Coxey's Army
The Overlook
By Tom Clavin
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This month sees the birthday of a man who put together two marches on Washington D.C. – and in a way, the second one took decades to complete. The marches inspired FDR’s New Deal and the creation of unemployment benefits.
Jacob Sechler Coxey was born on April 16, 1854, in Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania. His father worked in a sawmill at the time, but the family pulled up stakes to move to industrially thriving Danville, Pennsylvania, with Jacob's father taking a job working in an iron mill.
Known as Jake, Coxey attended local public schools and one year at a private academy before leaving to take his first job at the age of 16 as a water boy in the mill where his father worked. Coxey spent eight years at the iron mill, advancing through the ranks from water boy to machine oiler, boiler tender, and finally to stationary engineer.
Coxey left the mill in 1878 to establish a business partnership with an uncle in a Harrisburg scrap-iron business. Three years later, he went on a scrap iron buying trip to the town of Massillon, located 325 miles to the west, in Ohio. Coxey liked the town so much that he decided to stay, cashing out of the scrap-iron business and using the proceeds to purchase a large farm and establish a quarry producing silica sand for the manufacture of glass and iron.
Don’t fret, we’re getting to those marches.
Coxey was a passionate equestrian who bred blooded horses and raced or sold them across the nation. At the time, horse racing was among the most popular spectator sports in the United States and Coxey's horse-breeding enterprise was prosperous. Alas, he fell into gambling on racing, which contributed to the end of his first marriage in 1888, after 14 years and four children. Coxey would remarry in 1891, siring two more children, including a son named "Legal Tender" in honor of his father's quirky monetary obsessions.
In 1893, a severe economic depression swept the U.S., which would be dubbed the Panic of 1893. Unemployment skyrocketed, bank runs paralyzed the local financial system, and credit dried up. A protracted period of deflation put negative pressure on wages, prompting widespread lockouts and strikes.
Never one to be short of either self-confidence or political ambition, Jake Coxey believed that he had a cure for the nation's economic woes. He began espousing a plan of public works, specifically road improvement, to be financed through the issuance of $500 million in paper money, backed by government bonds. This expenditure would in one swoop improve infrastructure, put unemployed workers to work, and loosen the strangled credit situation.
To promote his controversial economic program, organized around the slogan "Good Roads,” Coxey and his close political associate Carl Browne devised a novel political strategy designed to force the federal government into action. Rather than attempt to form a conventional political organization to capture decision-making offices, Coxey decided upon a course of what would later be known as “direct action” -- the assembly of a mass of unemployed workers who would boldly march on Washington, D.C., to demand immediate satisfaction of their needs by Congress.
This plan began to take shape early in the spring of 1894, to the point that by March the managing editor of The Chicago Record would assign the young reporter Ray Stannard Baker to cover the "queer chap down there in Massillon" who was "getting up an army of the unemployed to march on Washington."
Many members of Coxey's family were opposed to his involvement in what became called “Coxey’s Army.” His father refused to talk to reporters and called his son "stiff necked,” "cranky,” and "pig-headed.” One of Coxey's sisters called him “an embarrassment.”
Twice, in 1894 and 1914, he led “Coxey’s Army” to Washington to present a "Petition in Boots" demanding that the U.S. Congress allocate funds to create jobs for the unemployed. Coxey's Army was an early attempt to arouse political interest in an issue that grew in importance until the Social Security Act of 1935 encouraged the establishment of state unemployment insurance programs.
In the 1894 edition, various groups from around the country gathered to join the march, and its number had grown with more on the way from further west when it reached Washington on April 30. The 260-acre Shreve farm in Maryland was used by the 6000 jobless men as a camp site. Coxey and other leaders of the movement were arrested the next day for walking on the grass of the U.S. Capitol. This effort is considered the first protest march on Washington, D.C.
Coxey organized a second march in 1914. A portion of it reached Monessen, Pennsylvania, also on April 30. Another contingent from New York City merged with the march. When the combined force reached Washington, D.C., Coxey addressed a crowd of supporters from the steps of the Capitol – or tried to: He was arrested for trespassing.
Although Coxey's proposal for government jobs was radical for its time, it came to be part of U.S. federal policy with the passing of the New Deal. Thirty years later, on May 1, 1944, Coxey was asked to read his original petition from the steps of the Capitol. More significantly, marches on Washington became a popular way for people to express their displeasure at the government or its policies.
Jake Coxey died on May 18, 1951, aged 97, in Massillon. When asked his secret to longevity, he told reporters an array of reasons from elixirs to not resisting temptation.
Tom Clavin is the author/co-author of 25 books, including, most recently, Bandit Heaven and, with Bob Drury, Throne of Grace, both published by St. Martin’s Press. To purchase copies, please go to your local bookstore or to Bookshop.org, Amazon.com, BN.com, or tomclavin.com.