Coxey's Army

Coxey's Army PDF Author: Benjamin F. Alexander
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
ISBN: 1421416212
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 170

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Book Description
The engrossing tale of the first audacious protest march on Washington—a precursor of the Occupy movement. In 1893, after a major British bank failure, a run on U.S. gold reserves, and a late-June stock-market crash, America was in the throes of a serious economic depression. Unemployment rose, foreclosures climbed, and popular unrest mounted. By the following spring, businessman and Populist agitator Jacob S. Coxey was fed up with government inactivity in the face of the crisis. With the help of eccentric showman Carl Browne, he led a group of several hundred unemployed wage earners, small farmers, and crossroads merchants on a march from Massillon, Ohio, to Washington, D.C., to present a “petition in boots” for government-financed jobs building and repairing the nation’s roads. On May 1, the Coxeyites descended on the center of government, where Coxey attempted to deliver a speech on the Capitol steps. The police attacked, a melee ensued, and Coxey and Browne spent a month in jail. Meanwhile, other Coxey-inspired contingents were on their way east from places as far away as San Francisco and Portland. Some of them even hijacked trains along the way. Who was Coxey, and what motivated him—along with the angry marchers who joined his cause? What did other Americans think of the protesters? Was there ever any chance that the protesters’ demands would be met? Where did the agitators fit in with the politics of their day, and how did their actions jibe with the other labor-related protests happening that year? In this concise and gripping narrative, Benjamin F. Alexander contextualizes the march by vividly describing the misery wrought by the Panic of ’93. Alexander brings both Coxey and his fellow leaders to life, along with the reporters and spies who traveled with them and the diverse group of captivated newspaper readers who followed the progress of the marches and train heists. Coxey’s Army explains how the demands of the Coxeyites—far from being the wild schemes of a small group of cranks—fit into a larger history of economic theories that received serious attention long before and long after the Coxey march. Despite running a gauntlet of ridicule, the marchers laid down a rough outline of what, some forty years later, emerged as the New Deal.

Coxey's Army

Coxey's Army PDF Author: Benjamin F. Alexander
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
ISBN: 1421416212
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 170

Get Book Here

Book Description
The engrossing tale of the first audacious protest march on Washington—a precursor of the Occupy movement. In 1893, after a major British bank failure, a run on U.S. gold reserves, and a late-June stock-market crash, America was in the throes of a serious economic depression. Unemployment rose, foreclosures climbed, and popular unrest mounted. By the following spring, businessman and Populist agitator Jacob S. Coxey was fed up with government inactivity in the face of the crisis. With the help of eccentric showman Carl Browne, he led a group of several hundred unemployed wage earners, small farmers, and crossroads merchants on a march from Massillon, Ohio, to Washington, D.C., to present a “petition in boots” for government-financed jobs building and repairing the nation’s roads. On May 1, the Coxeyites descended on the center of government, where Coxey attempted to deliver a speech on the Capitol steps. The police attacked, a melee ensued, and Coxey and Browne spent a month in jail. Meanwhile, other Coxey-inspired contingents were on their way east from places as far away as San Francisco and Portland. Some of them even hijacked trains along the way. Who was Coxey, and what motivated him—along with the angry marchers who joined his cause? What did other Americans think of the protesters? Was there ever any chance that the protesters’ demands would be met? Where did the agitators fit in with the politics of their day, and how did their actions jibe with the other labor-related protests happening that year? In this concise and gripping narrative, Benjamin F. Alexander contextualizes the march by vividly describing the misery wrought by the Panic of ’93. Alexander brings both Coxey and his fellow leaders to life, along with the reporters and spies who traveled with them and the diverse group of captivated newspaper readers who followed the progress of the marches and train heists. Coxey’s Army explains how the demands of the Coxeyites—far from being the wild schemes of a small group of cranks—fit into a larger history of economic theories that received serious attention long before and long after the Coxey march. Despite running a gauntlet of ridicule, the marchers laid down a rough outline of what, some forty years later, emerged as the New Deal.

Coxey's Army

Coxey's Army PDF Author: Carlos A. Schwantes
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 344

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Book Description
On May 1, 1894, Jacob S. Coxey led an army of tattered, hungry, unemployed people from western and mid-western states to Washington, D.C., to persuade Congress and President Cleveland to create public works and increase the money supply to stimulate the economy. Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.

