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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END OF THE WORLD....AGAIN.

 

I wonder if you are aware that the the world ended on 5 April, 1761. If you haven't heard of this tragic event, well, your ancestors were just not paying attention. In a world where most people still believed in the literal history of a real Adam and Eve, a certain William Bell, trooper in the Life Guards Horse Cavalry, went about London telling everyone and anyone who would listen that doomsday was nigh. And on the date predicted, thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of people, acted on his prediction. And what was amazing was that Corporal Bell was right. The world did end on that year.  But  Corporal Bell was right for the wrong reasons. And reason made all the difference. 

The 8th  day of February,  1761 dawned cold, as was to be expected in a world still in the grip of “The Little Ice Age”. Most winters the Thames froze over allowing people to cross the ice. And the great city was chocking on her own coal smoke to keep warm. This Sunday The “Picadilly Butchers”, as the members of the Life Guards Household Cavalry were called, were gathering for their parade, set then, as now, on every Sunday, for 11:30 A.M.

Then, from Greenwich below London on the south bank, to Richmond, on the upstream north shore, the entire Thames valley shuddered. In Hampstead and Highgate houses shook. Among the ship construction ways in Limehouse, the chandler’s tools were vibrated off their frames.

In the tiny village of Poplar across from the Isle of Dogs in the great bend of the Thames River, chimneys were shaken apart, their bricks crashing to the ground. In ‘The City’ itself pewter keepsakes slipped off mantles and chairs were upended. It was over in a few seconds. The dust settled. Nerves calmed. Normality returned.

On Sunday, March 8, 1761, between five and six on in the morning, the Thames valley shuddered again. This time the shaking was stronger and lasted longer, roiling from north to south and back again.

In St. James Park a section of an abandoned canal in the private gardens behind Buckingham House (above) collapsed. In the churches of London, words of reassurance offered after the first quake, now fell on deaf ears.

Reason and logic were forgotten. All that people could think of was their fear. Panicked, the richest and poorest citizens of central London ran from their beds at the slightest suggestion of another quake, convinced their homes were about to collapse around their heads, as some already had.

But the most well known collapse caused by the twin London earthquakes of 1761 was the collapse of sanity in the person of William Bell. He was one of the “Tinned Fruit”, aka a “Picadilly Butcher", a corporal in the Household Cavalry. And he became convinced that the shaking of 8 February (the second Sunday in the month) and 8 March (the second Sunday in that month), would be followed by a truly catastrophic shaker on the second Sunday in April - the twelfth.

In his mind Bell saw the earth split open. The mighty Thames River boiled and roiled. The bridges cracked and fell. The fires of damnation burst forth from the bowels of the earth. Sinners and Saints were cowed before the angels of the Lord. Spirits of the dead rose up. And the earth was laid bare, swept clean of the sins and works of man. Corporal Bell's visions became so intense and detailed, that he began to share them with any and all who would listen. He related them with such passion that Bell's visions took hold of the entire city like a fever.

Charles Mackay’s excellent book, “Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds” (Harmony Books – 1843) records that, “…all the villages within a circuit of twenty miles …(were) crowded with panic-stricken fugitives, who paid exorbitant prices for accommodation to the housekeepers of these secure retreats. Such as could not afford to pay for lodgings at any of those places, remained in London until two or three days before the time, and then encamped in the surrounding fields…

"...and hundreds who had laughed at the prediction a week before, packed up their goods, when they saw others doing so, and hastened away. The river was thought to be a place of great security, and all the merchant-vessels in the port were filled with people, who passed the night between the 4th and 5th on board, expecting every instant to see St. Paul’s totter, and the towers of Westminster Abby rock in the wind and fall amid a cloud of dust.”

One enterprising chemist even advertised pills which he claimed to be “good against earthquakes”, although exactly how the pills proposed to save the swallower, was never fully explained.

