Chapter 1. Without Precedent
Coxey’s Army Invades Washington, 1894

In 1944, a ninety-year-old man stood on the eastern steps of the United States Capitol and completed a speech he had begun fifty years earlier. In words that echoed the labor struggles of that earlier time, he spoke of "millions of toilers whose petitions have been buried in committee rooms." He championed those people "whose opportunities for honest, remunerative, productive labor have been taken from them by unjust legislation, which protects idlers, speculators, and gamblers." He described a massive program of public works he had proposed to end the depression of the 1890s.¹ A small crowd of spectators stopped to hear him with polite curiosity, mostly servicemen home from the war, a few journalists. Capitol police officers looked on with benign indifference for he spoke that day with the formal blessing of the vice president and the Speaker of the House. The speech needed completing because fifty years earlier, he had hardly begun speaking when the District of Columbia police hauled him off to jail.

In 1894, Jacob Coxey had helped organize the first real march on Washington. Coxey and his co-organizer Carl Browne proclaimed that they and half a million distressed American workers would collect at the Capitol on May 1 to petition Congress to enact a sweeping legislative package. They wanted Congress to end permanently the suffering of unemployed workers by building modern roads throughout the United States and funding new community facilities with federally subsidized bonds. Coxey called the marchers the "Commonweal of Christ"; their observers labeled them "Coxey’s Army." His expectations were bold; the demands, far-reaching. It was their tactic, however, that caused the most controversy and had the longest legacy. Coxey called it a "petition in boots." Federal politicians and journalists called it an "invasion."

Their group traveled seven hundred miles from Coxey’s hometown of Massillon, Ohio, to the border of the District of Columbia. Then, on May 1, 1894, the two organizers and around five hundred Commonwealers paraded down Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol. There, Coxey confronted police officers intent on enforcing the law that forbade groups from using the Capitol grounds for political action.²Coxey and Browne were to spend twenty days in jail. Their confused and demoralized followers spent the rest of the summer in crude camps waiting in vain for Congress to address their claims. Public reaction was harsh. In Oregon, the editor of the Portland Telegram called the protesters a sign of fatal "blood poisoning in the republic." To Republican Senator Joseph Hawley of Connecticut the demonstration in Washington was "extraordinary" and "without precedent."³

The unprecedented claim that ordinary Americans had a right to voice their demands in the capital was one that activists and politicians would struggle with for the next century. The organizers’ effort would lay the groundwork for a new style of protest and a new form of national public space that would change the relationship between the American people and their government. Coxey claimed the ceremonial spaces of the Capitol Building; it was "the property of people." In 1894, Coxey and Browne were pioneers—and unlikely ones at that. Pulling their demands out of a mishmash of other causes, these two virtually unknown political activists based the national demonstration on established techniques of local protest. Understanding the first national political demonstration in Washington therefore requires suspension of one’s modern sense of how demonstrations happen in Washington. And, though the events that took place in the capital on May 1, 1894, were important, the previous months of discussion of the leaders, the groups, and their tactics did as much to shape the perception of marching on Washington in the future.

"A Petition in Boots"

The man who gave the march its name was barely a public figure before 1894. Jacob Coxey combined respectability, ambition, and radicalism in his personal and political life. Born in 1854, Coxey spent his first twenty-four years in the shadow of the iron mills of Danville, Pennsylvania. After attending school, he joined his father in the mills at the age of sixteen. With help from relatives, Coxey left manual labor behind. By 1881, he had moved to Massillon, Ohio, where he purchased a stone quarry. As Coxey moved from ironworker to successful business owner, his politics followed a somewhat surprising path. Beginning as a Democrat, he espoused the Greenback cause in the 1870s and 1880s, and by the 1890s was a confirmed Populist.⁴ From the Populists, Coxey learned to doubt the dominant parties and to believe a reformed federal government with the proper policies could cure the nation’s problems.

The 1890s were a period of severe economic depression and turbulent politics. As the crisis spread across the country in 1893, most people felt the strain and devastation. Investors and journalists noted with alarm the failures of the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad in February and then the National Cordage Company in May. Soon, the stock market took a dramatic fall, and the monetary supply contracted sharply. By July, many banks had no cash; by September, nearly four hundred banks had closed. Unemployment spread rapidly. Forty-three percent of Michigan workers were unemployed in the fall, and more than a third of New York State workers had no employment by winter.⁵

Working-class activists saw this suffering as confirming the need for new political methods and more protection of workers, while even national politicians and journalists spoke of the need for some economic assistance. Throughout the nineteenth century, but especially after the Civil War, working people in the United States had been challenging the changes accompanying the rise of industrial capitalism. Working people struggled against their employers through strikes; they formed organizations such as the Knights of Labor, the Farmers’ Alliance, and trade unions. Increasingly, they sought a voice in government. In the 1890s, these efforts proved more successful than ever before. Representatives of the Populist Party won elections to local, state, and federal offices. Even the major parties began to speak as though the interests of the working people concerned them. And, more and more members of Congress and federal officials acknowledged the federal government’s influence over the national economy and became more likely to listen to a broader spectrum of people.⁶

In this political atmosphere, Coxey first proposed a comprehensive national solution to the monetary and employment problems of the United States. In 1891, he drafted the Good Roads Bill to propose a massive program of road building funded by the federal government. Like most of Coxey’s ideas, this scheme was a mishmash of other people’s political proposals. Many were already lobbying local and national authorities; the League of American Wheelmen, a group of cyclists, entitled their newspaper "Good Roads." But Coxey melded these demands with the concerns of the Greenbacker and Populist parties for more currency. The bill required the treasury secretary to print "five hundred millions of dollars of treasury notes" without any backing in metal or bank loans. The secretary of war was to spend this money, at least $20 million a month, building roads across the country. The roads would be built by an army of labor, guaranteed an eight-hour day and wages of at least $1.50 per day. Considering that the total government expenditure in 1891 was $332 million, the bill represented an increase in federal spending of nearly 75 percent. Likewise, the road builders would earn at least 80 percent above the going hourly rate.⁷ In short, Coxey’s proposal sought to transform the entire economic system of the United States by expanding the money supply and changing working conditions.

Coxey’s plans resonated with the thinking of many reformers about how to help the unemployed. In the United States, working people had often supported the idea that the government should provide work in times of economic difficulty. By the 1890s, authorities in private charities and municipal welfare offices occasionally set up programs for men to build roads, cut wood, or clear trash.⁸ The goal of the Good Roads Bill, however, was to employ more than a few workers deemed deserving by local authorities; it aspired to put thousands of men to work for government money on a federal project. Coxey’s program moved an arena almost exclusively controlled on a local level to the national.

If his plan was grand, Coxey’s first attempts to enact it were modest. He did persuade a Populist congressman to introduce the bill. As with most bills sponsored by third-party legislators, however, the proposal went nowhere. Still optimistic, Coxey turned to the other avenue for reform in the late nineteenth century: the association.⁹ He formed the J. S. Coxey Good Roads Association of the United States in 1892 and named himself president of the group.

Though he did not know it in 1892, Coxey’s proposal and his national ambitions would depend on a radical agitator, consummate mythmaker, and self-promoter in California named Carl Browne. Browne claimed he was born on the most American of days, the Fourth of July, in 1849 in a log cabin in Illinois. In the 1870s, he moved to California, where he took up the habit of wearing a long leather jacket and a sombrero. Browne was by training a printer and a journalist; by avocation, he was a painter and a dramatist. Along the way, he supported himself by writing freelance articles, occasionally selling patent medicines, and running labor newspapers illustrated with his own cartoons .¹⁰

The culture of working-class protest in California shaped Browne’s view of political action. As a reporter and supporter, he attended the numerous protests and demonstrations organized by the Chinese Exclusion movement. Working-class leaders had seized hold of the sometimes violent and destructive outbursts by workers against Chinese people and business and channeled them into mostly peaceful public demonstrations. For a while, they led a successful—and virulently racist—political movement that transformed California politics. For Browne, the highlight of these protests came when Dennis Kearney, the most noted leader, and he made a speaking tour in the eastern United States, including a speech from the steps of the Capitol Building.¹¹ From many experiences with radical causes, Browne learned that dramatic public protests could lead to successful political campaigns and great personal satisfaction.

In the 1890s, Browne embraced a new religious faith that came to infuse his political ideals. His wife fell ill and died on Christmas Day of 1892. As she died, he felt her soul pass into his body. This miracle confirmed his faith in Theosophy and its concept of reincarnation.¹² Because Theosophists believed so fervently in practicing enlightenment through social reform, Browne’s religious faith inspired even more enthusiastic endorsement of political causes.

In the summer of 1893, Jacob Coxey, armed with his Good Roads Bill, and Carl Browne, blessed with his religious commitment to political action, met at a Chicago conference on monetary policy. This conference, bringing together party and association activists, like Coxey, and protest organizers and journalists, like Browne, helped transform both activists into figures with even more expansive national visions. The Bimetallic Convention took place during the world’s fair known as the Columbian Exposition and attracted more than six hundred delegates. Impressed by Browne’s passion during debates, Coxey realized that Browne’s skills at self-promotion and political organizing might help the Good Roads Association. Coxey sought out Browne and convinced the westerner to visit him in Massillon.¹³

At first, the two men schemed to expand the reach and efforts of Coxey’s Good Roads Association. They printed the first issue of a newspaper describing Coxey’s proposal for road building. They sent the paper to acquaintances in the Populist and labor movements across the country. In December, Browne brought the cause of good roads to the annual meeting of the American Federation of Labor in Chicago. He convinced the delegates to endorse the Good Roads Bill and collected their signatures on a petition to Congress urging its passage.¹⁴

Emboldened by the labor federation’s support and shocked by the suffering of workers in Chicago and elsewhere, Browne conceived of the idea of a "petition in boots" to Washington. He rejected the notion of mailing in petitions to Congress, as activists in the United States had done for years. Nor did he think that Coxey and he should merely deliver the petitions to Congress. Instead, Browne declared that a group of unemployed men ought to walk to Washington and present their demands.¹⁵

The more conservative Coxey hesitated at first to adopt Browne’s grander vision. Gradually, Coxey changed his mind. Browne converted the previously agnostic Coxey to Theosophy, flattering him with the idea that both Coxey and he were reincarnations of Christ. With them at the helm, a march to Washington would be like the "Second Coming of Christ." In addition to a religious sanction, Coxey reassured himself that Browne’s proposal was an extension of the constitutionally protected right of petition. On January 31, 1894, the Good Roads Association’s newspaper consisted of a pictorial petition that portrayed the transformative possibilities of the Good Roads Bill and encouraged people to go "On to Washington."¹⁶

Since they were inventing a new form of political expression, the two men scrambled to make a "petition of boots" appealing and practical. Browne, ever conscious of symbolism, emphasized the group’s Christian roots. To signal that their protest was peaceful and godly, he named the group carrying the petition the "Commonweal of Christ." In keeping with this theme, Coxey and Browne decided to leave Massillon on March 25—Easter Sunday. Like pilgrims of old, the Commonweal of Christ intended to travel the more than seven hundred miles on foot and horseback, succored only by the goodwill of the townspeople they met along the way.¹⁷

Coxey concentrated on the political and practical side. Though he wanted the effort to be funded by contributions as much as possible, he turned to his local contacts for immediate help and supplies in Massillon and contributed some of his own funds to support the Commonwealers’ march to the capital. Aware that "good roads" were mainly a concern of rural residents, he added to his proposals measures that would allow states and cities to deposit "Non-Interest Bearing Bonds" in the federal treasury. In exchange, they would receive treasury notes to finance "public improvements" such as libraries, schools, utility plants, and marketplaces.¹⁸ Such support from the federal government, he hoped, would build support for the "petition" among urban people. And, their journey would end with a "monster mass meeting on the Capitol steps" on May 1. Choosing that date clearly connected their efforts to those workers who claimed it as Labor Day.¹⁹ As for the Congress, both Browne and Coxey believed that "our Representatives, who hold their seats by grace of our ballots," would respond to their petition by immediately enacting both the Good Roads Bill and the Non-Interest Bearing Bond Bill.

