COXEY'S ARMY - Three - REVOLT

 

I suspect there were murmurs among the growing ranks of Coxey’s Army as they finally breached the mountain ramparts southeast of Pittsburg, Pennsylvania. Late each afternoon the men formed a picket line while tents were erected as their shelters. 

Then, each group would build a cooking fire, while their leaders would distribute rations either bought by Coxey or donated by sympathetic locals. After an early meal, groups would be sent out to canvass for more donations of food, clothing and money. But the vast majority of the men stayed in camp, where they had little to do but talk.

"Well," said the Head, "I will give you my answer. You have no right to expect me to send you back to Kansas unless you do something for me in return. In this country everyone must pay for everything he gets. If you wish me to use my magic power to send you home again you must do something for me first. Help me and I will help you."

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

What the soldiers in Coxey's Army were talking about was their leader. Many nights, and every Sunday, Carl Browne would berate the men with ideological harangues, selling his vision of the unity of all working men, along with his version of Christianity - mixed with a little reincarnation. Most of the Army had long since stopped listening to his speeches, referring to him in private as the “Great Humbug.” 

But they also noticed that after the oration, while they settled into their bed rolls on the cold ground, Browne and Coxey spent every night in warm soft beds in local hotels. And should they ever forget to notice this disparity in creature comforts, The Great Unknown Smith was always careful to point out that he was sharing all the discomforts of the march with them, unlike Mr. Browne.

The Great Unknown Smith had been Carl Browne's partner in the patent “Blood Purefyer” business before Coxey had appeared in Chicago. 

Browne even knew The Great’s Unknown Smith's real name, A.B.P. Bazarro (above)...

...and he knew that the silent, mysterious veiled lady who never spoke but always followed Smith around was really Bizarro's wife. 

The "recording angels" (above), particularly those from Chicago, had known Bizzaro's (above, Center) real identity all along. But he was such good copy as The Great Unknown Smith, that they had not shared this information with their readers, or the Army. In fact there was also a rumor whispered among the reporters that the Great Unknown Smith was in fact a Pinkerton spy, sent by the wealthy to disrupt the march. And by his later actions, I suspect he may have been.

In the teeth of yet another snowstorm, on Wednesday, 11 April, 1894, the Army made the hard march south west, out of Uniontown, Pennsylvania. They were following the old National Highway, which had first been created by President Thomas Jefferson.  It was the last significant road improvement project the Federal Government had undertaken, over ninety years earlier.

Now this motley "Commonweal Army" was petitioning their government for a new, larger investment in national infrastructure. They were speaking, they said, with their boots, as they struggled past Fort Necessity, built by George Washington -  the construction of which had set off the French and Indian War in North America. They plodded in the snow past the grave of the British General Braddock (above) , who had been ambushed on the road to Pittsburgh by the French and Indians. 

Coxey's Army, seeking to speak for the vast armies of unemployed, mocked by every major newspaper in the nation, trudged step by step over the 2,000 foot high Big Savage Mountain. Every man was cold, wet and exhausted.  Patience was in short supply. Reason was slipping away. It was a bad time and place for a fight, so of course they had one.

As they reached the peak the Great Unknown Smith – who was mounted this day – rode back to the commissary wagons to grab a snack. Carl Browne saw this and was infuriated. He rode up to Smith and berated him, and then returned to the front of the column. After smoldering over the insult for a mile or so on the down slope, Smith rode forward and verbally unloaded on the buckskinned duomo, calling him a “fat faced fake” and threatening that if Browne ever spoke to him like that again he would “make a punching bag out of your face.” “I found you on your uppers in Chicago” Smith shouted. “I picked you out of the mud.”

Browne immediately ordered the marchers to halt. They stopped. Smith responded by commanding the Army to “Forward March”. The the men automatically leaned forward. Smith  sensed that hesitation and seized the advantage.

He turned his horse and rode back among the men. “You and I have roughed it together,” he reminded them. “You know I have been with you…while others were enjoying their ease. It is for you to say men, who shall command you…Will you have Smith …or this leather coated polecat?” It was a loaded question, and the Army responded as expected,  with chants of “Smith, Smith , Smith!” 

Even Coxey’s eldest son, Jesse (above), joined the mutineers. With that,  Smith led the army down the slope, while Browne, now bereft of command, galloped to the nearest telegraph office.

Jacob Coxey was in Cumberland, Maryland, arranging supplies and support in advance of the Army. It was there that Browne's desperate telegram reached him. Coxey immediately hired a carriage and drove all night to intercept his Army. They met just after dawn, Saturday, 14 April, as The Army  finally descended from the mountain top, in the well named town of Frostburg (above), just over the Maryland state line. In a perfect bit of historical staging, the Army’s headquarters for the night was in the town’s opera house (below), one of the few buildings not damaged by a tornado which had almost destroyed Frostburg the year before.

After listening to several  version of the drama on the road, Coxey stood on a box on the stage (he was not a tall man), and called for a vote for second in command. The results were not what he had hoped for; 158 for The Great Unknown Smith, and just four for Browne. There was an uncomfortable pause, and then Coxey did the greatest thing - the thing that proved him to be a real leader. He said to the men, “I cast 154 votes for Mr. Browne.” It took a few moments for the army to realize the choice they now had to make; give up the march, or give up the Great Unknown Smith. And just as that realization was dawning, into the stunned silence Coxey added, “I further order that the Unknown Smith be forever expelled from the Army.” And he called for an immediate vote of agreement.

A few voices were raised in protest, saying  that if The Great Unknown Smith were expelled, then so should Coxey's eldest son, Jesse Coxey. But even they were disarmed when Coxey  agreed to that logic. And thus so did the Army. 

The Great Unknown Smith (above) was out. Across the street from the opera house the Great Unknown unloaded again, this time to the press. “I have been deposed by a patent medicine shark, a greasy-coated hypocrite, a seeker for personal advancement.” Like all those caught in the act, Smith’s (actually Bazarro’s) accusations might have been better used as a self portrait.

The next morning Carl Browne called a press conference of his own and revealed what the press already knew, that the Great Unknown Smith was actually A.P. B. Bazzarro, a patent medicine salesman and a hypocrite. And with that weight lifted, the Army moved on 14 miles to Addison, Maryland.

Twenty years later, Jacob Coxey (above) would explain why he stood up for Carl Browne that cold morning in a half empty opera house, and why he had tolerated the bombast and pretense which Carl Browne so often exhibited, and why Jacob trusted him despite the man’s less than sterling past. Coxey called Browne “…the most unselfish man of my entire life’s acquaintance. He never gave a thought to pecuniary gain.  His whole heart was in the movement to emancipate labor."

The next day, as the march continued into Maryland, the eldest son Jesse Coxey was reinstated on the one (his father's) condition, that “he not sulk anymore”. The day after that, Coxey’s Army acquired a navy.

Don't speak so loud, or you will be overheard--and I should be ruined. I'm supposed to be a Great Wizard."

"And aren't you?" she asked.

"Not a bit of it, my dear; I'm just a common man."

"You're more than that," said the Scarecrow, in a grieved tone; "you're a humbug."

"Exactly so!" declared the little man, rubbing his hands together as if it pleased him. "I am a humbug."

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

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COXEY'S ARMY -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 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...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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