WEBVTT - Coxey’s Army 0:00:01.280 --> 0:00:04.279 Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production 0:00:04.360 --> 0:00:13.560 of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. 0:00:13.600 --> 0:00:17.320 I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy Vie Wilson. So, Uh, 0:00:17.440 --> 0:00:20.759 in the midst of today's very bananas world, which I 0:00:20.800 --> 0:00:22.520 think we have both talked about a lot, has been 0:00:22.560 --> 0:00:26.320 informing our choices of topics lately, uh, and which is 0:00:26.400 --> 0:00:30.680 involving this constant news cycle of economic instability and protests 0:00:31.200 --> 0:00:35.040 and those things being hashed and rehashed and discussed for 0:00:35.080 --> 0:00:39.320 their various merits, uh lack thereof in some cases. I 0:00:39.360 --> 0:00:42.760 got to thinking about earlier protests and wanting to talk 0:00:42.880 --> 0:00:47.240 more about those and specifically the first protest march on Washington, 0:00:47.320 --> 0:00:49.800 d C. And that is the story of Coxey's Army, 0:00:49.840 --> 0:00:52.120 and it is one that's been requested a lot of times. 0:00:52.840 --> 0:00:55.600 It's really easy when you look at the facts of 0:00:55.640 --> 0:00:57.600 it to see why it is so compelling to people 0:00:57.640 --> 0:01:00.240 and why people request it because in a day should 0:01:00.280 --> 0:01:03.400 de parallels to our current situation. Uh. There are also 0:01:03.480 --> 0:01:05.880 just a lot of really fascinating details in the mix. 0:01:05.920 --> 0:01:09.640 So today is the day, and we're covering Jacob Coxey 0:01:09.680 --> 0:01:13.320 and what came to be known colloquially as Coxey's Army. Yes, 0:01:13.440 --> 0:01:15.280 I feel like this one has been on both of 0:01:15.280 --> 0:01:19.640 our lists at points because so many people have asked 0:01:19.680 --> 0:01:22.279 for it. Um So we've talked on the show before 0:01:22.360 --> 0:01:25.560 about the Panic of eight and the economic crash that 0:01:25.720 --> 0:01:30.160 came along with it. Railroad overbuilding that was financed through 0:01:30.400 --> 0:01:33.360 just really unsound lending practices had caused a lot of 0:01:33.440 --> 0:01:36.560 railroads to go under, and then that coupled with a 0:01:36.640 --> 0:01:39.479 run on the gold supply, the country was plunged into 0:01:39.480 --> 0:01:43.480 what amounted to a financial freefall. Those are obviously broad strokes, 0:01:43.520 --> 0:01:47.160 but since we have covered this many many times before, uh, 0:01:47.280 --> 0:01:50.360 we're just doing the light touch version. But as a 0:01:50.440 --> 0:01:54.480 result of that panic, five hundred banks closed across the country, 0:01:54.560 --> 0:01:58.040 and fifteen thousand businesses shut their doors for the last time, 0:01:58.520 --> 0:02:01.520 and seventy four railroads, which had been a huge economic 0:02:01.560 --> 0:02:05.160 driver in a lot of places, ceased operations. And this 0:02:05.400 --> 0:02:09.600 was of course all happening before things like unemployment insurance. 0:02:09.720 --> 0:02:13.000 So workers that had come into the labor market in 0:02:13.040 --> 0:02:17.000 a new industrial age and were prepared to work in 0:02:17.040 --> 0:02:20.080 that industrial age suddenly had no work and they also 0:02:20.120 --> 0:02:24.639 had no safety net. President Grover Cleveland continued his anti 0:02:24.720 --> 0:02:27.040 welfare stance that he had held for a long time. 0:02:27.639 --> 0:02:30.639 We talked about this earlier on in our episode about 0:02:30.880 --> 0:02:34.480 Grover Cleveland's secret surgery. But in short, he thought that 0:02:34.520 --> 0:02:37.960 this rush to embrace silver with the Sherman Silver Purchase 0:02:38.000 --> 0:02:42.000 Act had been a woeful misstep economically. He thought there 0:02:42.040 --> 0:02:44.560 needed to be a course correction, and he also felt 0:02:44.560 --> 0:02:48.399 really strongly that financial assistance for the country's common man 0:02:48.639 --> 0:02:52.240 was just not the business of the government. In seven, 0:02:52.320 --> 0:02:55.040 during his first term, he had vetoed a bailout for 0:02:55.160 --> 0:02:57.560 Texas farmers