Despite their high hopes, Coxey and Browne struggled to convince people to join their moving petition. For support, they turned to a network of labor activists. In Los Angeles, one of Browne’s acquaintances, Lewis Fry, organized the first of many sympathetic groups who would travel to Washington that spring. Fry named himself the general of what he called the "United States Industrial Army" and demanded that the railroads transport him and his men east. To make arrangements in Washington, Browne contacted A. E. Redstone, a journalist and patent attorney. As his first task, Redstone took the responsibility of finding congressional sponsors for the two bills. If the Congress was actually considering the legislation, the demonstration could safely claim to be simply a petition about a matter of political record.²⁰ He succeeded on March 19. William Peffer, a Populist from Kansas who knew Coxey, introduced the two bills in the Senate.²¹

The political backgrounds of Coxey and Browne, their demands for the "petition in boots," and their method of organizing show that the first march on Washington had roots in political traditions, however marginal. Both men came to the "petition in boots" from involvement in third-party agitation. Both men shared a sustained concern with solving the problems that they associated with the industrial development of the country. Moreover, to solve these problems, Coxey and Browne wanted to change the way the national government operated and to win more influence over federal policy for ordinary citizens. Browne’s involvement with public demonstrations in the United States soon convinced them both that going to the capital itself was within the rights and indeed responsibilities of American citizens. Such claims struck many observers as deeply suspect.

"An Army of Tramps"

Today, the extent of television coverage is the way many people judge the success of marches on Washington. In 1894, national networks of newspapers served by wire services determined the fate of the Commonweal of Christ. The invention of the telegraph in the 1840s and its use during the Civil War had encouraged many newspaper owners to create formal, though mainly regional, organizations. By 1893, some of these groups had consolidated into the Associated Press, serviced by a national "wire service" to share news, creating a more coordinated national press.²² The Army’s march to the capital became a national event only because of the intense interests of journalists connected to these wire services. But, just as television coverage today conveys only part of protesters’ behavior and demands, so newspaper journalists in 1894 were selective, and not particularly sympathetic, in their coverage. Most of the journalists were scornful of the participants and their tactics. Their stories portrayed the protest as a folly by marginal men they dubbed tramps rather than a legitimate challenge to an already unbalanced system of national politics by citizens.

Even before Coxey’s Army had taken their first steps, newspaper reporters were transforming the Commonweal of Christ and their "petition in boots" into a matter of national concern. A reporter in Massillon, intrigued by Coxey and Browne’s plan, began sending out reports on their activities over the newspaper wire services in late February.²³ Editors and reporters for papers across the country picked up these stories. Soon journalists were moving toward Massillon. Among the first was Ray Stannard Baker, then a young reporter for the Chicago Record. As his editor sent Baker out of town, he told him of a "queer chap . . . named Coxey" whose plans were "getting a good deal of support." Baker arrived in Massillon on March 15 and sent his reports back to Chicago; the wire services relayed them to other parts of the country. Baker found Browne, Coxey, and their march "crazy." Nevertheless, other reporters came to the small town in Ohio, and eventually more than forty reporters joined the group as it traveled to Washington.²⁴

As the first marchers set off for Washington, journalists published their initial assessments of the Commonweal’s plans and hopes. Fry left Los Angeles with five hundred men on March 16. After two days of marching on foot, they climbed aboard an empty freight train heading over the mountains to the east. Railroad officials objected, but eventually carried them as far as St. Louis. In Massillon, a far smaller contingent assembled. Around a hundred men had trickled into Massillon by March 24. On Easter Sunday, the Commonweal of Christ departed, as announced, for Washington. A wire service story adapted by the Washington Post set the tone of public reaction to the protesters: mockery and denigration. The Post’s writer generalized that the nearly 10,000 spectators who turned out to watch the Commonweal embark "regarded the affair as a huge joke." The appearance of the participants received doubtful scrutiny: they were "hard looking citizens" who marched "as pleased their fancy."²⁵

Despite this dismissive tone, journalists had good reason to continue covering the Commonweal’s long march. Journalists needed a new way to cover the ill effects of the economic depression. As the English commentator W. T. Stead observed, by spring 1894, it was becoming difficult to transform "this grim and worn-out topic" into "good saleable newspaper articles." Moreover, the month-long march from Massillon to Washington allowed the journalists to fit their coverage into one of the most popular conventions of the time—the serial story.²⁶

Most importantly, Coxey’s Army attracted a great deal of interest because the press, like much of society at large, had a serious interest in and concern with how "mobs" could change governments and what governments should do in response. Though Washington had suffered less than foreign capitals from violent events occasioned by "mobs," other American cities had found themselves the centers of widely publicized incidents. To many, these incidents seemed to threaten the whole country rather than just the single city. For example, the demonstrations in Chicago at Haymarket Square in 1888 had resulted in deaths of police officers and years of court battle over the anarchists charged with the disturbances. By 1894, "Haymarket" was shorthand for the tragedy organized protests could bring to the country. One reporter damned Browne with the charge that he was "a ‘Red’ of as deep dye as any that ever trod Haymarket."²⁷

The events surrounding a group of sympathizers in Montana in late April suggested the risks were serious and even deadly. Under the auspices of the Butte Miners’ Union, unemployed workers rallied to the idea of demonstrating in Washington. They spent most of April trying to collect supplies and to persuade the railroad to transport them. Railroad officials had no sympathy. Finally on April 24, the men’s impatience overcame their intentions to be lawful and peaceful. They seized a Northern Pacific train and began racing east. Railroad officials were outraged and turned to both the state and the federal government for help in retrieving their property. A confrontation between the men on the train and federal marshals resulted in two deaths, but the men still had the train. Two days later, a division of the U.S. Army successfully stopped the men’s desperate trip east. To most journalists covering the protest, these deaths merely confirmed their worse fears about what "an army of tramps" could do. Capturing the prevailing attitudes of reports, the New York Times announced, "Blood Flows from Coxeyism."²⁸ But Coxey and Browne’s plans resulted in few such violent incidents.

Because of the extreme fears and relative lack of actual violence, most reporters reconciled these two viewpoints by mocking the protest and its supporters. The reporters who traveled with the Commonwealers were keenly conscious of the lack of organization, Browne’s eccentricity, and the grandiose nature of the legislative demands. Before the Commonwealers had even left Massillon, the Independent called Coxey a "poor fool" and predicted that if any men did reach Washington they were destined for the jail.²⁹

The most enduring expression of this fearful and mocking attitude was the name journalists gave to the march, "Coxey’s Army," influenced by California co-leader Lewis Fry’s use of "Industrial Army." And despite his lack of military service, Coxey became "General Coxey." The use of "army" to refer to organized groups, particularly of workers, was pervasive and not always contemptuous in the nineteenth century.³⁰ Still, the journalists exploited the term as a double-edged sword. They not only used "Coxey’s Army" to imply a violent purpose in their approach to Washington but also judged the protest harshly when the group did not meet standards of military discipline.

This form of attack became clear as the journalists began routinely describing the marchers as "tramps." In a relatively moderate statement, the New York Times described the group of men who had assembled in Massillon on March 24 as "a lot of tramps, cranks, and a few men who would doubtless work if they could find work." The Commercial Gazette in Pittsburgh labeled them a "motley aggregation of homeless wanderers." In an oxymoron that revealed the fears generated by the demonstration, the Philadelphia Ledger called them "organized tramps." In these descriptions, journalists repeated common tropes that transformed working-class radicals into tramps. According to John McCook, writing in Charities Review, a tramp was characterized by "aimless wandering, no visible means of support, capacity to labor along with fixed aversion to labor, begging from door to door, camping on property of others without their consent." Many in the middle class imagined tramps, people who wandered from place to place, as simultaneously outside of and disruptive to the social order.³¹

By accusing the marchers in Coxey’s Army of being tramps, journalists struck at the very core of their mission: their right to speak as members of the American polity. These "social scourges" should not expect to affect Congress, their critics concluded. The editors of the Independent declared, "It is idle to suppose that an army of tramps, however numerous, can or ought to have any influence whatever on legislation or Congress." The men, the editors arrogantly declared, did "not belong to the bone and sinew of the country.³²

The characterization of the members of Coxey’s Army as tramps influenced how authorities in Washington planned to respond to the demonstration. Because citizenship in the United States rested on allegiance to the social, economic, legal, and political order, tramps were the antithesis of ideal political citizens. The negative view of tramps was powerful enough to convince cities, counties, and even states to pass and enforce harsh vagrancy laws that allowed the police to arrest people without visible means of support. Those arrested had to leave the region or work. In late March 1894, authorities in the District of Columbia—after private urgings from President Cleveland—announced that if the men reached Washington and proved to be tramps, police officers would arrest them under the District’s vagrancy law.³³ By categorizing the men as tramps, journalists not only marginalized the Commonweal and its political ambitions; they also helped justify plans to suppress the protest.

Most journalists saw Coxey’s Army and its trip to Washington as a challenge to the political order they supported. Consequently, they sought to control the meaning of the protest by attacking the men behind the movement as unworthy. This attack allowed journalists to individualize the marchers’ political demands. Tramps wanted handouts of any sort; hence their demands for the Good Roads Bill. The label of tramp suggested that the men were not the kind of people who could legitimately protest in Washington. In the following decades, this method of slighting the political purposes of demonstrations by denigrating the protesters as unworthy individuals remained common and effective. For Coxey and Browne, it required an immediate response.

"We Are All Citizens"

Caught in this hailstorm of negative publicity, Coxey and Browne scrambled to reshape the Commonweal’s public image. They recognized that they had to refute the related charges that the marchers were tramps and that their mission violated the norms of political behavior. With characteristic gusto, they countered that participants were "citizens." And, as citizens, they insisted, Americans had an obligation to go to the capital if that was what it took to improve the country.

