Coxey's Army

A phrase that my grandparents used to throw around and that I have adopted over the course of my life is "... we've enough food here to feed Coxey's Army!" In short, it means that far too much food has been prepared for the people that will eat. It really reflects just how old my Dad's folks were... Coxey's last march on Washington occurred in 1914, but must have had a huge impact on society at large for the term to remain in common usage well into the 30s and 40s.

Jacob Coxey was a business man and politician from Ohio who, in 1894 (during the worst economic depression the country had ever seen outside of the Great Depression of 1929) and again in 1914, marched 500 unemployed men from central Ohio, through Pennsylvania and into Washington DC, gaining followers all along the way. The crux of their protest was that the Federal Government should enact a public works program to put unemployed people to work on a national road system, pumping much needed cash into the pockets of providers that had no unemployment insurance or Federal relief programs to assist them during a period of national unemployment that reached 19%.

The "Panic of 1893" was the second half of a longer era of general economic depression that began in 1873 and didn't actually end until the start of WWI. The depression was rooted in protectionist policies and Federal monetary actions that severely limited the Fed's ability to spend money without raising taxes and tariffs. As many as 22% of all banks in the country failed during this crisis, taking as much as 40% of all the savings within those banks with them. Hundreds of thousands of Americans were suddenly without jobs and without any sort of savings... mostly out west, but in the heartland, too. Bankruptcies and foreclosures reached heights that wouldn't be seen again until 1930, and had never been seen before. The price of gold on the global market (although the price was fixed here in the US) skyrocketed, and the price of silver (the monetary standard of international trade) plummeted.

Coxey and his bunch knew that increased taxes (payroll, sales or otherwise) would dampen the recovery, and they knew that there was no liquidity that could be pumped into the economy the way there is today because there was no central banking agency of the Federal government (today, we have the Federal Reserve). They were not asking for entitlements (per say) so much as asking for temporary public employment that could see them through the depression without undue hardship or even starvation. Both Presidents Cleveland and McKinley denied this logic and refused the efforts of Coxey.

Why do I bring this up?

The parallels are not perfect, but this is strikingly similar to the "Occupy" protests of today. Granted, the "Occupy" folks want less corporate influence and greater wealth equality through Government action... rather than public employment... but the efforts and reactions are surprisingly mirrored, I feel. Both protest efforts blame bad government policy and corrupt big business dealings on the economic crisis (both with some validity), and neither is getting a whole lot of consideration from the mainstream media. The general population seems a bit ambivalent toward the "Occupy" effort, as they did in '94 and '14 respectively.

Are there any conclusions that can be drawn from this?