COXEY'S ARMY - Chapter Two - CLIMBING MOUNTAINS

 

I said earlier that I would not have enjoyed being there at the first day of the march of Coxey’s Army because it was cold and raining. But the second day, Monday, 25 March, 1892, it  was worse. It actually snowed. 

Marching to the northwest that day, Coxey's "Petition in Boots" only reached Louisville, Ohio, a distance of barely six miles. The New York Times noted, “When the sun rose…this morning (26 March) not a soldier….was visible… Fifty-eight of them went to the police station, where they were given lodgings on the cold stone floor.” 

"How can I help being a humbug," (Oz) said, "when all these people make me do things that everybody knows can't be done? It was easy to make the Scarecrow and the Lion and the Woodman happy, because they imagined I could do anything."
1900  L. Frank Baum  "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz"

The plan laid out by Coxey and Browne was designed to get their hoped for 100,000 man army over the 800 miles of bad roads between Massillon, Ohio and Washington, D.C.  Each morning the Army would leave camp at 10:30 A.M., and sought to achieve 15 miles before night fall.  This distance had been established by Sherman’s march through Georgia - as the Civil War dominated the culture of the 1890’s the way the history of World War Two dominated American culture for sixty years afterward.

The “Army Of Peace” or the Army of the Commonweal" as Browne called it in his pamphlets, was organized following guidelines from the same experience.  Five men formed a "group" (or squad), each designated by cloth badges. Twenty groups formed a "commune" (a platoon), five communes a "community", (an infantry company) two communities a "canton" (or a battalion) and two cantons formed a "division", commanded by a marshal. It must have looked extraordinarily impressive on paper, but when the paper army was replaced with eighty hungry and desperate men, the privates must have been tripping over their officers.

The press corps had not failed to notice this touch of farce,  and played it to the hilt in their reporting. A half century later my mother would describe any unorganized ineffective endeavor by saying, "They were spread out like Coxey's Army."  It took until Wednesday, 27 March, for the Army to cover the twenty-Seven miles to the Quaker settlement of Salem, Ohio. 

The townspeople of Salem opened their homes and barns to give the marchers a place to sleep. The weather turned warmer. However this proved to be a two edged sword as on Friday, 29 March, the army managed just ten miles through thick mud to Columbiana. But at least upon arrival they were provided with 1,000 loaves of bread, or about ten for every man in Coxey’s Army. 

After camping overnight in East Palestine and then in Waterford, Ohio, on the first day of April, the Army crossed into Pennsylvania and was warmly received in New Beaver. Their numbers had now increased to 137, and one more day’s march brought them to the outskirts of Pittsburgh. 

The Commercial Gazette headlined on 4 April that “enthusiastic crowds greet the pilgrims of poverty”. That night the Army camped on a baseball field in the suburb of Allegheny. Carl Browne announced a parade to be held right through the center of Pittsburgh, but the politicians said no.  Browne  complained to the press, “They have not treated us decently and have penned our men up like a lot of cattle.” 

What Browne meant was that the police locked the gates of the ballpark, confining the army inside, like the carriers of some infectious disease. But Coxey and Browne still made speeches standing on wagons in the center of the field (above), and the Gazette estimated that “15,000 to 20,000 people” stood outside the fence to hear what they had to say.

When the cantons formed in a steady drizzle the next morning, Browne announced that a local manufacturer had donated 500 pairs of shoes to the marchers.  Noted the Gazette, “The army could hardly work its way through the crowd around the baseball grounds…” An impromptu parade was formed as the Army marched out of town. “All business had been suspended and everybody was out to see the army. ... “.  By now the Coxey's Army had grown to over 400 men.

For the first time national politicians began to take public notice. Secretary of Agriculture,  J. Sterling Morton, described the marchers he had never seen this way: “If a life history of each individual in Coxey’s Army could be truthfully written, it would show, no doubt, that each of them has paid out, from birth to death, more money for tobacco, whiskey and beer, than for clothing, education, taxes and food all put together.”  The press dutifully reported the Secretary’s opinion, but never asked the marchers themselves, as the Professor from Chicago had done, and they never bothered to report his findings, either.