who were trying to get through a drought, 0:02:58.200 --> 0:03:00.679 and he wrote this as part of the the two 0:03:01.120 --> 0:03:04.079 I can find no warrant for such an appropriation in 0:03:04.160 --> 0:03:07.600 the Constitution, and I do not believe that the power 0:03:07.639 --> 0:03:10.600 and duty of the General Government ought to be extended 0:03:10.639 --> 0:03:13.760 to the relief of individual suffering, which is in no 0:03:13.880 --> 0:03:18.200 manner properly related to the public service or benefit. A 0:03:18.280 --> 0:03:22.200 prevalent tendency to disregard the limited mission of this power 0:03:22.240 --> 0:03:25.840 and duty should, I think, be steadfastly resisted, to the 0:03:25.960 --> 0:03:29.639 end that the lesson should be constantly enforced, that though 0:03:29.680 --> 0:03:32.880 the people support the government, the government should not support 0:03:32.919 --> 0:03:37.440 the people. That's a whole bag of weasels to unpack. 0:03:38.320 --> 0:03:42.600 Chicago during this time reported an uptick in crime, not 0:03:42.760 --> 0:03:45.360 because people turned to crime as a way to make 0:03:45.400 --> 0:03:49.040 an illicit living in desperation, but because they wanted desperately 0:03:49.080 --> 0:03:53.680 to get arrested. Jail or prison, which offered shelter and 0:03:53.720 --> 0:03:57.280 regular meals, was preferable to the streets in a Chicago winter. 0:03:57.480 --> 0:04:01.240 And other cities. Also wrestled was Miller problems and how 0:04:01.240 --> 0:04:04.480 to manage a population that was losing its housing and 0:04:04.560 --> 0:04:09.480 ultimately completely losing stability. Of course, everyone wanted things to improve, 0:04:10.040 --> 0:04:12.280 but not many saw a way to get through this 0:04:12.360 --> 0:04:16.600 turbulent time. And that is where we get to Jacob Coxey, 0:04:16.720 --> 0:04:19.760 who came up with a novel plan. So at the 0:04:19.800 --> 0:04:23.120 center of this story is this man, Jacob Seckler Coxey 0:04:23.160 --> 0:04:25.760 and Coxey was the son of a sawmill engineer named 0:04:25.760 --> 0:04:29.919 Thomas Coxey. Jacob was born in Sellen's Grove, Pennsylvania, on 0:04:30.000 --> 0:04:33.320 April six, eighteen fifty four, in the log house he 0:04:33.360 --> 0:04:36.480 was born and actually now bears a historical marker. When 0:04:36.520 --> 0:04:39.600 Jacob was six, the family moved to Danville, Pennsylvania, where 0:04:39.640 --> 0:04:43.479 his father started working in an iron mill. Jacob completed 0:04:43.560 --> 0:04:45.960 nine years of school before going to work when he 0:04:46.000 --> 0:04:49.200 was sixteen, also at a mill, serving as the water boy. 0:04:49.640 --> 0:04:52.000 He worked his way up through various positions over the 0:04:52.080 --> 0:04:55.200 next eight years. When he was twenty, he married a 0:04:55.279 --> 0:04:58.960 young woman named Caroline Ammerman that two of them had 0:04:59.000 --> 0:05:02.680 four children together. Coxey voted for the first time during 0:05:02.720 --> 0:05:04.960 this stage of his life in the eighteen seventy six 0:05:05.040 --> 0:05:08.440 election at the age of twenty two. Over the years, 0:05:08.480 --> 0:05:11.520 he would switch political parties multiple times, and he was 0:05:11.560 --> 0:05:13.919 a member of the Greenback Party. At one point he 0:05:14.040 --> 0:05:17.920 even organized it's Danville, Pennsylvania chapter. He moved on to 0:05:18.000 --> 0:05:20.279 work with his uncle and a scrap metal business in 0:05:20.320 --> 0:05:23.040 eighteen seventy eight, and it was while on a business 0:05:23.080 --> 0:05:25.279 trip for this job in eighteen eighty one that he 0:05:25.400 --> 0:05:28.800 first visited Massillon, Ohio. He decided he would like to 0:05:28.839 --> 0:05:31.479 move there, and that was really the end of his 0:05:31.480 --> 0:05:34.479 scrap metal career. He sold his interest in the business 0:05:34.520 --> 0:05:37.240 and his next move was to purchase a sandstone quarry 0:05:37.320 --> 0:05:40.560 in Masslin and converted into a crushing mill to process 0:05:40.600 --> 0:05:44.080 silica sand. He also purchased a farm where he would 0:05:44.120 --> 0:05:46.960 eventually start breeding