Although the Post and other newspapers mocked their departure from Massillon, their parade followed well-established conventions for public celebrations in the late nineteenth century. The Commonwealers tried to communicate respectability, patriotism, and adherence to the social order when they appeared in public. Leading the parade on March 25 was Jasper Johnson, an African American, carrying the United States flag. Following him was a band to entertain the spectators. Then came Browne on a grand horse. Next came Coxey riding in a carriage with Mrs. Coxey and their recently born son with the odd and political name of Legal Tender. Behind Coxey walked the Commonwealers, trying to march in the disciplined ranks of soldiers. The men maintained this form until they reached the edge of town, where the serious task of walking the seven hundred miles required less formal order. In town after town, however, the Commonwealers repeated their performance to signal not revolution but a desire for a social order firmly rooted in the flag, the family, and discipline.³⁴

Central to the Army’s performance and arguments was that the men were citizens. To the Commonwealers, resting their demands on their status as citizens had practical and ideological power. As they were aware, however, citizenship involved much more than a simple legal claim. Americans tended to define legitimate citizens by their behavior and values as well as their birthplace. So as the Commonwealers struggled through spring snowstorms, climbed mountains, and rode canal boats to reach Washington, they worked to prove themselves as citizens .³⁵

According to their supporters, these "straightforward, honest Americans" were unemployed men who would work if they could find work. When a reporter told Coxey that the marchers were "bums and blackmailers," Coxey countered that many carried "certificates from labor organizations."³⁶ In asserting the legitimacy of the men as workers, the Commonwealers made clear they wanted not a revolution in society, but assistance in what they saw as a fundamental need for work.

Browne believed strongly that citizens—as opposed to foreigners—deserved both respect and power in the United States. By excluding certain people from the group, he—like other organizers of political causes—could bolster his claim that his men were politically deserving. While the Commonwealers were camped in Frederick, Maryland, on their way to Washington, some "Hungarians" tried to join. Browne explained that he gave the men "no badges, as I had ‘weeded out’ all but bona-fide citizens." In pleading the group’s cause in the District, Populist activist Annie Diggs claimed that "there is not a man in the ranks of that army but who is either a naturalized citizen or a native born."³⁷

The Commonwealers asserted their status as citizens in part by emphasizing their masculinity. Supporters tended to use Coxey and his family to show that families were behind the men’s efforts. Coxey’s wife and daughter both played prominent roles in parades in Massillon and in Washington. His son accompanied the participants on the long trip to the capital. In other places, the presence of women as enthusiastic supporters of the men’s effort was publicized. For her part, Diggs assured her Washington listeners that these men were on the march because their "wives and children . . . are starving."³⁸

But organizers carefully kept women as mainly symbolic recipients of the Commonwealers’ devotions to their family. Browne’s illustration at the top of the original petition portrayed how the Good Roads Bill would restore the order of the family: a man employed on the roads project returns home at the end of the day to a happy baby and a devoted wife cooking dinner. When faced with actual women who wanted to join the march, organizers rejected them.³⁹ By emphasizing that they were protecting their own families and family unity in general while also preventing women from taking part in this unprecedented political act, the marchers emphasized their status as that most respectable of all citizens: the family man.

These efforts to establish themselves as citizens related closely to the Commonwealers’ desire to reform national politics so that it would respond to the demands of deserving Americans. They constantly reiterated arguments about the rights of citizens and the responsibilities of national politicians. To a crowd of spectators along the way to Washington, Coxey asserted that if "the people . . . come in a body like this, peaceably to discuss their grievances and demanding immediate relief, Congress . . . will heed them and do it quickly." Coxey’s belief spread to the men marching toward Washington as well. A writer who interviewed some marchers said, "They believe that the congressmen who represent them will not dare to refuse them legislative relief."⁴⁰

This vision grew from more than the idealism of direct democracy; the Commonwealers had faith in personal appeals because of prior experience with working-class agitation at the local level. As Browne’s California activities illustrated, working people without other forms of access to the political system often successfully used the streets to support their causes. If the workers were unified, strikes sometimes did win higher wages. If enough people turned out for parades and went to the polls, working-class candidates sometimes won. If the unemployed pushed hard enough, city officials sometimes initiated public works programs. In going to Washington, Coxey and Browne hoped to have the same results.⁴¹

Central to their argument, however, was that national politics were both corrupt and ineffectual. Members of the Commonweal of Christ detested the power of the dominant political parties. Coxey saw the month-long trip to Washington as part of an educational process through which the American people would learn more about the "money question" than they had "through any one political party in ten years." Likewise, the marchers reportedly believed "the Government has fallen into the hands of persons who are administering it in the interest of the favored few." While these statements clearly show a bitter resentment toward the way the federal government worked, the marchers’ willingness to struggle to reach Washington demonstrated their faith that Congress could do better if pushed. By focusing its anger on political parties, the Commonweal was able to maintain its position that passage of the Good Roads and Bond Bills would redeem the government and the country.⁴²

The Commonwealers’ presentation of themselves as citizens persuaded many. As the men continued their march to Washington, reports acknowledged that the men were indeed mostly workingmen and that they were orderly and honest along the way.⁴³ Despite the journalists’ rhetoric, many of the people who saw the men marching behind their flag did not equate these men with tramps. Many communities provided filling meals, opened public parks and buildings as resting spots, and donated funds. Even in Pittsburgh, where the city authorities deemed the marchers a threat, controlled their route through the city, and ordered them confined to their campground, workers and other sympathizers defied the police to cheer the marchers and rallied to their defense. A sign of the power of the Commonweal campaign came when authorities in Washington backed away from plans to arrest the men as vagrants.⁴⁴ Though the authorities continued to disparage the cause and the Army’s tactics, the men had won an important recognition of their status as political actors.

"Socialism and Populism and Paternalism Run Riot"

Still, the Commonweal’s fate depended on what District and federal authorities and politicians thought of the marchers, their goals, and their tactics. The Commonwealers had modeled their protests on local demonstrations in which government officials responded to the claims of the community, but they also made political arguments that challenged the legitimacy of the existing political order. While they found some support among the few Populist and third-party politicians in Washington, most authorities considered the demonstration in Washington an unreasonable assertion of a new role for American citizens in the national government. As much as Coxey’s Army tried to wrap their tactics in the First Amendment, they found little support for this constitutional claim. The New York Tribune warned, "The very purpose and the method of this organized movement are hostile to the spirit of our Government, and at war with the fundamental principle upon which free institutions rest."

While authorities abandoned the fantasy of mass arrests at the city limits, they still prepared to control the approaching group. By March 15, "one policeman . . . in citizen’s clothes" was already stationed in the Capitol to watch for "advance agents of the army." Later in the month, the District of Columbia Militia practiced special drills in anticipation of what they termed an "invasion." With the unconvincing argument that such money-hungry men might invade the treasury, the secretary of the treasury sent Secret Service agents in disguise to Ohio to infiltrate the army. Meanwhile, the superintendent of the Metropolitan Police, William Moore, and attorneys for the District began searching for laws that would permit them to control the demonstration. Superintendent Moore explained that the Capitol grounds in particular were off limits because the 1882 Act to Regulate the Grounds specifically prohibited speeches, parades, and the carrying of banners. Soon the District authorities could assure the White House they had the means to control the march.⁴⁵

As District and federal authorities monitored the Commonwealers, members of Congress debated the meaning of the march. Populist senators brought the issue of demonstrating in Washington off the newspaper pages and onto the floor of the Senate. Senator Peffer, who had sponsored the bills that Coxey and Browne used to justify their trip to Washington, asked on April 19 that the Senate receive the men and their petitions. Horrified that the police might "arrest men as vagrants who come upon a peaceable mission to the capital of their country," he proposed that the Senate establish a new "Committee on Communication" to meet such groups and report to the Senate on their demands. These were not men with violent purposes, Peffer explained, but rather men who simply wished to confer "in person with the chosen representatives of the people." Another Populist senator supported Peffer’s resolution publicly. William Allen of Nebraska argued that "any American citizen has a right to come to Washington." He continued by explicitly comparing the Commonwealers to another group welcomed not just in Washington but in the Capitol Building itself: lobbyists. His language rang with scorn and shame as he described how the "great bodies of lobbyists" arrived every day and walked "right into the corridors of this Capitol," where they were greeted by members of Congress with their "hats off." Allen questioned the law, which regulated the Capitol grounds, and asked why lobbyists were allowed on the "sacred" grounds of the Capitol, and under the "dome," while the Commonwealers were "to be stopped at their edge."⁴⁶ Peffer’s proposed Committee on Communication and Allen’s outrage illustrated how some national politicians in 1894 could appreciate the claim of Coxey’s Army to use the capital.

These two men did not find support from their colleagues. In a series of speeches in late April, senators from both parties attacked the demands of the Commonweal and their plans to parade to the Capitol on May Day. They defeated Peffer’s resolution and a subsequent resolution by Allen that sought to affirm the right of "citizens" to come to Washington and "enter upon the Capitol Grounds." These responses exposed the threats and challenges the senators saw in the tactic of a "petition in boots."⁴⁷

Mainstream politicians united in describing the demand of the Commonweal for the federal government to come to the aid of unemployed men as a call not for justice, but for "paternalism." The year before, in his inaugural speech, President Cleveland, in a classic and blunt statement, had explained, "The lessons of paternalism ought to be unlearned and the better lesson taught that while the people should patriotically and cheerfully support their government its functions do not include the support of the people."⁴⁸ Hence, the central premise of Coxey’s Army that the national government should provide "support" for unemployed workers countered an essential political tenet of the president.

On April 26, Senator Edward Wolcott, a Republican from Colorado, made this very point in response to Allen’s resolution. Wolcott’s speech showed how critics feared both the tactics and the demands of Coxey’s Army. "I am tired . . . of this talk of a national demonstration," he declared. He asked his fellow senators to have "the courage to stand together against socialism and populism and paternalism run riot, which is agitating and fermenting this country." He warned that inaction risked "the destruction of the blessed liberties which the laws and the Constitution give us."⁴⁹

To further discredit Coxey’s Army, senators and others described the Commonwealers as being precisely what the Commonwealers accused the Congress of being: unrepresentative. Senator Joseph Hawley of Connecticut declared, "The men who are coming here do not represent the great voice of the American people." The Democratic Congressman Bourke Cockran from New York echoed Hawley when he scorned the idea that "the workingmen of the United States have constituted Coxey and his crowd their representatives." According to these critics of Coxey’s Army, who did represent the people? The answer was Congress. Hawley asserted that it was senators who, as the result of a "most complex and universal system of selection," knew the "will of the people."⁵⁰

In reality, however, Congress had already begun to recognize that they needed to solicit the advice of particular groups and people as they made decisions. In the aftermath of the Civil War, Congress increasingly heard testimony from experts and representatives of organized groups on legislation. Working people were not entirely excluded from this trend. Congress regularly constituted special committees to investigate strikes that recognized the spokesmen of workers. In a study of legislative methods published in 1898, Lauros G. McConachie praised the increasing "publicity" of Congress brought about by the committee hearing, which meant "the despised secret lobby" was replaced by "the open and fair voice of all who desire to be heard."⁵¹ Because Congress did acknowledge these groups publicly, the Commonweal’s critics had to reassure themselves that the Commonwealers were not a legitimate organization.