At the same time the press had begun to hound the Coxey relatives for dirt on the 44 year old father of the rebellion. Who was this man who had bankrolled the voices of the great unwashed? Jacob Coxey was a true self made man. He started in as a water boy at a rolling iron mill, Now wealthy, in  1881 he moved to Massolin, Ohio. 

It was called The Port of Massolin, because of the 300 mile long Ohio River and Lake Erie Canal. 

By 1850 the canal had been superseded by railroads. 

But by then Massolin manufactured steam tractors for farms and iron bridge construction. Jacob even bought a small farm and a sandstone quarry.  

And just about every building that went up in Massolin was built from Coxey sandstone. By 1890 Jacob was one of the richest men in Ohio, and had become fed up with the terrible roads in his adopted state, and frustrated with the vice grip the railroads had over the nation's growth. He  began to conceive of a way to improve the roads and encourage investment nationwide.  The press found his original ideas crazy and incomprehensible. 

Tired of being misquoted, Jacob Coxey’s father finally refused to talk to the press anymore.  But before he had reached that point they quoted him as describing his eldest son as “stiff necked” and “pig headed”, and one Jacob’s sisters described the warrior for the unemployed as “an embarrassment”. To listen to such quotes you might not know that Jacob Coxey was one of the most successful and wealthiest men in Ohio, not from inheritance but by the sweat of his own brow and brain.

Snowfall  now delayed the army’s progress over the mountains. Noted the New York Times on 11 April, "Coxey's Commonweal Army is still encamped in a grove…and is likely to remain there some time unless the severe mountain storm prevailing subsides by noon to-morrow. The furious storm of last (night) continued though out the day.” Coxey himself had moved ahead into Maryland, to make arraignments for the future encampments, leaving Carl Browne in charge. And it quickly became evident the threat from Coxey’s Army and the social revolution it was seeking to inspire, was brewing trouble within its own ranks.

"I didn't bite him," said the Lion, as he rubbed his nose with his paw where Dorothy had hit it. "No, but you tried to," she retorted. "You are nothing but a big coward."  "I know it," said the Lion, hanging his head in shame. "I've always known it. But how can I help it?  

1900  L. Frank Baum  "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz"

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COXEY'S ARMY - Chapter One - FIRST STEPS

  

I am glad I was not there on that Easter Sunday, 26 March, 1894, when what the press would call “Coxey’s Army” set out from Massillon, Ohio. It would have been a depressing sight. It was raining and it was cold, and only 86 men showed up to begin a march which was intended to change the course of American democracy. 

On the plus side, they were joined by 42 reporters from various newspapers, just about one reporter for every two marchers. The press corps was further augmented by four Western Union telegraphers and two line men. Along the route they could tap into a telegraph lines,  sending dispatches about the progress of the army. William Stead, from the magazine Review of Reviews, noted that “Never in the annals of insurrection has so small a company of soldiers been accompanied by such a phalanx of recording angels.” It would quickly develop that he was one of the few sympathetic angels.

"The road to the City of Emeralds is paved with yellow brick," said the Witch, "so you cannot miss it. When you get to Oz do not be afraid of him, but tell your story and ask him to help you. "
1900  L. Frank Baum  "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz"

History records that they were singing new words (written by Carl Browne) set to the tune "When We Were Marching Through Georgia!", sung by Sherman’s Army as it burned it's way to Savanna.  “So now we sing the chorus,  Wherever we may be, While we go marching to Congress.” But if they did sing, it was not for long. At least they waited until the "warmth" of  the afternoon before, with collars turned up against the cold, they began their trek.

First there came a man on foot carrying an American flag, who was dutifully identified as a “negro” by the recording angels -  thus mocking Coxey’s determination to treat all races in his army with equal respect.  He was followed by Carl Browne, mounted on a stallion, and bedecked in his buckskin jacket and a huge western hat.  

Behind him, riding in a Pheaton buggy drawn by a matched pair of magnificent horses, came the financial support and ideological inspiration for the march, Jacob Coxey.  He was one of the richest and most successful businessmen in Ohio.  And behind him came the “army”,  all 86 of them,  on foot and bicycle. But who were “them” really?

