Coxey's Army Marches on Washington, DC in 1894
- Dec 20, 2010
- Michael Streich
- Gilded Age Robber Barons Controlled Congress - US Senate Photo Image
Jacob Coxey was the most unlikely man to be branded a revolutionary. In 1894, Coxey, a farmer and small businessman, led an “army,” the “Commonweal of Christ,” to Washington, DC. Part of his message to Congress asserted that, “Up these steps the lobbyists of trusts and corporations have passed unchallenged on their way to committee rooms, access to which we, the representatives of the toiling wealth-producers have been denied.” Coxey’s “Address of Protest,” though reflecting the economic depression of the early 1890s, might well have been written for other similar times in American history.
Coxey’s Army Marches from Ohio to Washington’s Capitol Building
In 1894 the American nation was suffering from massive unemployment. John Hay, the future Secretary of State, estimated that as many as two million Americans were jobless although other estimates were as high as three million. The 1890 federal census counted over 62 million Americans. Many of those unemployed roamed the countryside as tramps and beggars.
When Coxey first proposed his march, observers predicted that his army would be comprised of these same beggars, but that would not be the case. Many of those that joined his cause were farmers and jobless workingmen. Coxey himself was a mild-mannered family man, a devout Christian, and, as historian Page Smith characterized him, the “classic American type.”
The march began on Easter. Although Coxey’s 20,000 never materialized, slightly less than a thousand reached the foot of the Capitol building. They carried banners with slogans like “work not charity” and claimed to be “assembling under the aegis of the Constitution…” But as Coxey began to ascend the Capitol steps, he was arrested by Washington police.
All along the route from Ohio to Washington, Americans took to the streets and cheered the marchers on. They fed them and housed them. The response of thousands of well-wishers was highly significant. Dissatisfaction with government policies was everywhere.
The Constitutional Right to Petition Congress
Coxey was charged with “…violating the United States statutes in unlawfully displaying a banner or device in the Capitol grounds and in breaking shrubs and plants there.” (The New York Times, May 5, 1894) Coxey was supported by western Populists, including Nebraska Senator William V. Allen. According to Allen, the laws under which Coxey and his co-defendants were being charged were unconstitutional.
Allen argued that every American has the constitutional right of assembly and the right to petition Congress. New York Rep. Van Voorhis, who came to watch the proceedings, believed, “It was the most trivial case imaginable.” Coxey was convicted and paid a five dollar fine as well as spending twenty days in jail. Coxey, however, had fathered a new form of political protest: the march
Judge Miller, presiding at the case, made it clear that the Washington statutes broken by the defendants were not a barrier to assembly or petition. Miller opposed the manner in which Coxey and his group elected to serve their petitions. Other observers saw Coxey’s march as an attempt to storm the Capitol itself. But this was not the Paris of 1789 and the marchers were far from being the revolutionary sans culottes.
The Legacy of Jacob Coxey and Political Protest
Coxey marched on Washington again in 1914. Although neither marches achieved desired results, Coxey made unemployment and the plight of the worker front page news. Coxey himself was an experienced politician when not on his Massillon, Ohio farm, having stood for office several times in Ohio on behalf of the People’s Party and the populists.
Coxey and his co-leaders brought to the forefront the “Money Power” that dominated the halls of the Capitol where it seemed only the wealthy plutocrats had influence while everyday working Americans and farmers were further marginalized and pauperized.
In the Gilded Age, it mattered little what party controlled: both were beholden to the “trusts,” the “Captains of industry” who Teddy Roosevelt later dubbed “malefactors of great wealth.” Men like John D. Rockefeller and J.P. Morgan, representing the epitome of capitalism, were also viewed as “robber barons.” This was the influence Coxey marched against.
The Growing Gulf between the Rich and the Poor
Coxey, quoting a U.S. Senator in his Address, predicted that, “…by the close of the present century the middle class will have disappeared as the struggle for existence becomes fierce and relentless.” Such words are commonly heard during periods of economic upheaval, perhaps most notably during the Great Depression.
The request for governmental assistance, however, is always met with charges of socialism and revolution. The same was true in 1894 at a time anarchists and foreigners were blamed for labor unrest and urban lawlessness.
This would be the apocalyptic political battle in the 1894 midterm election and the 1896 presidential election. Republicans won large majorities in both elections, championing law and order. Jacob Coxey, despite his good intentions, contributed to the fear of revolution and lawlessness. Some contemporary writers still label him a socialist. But for this Ohio farmer and Civil War veteran, Congress was aloof to the cries of the unemployed. Coxey’s march demonstrated that “enough is enough.”
Sources:
- “Coxey’s Defender A Senator,” The New York Times (May 5, 1894)
- “Coxey Dies At 97: Led Army of Idle,” The New York Times (May 19, 1951)
- Jacob Coxey, “Address of Protest,” Congressional Record, 53rd Congress, 2nd Session (9 May 1894), 4512
- George A. Gipe, “ Rebel in a Wing Collar,” American Heritage, Volume 18, Issue 1 (December 1966)
- Page Smith, The Rise of Industrial America: A People’s History of the Post-Reconstruction Era, Volume 6 (Penguin Books, 1990)
- Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States (Harper Perennial, 2010) (available as a free on-line source)
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