders of the movement were arrested the next day for walking on the grass of the United States Capitol
United States Capitol
The United States Capitol is the meeting place of the United States Congress, the legislature of the federal government of the United States. Located in Washington, D.C., it sits atop Capitol Hill at the eastern end of the National Mall...
. Interest in the march and protest rapidly dwindled.
Some of the most militant Coxeyites were those who formed their own "armies" in Pacific Northwest
Pacific Northwest
The Pacific Northwest is a region in northwestern North America, bounded by the Pacific Ocean to the west and, loosely, by the Rocky Mountains on the east. Definitions of the region vary and there is no commonly agreed upon boundary, even among Pacific Northwesterners. A common concept of the...
centers such as Butte
Butte, Montana
Butte is a city in Montana and the county seat of Silver Bow County, United States. In 1977, the city and county governments consolidated to form the sole entity of Butte-Silver Bow. As of the 2010 census, Butte's population was 34,200...
, Tacoma
Tacoma, Washington
Tacoma is a mid-sized urban port city and the county seat of Pierce County, Washington, United States. The city is on Washington's Puget Sound, southwest of Seattle, northeast of the state capital, Olympia, and northwest of Mount Rainier National Park. The population was 198,397, according to...
, Spokane
Spokane, Washington
Spokane is a city located in the Northwestern United States in the state of Washington. It is the largest city of Spokane County of which it is also the county seat, and the metropolitan center of the Inland Northwest region...
, and Portland
Portland, Oregon
Portland is a city located in the Pacific Northwest, near the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers in the U.S. state of Oregon. As of the 2010 Census, it had a population of 583,776, making it the 29th most populous city in the United States...
. Many of these protesters were unemployed railroad workers who blamed railroad companies, President
President of the United States
The President of the United States of America is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president leads the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces....
Cleveland
Grover Cleveland
Stephen Grover Cleveland was the 22nd and 24th president of the United States. Cleveland is the only president to serve two non-consecutive terms and therefore is the only individual to be counted twice in the numbering of the presidents...
's monetary policies, and excessive freight rates for their plight. The climax of this movement was perhaps on April 21, 1894 when William Hogan and approximately 500 followers commandeered a Northern Pacific Railway
Northern Pacific Railway
The Northern Pacific Railway was a railway that operated in the west along the Canadian border of the United States. Construction began in 1870 and the main line opened all the way from the Great Lakes to the Pacific when former president Ulysses S. Grant drove in the final "golden spike" in...
train for their trek to Washington, D.C. They enjoyed support along the way, which enabled them to fight off the federal marshals attempting to stop them. Federal troops finally apprehended the Hoganites near Forsyth, Montana
Forsyth, Montana
Forsyth is a city in and the county seat of Rosebud County, Montana, United States. The population was 1,944 at the 2000 census. Forsyth was established in 1876 as the first settlement on the Yellowstone River, and in 1882 residents named the town after General James William Forsyth who commanded...
. While the protesters never made it to the capitol, the military intervention they provoked proved to be a rehearsal for the federal force that broke the Pullman Strike
Pullman Strike
The Pullman Strike was a nationwide conflict between labor unions and railroads that occurred in the United States in 1894. The conflict began in the town of Pullman, Illinois on May 11 when approximately 3,000 employees of the Pullman Palace Car Company began a wildcat strike in response to recent...
that year.
Second march
A second march was organized in 1914. A portion of the march reached Monessen, PennsylvaniaMonessen, Pennsylvania
Monessen is a city in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, United States. The population was 8,669 at the 2000 census. In 1940, 20,257 people lived there. In 1990 the population was 13,026. Steel-making was a prominent industry in Monessen, which was a Rust Belt borough in the "Mon Valley" of...
on April 30. Another contingent from New York City merged with the march.
When the march reached Washington DC, Coxey addressed a crowd of supporters from the steps of the United States Capitol
United States Capitol
The United States Capitol is the meeting place of the United States Congress, the legislature of the federal government of the United States. Located in Washington, D.C., it sits atop Capitol Hill at the eastern end of the National Mall...
.
Coxey's Army in culture
Among the people observing the march was L. Frank BaumL. Frank Baum
Lyman Frank Baum was an American author of children's books, best known for writing The Wonderful Wizard of Oz...