For these reasons, the senators tried to distinguish between respectable individuals and illegitimate groups as they endorsed plans by the Metropolitan Police to prevent the Commonwealers from entering the Capitol grounds. "No one denies the right of any citizen to visit the capital," Senator Joseph Dolph explained, but he warned that if "they violate the law and commit a crime," by marching as a group or making speeches, they would be arrested. These politicians supported federal and District officials in their decision to use their legal authority to draw a line in the sand that Coxey’s Army could not cross. The Commonweal camp would be allowed at the Brightwood Riding Park on the edge of the District and the Commonwealers would be permitted to march down Pennsylvania Avenue. They would not be allowed to come to near the Capitol itself. By preventing the Commonwealers from using the Capitol to support their cause, Congress and the District authorities effectively signaled that this group did not deserve access to the central space of American politics.⁵²

The main problem authorities faced in using the 1882 Act to Regulate the Grounds of the Capitol was that they had almost never before enforced it. The authorities brazenly tried to establish a precedent for denying groups access to the official spaces near the Capitol. A parade by the Odd Fellows fraternal society up Pennsylvania Avenue, which President Cleveland reviewed on April 26, gave them the needed opportunity. When one division, dressed in the elaborate costumes of the group and carrying its banner, tried to cross the Capitol grounds on its way home from the White House, the Capitol police informed them that this was against the law. Obediently, the Odd Fellows walked around the long way.⁵³ Armed with this weak precedent, the men in control of the nation’s capital braced for the arrival of Coxey’s Army.

With this debate swirling ahead of them, the men made their way across the mountains of Pennsylvania, through the countryside of Maryland, and arrived just over the border of the District of Columbia on April 29, where they camped at Brightwood Riding Park (see map 1). After their long march through farms and country towns, marchers were struck by Washington’s imposing scale and monumental architecture. The weary marchers might not have known that such glories had only recently transformed Washington into a popular destination for tourists. A contemporary guidebook noted that the "much needed improvement" had only begun in 1870. Since then, the writer proudly declared, the city was becoming annually "more worthy of the greatness of the Republic." Visitors could access easily many parts of the nation’s city. The grounds of the White House were open to the visitor "with no restriction." For visitors, a trip to the Capitol to admire the statues, observe a congressional debate, or perhaps call at a politician’s office was a required part of a Washington tour.⁵⁴

As Coxey’s Army entered the District, these sites of patriotic tourism faced competition from those interested in seeing the invading force. Because of their own experiences with economic suffering, many District residents expressed sympathy for the Commonwealers’ crusade. Washington had not escaped the vagaries of the economic depression. By the time the Commonweal arrived, a relief committee for the capital had concluded its aid was no longer needed, but unemployment still afflicted many District residents. Some of these may have been among the people who greeted the group on Sunday, April 30. More than a hundred cyclists accompanied the men as they marched into the District. A crowd of at least 3,000 gathered to watch them enter their camping ground. To fill the empty coffers of the group, Browne asked people for donations to enter the grounds of the Riding Park itself and watch the men set up their tents. On Sunday, more than 8,000 people, including congressmen, foreign dignitaries, and residents, visited the camp, studied the men and their banners, and listened to speeches by Browne and Coxey.⁵⁵

Nonetheless, by the time the marchers arrived in Washington, both their leaders and their critics had muted their expectations. Coxey and Browne’s faith that Congress would respond quickly and earnestly to their demands and their march seemed shaken. Speaking in the Riding Camp on April 29, Coxey attempted bravado by claiming that his group was "like Grant before Richmond" and would not turn away until their goal was met. But his doubts about immediate results came through: "It may be in three days or five weeks, but we will stay as long as we are able to subsist." Browne grew disheartened as he realized that the size of the group was nowhere near his ambitious predictions. He was also discouraged because the Washington authorities, warned in advance of the Commonweal’s plans to use the public spaces of the city, greeted the men with firm prohibitions and dismissive attitudes. The police sent a small force out to Brightwood Riding Park to keep order, claiming this was what they always did for "circuses, picnics, and other gatherings." The Washington Post described the men waiting in Brightwood Riding Park "as properties for a third-rate dime museum."⁵⁶

On the day before the Commonweal was to enter the city, Coxey seemed particularly overwhelmed by his encounters with the authorities in Washington. In a day full of meetings, he talked with the District commissioners, Superintendent Moore from the police, the health commissioners, and the sergeant of arms for the Capitol. Expecting confrontation, Coxey appeared surprised by the officials’ cordial tones. They all assured him that the plans for the parade down Pennsylvania Avenue were acceptable, but emphasized that he and his men could not enter the Capitol grounds. By the end of the day, Coxey told a reporter that the Commonwealers would come to the Capitol anyway on May 1, not "as a parade, but as private citizens." While Coxey conceded the issue of the parade on the grounds, he remained defiant about his right to make a speech on the grounds, asserting, "We will test the constitutionality of the law."⁵⁷

Coxey’s new focus on his right to speak shows how the experience of the long walk to Washington, the attacks on him and his supporters, and the disparagement of their political goals had shifted his attention from legislative changes to some basic premises about how American citizens could participate in national politics. From the beginning, he had justified his effort as protected by the First Amendment. He referred in speeches to their "right . . . peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." Although the District authorities realized that complete repression would violate even the narrowest interpretation of this first provision of the Bill of Rights, they still did not believe that the First Amendment gave all citizens the right to claim spaces they considered official.⁵⁸

"The Property of the People"

May 1 was already a sunny and warm day when the Commonwealers left their camp heading for the Capitol at 10 a.m. Reports of the number of marchers ranged from 600 to more than 1,000 depending on the degree of sympathy for the cause. In form, their parade echoed that of other parades that Washingtonians had seen in their city. At the front of the procession was the traditional phalanx of police officers to clear the way and preserve order. A flag bearer led the way with the requisite Stars and Stripes to mark the parade as patriotic. Behind him came carriages filled with members of the local committees that had collected supplies for the demonstrators and had successfully arranged the parade. Next came a pair of riders, each on fine horses. One was Coxey’s daughter, Mamie. Browne had named her the Goddess of Peace and picked her subtle, but patriotic, costume of white with red and blue accents. As chief marshal, he rode by her side. Behind the pair came a carriage carrying Coxey, his wife, and their infant son. Finally came the Commonwealers, still attempting to march in even rows like the military parades more typical on Pennsylvania Avenue.⁵⁹

The Commonweal’s challenge to traditional politics and conventional uses of the capital was emphasized as they marched down Pennsylvania Avenue in the opposite direction of most ceremonial parades. Traditionally, parades in Washington began at the plaza that surrounded the Peace Monument at the base of Capitol Hill and then proceeded up Pennsylvania Avenue and past the White House; if deemed important enough, participants received a presidential review. But Coxey’s men began near the White House and marched past it without pausing, heading directly to the Capitol. The route reflected the reality that political power in 1894 rested firmly with Congress as well as the Commonweal’s ideals that Congress could restore democracy by hearing the people.⁶⁰

The spectators also confirmed that the marchers appealed to a different kind of District residents. Importantly, in a period when crowd size for spectacles and political events was the main indicator of success, a huge group gathered to view the march—as large or larger than any attracted to presidential inaugurations of the era. One estimate reported that 30,000 people had turned out to watch the Commonwealers. Moreover, the crowd’s racial and class composition was equally divided between blacks and whites and seemed to consist overwhelmingly of workingmen.⁶¹

Both the Commonwealers’ continued belief in their cause and the apparent support of many observers strengthened the authorities’ resolve to control the marchers. One of the most visible differences between the Commonwealers’ march on May 1 and other parades in the District was the pervasive presence of the police. More than forty officers accompanied the men on their seven-mile hike to the center of the District. As the Commonwealers proceeded through Washington, they passed more officers. Special guards policed the grounds of the White House and two hundred policemen patrolled the perimeter of the Capitol grounds. Inside the Capitol Building, the Capitol police protected the House of Representatives, which was meeting in regular session that Tuesday. Undercover agents marched in the midst of the men, and a division of the U.S. Army waited in readiness.⁶²

As the men approached the Capitol grounds, the crowds of spectators grew denser. Observers stood all over the pathways and grass, and carriages holding viewers filled the great plaza on the east side of the Capitol. Some people climbed part way up the steps of the Capitol, but stopped at a human barricade of police officers. Members of Congress, staff, and privileged visitors stood further up the steps under the portico to the Capitol or crowded into the windows of the building. A few adventurous souls even climbed onto the roof.⁶³

The tension grew as the Commonweal halted at the southern edge of the Capitol grounds. Soon, there was excitement. Browne and Coxey defied the previous warnings of the District and federal authorities and the immediate presence of hundreds of policemen, and went onto the grounds. Browne and another Commonwealer jumped over a low wall and ran toward the Capitol, a move Browne later described as a purposeful distraction to enable Coxey to make his speech at the Capitol. Police rushed to seize them both, swinging their batons. At 1 p.m., a telegram informed the White House that because Browne "resisted arrest he received a clubbing." Still defiant, Browne reminded the crowd of his central justification for the entire effort: he shouted that he was a "citizen."⁶⁴

Coxey’s efforts were both less dramatic and less violently suppressed. He made his way through the crowds on the Capitol grounds unnoticed and went up five steps of the Capitol. There, police stopped him and reminded him that he could not deliver a speech. Coxey tried to read his prepared remarks, but the officers "hustled him off the steps" and escorted him back to his carriage and the waiting Commonwealers. While not surprised at his treatment, Coxey was disgusted at being prevented from exercising his constitutional rights on the steps of a building he considered "the property of the people" .⁶⁵

At first, it seemed that the authorities had succeeded in their goal of tolerating the parade while restricting the use of the Capitol grounds. To some, the parade and its quick dispersal was such an anticlimax that one observer commented on "the disappointment" of the spectators who had hoped for a longer lasting drama.⁶⁶ Browne’s flagrant and purposeful violation of the law had resulted in his arrest, while Coxey’s more modest efforts were handled peacefully. The editors of the Washington Post praised the authorities for their "commendable discretion and efficiency." As for Coxey, they suggested he should now lead the men out of the District and back to their homes.⁶⁷

Coxey did not follow the advice of the Post’s editors. Instead, he and his supporters reiterated their demands for a hearing and a place in the capital. On the evening of May 1, Browne, bailed out of jail, addressed their dispirited followers. "I congratulate you upon your splendid action to-day," Browne said. He described the events of the day as just a "temporary" setback and predicted "the wounds of liberty" would soon heal. Browne then announced that the Commonweal intended to stay in Washington "until there is a greater gathering here of men than confronted Lee on the banks of the Potomac." When this group was assembled, Browne declared they would win "the passage of Brother Coxey’s good roads bill."⁶⁸ Comparing their effort to the Civil War reinforced the notion that the men were not so much destroying the nation as trying to restore the Union to its initial purpose.