Later, Chicago University Professor Hourwitch actually tried to find out who they were. When the marchers had grown in number and in fame, he polled 290 of them. Their average age was 31 years old and on average they had been unemployed for five months. Almost two thirds were skilled mechanics, but less than half of those were union members. There were 88 Democrats in the army, 39 Republicans and 10 who declared themselves to be members of the Populist Party. One in four had needed charity to survive the winter just passed. The study also noted that five or six were of “questionable character”. 

"After a few hours the road began to grow rough, and the walking grew so difficult...The farms were not nearly so well cared for here as they were farther back. There were fewer houses and fewer fruit trees, and the farther they went the more dismal and lonesome the country became." 
1900  L. Frank Baum  "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz"

The New York Times noted in their dispatch that by the end of the first day’s march of just eight miles, ending outside of Canton, Ohio, twenty-five men had “dropped out”.  Another paper noted that of the “seventy-five stragglers” who had begun the march, several had spent the previous night in the local jail, and were released just before the march had begun. 

And calling the marchers “stragglers” was one of the kinder characterizations. Routinely they were identified as “bums”, or “tramps”.  The reporters did not pass up any chance to mock and degrade the "Army of the Poor". 

But four days before the march began the magazine “The Coming Nation” noted, “There is to be a presidential election this year; in view of which it may be well to remark-- That workingmen will not be taxed less under a Republican president than they have been under a Democrat. That there will be no more opportunities open to labor in the next four years than there have been in the past four…That there will be no more flour in the bin with a McKinley in the White House than there has been with a Cleveland….We admit that this is rather a gloomy forecast; but experience warrants it and events will justify it.” They certainly did.

What Coxey wanted from the Federal government was not charity. He wanted half a billion dollars to be spent on building and improving roads. We know today, as the beneficiaries of the interstate highway system, that the investment in infrastructure Coxey was promoting would improve the nation, would create new wealth by creating new opportunities for business and in the short run provide honest work for the unemployed.  

But the tired, plaintive ideological repetitions were heard just as loudly in 1894 as they are today. Then -  that surface roads built by the government were somehow less “moral” than the railroads which were privately owned, even though both were built and run as government endorsed monopolies. In the eyes of the wealthy, who owned the railroads, one was moral and one was not. You need not guess which was which.

Put in such stark black and white imperatives the argument may seem absurd to us today, and, in fact there are indications it seemed just as absurd to the citizens of 1894.  But at issue was not what the average American thought, but what the bought and paid for politicians in Washington and the various state capitals were willing to publicly seriously consider. For, much as they are today, the press and the politicians, to their mutual advantage, avoided any honest discussion of the middle ground, preferring instead to debate positions that most people considered absurd extremism. 

Carl Browne was described as, “...strongly built with a heavy mustache, and a beard with two spirals. He wore a leather coat fringed around the shoulders and sleeves. A row of buttons down the front were shining silver dollars. Calvary boots, tight-fitting, well polished, came to his knees…He handed me a card with his written signature, at the end of which was a grand flourish and the words, ‘The pen is mightier than the sword.’”

Carl Browne (above) was a part Christian mystic, a part theatrical ham, part artist and illustrator and a part time poet. Coxey had conceived of the method to help the unemployed, but the march on Washington by "The Army of the Commonweal", was all Carl Browne.

But the cause of the common man was not helped by the men Browne (above, center) had brought in to be his Marshals -  the second tier leaders of the army.  David McCullaum was an economic author and a supposed Cherokee Indian  who had written a pamphlet entitled "Dogs and Fleas" under the non de plume of “One of the Dogs”.   Also there was "Mr. One"  who claimed to subsist only on oatmeal. Then there was Cyclone Kirtland, an astrologer who predicted the army would be “invisible in war, invincible in peace.”  Beside him stood Christopher Columbus Jones (above, left) , the leader of marchers out of Philadelphia, who always wore a silk top hat, which merely accented his diminutive five foot tall frame. There was also the trumpeter named “Windy” Oliver. Together they more closely resembled circus side show barkers than the managers of a political movement.

But the most disturbing of all them all was a man who insisted upon being known as “The Great Unknown”. It was not a name chosen at random, but self promoted. “The Great Unknown” was always followed about by a woman who wore a veil and never spoke. But Carl Browne knew the Great Unknown  was an ex-circus barker and a current patent medicine “faker” named A.B.P. Bazarro. 

