Speaking of “a class of the lost,” on this day in 1894, Jacob S. Coxey started out with his army of the unemployed, also known as “the Commonweal of Christ,” from Massillon, Ohio, to march to Washington. You know the basic story: it’s a deep, desperate depression, the worst at least until the Great Depression; Coxey is a soft-money man, a People’s Party kind of guy—not poor himself, but believes in the cause, and wants the federal government to provide aid.
Here’s the thing: it’s awfully hard not to play Coxey for laughs. He named his child “Legal Tender.” He converted to a peculiar version of Christianity at the hands of an amateur theologian named Carl Browne, who held that each of us is reincarnated from a pool of mixed souls, so that a new soul contains an amalgam of old souls, which means that each of us contains a bit of Christ’s soul, too—and that Browne and Coxey had extra bits of Christ’s soul (he could just tell). The army marched under a banner with a portrait of Christ and a motto reading, “He is Risen, but Death to Interest on Bonds.” Coxey promised an army of a hundred thousand, but mustered only maybe a hundred; Massillon, in retrospect, probably wasn’t the best place to accumulate a pool of the unemployed. The army accrued a few hundred more people as it went along, but arrived still pretty small in Washington, DC, where its leaders were arrested and convicted for walking on the grass.
There were, immediately following, much more serious armies. But they were all tainted by this first outing’s faint air of ridiculousness.
So what do you do, teaching this story? Do you let the funny parts be funny? (Honestly, I’m not sure you can stop them.) How do you get your students, or readers, to refocus on the serious material at hand (double-digit unemployment, Pullman Strike, federal government going bust until/unless Morgan bails it out, that kind of thing). How can you play something that happens first as farce, then as tragedy?
21 comments
March 25, 2008 at 9:26 am
ari
I’m a huge believer in the axiom that if you can get your students to laugh, you can get them to learn. Which is why my Ford’s Theater lecture is filled with laugh lines. Really, though, as you say, how can you keep the funny from shining through in a story like this? Plus, that Coxey was a bit absurd needn’t obscure the serious context in which his absurdity took root.
March 25, 2008 at 9:42 am
Punning Pundit
Many of the early Christians were… absurd. That’s being nice. And yet the serious topics they dealt with are treated quite reverently.
March 25, 2008 at 9:45 am
Megan
You talk about how human it is to see through strong lenses, and how even though that is an odd lens for us now, the need that made this man walk to DC is a desperation that is equally familiar and human.
March 25, 2008 at 11:30 am
Rob_in_Hawaii
I agree with Ari on the efficacy of humor in the classroom. Besides, if we didn’t laugh, history would probably be too depressing to continue teaching.
So, teach Coxey for all the yucks he’s worth, from his kid, Legal Tender, to his odd views on reincarnation, to his leading an “army” of the unemployed from his fancy carriage with its finely matched pair of horses.
But then bring in the serious stuff. Coxey’s protest fits into a long history of such marches on Washington (e.g., the Bonus Army, various civil rights demonstrations, and protests for and against wars, guns, and abortion rights). Also, point out that Coxey’s was one of a handful of “armies” that marched that year. In California Kelly’s Army attracted a teenaged oyster pirate and future writer named Jack London, who ended up in jail for his troubles. (He got a few stories out of the experience though.)
You should point out too that Coxey’s Army was part of a larger “industrial army” movement, one suggested by Edward Bellamy’s novel “Looking Backward.” (Have I told you about my manuscript?) And even though he never mustered more than a few hundred “troops,” the protest attracted national attention in the press — both sympathy and abuse, but attention none the less. Along the way, towns offered food & shelter, while railroads gave them free rides. (Okay, so the towns were nice just so the army of “tramps” would keep moving, and the railroads gave free rides so that the men wouldn’t hijack the trains.)
Lastly, Coxey’s getting arrested for “walking on the grass” and the eventual fizzling out of his protest is full of bathos. But before that all played out he did attract the attention of the government. Legislation for full employment for an “industrial army” was offered in Congress (it went nowhere). Several schemes for aiding the unemployed were also floated in the newspapers.
Like all protests, Coxey’s Army was part theater and part serious political action. We shouldn’t get too caught up in being drama critics while studying the former while neglecting serious scholarship of the latter.
BTW, has anyone come across any good recent scholarship on Coxey? I have Carlos Schwantes’ Coxey’s Army: An American Odyessy and Donald McMurry’s Coxey’s Army: A Study of the Industrial Army Movement of 1894, but both are older works.
March 25, 2008 at 11:37 am
ari
Lucy Barber’s excellent Marching on Washington opens with a chapter on Coxey.*
* Full disclosure: Lucy’s a friend. And she sometimes comments here.