District authorities continued to reject the protesters’ claims to belong in the capital and stepped up their efforts to control the marchers. On May 2, Coxey went to observe the bail hearing for Browne. To his surprise, Coxey was arrested. The warrants cited each of them for the display of banners in violation of part of the statute regulating the Capitol grounds. The warrants failed to point out that in each case the "banner" was a lapel pin that measured only "3 inches by 2 inches wide." To bolster the authorities’ obviously weak case, a second accusation of walking on the grass was added to Browne and Coxey’s charges.⁶⁹ Although Browne had definitely stepped on the grass, so had the thousands of spectators. Coxey had scrupulously stayed on the paths. In court, the obvious hostility of the presiding judge soon indicated there was little hope the men could defeat the charges. Still, Populist congressmen rallied to their cause, serving as their lawyers. Their defense disputed the constitutionality of the 1882 statute, the singling out of the leaders from the many other people who had walked on the grass and wore lapel pins, and the contrast between the treatment of the "finely dressed and well fed lobbyist" and these men. With appeals, it was not until May 21 that the judge was able to issue their sentences: twenty days in prison and a $5 fine.⁷⁰

The people’s right to use national public spaces was simultaneously debated in the Senate. The Populist senators began the argument by challenging this treatment of citizens who claimed the right to go to national spaces. On May 9, Senator Allen introduced a resolution calling for a Senate hearing on the arrests. He saw in their arrests a pernicious effort aimed at preventing them from exercising their rights of assembly and petition. Passionately, the senator argued that Congress had a constitutional and moral obligation to listen to the people. "There was a singular unanimity" among the Republican and Democratic senators, he observed, in support of "driving poor Coxey and his followers from the Capitol Grounds."⁷¹

Allen’s charge inspired senators of the major parties to defend the protection of the Capitol grounds from the likes of Coxey and Browne. They emphasized that Washington and especially the Capitol was foremost for official business by elected representatives, rather than belonging to the people. John Sherman, a Republican from Coxey’s home state of Ohio, invoked the commonly accepted myth that the District of Columbia had been established because "our Revolutionary ancestors were driven from their seats in Philadelphia by a mob in the city." The former Confederate general from Georgia, John Gordon, a Democrat, blamed the Commonweal’s origins on the much-hated "paternalism" and concluded that Congress should neither listen to these people nor enact their programs. George Hoar, the Republican senator from Massachusetts, joined in, declaring only "the majority of the duly chosen representatives" could find solutions.⁷²

The Commonweal’s claim to represent others faced strong criticism in these attacks. Inspired in part by Coxey’s Army, the House Labor Committee had decided to hear testimony on the causes of the economic depression. This hearing was the sole legislative success of the Commonweal’s march to Washington. As part of it, Coxey presented a petition to the committee supporting his two bills. The congressmen showed little interest in his proposals. Instead, they used the hearing to establish that Coxey and his Army did not represent any legitimate group. "How are you the representatives of the people?" Speaker Charles Crisp asked. "By what authority do you undertake to represent the 65,000,000 people of this country?" He reminded Coxey that the "people’s representatives are the 356 Representatives elected to Congress."⁷³

While the court and Congress deliberated the fate of the three leaders, the rest of the Commonwealers, now joined by many more men coming from the West, struggled to maintain themselves and their political message. Competition for limited supplies and attention caused conflicts between the men already in Washington and the groups that arrived later. Splits developed and new camps were set up around the borders of Washington in both Virginia and Maryland. The camp on the bluffs above the Potomac River in Roslyn, Virginia, eventually grew to more than a thousand men. Conditions were rough; some men begged door to door to keep themselves from starving. Once their original leaders were in jail, new leaders tried to organize further parades in Washington, including one on Memorial Day, but they did not attract many spectators or persuade Congress to act in their support.⁷⁴

When Coxey and Browne were released from jail on June 11, they announced plans to revive their cause on July Fourth. An embittered Coxey explained that the steps of the Capitol seemed to him "the most appropriate place" for a Fourth of July celebration. He announced, however, that he would not be at the celebration since he had decided to run for Congress in Ohio on the Populist ticket. The experience in Washington seems to have convinced him to return to electoral politics.⁷⁵

With Coxey in Ohio, Browne orchestrated the ill-fated Fourth of July parade. This event was beset by difficulties from the outset. For one thing, journalists’ attention had drifted away, and Browne went overboard as he tried to revitalize the cause with more outrageous performances. On July 4, three hundred men marched to the District from Maryland. On a wagon, Browne had painted one of his political "panoramas" decrying attempts to prevent "free speech, franchise, and free assemblage" in the capital. Accompanying the parade was very odd looking "Goddess" of Liberty. Reporters noted, "Her arms were bare, but browned with exposure to the sun, such as one might find with the man who had followed the fortunes of the army." Led by this Goddess, the men avoided the Capitol grounds, again patrolled by numerous police officers. Instead, they gathered at the Peace Monument on Pennsylvania Avenue. There, the Goddess spoke briefly about how corruption was destroying liberty in the United States. At the end of her speech, she "fell as in a trance" from her horse, was caught by waiting members of the Commonweal, and was placed behind the panorama. And soon "after some rustling," Browne, who had been strangely absent from his own parade, appeared without the beard he had worn since Massillon.⁷⁶

Browne’s divine cross-dressing dramatizes the difficulty the Commonwealers faced as they came to realize that their claim to be heard in the capital was being ignored. Critics reported the incident with a sense of fulfilled prophecy; Browne was not a political leader, but an insane and desperate performer. To them, the movement and its leaders had now shown their true colors. Sympathizers remained silent. Browne soon departed, hoping publicity stunts in other cities might raise money for the men in Washington and revive interest in the cause. He faced major competition, however. By this point, the strike at the Pullman Company in Chicago and the accompanying boycott of Pullman Cars by the American Railway Union preoccupied both legislators and the press. Relying on reports of interference with the U.S. mail, President Cleveland ordered federal troops to protect the railroads in Chicago. News of the Commonwealers quickly faded from most newspapers beyond Washington. Even in the District, the stories grew briefer and more likely to appear off the front page.⁷⁷ In the beginning, the newspapers had brought the Commonweal to public attention; in the end, their inattention hastened its demise.

Soon the authorities’ tolerance of the camps near the District ended. Supporters still collected donations of food and money, but supplies were short and the purpose of remaining unclear. Some men began to leave of their own accord, and sympathizers arranged for rides in railroad boxcars for others. Finally, on August 9, the governor of Maryland ordered the arrests of the hundred or so men in the camps in his state and their placement in the workhouse. On the same day, the Virginia militia warned the men in Roslyn that soldiers would close the camps the next day. The soldiers arrived early, drove the men from the camp, and sent them onto the bridge crossing into the District. A standoff ensued as the District police prevented them from entering the capital until definite plans were made to take the men out of the area. By August 14, the last 165 men were either riding trains or walking out of Washington. With this anti-climactic departure, Coxey’s Army and their "invasion" of Washington was over.⁷⁸

The Commonweal of Christ did not win its demands or gain the respectful attention of Congress. Congress did not immediately take up, much less approve, either the Good Roads Bill or the Non-Interest Bearing Bond Bill. Nor did the federal government institute a similar program designed to alleviate the problems of workers and farmers with jobs and a looser money supply, although it did gradually shift in this direction. In the 1930s, the federal government became directly engaged in public works programs, hiring thousands of workers to build city halls, dams, and roads.⁷⁹ The legacy of the demonstration lies less with policy implementation than with the type of protest Coxey and Brown envisioned, however. The Commonwealers’ ambitions for a demonstration in Washington were thwarted in important ways. Local techniques of protest based on moral and personal claims did not translate comfortably into the actual space of Washington. Unlike demonstrators in cities and towns, who sometimes could confront politicians directly, the Commonwealers in Washington faced a battalion of specially hired police officers. With the single exception of Coxey’s appearance before the House Labor Committee, they never did force federal officials to listen personally to their demands. Nevertheless, they established the precedent for a new type of national public political protest.

"Legacies"

Less than a month after Jacob Coxey and Carl Browne’s march on Washington landed them in jail, as their followers began to scatter and lose focus, their campaign took on a fantastic new life as the theme of the latest installment of a popular series of pulp fiction. By late May, fans of the adventures of Old Cap. Collier—a detective who was a master of disguises, regularly defeated multiple opponents with his only his wits and his hands, and always sent true criminals to their appropriate fates—could pick up the latest account at the newsstands for five cents. The fictional Collier always appeared in the midst of events familiar to readers of the newspapers: and the novel, with remarkable precision, focused on the crucial issues at stake in the development of this new style of protest. In On To Washington or Old Cap Collier with the Coxey Army, the intrepid detective is asked by the Secret Service to infiltrate Coxey’s Army. But Collier is outraged when the chief of the Secret Service calls the participants "tramps" who he wishes he could "blow . . . into smithereens." A believer in working-class independence, Collier is always inclined to judge right and wrong for himself rather than accept the word of authorities. He challenges the stern bureaucrat by insisting that the demonstrators are "peaceful citizens, petitioning for their rights" who have "a constitutional right to assemble." In the end, he accepts the assignment in order to protect the marchers. He travels to Coxey’s home base at Massillon, disguises himself as a farmer, and soon finds plenty to do. He spots "notorious" criminals among the groups, fights them, and ensures their eventual capture. He advises Coxey and even restores a thwarted love affair. Heroic in his efforts, Collier remains ambivalent about the effort. While he respects the unemployed men and their rights, he doubts the tactic of marching on Washington. Indeed, at the conclusion of the story, Collier makes the romantic hero swear that he will involve himself in no similar activities; instead the man will seek improvements for "the laboring people and unemployed" through the traditional method: "the ballot box" .⁸⁰

Both the swift publication of this special number of Old Cap. Collier’s adventures and the ambivalence that ran through it emphasize the importance of the precedent established by Coxey’s march on Washington. In a dramatic, new way, the march raised the possibility that Americans and their political causes actually belonged in the capital and evoked visions as extreme as they were contrasting. Coxey and Browne never gave up on their fantasy of transforming the American political system with their "petition in boots." Despite the failure of their protest to win their political demands, both men continued to believe that marches on Washington belonged in the political repertoire and were constitutionally protected. They were personally emboldened by the attention paid to them over the course of the protest, and continued to search for ways to win that attention again. Politically, Browne remained a gadfly with a radical stripe, turning more and more to explicitly socialist causes. Browne remained fixated on Washington, returning in 1913 at age sixty-four. According to Arthur Young, who wrote a melancholy portrait of Browne for The Masses, Browne was often found on the corner of Tenth Street and Pennsylvania Avenue standing on a soapbox. Young observed that his speeches had not changed much from earlier years; he still "spoke against the capitalists and the money-lenders." Likewise, he still wanted to challenge official control of Washington’s spaces. Browne defiantly gave a speech on the Capitol grounds in late December 1913. Despite the lack of audience and national attention, it seemed to be enough for Browne. Three weeks later, on January 16, 1914, Browne died. "He had nothing left to live for," Young remarked, "His life’s work was accomplished." In the same year but apparently without any coordination with Browne, Coxey organized another march to Washington. A few men joined him, but again few paid any attention. Without novelty or the obsessive interest of journalists, neither man was able to revive the national debate caused by their earlier efforts. By the time Coxey finally did speak at the Capitol, at age ninety, the man, the speech, and the controversies surrounding his tactics had become historical relics.⁸¹

For many in the 1890s and later, the efforts of Coxey’s Army became both a cautionary tale and a subject of humor. Consider how the phrase "Coxey’s Army" became part of American slang. For some, the phrase "looking like Coxey’s Army" became an American expression for labeling a rag-tag, dirty, disorderly group. In this form, the image of the participants as tramps carried on in American popular images. Another usage simply dismissed the group’s political goals and its leaders: "an unorganized gang under the leadership of an agitator."⁸² Interestingly, in all such cases, the claim of the group for citizens’ right to use national spaces drops out of sight.