In an earlier life The Great Unknown and his wife had made their living selling a "Blood Purify-er" concocted in their makeshift lab on the west side of Chicago. And just to make it easier for the newsmen traveling with Coxe's Army, The Great Unknown let it be known that he would also answer to the name of “Smith”. So the press dubbed him "The Great Unknown Smith".  And like Fox News, Bazarro knew the value of mixing politics with the sales pitch.

In their previous existence, while Bazarro's wife passed through the crowds collecting cash for their  "Purify-er",  Browne (above) would make his appearance and pitch his political theology of  abandoning the gold and silver standards and union organizing.  

Browne was also the self elected “Great Wizardo” of the “American Patriots”, a self created political organization. And it was because of his success with selling politics and snake oil, that Browne had asked “The Great Unknown”, to join the march.

So, the newspaper men might be forgiven for treating these desperate men as if they were members of a sideshow confidence game. Some of their leaders had recently been just that.  Some still were.

Except. of course, that required that the reporters also belittle and dismiss the millions of their desperate fellow citizens whose plight the march was trying to publicize.  The crime was that the news media of 1894, like the media of today, were perfectly willing to portray the march as a joke. But at least the joke, such as it was, was on it's way.  It was left to see if the desperate marchers on that Easter Sunday, 26 March, 1894, could turn this comedy into a national drama.

"Am I really wonderful?" asked the Scarecrow. 
"You are unusual," replied Glinda"
1900  L. Frank Baum "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz"

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OH, NO YOU DON'T

 

I was doing 70 miles per hour, speeding north out of Los Angeles on the 5 freeway on a typical Southern California morning during the 1990's. Suddenly, a flash of silver in the cloudless sky caught my attention. Then, there was nothing but the pale California blue. Then it flashed again, and again. And just as I started to ponder what it might be, the flashing stopped. Three hours later when I got home the first thing I told my my wife,  Samantha, was that I had seen a UFO. 

Now, any object you see in the sky which you cannot identify is by definition, an Unidentified Flying Object. And I had seen one.  But what I had not seen was a flying saucer, as in something built by aliens to visit our world.  

While watching the ten o'clock news my UFO was identified as a small home-built experimental “light” aircraft, flying out of Whiteman Airport, in Pacoma (above).  The engine had suddenly quit, and the plane had spiraled into the ground, sadly, killing the pilot. And with this knowledge, I realized every time the spinning plane's wings caught the light, they flashed in my direction, otherwise the plane was too small and too far away for me to have seen it. 

But what were the odds that I would have been in the exact position and looking in the exact direction to see that plane during the 20 seconds it took to fall three thousand feet? My sighting of that UFO was an extremely unlikely event, but far more likely than an alien spaceship visiting the earth. 

Twenty percent of Americans expect aliens to first land in Washington, D.C., which means that 20% of Americans are, in my opinion, too stupid to find their own feet in the dark. About one in three Americans believe flying saucers are alien visitors.  Barely two in ten are brave enough to assert unequivocally that UFO's are not alien spacecraft. I say all of this not because I believe I am right, but because I know I am. 

Just to leave the earth you have to be going 25,000 miles an hour, which is a very expensive and complicated thing to do.  And if you should see a rocket from an odd angle or at an odd time of day (above), it may look nothing like a televised launch. Being humans, with brains designed to make "sense" of what we see, connecting what we see with what we expect to see, with what we have seen before, it becomes easy to see something that is not what we think it is.

In one of the first UFO sightings, in 1947, over Seattle Washington, an experienced military pilot reported a formation of UFOs that raced away from him,  climbing and diving in defiance of gravity, while maintaining perfect formation. Since no one else saw the "aliens" the report can never be absolutely confirmed or absolutely denied. But a recreation by the PBS program NOVA showed the UFO's could have simply been sunlight reflections on the airplane's canopy.  I can't prove that is was reflections. But ask yourself,  what is more likely - aliens or a simple mistaken assumption when the pilot saw something he did not expect to see when and where he did not expect to see it?  Do you want to panic? Then it was aliens. If you prefer not to panic, then it probably wasn't, and life goes on. It's your choice

Also, consider this;   as difficult as it is to go 7 miles a minute just to get off this rock, in terms of space travel, escape velocity  is like backing out of your driveway. 