horses in the eighteen eighties when he 0:05:47.000 --> 0:05:50.680 became interested in racing, and between the quarry and his 0:05:50.800 --> 0:05:53.640 fancy stock horse breeding, he was able to build a 0:05:53.760 --> 0:05:57.880 really nice living for himself. Coxey was also really interested 0:05:57.960 --> 0:06:01.440 in politics and the economy, and even before the Panic 0:06:01.520 --> 0:06:04.599 of eight three, he was aware of the problems that 0:06:04.680 --> 0:06:08.680 we're facing laborers in the US. Was this is things 0:06:08.720 --> 0:06:10.159 that he gave a great deal of thought to you, 0:06:10.240 --> 0:06:14.040 and allegedly a moment of inspiration led to the reform 0:06:14.200 --> 0:06:18.120 idea that would make him famous. Yeah, just for clarity, Like, 0:06:18.200 --> 0:06:23.520 even before the panic, there were economic downturn effects happening, 0:06:23.600 --> 0:06:27.600 and there there were labor shortages already. But the story 0:06:27.640 --> 0:06:30.560 of his inspiration goes that as he was traveling home 0:06:30.600 --> 0:06:32.960 one day, he noticed that the road that he was 0:06:33.000 --> 0:06:36.279 on was in really sorry shape. According to a write 0:06:36.320 --> 0:06:38.960 up in the Chautauquin in eight nine four, this was 0:06:39.000 --> 0:06:41.880 the result of an especially problematic mud hole in the 0:06:41.960 --> 0:06:46.600 road that hampered his progress. And after he got out 0:06:46.600 --> 0:06:49.120 of the mud hole and started thinking about how they 0:06:49.160 --> 0:06:51.720 really needed to fix that roadway, and they needed better 0:06:51.839 --> 0:06:55.120 roadways in general, he put together the idea that the 0:06:55.200 --> 0:06:57.679 many people who were out of work could be given 0:06:57.760 --> 0:07:01.400 jobs fixing the roads throughout the stay. He started putting 0:07:01.400 --> 0:07:06.080 these ideas to paper, and he wrote the Coxie Plan 0:07:06.240 --> 0:07:09.880 for Business and Unemployment Relief, How the State of Ohio 0:07:10.000 --> 0:07:14.520 and its subdivisions can help themselves. Coxey's idea evolved into 0:07:14.520 --> 0:07:17.320 what he called his Good Roads Bill. It called for 0:07:17.440 --> 0:07:20.520 fair wages and an eight hour work day to achieve 0:07:20.600 --> 0:07:24.280 both prosperity for the common man and better public works. 0:07:24.920 --> 0:07:27.400 And the Good Roads Bill was no small potatoes in 0:07:27.480 --> 0:07:29.720 terms of its ambition and its scope. This was a 0:07:29.840 --> 0:07:34.000 five hundred million dollar plan, yeah transition from being just 0:07:34.120 --> 0:07:37.240 about Ohio over the years to being a national effort 0:07:37.280 --> 0:07:40.000 on his part. And that five million dollars that he 0:07:40.040 --> 0:07:42.600 was talking about was to come from the Treasury in 0:07:42.640 --> 0:07:46.880 the form of non interest bearing bonds. He also later 0:07:46.920 --> 0:07:49.440 on developed a second bill that ran alongside this one, 0:07:49.520 --> 0:07:52.600 and in that one, state or city improvement projects could 0:07:52.680 --> 0:07:56.320 deposit non interest bearing twenty five year bonds with the 0:07:56.360 --> 0:07:59.400 Treasury and then get back the cash value of the 0:07:59.440 --> 0:08:03.600 bond paper currency minus one percent. And his thinking was 0:08:03.640 --> 0:08:06.880 that that paper currency, then paid as wages to the workers, 0:08:07.200 --> 0:08:10.240 was going to reinvigorate the economy. He saw this as 0:08:10.280 --> 0:08:13.280 a benefit on a couple of different levels. One, it 0:08:13.280 --> 0:08:18.080 would improve US infrastructure and ways that were just desperately needed. Too, 0:08:18.280 --> 0:08:21.280 it would provide much needed relief to laborers who had 0:08:21.280 --> 0:08:25.920 found themselves impoverished as the country went through an economic depression. 