In the 1890s, however, citizens routinely claiming the capital seemed like a possible nightmare. Just after the Commonwealers started out from Massillon, the Washington Post ran a satirical editorial that declared there should be "no monopoly for Coxey." It entertained the idea that groups of all sorts might also come to the District. The editorial concluded by wondering what else was "Washington here for, anyhow, if not for the use and glory and delectation of the evangels, the reformer, the complainants and the cranks?" Senator Joseph Hawley saw less humor in the situation. As he warned the Senate of the dangers in Coxey’s Army, he predicted that if the Senate did not handle the "business gently and firmly . . . it is quite possible . . . that it may become a habit to make pilgrimages annually to Washington and endeavor to dominate Congress by the physical presence of the people."⁸³

Hawley’s fear that marching on Washington might become habitual was prescient. Coxey’s Army had established unquestionably that political protest in Washington was possible under certain conditions and that it would attract considerable attention from both Congress and the press. Even in the midst of virulent attacks on the Commonwealers, authorities did not deny that political groups had the right to parade in some parts of Washington. While the Capitol grounds were firmly and emphatically closed to such demonstrations, the rest of Washington had been established as both a legitimate and potentially powerful place for national protests. But the squelching of Coxey’s Army was such that no other groups would successfully use those streets to attract the nation’s attention until 1913. In that year, woman suffragists built on the precedent set by Coxey’s Army and held a national march in the capital that received praise and federal support. In 1913, different strategies and different alliances would result in a very different spectacle and a more encouraging precedent. In contrast to the Commonwealers of Christ, who laid claim to Washington as the property of citizens, the suffragists conceived of Washington as a powerful stage that citizens could borrow and use to further their own political ends.

1. Without Precedent

¹. Carlos A. Schwantes, Coxey’s Army: An American Odyssey (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1985), 259. The speech was printed in remarks by William Allen (Pop., Neb.), Senate, Congressional Record, 53rd Cong., 2d sess., 9 May 1894, 26, pt. 5:4512.

². An Act to Regulate the Use of the Capitol Grounds, Senate 789, Congressional Record, 47th Cong., 1st sess., 26 June 1882, 13, pt. 6:5357. The terms of this law affected the way marchers approached the Capitol Building for ninety years; it was overturned by judicial action in 1972. The details are discussed in the introduction in note 8.

³. Telegram, 3 April 1894, quoted in Herman C. Voeltz, "Coxey’s Army in Oregon, 1894," Oregon Historical Quarterly 65 (September 1964), 168; Joseph Hawley (Rep., Conn.), Senate, Congressional Record, 53rd Cong., 2d sess., 20 April 1894, 26, pt. 4:3884.

⁴. On Coxey’s biography, see Donald L. McMurry, Coxey’s Army: A Study of the Industrial Army Movement of 1894 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1968 [1929]), 21-26; Carlos A. Schwantes, Coxey’s Army, 34-36; Henry Vincent, The Story of the Commonweal (New York: Arno, 1969 [1894]), 49-50; Shirley P. Austin, "The Downfall of Coxeyism," Chautauquan 18 (July 1894), 452; and Bernard Howson, "Jacob Sechler Coxey: A Biography of a Monetary Reformer, 1854-1951" (Ph.D. diss., Ohio State University, 1973). For other labor radicals and businessmen of the time, see Herbert G. Gutman, Work, Culture, and Society in Industrializing America: Essays in American Working-Class and Social History (New York: Knopf, 1977), esp. "Protestantism and the American Labor Movement" chap.; Paul Krause, The Battle for Homestead, 1880-1892: Politics, Culture, and Steel (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1992), esp. "The Life and Times of ‘Beeswax’ Taylor: Exemplary Paradoxes of American Labor" chap.

⁵. On course of depression, Samuel T. McSeveney, The Politics of Depression: Political Behavior in the Northeast, 1893-1896 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1972), 33-35; rates of unemployment from Charles Hoffman, The Depression of the Nineties: An Economic History (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1970), 106; see also Samuel Rezneck, "Unemployment, Unrest and Relief in the United States during the Depression of 1893-1897," Journal of Political Economy 61 (August 1953), 324-45.

⁶. On labor in this period, see David Montgomery, The Fall of the House of Labor: The Workplace, the State, and American Labor Activism, 1865-1925 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987). On Populists, see Lawrence Goodwyn, The Populist Moment: A Short History of the Agrarian Revolution in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), and Robert C. McMath, American Populism: A Social History, 1877-1898 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1993). On changes in political culture and the responsibilities of the national government, see Morton Keller, Affairs of State: Public Life in Late Nineteenth Century America (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1977); and Michael E. McGerr, The Decline of Popular Politics: The American North, 1865-1928 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986).

⁷. On "good roads" movement, see Howard L. Preston, Dirt Roads to Dixie: Accessibility and Modernization in the South, 1885-1935 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1991), 12, 26. This description is taken from the bill as it was announced in 1894, but according to Coxey, this was the same bill he had drawn up in 1891; Henry Vincent, Story of the Commonweal, 52-53. Estimates of federal spending and hourly wages from Charles Hoffman, The Depression of the Nineties, 219, 257.

⁸. See numerous examples of such claims in Franklin Folsom, Impatient Armies of the Poor: The Story of Collective Action of the Unemployed, 1808-1942 (Niwot: University Press of Colorado, 1991). For efforts in the 1870s that were mostly unsuccessful, see Herbert G. Gutman, "The Failure of the Movement by the Unemployed for Public Works in 1873," Political Science Quarterly 80 (June 1965), 254-76. For specific programs that were adopted, see Leah H. Feder, Unemployment Relief in Periods of Depression: A Study of Measures Adopted in Certain American Cities, 1857 through 1922 (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1936), esp. 72-97.

⁹. See Robert H. Wiebe, The Search for Order, 1877-1920 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1967), 111-27.

¹⁰. This account of Browne’s life draws on Henry Vincent, Story of the Commonweal, 109-13; and Browne’s memoirs, Carl S. Browne, When Coxey’s Army Marcht on Washington (San Francisco: n.p., 1944) (the unusual spelling, "marcht," is Browne’s). See also Donald L. McMurry, Coxey’s Army, 30-32.

¹¹. On the Chinese Exclusion movement, see Elmer Sandmeyer, The Anti-Chinese Movement in California (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1973); Alexander Saxton, The Indispensable Enemy: Labor and the Anti-Chinese Movement in California (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971); and Neil L. Shumsky, The Evolution of Political Protest and the Workingmen’s Party of California (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1992). For Browne’s dramatic account, greatly exaggerating the importance of the event at the Capitol, see Henry Vincent, Story of the Commonweal, 110. For newspaper coverage, see "Kearney at the Capitol," Washington Evening Star, 30 August 1878, 4; "Kearney at the Capital," New York Times, 30 August 1878, 5; and "Kearney on a Rampage in Washington," San Francisco Chronicle, 30 August 1878, 3.

¹². Henry Vincent, Story of the Commonweal, 110-11. On theosophy generally, see S. F. Hecht, "Essence of Theosophy," Current Literature 15 (March 1894), 269.

¹³. On the importance of the networks forged at such events to social movements and political protest, see Sidney G. Tarrow, Power in Movement: Social Movements, Collective Action, and Politics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 54-57; Henry Vincent, Story of the Commonweal, 112; on the Bimetallic Convention, see Carlos A. Schwantes, Coxey’s Army, 24-25; on Browne’s visit to Ohio, ibid., 28-32.

¹⁴. Coxey details these steps in Jacob S. Coxey, "To the Members of the Public," Bulletin No. 6 of the J. S. Coxey Good Roads Association of U.S., 25 January 1895, Papers of Jacob Sechler Coxey Sr., 1874-1976, at Massillon Museum (Columbus: Ohio Historical Society, 1977[?]), reel 2 (cited hereafter as Coxey Papers).

¹⁵. Carl S. Browne, When Coxey’s Army Marcht, 5; Carlos A. Schwantes, Coxey’s Army, 32-33.

¹⁶. Carl S. Browne, When Coxey’s Army Marcht, 5; Henry Vincent, Story of the Commonweal, 50, 112. Carl S. Browne, "On to Washington," Bulletin No. 2 of the J. S. Coxey Good Roads Association, 31 January 1894, reel 1, Coxey Papers, reel 1; Jacob S. Coxey, "To the Members," Coxey Papers, reel 2.

¹⁷. Osman C. Hooper, "The Coxey Movement in Ohio," Ohio State Archeological and Historical Society 9 (1901), 162-64. In associating their cause with Christ so directly, Browne showed the influence of working-class notions that Christians should work to change the industrial system rather than passively await salvation; see Clark Halker, "Jesus Was a Carpenter: Labor Song-Poets, Labor Protest, and True Religion in Gilded Age America," Labor History 32.2 (Spring 1991), 273-90.

¹⁸. Jacob S. Coxey, "To the Members," Coxey Papers; Henry Vincent, Story of the Commonweal, 52-53.

¹⁹. "The Coxey Crusade," Review of Reviews 10 (July 1894), 64. Regarding May 1, see Michael Kazin and Steven J. Ross, "America’s Labor Day: The Dilemma of a Workers’ Celebration," Journal of American History 78.4 (March 1992), 1304-5; and Eric J. Hobsbawm, Workers: Worlds of Labor (New York: Pantheon Books, 1984), 74-79.