From the earth to the sun (called an Astronomical Unit) is 93 million miles. It would take 176 years to drive to the sun in a Chevette at 70 miles an hour, and you would need special glasses. Call them sun glasses. 

Neptune, the 8th and farthest planet in our solar system  is 30.5 AU's from the sun, so just to get out of our neighborhood you would have to drive that Chevette at 70 miles and hour, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, for 5,369 years to get to Neptune.  And that would just get you to the edge of our property line, speaking universally. 

The nearest star to our own sun, in other words the house next door, is Proxima Centuri (above, in the red triangle), which is 15, 300 AU from our sun. That means it would take you, at 70 miles an hour,  two million, six hundred ninety-two thousand, eight hundred years to drive there. And at 30 miles to the gallon, that would be a very expensive trip for a Chevette.

Of course, the assumption is that aliens have warp-drive, or hyperdrive or star-drive or maybe  "fold space", which allows then to travel faster than the speed of light. I guess, on a Saturday night future human teenagers will just zip down to the McDonald's on Proxima Centuri to hang out.

 And I wish that were true, I really do. I am a big Star Strek/Star Wars fan. (Dr. Crusher was the MLF. of my 30's ) But it ain't gonna happen, folks.

Let's say you wanted to build an intersellar Chevette. I would suggest a few style changes, just because. But even if you kept the classic hatch-back earth size, that car weighs about 2,000 pounds. So, just to get that hatchback into orbit would take 57,000 pounds of thrust, or a 28.5 to one ratio of thrust to weight. Now that ratio drops quickly the further you get from the center of the earth. But as you go faster the ratio starts to go back up, and quickly, because - and hold on to your hat here – ...

Fueling up your 2,000 pound Chevette to reach the speed of light would require 69 billion, 192 million pounds of thrust... except, as you go faster, the Chevette gets heavier. Which means you need more thrust, leading to more mass, requiring more thrust, making more weight, requiring more thrust, etc. ad nauseum. 

That's because the amount of additional thrust required to go even one millionth of a mile per hour faster is always squared, (E=mc2) until the additional thrust required to go even one millionth of mile an hour faster is infinite. That means that the last little bit of energy required to go from 175, 999 and 9/10ths miles per second to 176,000 miles per second - aka 300,000,000 meters per second - would require you to convert all matter in the universe into energy - including your Chevette.  Relatively speaking,  you can not get to the speed of light unless you start out as light. 

Of course, science fiction writers envision ways of changing the rules of the game, by warping space, or using a convenient worm hole. Except you might as well say going down the worm hole with Alice will get you to Proxima Centuri in five minutes flat. It might. But nobody has ever actually seen a worm hole. Or designed a workable a warp drive.

Let me, as a male, explain it this way. The speed of light is like a gentleman's club where friendly beautiful naked woman gyrate on your lap. But just to get in the club requires you to hand over all your credit cards. And without a credit card, the beautiful women will no longer gyrate within  a hundred feet of you. 

Just getting into a worm hole requires you to get squished flat in a gravity field, after you have been  bombarded with enough radiation to make you transparent - for the fraction of second before you are disassembled into your individual atoms.  Can I prove that? Aha!. I don't need to. I'm not the one claiming there is a magical way of getting something for nothing out of the universe. You might was well ask a Republican for a affordable health insurance.

Is there life on other planets? Of course there is. On this planet there is life crowded around 700 degree thermal vents, in the deepest, darkest parts of the ocean - bacteria, tubeworms (above), clams, mussels, and shrimp, These creatures never see sunlight, and find oxygen poisonous and thrive in crushing depths. They actually eat hydrogen and sulfur. There are even bacteria that eat acid and petroleum. On this planet. Why wouldn't there be life on other planets?

 With an estimated 6 sextillion planets in the universe (that's a 6 followed by 21 zeros), it becomes certain that there is life out there, probably everywhere. But is also certain, they have not and will not visit us because they cannot travel at the speed of light. Nobody can. It's not unlikely.  It is impossible.

 Sorry, but that's just the way it is.  Grow up and get used to it. UFO's ain't alien space ships. They are just stuff we haven't identified yet. But we will. Eventually. Be patient. Some day, Gates McFadden may even ask me for a date. It's possible. It just ain't likely.

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