0:08:26.560 --> 0:08:28.960 And his rite up he noted, quote Congress takes two 0:08:29.040 --> 0:08:32.080 years to vote on anything, twenty millions of people are 0:08:32.200 --> 0:08:35.480 hungry and cannot wait two years to eat. And he 0:08:35.520 --> 0:08:39.120 started pitching this plan in its earlier versions to his 0:08:39.200 --> 0:08:42.240 local politicians as well as basically anyone who would stand 0:08:42.240 --> 0:08:45.840 still long enough. But he did not exactly get a 0:08:45.840 --> 0:08:48.959 warm reception initially. According to that same right up in 0:08:48.960 --> 0:08:51.560 the Chautauquin that I mentioned a moment ago quote, his 0:08:51.679 --> 0:08:54.720 neighbors dubbed him crank, and his wife secured a divorce 0:08:55.040 --> 0:08:58.080 partly on the grounds of his craze. A new wife 0:08:58.120 --> 0:09:01.920 was secured and the jeering neighbors ignored. Uh. We should 0:09:01.920 --> 0:09:03.960 be very clear that this was not the only reason 0:09:04.240 --> 0:09:07.200 he got a divorce. Uh. There was also a gambling 0:09:07.240 --> 0:09:10.120 problem that was driving a wedge into his marriage to Caroline. 0:09:10.760 --> 0:09:14.280 That gambling was part of Coxey's passionate interest in horses. 0:09:14.320 --> 0:09:18.920 So uh, sometimes people will use his interest in his 0:09:19.040 --> 0:09:22.360 bills and his efforts at labor reform as the reason 0:09:22.440 --> 0:09:24.520 his wife left him, But it's a little more complicated 0:09:24.520 --> 0:09:28.720 than that. So Coxey wasn't entirely without interested listeners. He 0:09:28.840 --> 0:09:31.959 presented his plan to the St. Louis Populist Convention in 0:09:32.840 --> 0:09:36.960 two It was adopted into the Ohio Populist Party's platform 0:09:37.120 --> 0:09:39.680 that same year, but it really didn't get much farther 0:09:39.800 --> 0:09:43.440 than that. It wasn't until eight three, again, while the 0:09:43.520 --> 0:09:47.320 nation was really hitting this panic, that Jacob Coxey found 0:09:47.360 --> 0:09:52.840 like minded collaborators to really champion this plan alongside him. 0:09:52.880 --> 0:09:55.760 That year, at the Columbian Exposition in Chicago, he met 0:09:55.800 --> 0:10:00.120 a man named Carl Brown. Brown was on assignment from 0:10:00.160 --> 0:10:03.640 San Francisco Business Weekly as an artist and correspondent at 0:10:03.640 --> 0:10:05.840 the event. He was there to send back reports with 0:10:05.880 --> 0:10:09.560 illustrations of what was happening. He was basically like a contractor. 0:10:09.640 --> 0:10:11.040 He kind of was one of those people that worked 0:10:11.040 --> 0:10:13.199 a lot of different jobs. He wasn't a regular reporter 0:10:13.320 --> 0:10:16.920 for the San Franisco Business Weekly, and Brown was also 0:10:17.000 --> 0:10:19.880 sent to the expo with a costume suit intended to 0:10:19.920 --> 0:10:22.200 make him look like Buffalo Bill. So that he could 0:10:22.240 --> 0:10:25.280 be part of a living exhibit about the wild West. 0:10:25.360 --> 0:10:27.680 So he was wearing a number of different hats, both 0:10:27.720 --> 0:10:31.440 literally and figuratively. Here. Brown was a big personality. He 0:10:31.559 --> 0:10:34.000 was a gifted speaker, he was a showman, he was 0:10:34.000 --> 0:10:36.480 a jack of all trades, and he's been described as 0:10:36.480 --> 0:10:40.520 a labor agitator. His ideas of reform, which centered around 0:10:40.720 --> 0:10:43.600 ensuring that any able bodied person who sought work could 0:10:43.600 --> 0:10:47.680 find it, really aligned with Coxi's. His orations on labor 0:10:47.720 --> 0:10:51.160 reform had so irritated the leadership of Chicago that the 0:10:51.200 --> 0:10:53.320 mayor kicked him out of the city. He was not 0:10:53.360 --> 0:10:57.439 a quiet, subdued man in the least. But Jacob Coxey 0:10:57.880 --> 0:11:00.960 saw Carl Brown's potential and he saw that he could 0:11:01.000 --> 0:11:04.000 be the megaphone for the Coxie Plan. And while they 0:11:04.000 --> 0:11:07.079 sort of are often described as an odd couple, as partners, 0:11:07.520 --> 0:11:10.720 Brown and Coxey aligned on their shared vision that something 0:11:10.880 --> 0:11:13.520 big and drastic had to be done to get the 0:11:13.559 --> 0:11:17.520 country back on track. Carl came with some quirks, though. 0:11:17.600 --> 0:11:21.199 He believed and told anyone who would listen that Coxey 0:11:21.400 --> 0:11:25.600 was the reincarnation of Andrew Jackson. Brown had some interesting 0:11:25.679 --> 0:11:28.880 views religiously speaking, he thought that he had absorbed his 0:11:28.960 --> 0:11:31.720 wife's soul into his own as he sat at her deathbed. 