March 25, 2008 at 11:38 am
Cala
Hmm. Let them laugh, because it’s funny as all get-out, and it should be easy enough to make the point that the guy’s story is funny in part because he was so serious about it. No one names their kid Legal Tender if they don’t actually care about it.
March 25, 2008 at 12:21 pm
bitchphd
I actually think you do it in just the same tone as this post. You start out with a little framing of why Coxey is a sympathetic figure, the economic situation in which people found themselves at the time, etc. Then you allow as to how Coxey, while apparently a good man, was, well, sort of obsessive about some of the things that were part of his goodness. Maybe a tinge of regret about the nature of humanity, how being *too* earnest about anything is risible.
Then you tell the stories, and grin ruefully while the students laugh. They get to enjoy the lecture, and at the end you say “but the important point is ___, and that’s what you’ll be tested on.”
March 25, 2008 at 12:32 pm
Vance Maverick
How do your students (Eric, Ari) feel about contemporary protest? Certainly often laughed at (giant puppets) and often indeed somewhat laughable, but it’s all we’ve got. I suppose this doesn’t help with Coxey — rather, it makes it seem more important to highlight what’s worth not laughing at.
March 25, 2008 at 12:48 pm
ari
My students vary wildly. On the whole, though, they’re less cynical than one might imagine. And, in the Civil War course, at least, overwhelmingly opposed to the current war. Opposed enough to get out and march? For all but a few, I would doubt it.
March 25, 2008 at 1:43 pm
eric
Carlos Schwantes’ Coxey’s Army: An American Odyessy
….
Lucy Barber’s excellent Marching on Washington
I should just stop putting links in posts, shouldn’t I?
March 25, 2008 at 1:51 pm
ari
Yeah, probably. Or live with the fact that nobody actually reads the posts. I’ve gotten pretty comfortable with that cruel reality.
March 25, 2008 at 5:46 pm
Hemlock
I think protests remain viable avenues for political participation in the public sphere (for those of us that believe in non-representation). In many marches, I found that I actually garnered more influence in the outcome of legislative debates…even if that wasn’t the reality of the situation. Nevetheless, psychology has a lot to do with citizenship and spurred me to follow state and national political campaigns. In addition, “protests” can provide a provenance for invented civil rights traditions, i.e., the SF Gay Rights Parade. I went to school in Berkeley and SF, so I might be a bit subjective here.
As for Coxey/Pullman, I find that beginning a historical narrative with lightheartedness/humor and then ending it with darkness and death resonates with students. Seriously…gets them to think that human tragedy can (and usually does) originate from harmonious and humorous circumstances. In other words, is that really funny? Why do you find that funny? Compelling questions that often require self-analysis.
March 25, 2008 at 8:25 pm
bitchphd
nobody actually reads the posts
OMG, it’s just like academic publishing!
March 25, 2008 at 9:05 pm
urbino
I think you made the whole thing up, Eric. I mean, you got me on that whole neo-Confederate, amnestized Palestinian delegate thing, but, really, this one is just silly.
March 25, 2008 at 9:11 pm
eric
I think you made the whole thing up, Eric
Well, if only I had more library time and less, er….
March 25, 2008 at 9:14 pm
urbino
I think you made that up, too.
March 25, 2008 at 9:18 pm
eric
Basically, I write all the posts and comments.
Also, everything in Google.
March 25, 2008 at 9:20 pm
urbino
Oh, right, like somebody would actually name something “Google.”
March 26, 2008 at 10:29 am
Lucy B
Thanks eric and ari for the mention of the book. I found Coxey’s craziness a bit hard to take, and had a hard time sorting out how much of it was his and how much of it was Carl Browne. Browne ends up later on the street of Washington dressed as a Knight in what I call “tin foil.” He was authentically an odd ball.
Coxey was a die-hard greenbacker and kept at it for years. Indeed, I start my chapter with him giving the speech they stopped him from giving in 1894 in 1944. He came to DC for the Bonus March as well and spoke out again in favor of inflating the currency to help the poor.
Of course, the interesting part for me was how much the little “army” set off such a ferocious debate about the use of the capital. But you might want to read the book for that. Or maybe on May 1st, I’ll write you all about the day that Coxey was arrested for trying to speak at the capitol (which was illegal for a citizen to do without permission until a supreme court case in 1973/4)
March 26, 2008 at 10:31 am
ari
Lucy B!. Hurrah! And yes, May 1st. I’ve written your contribution down in my planner. In pen.
March 28, 2008 at 7:20 am
The Edge of the American West
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