COXEY'S ARMY - Chapter Six - BEING HEARD

I imagine that every one of the seven miles - about a 3 hour march - from Brightwood Park to the nation's capital were tense for Coxey’s men. The now 500 man Army was swollen by the convergence of marches from New York and even Texas, and supporters to perhaps 4,000.  And leading the army, at least in the cartoons (above) was Democratic Presidential contender William Jennings Bryan. But in truth, Bryan was with the army in lukewarm spirit only.

The 12,000 witnesses who now marched alongside the army intended, I suspect,  to use their bodies to protect the army.  

Among those thousands was was Mr. L. Frank Baum (above), then a reporter for the Chicago Evening Post.  The following year he would begin writing a children’s book “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” about four friends - Dorthy (wearing silver slippers ), along with The Scarecrow (the American Farmer), the Tin Woodsman (Industrial Workers), and the Cowardly Lion (Populist politician William Jennings Bryan), who follow the Yellow Brick Road (the gold standard) to the Emerald City (Washington D.C,) demanding the Wizard's assistance.  The Wizard being, of course, the American government "...of the people, for the people..."

The crowds lined the route of the Army down 16th Street to Massachusetts Avenue, then across to Mount Vernon Square and then turning south west on 9th Street to Pennsylvania Avenue, which they followed directly to the capital building. 

"Why do you wish to see Oz?" he asked. 
"I want him to send me back to Kansas, and the Scarecrow wants him to put a few brains into his head," she replied. 
The Tin Woodman appeared to think deeply for a moment. Then he said: "Do you suppose Oz could give me a heart?" 
"Why, I guess so," Dorothy answered. "It would be as easy as to give the Scarecrow brains." 
"True," the Tin Woodman returned. "So, if you will allow me to join your party, I will also go to the Emerald City and ask Oz to help me."
1900  L. Frank Baum  "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" 

By this time the crowd was so large, it was being led by 25 mounted Metropolitan Policemen, intent upon keeping the Army moving.  Ray Standard Baker, covering the march for the Chicago Record, noted that “Coxey’s carriage (stopped) near the “B” street entrance to the grounds…Rising from his seat, he stooped over and kissed his wife, as if realizing something of the terrible ordeal to follow”.

Jacob Coxey then “leaped nimbly to the ground, and in a moment he and Browne were swallowed up in a wild surging mob of men which lifted them from their feet and bore them bodily across the street to the Capital grounds. More than four hundred mounted policemen…rode into the crowd with the intention of capturing the two…but they might as well have attempted to arrest a cyclone. The mob forced one of them against a stone wall…and threw his horse violently to the ground. Coxey…lost his footing and in a moment he was at the bottom of a pack of writhing, struggling humanity.” 

“The mounted policemen lost their heads…and began striking everyone within reach. Women and children were ruthlessly ridden down…All this time Coxey had been struggling through the crowd toward the central steps of the capital….Before anyone knew it Coxey was bounding up the East front…He was up to the tenth step before he was recognized. Then the officers closed in on him.”

Holding Coxey’s arm, Captain Garden of the Capital Police, demanded, “What do you want here?” Coxey replied, “I want to make an address.” Gardner told him he would not be allowed to do that. “Then can I read a protest?” asked Coxey. The answer again was no. After that, it was all over in less than five confused minutes.

Jacob Coxey was not arrested on The Capital's  steps, no matter what the history books say.  Jacob Coxey was instead ushered back to his carriage .

Since Carl Browne (above, left) and Christopher Columbus Jones were under arrest, the Army, now under the command of Jesse Coxey (above right) ,  marched “like a funeral procession” toward their new camp, at the site of an old dump on M street, They dubbed the new site, “Camp Tyranny”.   

On Wednesday, May second Jacob Coxey was in court to show support and pay the fines for his two friends. That was when he was arrested. The charges laid against all three men were "carrying banners illegally" and "walking on the grass" and "injuring the shrubbery". They were immediately thrown in jail. 

One week later, on Tuesday, 9 May, 1892  all three men were tried in District Court, where it was revealed that the illegal banners they were charged with displaying were the three by two inch cloth lapel pins worn by every member of the Army.  Coxey always maintained that he never stepped on the grass. It did not matter. All three men were found guilty, fined five dollars each and sentenced to an additional 20 days in jail.