0:11:32.440 --> 0:11:34.560 He also thought that he had many others that they 0:11:34.559 --> 0:11:37.400 eventually rallied to their cause, had absorbed the soul of 0:11:37.480 --> 0:11:41.079 Jesus Christ, and that that was what was driving their efforts, 0:11:41.120 --> 0:11:44.240 and that Jacob Coxey had absorbed a significant amount of 0:11:44.280 --> 0:11:47.320 that soul. He also didn't stop wearing that buffalo bill 0:11:47.400 --> 0:11:49.840 costume when the expo ended, and said he just made 0:11:49.840 --> 0:11:54.440 it part of his personal brand. He is really a 0:11:54.440 --> 0:11:59.040 fascinating character. As for Jacob Coxey's views of all of this, 0:11:59.320 --> 0:12:02.840 reincarnate should talk. One reporter at the time wrote, quote, 0:12:03.160 --> 0:12:06.520 Coxey's religious views did not prevent his ready conversion to 0:12:06.600 --> 0:12:11.160 Brown's abortive theosophy. He does not claim any supernatural wisdom 0:12:11.200 --> 0:12:15.080 as Brown does, but modestly poses as the living representation 0:12:15.120 --> 0:12:19.079 of Christ because Brown says so. Though he was an eccentric, 0:12:19.160 --> 0:12:22.320 Carl Brown was crucial to the growth of Coxey's support base. 0:12:22.920 --> 0:12:26.080 He was really good at communicating with people and gaining 0:12:26.120 --> 0:12:29.800 their trust. Carl's orations and the desperation of the men 0:12:29.840 --> 0:12:32.520 that they were speaking to. That was a powerful combination. 0:12:33.240 --> 0:12:36.560 Slowly they garnered up pretty significant following, and at this 0:12:36.640 --> 0:12:40.080 point Coxey was more passionate about his plan than ever. 0:12:40.360 --> 0:12:43.000 He was a wealthy man, but his own businesses had 0:12:43.040 --> 0:12:45.920 struggled due to the panic. He had to sell his 0:12:46.000 --> 0:12:50.280 horse farm and his crushing mill was struggling. On December seven, 0:12:51.440 --> 0:12:54.120 Brown and Coxey formed the J. S. Coxey Good Roads 0:12:54.160 --> 0:12:58.840 Association of the US. Brown was the organization's secretary and 0:12:58.920 --> 0:13:02.600 Jacob Coxey was, of course it's president. In Coxey's eyes, 0:13:02.760 --> 0:13:04.920 one of the villains and all this was the press. 0:13:05.240 --> 0:13:07.880 He felt that all the reporting about a currency crisis 0:13:07.960 --> 0:13:11.319 had actually caused some of the worst problems as panicked 0:13:11.400 --> 0:13:15.160 readers started to hoard gold. His relationship with the press 0:13:15.240 --> 0:13:19.400 only became more contentious as his activism became more high profile. 0:13:19.600 --> 0:13:22.440 That's something we'll get back to you shortly. Yeah, it's 0:13:22.480 --> 0:13:25.080 interesting and you'll you'll see it as we talk about it. 0:13:25.120 --> 0:13:27.880 But even though Coxey has this sort of like dim 0:13:27.960 --> 0:13:30.120 view of the press and what they have done at 0:13:30.200 --> 0:13:33.400 various points, it's really Carl Brown that kind of gets 0:13:33.440 --> 0:13:36.959 into it with them. Just a few months after its founding, 0:13:37.040 --> 0:13:41.679 the Good Roads Association was making very real progress. Senator 0:13:41.720 --> 0:13:45.320 William a Peffer, a populist from Kansas, was willing to 0:13:45.360 --> 0:13:49.400 introduce Coxey's two bills in Congress. But this idea of 0:13:49.440 --> 0:13:52.000 getting the Federal Reserve to print money to fix the 0:13:52.040 --> 0:13:56.200 economy didn't go over all that well. But Coxie and 0:13:56.240 --> 0:14:00.200 Brown were just undeterred. They attatched a plan early year 0:14:00.240 --> 0:14:03.080 in the year that was intended to underscore their idea 0:14:03.240 --> 0:14:05.640 and make it clear to elected officials just how much 0:14:05.679 --> 0:14:09.000 support Coxey's plan had among the working men of the country, 0:14:09.240 --> 0:14:13.040 who were voters who were unable to find jobs. Coxie 0:14:13.080 --> 0:14:15.880 and Brown, who was likely the architect of this whole idea, 0:14:16.080 --> 0:14:20.480 