Today is May Day and International Workers’s Day. It is also the day that Coxey’s Army reached Washington in one of the first significant protest marches. Coxey’s Army was a protest march by unemployed workers from the United States, led by Ohio businessman Jacob Coxey. They marched on Washington, D.C., in 1894, the second year of a four-year economic depression that was the worst in United States history at the time.
The purpose of the march, termed a “petition in boots”,[1] was to protest the unemployment caused by the Panic of 1893 and to lobby for the government to create jobs which would involve building roads and other public works improvements, with workers paid in paper currency which would expand the currency in circulation, consistent with populist ideology.
Among the people observing the march was L. Frank Baum, before he gained fame. There are political interpretations of his book the Wonderful Wizard of Oz which have often been related to Coxey’s Army. In the novel, Dorothy, the Scarecrow (the American farmer), Tin Woodman (the industrial worker), and Cowardly Lion (William Jennings Bryan), march on the yellow brick road to the Emerald City, the Capital (or Washington, D.C.), demanding relief from the Wizard, who is interpreted to be the President. Dorothy’s shoes (made of silver in the book, not the familiar ruby that is depicted in the movie) are interpreted to symbolize using free silver instead of the gold standard (the road of yellow brick) because the shortage of gold precipitated the Panic of 1893.
Jacob Coxey (right) is released from the D.C. Jail alongside associates Christopher Columbus Jones (left) and Carl Browne (center), 1894
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Today is the birthday, in 1954, of American guitarist, singer-songwriter Ray Parker Jr. who had the 1984 US No.1 & UK No.2 single ‘Ghostbusters’. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fe93CLbHjxQ