Coxey’s Army stayed in Camp Tyranny for two weeks, playing baseball, drilling and attending rallies, until the D.C. Board of Health ordered them to move. They then returned to their camp at Hyattsville for another week. 

Then a hotel in Bladensburg, Maryland provided free rooms for the newly released Coxey and Browne, while the Army cramped in the hotel's back yard. Heavy rains in June drove the marchers to higher ground and this time they moved to Roslyn, Virginia.  

Finally, on 11 August,  the Army's numbers had dwindled to the point that the Governor of Maryland dispatched Baltimore Police Officers to sweep in and arrest the remaining 80 men on charges of vagrancy. That whimper was the end of Coxey's Army of 1894.

The speech Coxey had wanted to deliver from the steps of the capital, was a desperate plea. “We choose this place of assemblage because it is the property of the people,” he had wanted to say. “We come to remind the Congress...that for a quarter of a century the rich have been growing richer, the poor poorer, and that by the close of the present century the middle class will have disappeared as the struggle for existence becomes fierce and relentless.” That was what all he had wanted to say.

In the wake of Coxey’s Army, ex-President William Howard Taft was asked what a man with a family was to do when there were no jobs. The President replied “Lord knows. I do not.” And he didn’t. Neither did he have any idea how to revive the national economy. 

Two years later, the Denver News would still note, “There are millions of heads of families partially or wholly out of employment…In the agricultural districts wages have fallen one-half.  In manufacturing…the aggregate of all wages paid is at the starvation point.” 

The depression would continue for another two long years, and during that lost decade, those with little imagination fiercely contended that there was nothing that could be done to mitigate the disaster; so nothing was tried. To the surprise of the wealthy and ruling class, that did not work..

Then, in 1898 the nation raised an army and invaded Cuba and the Philippines. And at that, the six year long depression came to an end. Still, conservative economists argued the war could not have revived the economy. Besides, they insisted, increasing taxes and government investment in infrastructure could not revive a depressed economy.  And that may be so. But if it is so, then the war spending and the end of the depression was one heck of a coincidence in 1898, and again in 1942. 

I think the best memorial for those unnamed heroes of the spring of 1892 was provided by a bar fly in New York City,  who was named Feeb.  He composed and performed songs for his supper. And his favorite that spring of 1892  was, “Come, boys, turn around the beer keg. And listen to my song, Great Coxey is among us, to right each grievous wrong. No more shall sorrow grip us, We're on the way to wealth…With a glass in every hand; Sing to Coxey and his army, And free lunch all in the land.”

"…and the Witch said to the Scarecrow, "What will you do when Dorothy has left us?"

"I will return to the Emerald City," he replied, "for Oz has made me its ruler and the people like me. The only thing that worries me is how to cross the hill of the Hammer-Heads." 
"By means of the Golden Cap I shall command the Winged Monkeys to carry you to the gates of the Emerald City," said Glinda, "for it would be a shame to deprive the people of so wonderful a ruler." 
"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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COXEY'S ARMY Chapter Five - ENEMY AT THE GATES

I suppose, in the category of those seeing Coxey's Army as a relief from oppression,  you would have to include 14 year old Albert Hicks, of East 83rd street in Manhattan. According to the Brooklyn Eagle, Albert had a fight with his mother and ran away from home, saying he was going to join Coxey’s Army.  According to the Eagle, Albert made it no farther than the ten year old Brooklyn Bridge, where a police officer took him into custody, and called his father to come to collect the boy. It was a common story, an angry fourteen year old running away from home, not worth repeating on the front page of a large newspaper, except for the connection to “Coxey’s Army”. 

Which may explain why the hero of this story bore the same name as the last pirate hung in New York City, back on Friday, 13 July, 1861.

Pirates were basically sailors working for themselves, committing murder and robbery without government sanction.  And in that spring of 1892, the Congressmen, members of the cabinet and lobbyist for the wealthy, considered the Commonweal Army under General Coxey as pirates, practicing the dangerously romantic concept that government can be petitioned directly by its citizens. It had not really been tried in America since the civil war.  And consider what that experiment cost. 

So working class Americans came out to have a look at Coxey’s Army, which was doing this odd thing. And the vast majority were not frightened by what they saw.   The mixing of whites and blacks did cause some unease, but not enough to deny the logic of joining people looking for work with work that ought to be done, such as building roads. 