organized a march on Washington. This is an unemployment protest 0:14:20.520 --> 0:14:23.120 that would be too big to be ignored. And before 0:14:23.120 --> 0:14:26.040 we dig into how that all plays out, let's pause 0:14:26.120 --> 0:14:36.160 for a quick sponsor break. So this march that we 0:14:36.200 --> 0:14:39.360 mentioned before the break was conceived as what Coxy and 0:14:39.440 --> 0:14:43.760 Brown called a petition in boots. They intended to gather 0:14:43.840 --> 0:14:47.160 supporters as they traveled with the hopes of reaching Washington 0:14:47.280 --> 0:14:50.320 with a huge throng of men. The men they had 0:14:50.320 --> 0:14:53.440 won over while still in Ohio started their journey in 0:14:53.600 --> 0:14:59.080 Massilon on March, which was Easter Sunday. The residents were 0:14:59.080 --> 0:15:02.240 not all that in used about being a convergence point 0:15:02.320 --> 0:15:04.280 for this rally. A lot of them believed that the 0:15:04.320 --> 0:15:08.720 participants and Coxy's protest march were just itinerant troublemakers and 0:15:08.760 --> 0:15:10.320 they wanted them to hurry up and get out of 0:15:10.360 --> 0:15:14.600 town quickly. This perception would follow them throughout the whole trip. 0:15:14.680 --> 0:15:17.360 A lot of write ups referred to Coxy's men as 0:15:17.400 --> 0:15:21.280 just a band of tramps. There were also always people 0:15:21.320 --> 0:15:24.840 who were suspicious that they would bring lawlessness and violence 0:15:24.880 --> 0:15:27.720 as they moved through the country. Yeah, they definitely got 0:15:27.760 --> 0:15:30.480 like a duality reception in most places, where some people 0:15:30.520 --> 0:15:34.600 were really genuinely enthusiastic about them and what they were 0:15:34.600 --> 0:15:36.880 trying to do, and others were like, uh, keep those 0:15:36.880 --> 0:15:40.200 troublemakers out of our town. In the beginning, there were 0:15:40.200 --> 0:15:43.360 an estimated fifty to one participants in the march. That 0:15:43.800 --> 0:15:46.920 number varies depending on your source, and there were also 0:15:47.040 --> 0:15:49.600 forty three reporters that marched with them, but they were 0:15:49.640 --> 0:15:53.080 of course not counted among their numbers. These reporters were 0:15:53.080 --> 0:15:56.400 there on assignment because this story was sensational, and in 0:15:56.560 --> 0:16:00.920 chasing that sensationalism, their coverage was not always act you're it. 0:16:00.920 --> 0:16:03.920 It also sometimes made fun of the whole effort. But 0:16:03.960 --> 0:16:07.040 the important thing to Jacob Coxey was at his march 0:16:07.160 --> 0:16:10.800 was getting national coverage. As I was looking for a 0:16:10.840 --> 0:16:13.720 picture to use on our social media and stuff with this, 0:16:13.920 --> 0:16:17.960 I found a lot of editorial cartoons satirizing Coxey in 0:16:18.040 --> 0:16:21.080 his march. The side of the march had been a show. 0:16:21.480 --> 0:16:24.760 Coxy's wife, Henrietta Jones Coxey, and their newborn son were 0:16:24.800 --> 0:16:27.520 at the front of the parade. Coxie had named this 0:16:27.600 --> 0:16:31.200 baby Legal Tender to show his commitment to legal tender 0:16:31.240 --> 0:16:35.240 currency as a revitalizing force for the nation. So there 0:16:35.280 --> 0:16:38.440 are some accounts that Henrietta and the baby marched with 0:16:38.440 --> 0:16:41.160 the group. That's actually a little misleading. They were part 0:16:41.200 --> 0:16:43.320 of the procession as it was headed out of town, 0:16:43.360 --> 0:16:46.160 but they didn't stay with the march. They arranged to 0:16:46.320 --> 0:16:48.520 meet back up with Coxey at the destination of the 0:16:48.600 --> 0:16:52.000 nation's capital. But still quite a trip with a five 0:16:52.000 --> 0:16:56.200 week old baby, though yeah, uh, not an awesome thing 0:16:56.240 --> 0:16:59.840 to do with the best modern conveniences and health standards, 0:17:00.440 --> 0:17:04.840 really unwise. In the eight nineties, uh Brown had set 0:17:04.920 --> 0:17:07.040 up the structure of this whole march. He's often really 0:17:07.040 --> 0:17:09.840 really cited as being like the guy who is running 0:17:09.840 --> 0:17:12.480 the actual march, And as we said, he was a showman. 