²⁰. Coxey’s May 1 speech quoted in William Allen, Senate, 4512. Demands quoted in Donald L. McMurry, Coxey’s Army, 305. Fry may have taken the term "Industrial Army" from Edward Bellamy, Looking Backward, 2000-1887 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1966 [1888]). On Fry, Carlos A. Schwantes, Coxey’s Army, 86-87; on Redstone’s background, 143. For Redstone’s activities, "A Fizzle at the Start," Washington Post, 15 March 1894, 1.

²¹. William Peffer (Pop., Kans.), Senate, Congressional Record, 53rd Cong., 2d sess., 19 March 1894, 26, pt. 4:3076.

²². "Army of Tramps" from "The March of Tramps to Washington," Independent 46 (26 April 1894), 10-11. On the development of the wire services, see the detailed and authoritative account in Richard A. Schwarzlose, The Nation’s Newsbrokers, Volume 2: The Rush to Institution from 1865 to 1920 (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1990); and Menahem Blondheim, News over the Wires: The Telegraph and the Flow of Public Information in America, 1844-1897 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1994). On the power of these new forms of media to spread stories across the country, see Carl S. Smith, Urban Disorder and the Shape of Belief: The Great Chicago Fire, the Haymarket Bomb, and the Model Town of Pullman (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), esp. 28.

²³. Browne claimed responsibility for these reports; Carl S. Browne, When Coxey’s Army Marcht, 7. Schwantes gives credit to the reporter; Carlos A. Schwantes, Coxey’s Army, 40;

²⁴. Baker’s experience comes from Ray S. Baker, American Chronicle (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1945), 6-15; the number of reporters and Western Union operators is noted in W. T. Stead, "{hrs}‘Coxeyism’: A Character Sketch," American Review of Reviews 10 (July 1894), 52. Schwantes found information in "142 runs of newspapers from 31 states and territories and the District of Columbia"; Carlos A. Schwantes, Coxey’s Army, 281.

²⁵. Carlos A. Schwantes, Coxey’s Army, 83-97; Carl S. Browne, When Coxey’s Army Marcht, 8; Henry Vincent, Story of the Commonweal, 105; "In Dreams He Sees an Army," New York Times, 25 March 1894, 5. "Coxey’s Army Start," Washington Post, 26 March 1894, 2. That the source of this story is the wire services is indicated by the fact that the story in the New York Times on the same day used identical language in several places, see "Coxey’s Army on the Move," New York Times, 26 March 1894, 1.

²⁶. W. T. Stead, "Coxeyism," 48. Each day, newspapers carried stories detailing where the marchers had camped, the reaction of the local people, the weather, and their numbers. On the phenomenon of the serial story, see Thomas J. Schlereth, Victorian America: Transformations in Everyday Life, 1876-1915 (New York: HarperCollins, 1991), 182-87.

²⁷. Quote from "Traveling All Night," Washington Post, 19 April 1894, 2. On Haymarket, see Paul Avrich, The Haymarket Tragedy (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1984); David R. Roediger and Franklin Rosemont, Haymarket Scrapbook (Chicago: C. H. Kerr Pub. Co, 1986); and Carl S. Smith, Urban Disorder.

²⁸. Carlos A. Schwantes, Coxey’s Army, 149-65; Times quoted 161. The use of the federal troops was authorized by Attorney General Richard Olney and was considered appropriate since the economic depression had driven the Northern Pacific into receivership supervised by a federal bankruptcy court. Consequently, an attack on the Northern Pacific was considered an attack on the federal government. This policy and precedents for it are described in Gerald G. Eggert, Railroad Labor Disputes: The Beginnings of Federal Strike Policy (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1967), 136-52.

²⁹. Independent 46 (29 March 1894), 11.

³⁰. The prevalence of veterans’ organizations, like the Grand Army of the Republic, also heightened the association of "army" with organized groups; see Stuart C. McConnell, Glorious Contentment: The Grand Army of the Republic, 1865-1900 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992). While naturally the term implied a kind of armed militancy, this association was not always present. The Salvation Army’s entry into the United States in 1879 gave the term a Christian tinge; Thomas J. Schlereth, Victorian America, 268.

³¹. "Coxey’s Army on the Move," 1; Gazette and Ledger quoted in Public Opinion 17 (12 April 1894), 43-44. John McCook, "Tramps," Charities Review 3 (December 1893), 59. On tramps, see Michael B. Katz, Poverty and Policy in American History (New York: Academic Press, 1983), 151-81; Michael Davis, "Forced to Tramp: The Perspective of the Labor Press, 1877-1900," chap. in Eric H. Monkkonen, ed., Walking to Work: Tramps in America, 1790-1935 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1984). The most thorough treatment of tramps is Paul T. Ringenbach, Tramps and Reformers, 1873-1916: The Discovery of Unemployment in New York (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1973).

³². "The March of Tramps to Washington."

³³. For broader discussions of citizenship during this period, see Linda K. Kerber, No Constitutional Right to Be Ladies: Women and the Obligations of Citizenship (New York: Hill and Wang, 1998); Michael Schudson, The Good Citizen: A History of American Civic Life (New York: Martin Kessler Books, 1998); and Rogers M. Smith, Civic Ideals: Conflicting Visions of Citizenship in U.S. History (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1997). For early plans of the authorities, "Laws to Squelch Him," Washington Post, 24 March 1894, 1. On Cleveland’s intercession, see "In Advance of Coxey," Washington Post, 24 April 1894, 2.

³⁴. For broader discussions of citizenship during this period, see Linda K. Kerber, No Constitutional Right to be Ladies; Michael Schudson, Good Citizen; and Rogers M. Smith, Civic Ideals. Descriptions of the reception given the marchers, Henry Vincent, Story of the Commonweal, 55-56; and "Coxey’s Army on the Move," 1. On the symbolic importance of marching in ranks, see William H. McNeill, Keeping Together in Time: Dance and Drill in Human History (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1995), esp. 101-52. On a resurgence of interest in the American flag during this period, see Michael G. Kammen, Mystic Chords of Memory: The Transformation of Tradition in American Culture (New York: Knopf, 1991), 181-205.

³⁵. Carol Pateman and Nancy Fraser have shown how gendered assumptions and values shaped the eighteenth-century notion of citizens: see Carol Pateman, The Disorder of Women: Democracy, Feminism, and Political Theory (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1989); Nancy Fraser, "Struggle over Needs: Outline of a Socialist-Feminist Critical Theory of Late Capitalist Political Culture," chap. in Unruly Practices: Power, Discourse, and Gender in Contemporary Social Theory (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989); and Nancy Fraser, "Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy," chap. in Craig Calhoun, ed., Habermas and the Public Sphere (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1992). My thanks to Ruth Feldstein for her insights into the relationship of citizenship to the march. The marchers’ trip is described in detail in Carlos A. Schwantes, Coxey’s Army, 49-82, 168-72.

³⁶. "Straightforward" from Stanley Waterloo, "Introduction<’ to Henry Vincent, Story of the Commonweal, 12. "Coxey in New York," Washington Post, 22 April 1894, 1.

³⁷. Carl S. Browne, When Coxey’s Army Marcht, 16. Women in Los Angeles sang for a group of men as they departed; Henry W. Splitter, "Concerning Vinette’s Los Angeles Regiment of Coxey’s Army," Pacific Historical Review 17 (February 1948), 31. Diggs quoted in "Lauding Coxey’s Band," Washington Post, 22 April 1894, 3.

³⁸. These arguments generated their own problems, as journalists uncovered accusations from Coxey’s first wife that he had not paid her alimony on time; see "Mrs. Caroline Coxey’s Wrath," Washington Post, 8 May 1894.

³⁹. "Lauding Coxey’s Band," 3; "Agitation among the Women," Washington Post, 25 April 1894, 1; Carl S. Browne, "On to Washington," Coxey Papers, reel 1. Reports of rejection of women: "Coxey’s Clever Move," Washington Post, 21 March 1894, 2; and Henry Vincent, Story of the Commonweal, 123, 143.

⁴⁰. Coxey quoted in Henry Vincent, Story of the Commonweal, 51; Henry Frank, "The Crusade of the Unemployed," Arena 10 (July 1894), 242.

⁴¹. Coxey and Browne, like the Populists and other working-class groups, were trying to create on the national level a sense of the moral economy that was critical to local demonstrations. See E. P. Thompson, "The Moral Economy of the English Crowd," Past and Present 50 (February 1971), 76-136; Norman Pollack, The Just Polity: Populism, Law and Human Welfare (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987).

⁴². Coxey quoted in Henry Vincent, Story of the Commonweal, 51, 61; "favored few," H. L. Stetson, "The Industrial Army," Independent 46 (31 May 1894), 5. Norman Pollack argues that the Populist movement as a whole tended to share the Commonwealers’ faith in the power of national government to solve the country’s problems if run properly. Norman Pollack, Just Polity.

⁴³. See reports in Independent 46 (5 April 1894), 9; and "Traveling All Night," 2.

⁴⁴. Vincent’s official history often used the framework of conversion when he described the Commonwealers’ encounters with communities. Hostile towns and fearful townspeople had only to see the men and they embraced them and their cause. See Henry Vincent, Story of the Commonweal, 58-75. In Jack London’s account of his days with Fry’s Army in the west, he also pointed to the support of neighboring communities; Jack London, Jack London on the Road: The Tramp Diary, and Other Hobo Writings, Richard W. Etulain, ed. (Logan: Utah State University Press, 1979), 49-54. By the end of April, police plans to manage Coxey’s Army no longer included simply arresting them as tramps; see "Police Precautions," Washington Post, 30 April 1894, 2.

⁴⁵. Guard in the Capitol, "Fizzle at the Start," 1. On militia, "Preparing for Coxey," Washington Post, 23 March 1894, 1. On secret service, Matthew F. Griffin, "Secret Service Memories [Part 1]," Flynn’s 13 (13 March 1926), 906-27; and Matthew F. Griffin, "Secret Service Memories [Part 2]," Flynn’s 14 (20 March 1926), 86-98. Some of their reports were sent to the White House; William P. Hazen to John G. Carlisle, 20 April 1894, Grover Cleveland Papers, 1828-1945 (Washington, D.C.: Presidential Papers Microfilm, Library of Congress, 1958), reel 84; William P. Hazen to John G. Carlisle, 24 April 1894, Cleveland Papers, reel 84; and William P. Hazen to John G. Carlisle, 26 April 1894, Cleveland Papers, reel 84. Moore’s plans in "Two Now in Coxey’s Army," New York Times, 24 March 1894, 3. On April 14, District Commissioner George Truesdell met with Henry Thurber, Cleveland’s personal secretary, to discuss methods of controlling the army; letter enclosing the relevant regulations, George Truesdell to Henry Thurber, 15 April 1894, Cleveland Papers, reel 84.

