Before the Great Depression of the 1930's, there was another "Great Depression" during the latter part of the 19th century. It was also called the "Long Depression" because it went on, more or less, for a couple of decades. It all started with the Panic of 1873 and was followed by a long list of panics, crashes, and scandels. Experts disagree on the exact causes of this protracted economic turmoil, but I think most would agree that poor oversight, poor regulation, and greed had a lot to do with it. (Sound familiar?)
Some years into the Great/Long Depression, especially following the Panic of 1893, people got pretty fed up with the way things were going. America saw huge strikes, the rise of new political parties, and a strange thing known as Coxey's Army.
Jacob Coxey was a small-time politician from Ohio. He'd run for office as a member of the Greenback Party, the People's Party, the Republican Party, the Democratic Party, and much later on, the Farmer-Labor Party. He lost every time.
In 1894, Coxey organized a march on Washington D.C. His demands were simple and straightforward. Coxey and his followers wanted jobs. They wanted the government to provide jobs in the form of public works projects. They also wanted money to float free of the gold standard, much like it had during the Civil War.
Thousands of people set out to join Coxey's Army from all over the country. When they finally reached D.C., Coxey was arrested for walking on the grass, and without a leader, his army melted away. It wasn't a smart way to deal with disgruntled citizens. In 1914, Coxey led another march on Washington with similar results.
This little known episode is almost forgotten, except for a few old sayings you may have heard such as, "You have a enough food to feed Coxey's Army." But Jacob Coxey, and people like him, paved the way for other marches on Washington, and their ideas about unemployment insurance, social security, and monetary policy are the norm today. Coxey lived long enough to see his ideas vindicated too, he died in 1951 at the age of 97.
Photo: "The Panic" (Library of Congress)