But the stories of Coxey's Army did scare Congressmen and the President, and infuriated the wealthy and powerful who were not interested in sharing their access to power. 

"Once, indeed, the Tin Woodman stepped upon a beetle that was crawling along the road, and killed the poor little thing. This made the Tin Woodman very unhappy, for he was always careful not to hurt any living creature; and as he walked along he wept several tears of sorrow and regret."

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

On Sunday, 22 April, 1892 , the Philadelphia recruits under the top hat wearing Christopher Columbus Jones,arrived in Hagerstown. They army had been waiting for them, but there were just 18 of them.  Similar reinforcements coming from Chicago, Kansas and Georgia were being cut off by local authorities and broken up. Clearly the powers that ran America were not going to surrender their positions without a fight. 

This day, too, William G. Moore, Chief of the District of Columbia Metropolitan Police , publicly announced that if the Commonweal Army entered the Federal City, he would enforce an 1830 regulation making it illegal for anyone to enter the District who would likely become a “public charge’.  It was an absurdly pompous threat on the face of it, since being arrested for violating the 60 year old ordinance would achieve the very object the ordinance was designed to discourage. Prisoners were by definition, in the public charge. There is a reason criminalizing poverty has been discarded. But, it seems, every generation must relearn that reason on their own.

But the commission that ran the District of Columbia went even further. Knowing that Coxey's soldiers sought donations of food and money, Moore announced that hench forth it would be illegal to solicit funds without a license, even though no licenses yet existed and requirements had been written for such a license.

In addition it would now be illegal for there to be any  assembly on public property without a license., despite no such license being in existence, and no procedure for obtaining such a nonexistent license.  And no obstruction of public roads would be permitted, either, said the commission, such as pedestrians walking down a public street, enmasse.  If these regulations were meant to discourage Coxey’s Army, they failed. In fact, the confrontational approach probably added to the Army’s numbers, as the unemployed, who before had just been desperate and rejected, now began to get angry.

Bright and early on 23 April the 300 plus members of Coxey’s Army marched (above) out of the Hagerstown camp, with flags and banners flying. They only made about six miles that day, stopping for the night at the little community of Hyattstown, where some of the men were provided with home cooked meals by locals, and the rest were welcomed to camp along Little Bennett Creek. Thousands of people turned out for speeches and general festivities in the Army’s camp that night.

One of the reasons Hyattstown was so welcoming  was the nearby  the residents had been struggling with a “...deficient link of the Great National Western Road.”  The section between Rockville and Gaithersburg, Maryland, had been described for generations as,  “Deeply rutted and dusty in dry weather...a muddy morass after a heavy rain. Often it was nearly impassable, and its dismal condition was disparaged and deplored by the local press and public.”   A generation before the American Revolution, the English General Braddock had almost been defeated by this very stretch of road a year before he was killed in Pennsylvania. A generation after that war, Thomas Jefferson’s road improvements bill had failed to fix the problem. Now, four generations later, the problem persisted. In fact, this section would not be really fixed until 1925, when it was finally paved over, once the automobile became as powerful a lobby as the railroads.

The mayor of Frederick, Maryland (above), John E. Fleming,  lowered the old toll road barrier and boasted that Coxey's Army would never set foot in his town.  Forty additional deputies were sworn in to keep them out.  However, on 24 April , Coxey’s Army, now 340 strong, marched into town, escorted by the deputies. And the world did not end. That night the press reported a “drunken brawl”, but the details were never confirmed. And the next day, when the Army marched out, their numbers were now 400 strong. 

It was on Saturday, 28 April 1892  that Coxey’s Army reached the doorstep of their goal, Brightwood Riding Park – now the Brightwood Recreation Area - along Rock Creek, just outside the District of Columbia. Here they established what they called Camp Stevens. They were greeted by a crowd of 10,000 curious, friendly people. Also on hand were 1,500 federal troops (3 for every member of the Army), with more soldiers waiting in Baltimore, Annapolis, and Philadelphia, ready to rush to the capital to put down the first signs of any violence. There was none.

