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By Root 401 0

with an innovative but controversial idea. Why not have the United States government create public work jobs and hire unemployed workers to fix America’s roads? After walking these same troublesome roads, Helga and Clara understood exactly what he meant. Through his Ohio representatives he petitioned Congress for a $500 million public works bill; it languished, ignored by legislators. To draw attention to his petition, he devised a strategic march with another free-silver cohort he had met at the Chicago World’s Fair. During the depth of the depression in 1894, they invited out-of-work men to leave Massillon, Ohio, on Easter Sunday to join in a four-hundred-mile march to the nation’s Capitol steps, aiming for a May 1 arrival. Newspapers from around the country, intrigued with this novel protest from decent men desperate for work, sent journalists to accompany this first group of 122 marchers who called themselves the “Commonweal of Christ.”3 Reporters provided colorful daily news throughout the spring, which spawned offshoots of other groups, and Coxey’s Army swelled to four hundred. They represented a variety of occupations, various unions, and even a few from fraternal organizations like the Odd Fellows and Masons; their fellow members often gave them help along the way.

Other groups joined them on May 1 for this unique demonstration. Unemployed men from the West gathered to take trains east, legally and illegally, to show their solidarity. With so many people in America affected by the depression, the usually peaceful Coxeyites found sympathetic support for their plight and petition. In Pittsburgh, four hundred members of the Iron Moulders’ Union helped create a parade, marching in front of them, complete with a band.4 Although the poorly clad men often marched with little to eat, sometimes supporters provided meals as well as encouragement for the marchers.

It is probable that Helga knew of the Coxey groups from the Washington State coast who collected in Spokane during May of 1894. Hundreds of men stayed in the city for several days, putting on benefits to explain their mission and raise funds for the trip East, and even playing baseball games with locals.5 As a union worker, her husband may have met with the marchers. The strategies Coxeyites had used on their marches might have planted seeds for Helga when she began planning her transcontinental journey. She had seen how the heavy utilization of newspaper publicity helped these men gain popular support and tangible items, like a good meal or shelter for a night. Though internal conflicts and poor leadership undermined and ultimately disbanded these Northwest efforts, Coxey’s original group arrived six weeks later in Washington, D.C., and camped on the outskirts. Unarmed, poorly clad, often hungry, the men marched with a simple hope that the U.S. government might recognize an opportunity to assist the desperately poor in the country. They did not ask for a handout, just a chance to do honest work.

President Cleveland’s administration, fearful of trouble and riots, refused to grant the Coxeyites a permit to march the last few miles to the Capitol steps. Coxey argued that the Capitol steps were public property and it was his constitutional right to speak. After his men had walked four hundred miles, although he often rode in a carriage, he was determined to carry their message to the legislature. They marched into the city, with more than 20,000 curious spectators there to greet them or perhaps, to observe the potential confrontation. Over three hundred policeman stood guard by the Capitol.6 Police shoved Coxey down the Capitol steps before he could give his speech, eventually arresting him for “unauthorized parading on the grass” and “carrying signs on the Capitol grounds,” a charge ridiculed by some newspapers as overkill.7

Newspapers in Spokane followed this first major march of common citizens going to the Capitol to petition for change. One West Coast reporter argued that the nation should be proud of Coxey’s Army, that they showed the strength of the nation