⁴⁶. William Peffer (Pop., Kans.), Senate, Congressional Record, 53rd Cong., 2d sess., 19 April 1894, 26, pt. 4:3842-43. William Allen (Pop., Neb.), Senate, Congressional Record, 53rd Cong., 2d sess., 19 April 1894, 26, pt. 4:3843-44. Others echoed Allen’s complaints about the different treatment of lobbyists than that planned for the Commonwealers. Stetson compared the Commonweal to the "Chamber of Commerce of New York City," which "sent its members by carload to Washington to influence Congress"; H. L. Stetson, "Industrial Army," 5. For background on lobbyists during this period, see James Bryce, whose temperate view of lobbyists attributes the prevalence of such people on Capitol Hill to the committee system in Congress; James B. Bryce, The American Commonwealth: Vol. 1, the National Government, the State Governments (London: Macmillan, 1891), 647-52.

⁴⁷. William Allen (Pop., Neb.), Senate, Congressional Record, 53rd Cong., 2d sess., 26 April 1894, 26, pt. 5:4106. While the attacks on the Commonweal shared a common interpretation of the threat posed by the demonstration, partisan politics did shape the explanations for the cause of the protest. Republicans tended to argue that Democrats’ attempt to reduce the tariff—being debated at the same time—had caused the economic crisis and thus given the marchers their cause. Democrats preferred to argue that the "followers of Coxey learned their lesson from the Republicans," whose protectionist stance encouraged people to ask for help from the national government; Louisville Courier-Journal quoted in Public Opinion 17 (26 April 1894), 95. The Republican Boston Advertiser predicted that if Congress were to "defeat the Wilson bill and then adjourn promptly, there would be little heard of Coxey or his Army thereafter;" quoted in Public Opinion 17 (26 April 1894), 95.

⁴⁸. Grover Cleveland, "Inaugural Address, March 4, 1893," in Inaugural Addresses of the Presidents of the United States from George Washington, 1789, to Richard Milhous Nixon, 1969 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. GPO, 1969), 165.

⁴⁹. Edward Wolcott (Rep., Colo.), Senate, Congressional Record, 53rd Cong., 2d sess., 26 April 1894, 26, pt. 5:4107.

⁵⁰. Joseph Hawley, Senate, 3884; "Bourke Cockran’s Idea of Coxeyism," New York Times, 1 May 1894, 2.

⁵¹. On the investigation of strikes, Mary O. Furner, "The Republican Tradition and the New Liberalism," chap. in Michael J. Lacey and Mary O. Furner, eds., The State and Social Investigation in Britain and the United States (Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 1993), 171-241. Lauros G. McConachie, Congressional Committees: A Study of the Origin and Development of Our National and Local Legislative Methods (New York: Crowell, 1898), 56, 63.

⁵². Joseph Dolph (Rep., Conn.), Senate, Congressional Record, 53rd Cong., 2d sess., 26 April 1894, 26, pt. 5:4107.

⁵³. When asked subsequently if anyone had ever been arrested under this statute, Police Superintendent Moore said "No"; "Coxey before a Jury," Washington Post, 5 May 1894, 1. "Odd Fellows in Line," Washington Post, 27 April 1894, 5. Vincent thought this event was staged to set the precedent for the Coxey Army; Henry Vincent, Story of the Commonweal, 329. See also testimony about the failure to enforce this provision in William Allen, Senate, 3844.

⁵⁴. Quote from B. R. Keim, Keim’s Illustrated Hand-Book: Washington and Its Environs: A Descriptive and Historical Hand-Book of the Capital of the United States of America (Washington, D.C., 1884), 20. See also George G. Evans, Visitors’ Companion at Our Nation’s Capital: A Complete Guide for Washington and Its Environs (Philadelphia: G. G. Evans, 1892). On improvements to the capital, see Alan Lessoff, The Nation and Its City: Politics, "Corruption," and Progress in Washington, D.C., 1861-1902 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994); and Carl Abbott, Political Terrain: Washington, D.C., From Tidewater Town to Global Metropolis (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999).

⁵⁵. John Tracey, "Emergency Relief at Washington," American Review of Reviews 19 (March 1894), 295-96; "$30,000 for the Poor," Washington Post, 9 December 1893, 2. "Relief Work Closed," Washington Post, 4 April 1894, 5. On visits to the camp, "Coxey and His 300," Washington Post, 30 April 1894, 1; Carlos A. Schwantes, Coxey’s Army, 173.

⁵⁶. "Coxey and his 300," 1; "Police Precautions," 2; "600 Policemen on Duty," Washington Post, 1 May 1894, 2; New York Times, 1 May 1894, 4; "The Attenuation of Coxey," Washington Post, 30 April 1894, 4.

⁵⁷. "On the Capitol Steps," Washington Post, 1 May 1894, 1; "Coxey Will Defy the Law," New York Times, 1 May 1894, 1.

⁵⁸. In the 1890s, courts still interpreted the rights established by the First Amendment in relatively narrow terms; they routinely allowed authorities to prevent protests in public streets and parks. Still, District authorities recognized that Coxey’s Army’s plans for a protest directed at Congress clearly came within the scope of the Amendment. On the right to assemble, see Samuel Walker, In Defense of American Liberties: A History of the ACLU (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 28, 55, 108-11; M. G. Abernathy, The Right of Assembly and Association (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1981); and Robin Handley, "Public Order, Petitioning and Freedom of Assembly," Journal of Legal History 7 (1986), 136-38.

⁵⁹. "Property of people" from Coxey’s speech, reprinted in William Allen, Senate, 4512. Accounts of the march, "Climax of Folly," Washington Post, 2 May 1894, 1; Carl S. Browne, When Coxey’s Army Marcht, 18-22.

⁶⁰. This fact was reflected in the title of Woodrow Wilson’s influential book on Congress; Woodrow Wilson, Congressional Government: A Study in American Politics (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1885); Margaret S. Thompson, The "Spider Web": Congress and Lobbying in the Age of Grant (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1985), 28.

⁶¹. On importance of crowds, see Susan Herbst, Numbered Voices: How Opinion Polling Has Shaped American Politics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993). On makeup of crowd, see "Climax of Folly."

⁶². Carl S. Browne, When Coxey’s Army Marcht, 21; "600 Policemen," 2.

⁶³. See photograph in Mary Cable, The Avenue of the Presidents (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1969), 172. A member of Congress noted that the several congressmen were "within sight" of the police beating the crowd back; Tom Johnson (Dem., Ohio), House, Congressional Record, 53rd Cong., 2d sess., 2 May 1894, 26, pt. 5:4335.

⁶⁴. Carl S. Browne, When Coxey’s Army Marcht, 23; [Anonymous], Telegram, 1 May 1894, Cleveland Papers, reel 84; A. C. Hall, "An Observer in Coxey’s Camp," Independent 46 (17 May 1894), 4.

⁶⁵. [Anonymous], Telegram, on police actions; Washington Evening Star quoted in A. C. Hall, "Observer in Coxey’s Camp," 4; Coxey’s view of Capitol, see the speech he had planned to give, reprinted in William Allen, Senate, 4512.

⁶⁶. Kate Foote, "Our Washington Letter," Independent (10 May 1894), 6.

⁶⁷. "Coxey Had His Day," Washington Post, 2 May 1894, 4.

⁶⁸. "Browne’s Special Order," Washington Post, 2 May 1894, 2.

⁶⁹. William Allen, Senate, 4512-14.

⁷⁰. "Coxey on the Stand," Washington Post, 8 May 1894. See "[Trial Coverage]," Washington Post, 4 May 1894-22 May 1894.

⁷¹. William Allen, Senate, 4511-16.

⁷². John Sherman (Rep., Ohio), Senate, Congressional Record, 53rd Cong., 2d sess., 9 May 1894, 26, pt. 5:4517; John Gordon (Dem., Ga.), Senate, Congressional Record, 53rd Cong., 2d sess., 10 May 1894, 26, pt. 5:4564, 4565; George Hoar (Rep., Mass.), Senate, Congressional Record, 53rd Cong., 2d sess., 10 May 1894, 26, pt. 5:4570.

⁷³. Crisp quoted in Public Opinion 17 (26 April 1894), 136; "Coxey before a Committee," Washington Post, 10 May 1894, 7.

⁷⁴. Carlos A. Schwantes, Coxey’s Army, 224-26; "War on the Tramps," Washington Post, 2.

⁷⁵. "Prison Doors Opened," Washington Post, 11 June 1894, 1.

⁷⁶. The sympathetic Review of Reviews saw the July Fourth plans as an attempt to restore the "prestige of the movement" by expressing "a most excellent patriotic feeling." American Review of Reviews 10 (July 1894), 5; this report notes that Browne planned to include in the parade "a good many thousands of the colored people of the District of Columbia." Description of the event, "A Bit of Buffoonery," Washington Post, 5 July 1894, 1.

⁷⁷. Browne’s departure, "Oklahoma Sam in Command," Washington Post, 8 July 1894, 3; Jacob S. Coxey, "To the Members," Coxey Papers, reel 2. "Record of Political Events," Political Science Quarterly 9 (December 1894), 769-71; Washington Post, July 5-August 10, 1894. For the details on the bitter strike in the summer of 1894, see Stanley Buder, Pullman: An Experiment in Industrial Order and Community Planning, 1880-1930 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967).

⁷⁸. Joseph V. Tracy, "A Mission to Coxey’s Army," Catholic World 59 (August 1894), 666-80; account of their last days based on Carlos A. Schwantes, Coxey’s Army, 246-60; and miscellaneous articles on Coxey’s Army, Washington Post, 10-15 August 1894.

⁷⁹. Michael Parrish, Anxious Decades: America in Prosperity and Depression, 1920-1941 (New York: Norton, 1992); Howard L. Preston, Dirt Roads to Dixie.

⁸⁰. Old C. Collier, On to Washington; or, Old Cap. Collier With the Coxey Army, Norman L. Munro, pseud. (New York: Munro’s Publishing House, 1894).

⁸¹. Arthur Young, "Carl Browne: The Labor Knight," Masses 5 (April 1914), 16. See also Donald L. McMurry, Coxey’s Army, 291; and Carlos A. Schwantes, Coxey’s Army, 258-59. For Coxey’s activities until 1928, see Donald L. McMurry, Coxey’s Army, 286-91; on activities in 1930s and 1940s, Carlos A. Schwantes, Coxey’s Army, 259.

⁸². See reference to "Coxey’s Army" as "the entourage of interns, nurses and medical students which follows a chief of staff on his rounds," in H. L. Mencken, The American Language: An Inquiry into the Development of English in the United States, Supplement II (New York: Knopf, 1948), 755. "Unorganized gang" from Lester V. Berrey and Melvin Van den Bark, The American Thesaurus of Slang: A Complete Reference Book of Colloquial Speech (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1942), 789.

⁸³. "No Monopoly for Coxey," Washington Post, 29 March 1894, 4; Joseph Hawley, Senate, 3884.