Instead, over Saturday and Sunday, an estimated 6,000 unarmed curious citizens visited the encampment in peace. Coxey was quoted in the papers as explaining the march this way; “Congress takes two years to vote on anything…Twenty-millions of people are hungry and cannot wait two years to eat.”

On Tuesday, May 1st, 1892  perhaps 15,000 people crowded around as the Army of 500 left camp (above) for their final seven mile march on the Capital. The Baltimore Herald said “Such a fantastic aggregation never paraded itself in seriousness before the public.” 

First came Mrs. Annie L. Diggs, carrying the American flag. She was followed by Jacob Coxey’s 17 year old daughter on horseback, representing the goddess of Peace. Then came Carl Browne, dressed in his buckskin fringe.

Then came Jacob Coxey in his carriage, riding with his second wife and their infant child, “Legal Tender Coxey”.  They were followed by an actress on horseback, Ms. Virginia Le Valette.  She carried an umbrella and was draped in an American flag. And only behind this final exhibit of female pulchritude, did the public at last get a view of the object of the entire discussion, the army of the unemployed, totting banners and signs. It must have been the most bizarre procession that ever walked down Washington's 16th street, not excepting the parade formed by Dolly Madison as she fled the White House in 1813, with wagons piled high with silverware and paintings, just ahead of the British arsonists.

As they had formed up for the final march, Carl Browne told the men, “The greatest ordeal of the march is at hand. The eyes of the world are upon you, and you must conduct yourselves accordingly.” And they did.

Ahh, if they only knew the high drama and low comedy that was about to descend upon their heads.

"The Tin Woodman knew very well he had no heart, and therefore he took great care never to be cruel or unkind to anything. "You people with hearts," he said, "have something to guide you, and need never do wrong; but I have no heart, and so I must be very careful."
1900  L. Frank Baum  "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" 

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COXEY'S ARMY - Chapter Four - PLAYING DEFENSE

I would say the last thing America needed in 1894, was more millionaires. Over the previous half century, the nation of less than 70 million people had produced a ten fold increase in the number of millionaires. But no matter how profligate the wealthy might be in their spending, what the nation needed in the spring of 1894 was more consumers, more members of a working middle class with disposable income. In the perfect environment for trickle down economics, there was no trickle. The demand for demand needed to be great enough to absorb the vagaries of a business cycle that was collapsing for want of demand. That was the real answer to the bankruptcy of supply side economics; demand side economics. In thirty years Roosevelt called it the "New Deal"

"Before them stood a little man...He was clothed all in green, from his head to his feet, and even his skin was of a greenish tint. At his side was a large green box. When he saw Dorothy and her companions the man asked, "What do you wish in the Emerald City?" "We came here to see the Great Oz," said Dorothy. The man was so surprised at this answer that he sat down to think it over.  "It has been many years since anyone asked me to see Oz," he said, shaking his head in perplexity. "He is powerful and terrible, and if you come on an idle or foolish errand to bother the wise reflections of the Great Wizard, he might be angry and destroy you all in an instant." 
1900  L. Frank Baum  "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" 

On Tuesday, 17 April , 1894, Coxey’s Army arrived in Cumberland, Maryland, just a hundred air miles short of the nation’s capital. And for the first time Congress began to take public notice of the marchers, and their first reaction was, of course, panic. Congress stayed in session until 6:30 that evening, debating the impending doomsday of people actually petitioning their government. 

Ohio conservative Democrat, 51 year old Representative Joseph Hodson Outwaite, called for Mr. Coxey to consider that “...if from 10,000 to 50,000 men can intimidate Congress to do one thing, then another 10,000 to 50,000 men can intimidate them to do another thing—which leads to anarchy.” Of course some might say that is almost by definition not anarchy, but democracy. I might say that, for instance. And I just did.

In fact there had been government meetings behind the scenes before the march had even begun, on how to receive the Commonweal Army should it make it to Washington. But after some hyperventilating, congress voted down appropriations for a military reception. And some of the people’s representatives found comfort in the genius of Charles L’Enfant, who had designed the capital as a series of angled broad avenues, each of which terminated in huge traffic circles - a plan guaranteed to reduce tourists to tears, be they barbarian invaders or rebelling peasants, as in the case of Coxey’s Army. And anyway, noted the Washington Post at the time, each of those broad avenues could be controlled with a single Gatling gun.

