The Crisis of 1893 was one of the many cyclical economic disasters that plagued the United States’ economic history. The Great Recession wreaked havoc on farming people, whose incomes plummeted, and the increasing industrial middle class. Unemployment has surpassed 4 million people. Coxey’s Army was an organization of unemployed individuals who walked to D.C. in 1894 when the country was experiencing economic crisis. It was the only one of many delegations that had gone out for the United States headquarters to arrive. The team, led by activist Jacob S. Coxey, began in Ohio, on 25th March 1894, with about 100 men and a significant attendance of media groups, and landed in Dc on 1st May 1894, with over 500 men. Coxey wanted to convince Congress to approve a massive national road construction project, funded by a significant surge in the monetary supply, to create work for the jobless (HCC Learning Web,189).
Jacob S. Coxey, the leader of Coxey’s Army, was an unexpected rebel. He was born in Pennsylvania and spent his early years working in the iron industry until establishing his firm at the age of 24. In 1881, he went to Massillon, Ohio, and founded a mining operation that was so profitable that he could pursue a second career as a politician. Coxey had rejoined the Greenback Party, a political movement in the United States that advocates for economic changes. Coxey was a regular proponent of government works programs that hired the jobless, an outlandish idea in the 1800s that became standard economic strategy under Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. Many people were laid off when the American economy was decimated by the Panic of 1893 (HCC Learning Web,189). Coxey and Browne, who called themselves the “Army of the Commonwealth of Christ, had taken advantage of press coverage where their concepts and justifications filled the national news. Even though delegations of marchers arrived from California, Iowa, New York, and Pennsylvania and sub-groups staging demonstrations and protests across the nation, this team from Ohio established a stand-in for the greater organization (HCC Learning Web,189).
The article’s author shows the response actions taken to end the economic depression by Coxey Army. Ohio industrialist Jacob S. Coxey’s suggestion for a government-funded road-construction program to put the jobless back to work sparked a novel reaction to the crisis. Coxey recruited a U. S. Industrial Army to demonstrate in Washington, D.C. in 1894 and requested that Congress codify the employment initiative into legislation to obtain public support. Coxey’s Army was born out of the petition in boots, as Coxey described it. In the rural Northwest, where manufacturing employees were concentrated almost exclusively in a handful of places such as Portland, the media disseminated the viewpoint of corporate and political elites that joblessness was the responsibility of the unemployed and even a just punishment for their idleness (HCC Learning Web,190).
However, this national focus was far from joyful, as Coxey and Browne would realize. As Coxey’s Army approached the city walls of Washington, D.C., The Washington Observer Weekly wrote on 28th April; the Commonweal planned to teach the impatient and unsatisfied citizens the compelling strength that lay in accumulated multitudes. According to the publication, such training would be terrible, causing the subtle modifications of the current social structure to be blown off like twigs before a tornado. Several publications attacked Coxey’s Army and the larger Industrial Army organization, comparing the marches to hazardous rebels and claiming that most individuals were sluggish or untrained in American economic principles (HCC Learning Web,190).
Many people watched the protesters pass the city walls despite the unfavorable press. Thousands of people assembled to witness the Commonweal parade pass by the shops, and residences lined the road straight to Capitol Hill. Coxey saluted the crowds while riding in a wagon with his spouse and newborn kid, Legal Tender. Browne took his horse after them. He wore an enormous white headdress and was costumed as a buck-skinned outdoorsman. Jasper Buchanan, an African American gentleman assigned to bear the American emblem, was at the head of the parade. Browne and Coxey’s decision to combine the protest and have an individual of color guide it via the corridors of Washington, D.C., was not overlooked. The Washington Bee, an African-American publication, advocated that other social revolutionaries should follow suit (HCC Learning Web,190).
It was all staged show, but it was staged to convey a definite political point— the crowds were demonstrating as a single state. Coxey and Browne were presenting a concept for contemporary American patriotism. This nationalism was broad, liberal, supportive of a democratic population, and antagonistic to economic oppression by striving to unite North and South with an inter message of social peace. The parade proceeded across D.C. in this style until reaching Capitol Hill (HCC Learning Web,192). Coxey then exited from his chariot and strolled to the parliamentary building’s staircase. He held a presentation he intended to deliver to the audience. He pushed for the administration’s enlarged participation in the economy, including a national roads initiative to reduce joblessness and repair facilities and a relatively low scheme to fuel the economy. Despite Coxey and Browne’s frequent claims that these concepts resulted from Coxey’s intellect, they were consistent with the emerging Populist party.
Coxey’s address focused on monetary strategy, the issues of huge capitalist dominance in government, and the importance of adhering to the state’s greatest democratic values in these hard financial times. It also encompassed and merged a wide range of socialist beliefs regarding patriotism, politics, and economics. Overall, it would be a presentation aimed at rallying backing for a collection of revolutionary laws suggested. It was a performance of eloquence to go along with a large-scale demonstration of political agitation. Before Coxey could start talking, Capitol police arrived and captured the protest’s organizer as he traversed the grass. The situation swiftly devolved. As the cops apprehended Coxey, they pursued Browne, who rode his horse and then assaulted Jasper Johnson Buchanan. As they assaulted the spectators, the cops quickly dispersed the rest of the crowd (HCC Learning Web,193).
From the Coxey army, it is evident that every nation has a national jobs emergency. Free commerce, taxation, and company practices promoted companies to relocate to other countries and transfer funds from actual products and services to risky financial goods. There is an immediate need for huge nationwide public projects. Because the private economy is not providing jobs, the government must. The obvious budgetary sources include shifting cash from a huge military expenditure and reducing tax breaks for the wealthy. But there is an alternative possibility, one championed by an Ohioan who likely led the country’s first employment protest a decade ago. Coxey’s Army proposed two bills. The first, known as the “Good Roads Bill,” would provide landowners with $500 million in lawful cash notes to assist them in building country roads. The second bill would allow local and state administrations to issue non-interest securities to borrow lawful tender currencies from the federal administration. This funding would construct libraries, schools, power plants, and markets in metropolitan areas. It is also evident that more jobs could have been created without incurring any debt. Regrettably, in the U.s, this is not the case. Money is becoming increasingly industrialized and privatized. Private institutions and the Federal Government create over 95% of the money. It is practically “produced out of thin air” by financial institutions and lenders for their profit, irrespective of the demands of society.
Work Cited
HCC Learning Web, learning.hccs.edu/faculty/sheri.dylewski/american-history1302/articles/coxeys-army.
