“Coxey’s Army,” a group of unemployed workers led by activist Jacob Coxey, was the nation’s first travelling populist protest. When the ragtag band arrived at the Capitol in May of 1894 to ask Congress for a public works program to create jobs, they became the leading news story. The article in this magazine derided Coxey’s Army as a group “of which all the other wandering armies of tramps and idlers are imitators,” but their innovative approach would change the way Americans voiced their opinions forever.
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