Meanwhile, back in Cumberland, Coxey’s Army camped out on a baseball field, and the businessman from Massillon, Ohio even managed to show a little profit, charging ten cents for people to observe his footsore unemployed. It was an absurd idea, since Cumberland was already overflowing with its own unemployed. But still, the process put $145 in the army’s coffers.

The community of Cumberland (above) had once been Maryland’s second largest city, its surrounding mountains containing deposits of coal and iron ore.   It was also the junction of the National Road, the Baltimore and Ohio railroad, the Potomac River and the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal. 

The canal, also called the Grand Old Ditch, had not reached Cumberland until 1850, eight years after the railroad. And in the forty-four years since the canal had seen its better days. That was why Jacob Coxey was able to make a such good deal on hiring two canal boats, normally used to carry coal, to transport his Army down stream.

On Tuesday, 17 April 1892, the men marched through Cumberland to the loading wharf (above) at the Western Terminus of the Canal. 

The boats cut a hundred plus road miles off Jacob Coxey's Army’s march, saving perhaps four days of shoe leather. As an added plus, Coxey and Carl Browne were also hoping to put their bad press behind them. Browne had begun to refer to the reporters as “argus-eyed demons of hell.”

The cadre of reporters  were not going to be left behind when Coxey’s Army took to water. The 40 thieves banded together, hired themselves a “press boat”, stocked it with food, a cook and alcohol, and named it “The Flying Demon”. It looked, recorded one of its denizens, “like a floating picture by Victor Hugo.” 

The "Argus-eyed demons of hell" (above) had never felt favorable toward Coxey’s Army, but with the loss of copy from The Great Unknown Smith, they turned openly hostile. 

Samuel Williams, accompanying the march for the St. Louis Post Dispatch, described the hundred and fifty unemployed men as “the nucleus of a band of marauders, whose object is to despoil their fellow citizens” and called them “a species of terrorism.”   “These bands,” he wrote,  “naturally inspire terror and clashes with the authorities or citizens must come.” 

Babcock, writing for the Chicago papers, warned that the pair of boat loads of unemployed, “...can scarcely fail to cause bloodshed in Christian Communities”.  

But it did fail.  The terror was inspired only by those who read the reporter’s inventions. Those who actually saw the Army were generally favorably impressed with its discipline and decorum.  

On Thursday, 19 April, Coxey’s Army disembarked at Williamsport, Maryland, and marched the six miles to Hagerstown. 

Here they camped for two days. The community, having been fed for weeks on the press reports of tramps, thieves and anarchists, were not happy to see them. The Associated Press reported on the 21st, that, “The people of Hagerstown are preparing to make the best of the…Army for another day, or perhaps two days. Browne has determined on revenge for the rather cold reception of yesterday”. 

In truth, the Army was awaiting the arrival of additional unemployed marchers from Philadelphia, which the A.P. described in the most alarming terms. “…A party of thirty tramps is reported moving down the valley from Carlisle.” In the village of Middletown, said the press, “deputies are being sworn in to protect the town.” Still, even the alarmist press was forced to admit that “the conduct of the Coxey men In Hagerstown has so far been exemplary.”

More than that, it was evident that the Army had learned a thing or two about marketing. 

They erected a canvas screen around their camp, and charged admission to stare at the unemployed men cooking their meals and tending to their daily needs, even selling their hard-tack biscuits as souvenirs to the gawkers. “The badges the men wear (above) have also acquired a market value, and sets of the several varieties bring good prices, some of them commanding a dollar each.”

They even published and sold their own pamplet's, to explain why their objectives. It remained to be seen what profit the nation would make from the Army, now that it was so close to its goal.

"... I found myself in the midst of a strange people, who, seeing me come from the clouds, thought I was a great Wizard. Of course I let them think so, because they were afraid of me, and promised to do anything I wished them to. Just to amuse myself, and keep the good people busy, I ordered them to build this City, and my Palace; and they did it all willingly and well. Then I thought, as the country was so green and beautiful, I would call it the Emerald City; and to make the name fit better I put green spectacles on all the people, so that everything they saw was green." 
"But isn't everything here green?" asked Dorothy. 
"No more than in any other city," replied Oz; "but when you wear green spectacles, why of course everything you see looks green to you." 
1900  L. Frank Baum  "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz"

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