0:17:12.960 --> 0:17:15.919 He dubbed the march the common Wheel of Christ. He 0:17:16.040 --> 0:17:18.800 made banners and fabric badges for the men to wear, 0:17:18.880 --> 0:17:21.960 all of which read things like peace on earth, goodwill 0:17:22.000 --> 0:17:26.000 toward men, but death to interest on bonds. And these 0:17:26.040 --> 0:17:29.320 banners all had a mix of religious symbolism and economic 0:17:29.400 --> 0:17:32.560 commentary in the art I've often I've seen them described 0:17:32.560 --> 0:17:36.000 in a number of sources as being really confusing because 0:17:36.040 --> 0:17:38.640 he was trying to get a lot of different ideas 0:17:38.640 --> 0:17:41.959 and ideologies represented in them, like his religious views as 0:17:42.000 --> 0:17:44.520 well as his political views, as well as issues of 0:17:44.520 --> 0:17:47.640 the economy, and kind of blending them together, leaving some 0:17:47.720 --> 0:17:51.639 onlookers to kind of scratch their heads. Brown continued to 0:17:51.720 --> 0:17:55.280 wear that buffalo bill costume, and Coxey wore a Union 0:17:55.400 --> 0:18:00.240 Army uniform. Brown also may have cost Coxy a lot 0:18:00.280 --> 0:18:03.359 of money. It was reported that the bill for printing 0:18:03.440 --> 0:18:07.119 up recruitment flyers had come to a whopping two thousand dollars. 0:18:07.480 --> 0:18:12.000 That's two thousand dollars. On top of that, Coxy was 0:18:12.080 --> 0:18:14.760 footing the bill for some of the camp supplies, although 0:18:14.760 --> 0:18:17.520 they did take donations to cover most of their needs, 0:18:17.880 --> 0:18:21.439 as particularly being food. Food turned out to be an 0:18:21.520 --> 0:18:24.679 ongoing problem as the march played out, because in a recession, 0:18:24.800 --> 0:18:28.560 donations could be pretty sparse. The men really weren't ever 0:18:28.600 --> 0:18:31.400 getting enough to eat. Yeah, there are lots of descriptions 0:18:31.440 --> 0:18:35.399 of how like in some towns, you know, volunteers and 0:18:35.400 --> 0:18:37.280 people that wanted to welcome them would come and they 0:18:37.280 --> 0:18:41.399 would have brought food and prepared like these huge meals, 0:18:41.400 --> 0:18:43.919 but like there was never enough to go around, and 0:18:43.960 --> 0:18:45.800 so it was like, well, you might get soup one 0:18:45.880 --> 0:18:48.080 day and only bread the next, or you might only 0:18:48.119 --> 0:18:51.000 get two meals this day and one meal this day. 0:18:51.400 --> 0:18:54.119 It just was not consistent. And when you think about 0:18:54.160 --> 0:18:56.600 how much they were walking in any given day, you 0:18:56.640 --> 0:19:00.200 realized that this was a very, very difficult undertake ging 0:19:01.240 --> 0:19:04.280 because of all the press coverage, though more groups had 0:19:04.320 --> 0:19:07.280 started marching from all over the country, some as far 0:19:07.320 --> 0:19:10.080 as California in the hopes of joining what had at 0:19:10.119 --> 0:19:13.359 this point colloquially come to be known as Coxey's Army. 0:19:13.480 --> 0:19:16.200 Some of this coverage had actually started way back in January, 0:19:16.240 --> 0:19:18.960 when Coxey and Brown announced that they were planning this 0:19:19.640 --> 0:19:22.720 uh And to be very very clear, the reason people 0:19:22.760 --> 0:19:24.720 were so willing to do this was because there was 0:19:24.760 --> 0:19:27.520 a lot of desperation throughout the country at this time. 0:19:28.160 --> 0:19:30.320 This was only the second year of what would be 0:19:30.359 --> 0:19:34.159 a four year recession, and families were going hungry and 0:19:34.200 --> 0:19:37.080 there was no relief on the horizon. So for a 0:19:37.119 --> 0:19:39.760 lot of men, this seemed like the only way that 0:19:39.800 --> 0:19:42.040 they were ever going to make their voices truly heard 0:19:42.119 --> 0:19:46.240 by people with power and hopefully catalyze an improvement in 0:19:46.280 --> 0:19:50.879 their family's quality of life. Some of them traveled in wagons, 0:19:51.040 --> 0:19:54.480 some on horses, some were simply on foot, but all 0:19:54.520 --> 0:19:56.679 of