, before he gained fame. There are political interpretations
Political interpretations of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
Political interpretations of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz include treatments of the modern fairy tale as an allegory or metaphor for the political, economic and social events of America in the 1890s...
of his book, the Wonderful Wizard of Oz, which have often been related to Coxey's Army. In the novel, Dorothy, the Scarecrow (the American farmer), Tin Woodman (the industrial worker), and Cowardly Lion (William Jennings Bryan
William Jennings Bryan
William Jennings Bryan was an American politician in the late-19th and early-20th centuries. He was a dominant force in the liberal wing of the Democratic Party, standing three times as its candidate for President of the United States...
), march on the yellow brick road to Oz, the Capitol (or Washington DC), demanding relief from the Wizard, who is interpreted to be the President. Dorothy's shoes are interpreted to symbolize using free silver
Free Silver
Free Silver was an important United States political policy issue in the late 19th century and early 20th century. Its advocates were in favor of an inflationary monetary policy using the "free coinage of silver" as opposed to the less inflationary Gold Standard; its supporters were called...
instead of the gold standard
Gold standard
The gold standard is a monetary system in which the standard economic unit of account is a fixed mass of gold. There are distinct kinds of gold standard...
(the road of yellow brick) because the shortage of gold precipitated the Panic of 1893
Panic of 1893
The Panic of 1893 was a serious economic depression in the United States that began in 1893. Similar to the Panic of 1873, this panic was marked by the collapse of railroad overbuilding and shaky railroad financing which set off a series of bank failures...
. In the film adaptation
The Wizard of Oz (1939 film)
The Wizard of Oz is a 1939 American musical fantasy film produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. It was directed primarily by Victor Fleming. Noel Langley, Florence Ryerson and Edgar Allan Woolf received credit for the screenplay, but there were uncredited contributions by others. The lyrics for the songs...
of The Wizard of Oz, the silver shoes were turned into ruby for the cinematic effect of color, as Technicolor
Technicolor
Technicolor is a color motion picture process invented in 1916 and improved over several decades.It was the second major process, after Britain's Kinemacolor, and the most widely used color process in Hollywood from 1922 to 1952...
was still in its early years when The Wizard of Oz was produced.
For many years, the low value Pinochle
Pinochle
Pinochle or Binocle is a trick-taking game typically for two to four players and played with a 48 card deck. Derived from the card game bezique, players score points by trick-taking and also by forming combinations of cards into melds. It is thus considered part of a "trick-and-meld" category...
meld of four Jacks was called Coxey's Army.
The phrase Coxey's Army has also come to refer to a ragtag band, possibly due to an incident during the second march in 1914.
Coxey's Army also plays a prominent role in Garet Garrett
Garet Garrett
Garet Garrett , born Edward Peter Garrett, was an American journalist and author who was noted for his criticisms of the New Deal and U.S. involvement in the Second World War.-Overview:...
's The Driver where the main character is a journalist following the march.
In his story, "Two Thousand Stiffs," (published in hardcover as part of the collection "The Road," 1907) Jack London
Jack London
John Griffith "Jack" London was an American author, journalist, and social activist. He was a pioneer in the then-burgeoning world of commercial magazine fiction and was one of the first fiction writers to obtain worldwide celebrity and a large fortune from his fiction alone...
describes his experiences as a member of Kelly's Army. The story gives a vivid account on a personal level of the motivations of the unemployed "stiffs", the military style organization of their army, and the more and less willing support given them by more fortunate Americans who were still sympathetic to their cause. In London's description, he joined Kelly's Army at Council Bluffs, Iowa and remained with it until its dissolution at the Mississippi River, a dissolution caused primarily by the inability to capture trains for transportation from an alerted railroad industry.
The expression "Enough food to feed Coxey's Army" signifies that the person commenting believes there is a great deal more food being prepared or presented than is actually required for the persons to be fed.
See also
- List of protest marches on Washington, DC
- James Renshaw Cox for a later march on Washington
- Mass Arrests in 1894 Halted Coxey's Army in Idaho
Further reading
- Carlos A. Schwantes, Coxey's Army: An American Odyssey. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1985.
External links
- Daily Bleed Calendar: March 25, 1894
- "Recollections of a contingent of Coxey's Army passing through Straughn, Indiana, in April of 1894," poem by Jared CarterJared Carter-Background:Carter studied at Yale and at Goddard College. After military service and travel abroad, he made his home in Indianapolis, where he has lived since 1969...
.