Needless to say, the world did not actually end on Sunday 12 April, 1761, at least not in the way Corporal Bell had anticipated.  As Mackay recorded, “The greater part of the fugitives returned on the following day, convinced that the prophet was a false one; but many judged it more prudent to allow a week to elapse before they trusted their dear limbs in London.”

Corporal Bell became a man scorned, a repository for all those angry with themselves for having believed his prediction. And when he tried his hand at other doomsday prognostications, Corporal Bell was confined for some months in an insane asylum, probably, in part, for his own protection. Edward W. Brayley recorded in his book “Londoninania” (Hurst, Chance and Company – 1829) that Bell “…afterward kept a hosier’s shop in Holborn Hill during many years, and …retired to the neighborhood of Edgeware where he died a few years ago”.

Some things did change because of the twin quakes. His royal highness King George II picked up the damaged Buckingham House at a bargain price.

He kept the gardens but filled in the collapsed canal behind the structure and turned it into the Parade for the Household Cavalry. He renamed the residence “The Queen’s House”, but over the years, as additional wings were added, the old name returned and it became known as “Buckingham Palace”.

The channel between the Isle of Dogs and the hamlet of Poplar was bridged at two points and eventually the inside of the bend in the Themes became the East End of London (above). But something more fundamental had changed with the Earthquakes of 1761, and while the superstitions of William Bell were largely forgotten, another man was inspired, in part by the quakes  to a vision which indeed gave birth to a new world.

His name was James Hutton (above).  He was an ugly little man with a great big brain who was trained as a lawyer, a chemist, a doctor of Medicine, a businessman, and late in his life, a farmer. But the earthquakes of 1761 had awakened his curiosity as to what had caused them.

He had already come to the observation that the forces of erosion he saw on his farm, (streams and rivers, wind and rain) must be have been working in the time of Adam and Eve. But how long ago was that? 

Hutton did not know. Nobody did. But Hutton was curious and sure enough of his God given brain to believe that he could understand the process. 

He allowed the idea to percolate in his mind until, 27 years later, in 1788, when he went sightseeing with the mathematician John Playfair (above).  And while walking at the cliff edge at Siccar Point in Scotland, southeast of Edinburg,  Hutton saw a single formation of rock that utterly lifted the veil of superstition from his eyes.

There, in front of Hutton (above), was a bed of schistus, (to the right) thrusting up vertically from below. And sitting directly on top of this was a bed of sandstone, (left side of picture) lying in opposition to the schist. The junction point between the two kinds of rocks came to be called an “Angular Unconformity.”  

They were different kinds of rock and they could not have been formed in the same place or the same time, or even close to each other in time or place. Something between them must be missing; that something was the unconformity.

Sandstone is produced by compressing desert or beach sand under tons of more dessert sand or other rocks, with little to no water present. We now know that this particular sandstone had been formed when England was at the same latitude as the Sierra Desert is today, and looked very similar.

Schist is created by lava cooling deep under water, then reheating almost to the melting point and letting it to cool again, still under pressure but without the presence of liquid water. Each of these processes takes millions of years by themselves. But the schist rock must form in the presence of water, and the sandstone in the absence of water. 

So the missing layers at the angular junction of the two beds were like the missing pages in a book, missing pages that must tell a story of mountains perhaps rising and wearing down to nothing, of seas opening and closing, of river valleys cutting through the land filling again.  That would take millions of years to achieve, given the rates of erosion Hutton had observed on his farm. Those millions of years whose record had been destroyed had to be between the crystals of the schist and the grains of the sandstone.

The Angular Unconformity which Hutton stood over that day demanded an untold millions of years, and hinted at why earthquakes happen in England -  not because God was seeking to destroy a sinful humanity, but because that is how God made the world -  with earthquakes, one after another, millions of them over the  last four billion years. 

And how she is remaking it every day, out of the remains of the day before, a single grain of sand and a single crystal of schist at a time. It is the same way our minds were formed, and out of the same stuff. It is a world without end, because everything in it is reused, time and time again, Even us. Even time.

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