them had the intent that they were going to 0:19:56.720 --> 0:20:00.200 meet up with Coxey and converge on Washington. So while 0:20:00.200 --> 0:20:03.760 there were occasional deserters who probably joined up for the 0:20:03.760 --> 0:20:06.679 promise of free meals along the way, maybe even just 0:20:06.760 --> 0:20:09.480 the security of traveling with a group, the spots that 0:20:09.520 --> 0:20:11.760 they left filled in behind them is the army kept 0:20:11.800 --> 0:20:15.720 moving through more towns. Increasingly it was made up entirely 0:20:15.760 --> 0:20:18.280 of men who were just tired of waiting for better 0:20:18.359 --> 0:20:20.639 times and they wanted to take some kind of action. 0:20:21.240 --> 0:20:24.800 And as they traveled, the press became more and more 0:20:24.800 --> 0:20:28.720 critical of this whole operation. They started writing commentary about 0:20:28.760 --> 0:20:32.040 how Brown's cowboy gear was an affectation, and then they 0:20:32.040 --> 0:20:34.719 started talking about how dirty his suit and he was, 0:20:34.840 --> 0:20:38.159 and they started calling him old greasy, which he enjoyed 0:20:38.200 --> 0:20:42.119 about as much as you might expect. The press characterization 0:20:42.400 --> 0:20:45.639 of the rest of the marchers similarly degraded over time. 0:20:46.119 --> 0:20:48.600 While some of the accounts in the early days described 0:20:48.640 --> 0:20:53.199 the participants as enthusiastic and idealistic, that shifted soon they 0:20:53.200 --> 0:20:57.920 were referring to the protesters as an unwashed army. For example, 0:20:57.960 --> 0:20:59.960 there's one early article at the start of them, mark 0:21:00.040 --> 0:21:03.440 Jin massilin where the New York Times reported quote, most 0:21:03.480 --> 0:21:06.520 of those now here are hard looking people, but up 0:21:06.520 --> 0:21:09.080 to the present time, they have shown no disposition to 0:21:09.160 --> 0:21:13.320 be unruly. Coxie and his lieutenants are elated and declared 0:21:13.359 --> 0:21:15.440 that they will have ten thousand men in line when 0:21:15.440 --> 0:21:18.600 the word forward is given. But in a story from 0:21:18.600 --> 0:21:21.560 mid April, a few weeks into the march, the Times 0:21:21.600 --> 0:21:25.760 first outlined how the Fife core of Coxey's army traded 0:21:25.800 --> 0:21:29.280 their instruments for beer and then got arrested. The right 0:21:29.359 --> 0:21:32.520 up of the incident describes Coxie handling the situation well, 0:21:33.000 --> 0:21:35.600 explaining that there would be no tolerance for that kind 0:21:35.600 --> 0:21:38.320 of behavior and that the point of their march was 0:21:38.400 --> 0:21:41.440 much more important than getting drunk, But then it completely 0:21:41.480 --> 0:21:44.000 discredits him at the end, saying that he was made 0:21:44.080 --> 0:21:46.480 happy when he met a fortune teller on their journey 0:21:46.840 --> 0:21:49.400 who told him that he would live to be a hundred. Yeah. 0:21:49.440 --> 0:21:53.280 It's when you read the flow of that particular brief article, 0:21:53.400 --> 0:21:55.439 it's the weirdest thing, because it really is like this 0:21:55.560 --> 0:21:58.560 great portrait of like, Wow, he's really a good leader, 0:21:58.680 --> 0:22:00.960 Like he explains to them like why they are doing 0:22:00.960 --> 0:22:03.399 what they are doing and reminds them of the gravity 0:22:03.440 --> 0:22:05.400 of this effort. And then they're like, oh, and then 0:22:05.400 --> 0:22:07.400 he got all into a fortune teller for a little while. 0:22:07.480 --> 0:22:12.960 It's like, oh, eventually Carl Brown got really tired of 0:22:12.960 --> 0:22:15.880 all these jobs from reporters and he started calling them 0:22:16.160 --> 0:22:20.119 argus eyed demons of hell. This actually quite delighted the press. 0:22:20.440 --> 0:22:23.159 They started a little club amongst themselves that they dubbed 0:22:23.160 --> 0:22:27.040 the argus Side Demons, and this club even had elected officers. 0:22:27.119 --> 0:22:29.800 But really it was mostly just about like finding a 0:22:29.800 --> 0:22:32.600 good watering hole and drinking wherever they stopped for the night. 0:22:33.160 --> 0:22:35.840