Coxey’s Crusade for Jobs

Coxey’s Crusade for Jobs PDF Author: Jerry Prout
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1609091973
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 167

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Book Description
In the depths of a depression in 1894, a highly successful Gilded Age businessman named Jacob Coxey led a group of jobless men on a march from his hometown of Massillon, Ohio, to the steps of the nation's Capitol. Though a financial panic and the resulting widespread business failures caused millions of Americans to be without work at the time, the word unemployment was rarely used and generally misunderstood. In an era that worshipped the self-reliant individual who triumphed in a laissez-faire market, the out-of-work "tramp" was disparaged as weak or flawed, and undeserving of assistance. Private charities were unable to meet the needs of the jobless, and only a few communities experimented with public works programs. Despite these limitations, Coxey conceived a plan to put millions back to work building a nationwide system of roads and drew attention to his idea with the march to Washington. In Coxey's Crusade for Jobs, Jerry Prout recounts Coxey's story and adds depth and context by focusing on the reporters who were embedded in the march. Their fascinating depictions of life on the road occupied the headlines and front pages of America's newspapers for more than a month, turning the spectacle into a serialized drama. These accounts humanized the idea of unemployment and helped Americans realize that in a new industrial economy, unemployment was not going away and the unemployed deserved attention. This unique study will appeal to scholars and students interested in the Gilded Age and US and labor history.

Marching on Washington

Marching on Washington PDF Author: Lucy G. Barber
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520242157
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 344

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Book Description
"Beautifully written. Lucy G. Barber has taken different stories and woven them together so that each builds into a larger narrative about the history of political protest. By looking across a series of marches, Barber explores issues that escape more focused studies, such as the development of marching on Washington as a political strategy, and the changing conception of Washington as a public space. The scope of the research and the author's craft in telling these stories sheds new light on important moments in American history."—Mary L. Dudziak, author of Cold War Civil Rights

Coxey's Army

Coxey's Army PDF Author: Benjamin F. Alexander
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 1421416220
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
A colorful study of the nineteenth century march on Washington, the man who led it, and the national sensation that prefigured the New Deal. In 1893, America was suffering a serious economic depression. Fed up with government inactivity, Populist agitator Jacob S. Coxey led hundreds of unemployed laborers on a march from Massillon, Ohio, to Washington, D.C. Their intention was to present a “petition in boots” for government-financed jobs building and repairing the nation’s roads. On May 1, the Coxeyites descended on the center of government, where a melee ensued between them and the police. Soon, other Coxey-inspired contingents were on their way east from places as far away as San Francisco and Portland. Some even hijacked trains along the way. In Coxey’s Army, Benjamin F. Alexander brings Coxey and his fellow leaders to life, along with the reporters and spies who traveled with them and the captivated readers who followed the story in the newspapers. Alexander explains how the Coxeyite demands fit into a larger history of economic theory and the labor movement. Despite running a gauntlet of ridicule, the marchers laid down a rough outline of what emerged decades later as the New Deal.

The New Deal's Forest Army

The New Deal's Forest Army PDF Author: Benjamin F. Alexander
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
ISBN: 1421424568
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 192

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Book Description
How the Civilian Conservation Corps constructed, rejuvenated, and protected American forests and parks at the height of the Great Depression. Propelled by the unprecedented poverty of the Great Depression, President Franklin D. Roosevelt established an array of massive public works programs designed to provide direct relief to America’s poor and unemployed. The New Deal’s most tangible legacy may be the Civilian Conservation Corps’s network of parks, national forests, scenic roadways, and picnic shelters that still mark the country’s landscape. CCC enrollees, most of them unmarried young men, lived in camps run by the Army and worked hard for wages (most of which they had to send home to their families) to preserve America’s natural treasures. In The New Deal’s Forest Army, Benjamin F. Alexander chronicles how the corps came about, the process applicants went through to get in, and what jobs they actually did. He also explains how the camps and the work sites were run, how enrollees spent their leisure time, and how World War II brought the CCC to its end. Connecting the story of the CCC with the Roosevelt administration’s larger initiatives, Alexander describes how FDR’s policies constituted a mixed blessing for African Americans who, even while singled out for harsh treatment, benefited enough from the New Deal to become an increasingly strong part of the electorate behind the Democratic Party. The CCC was the only large-scale employment program whose existence FDR foreshadowed in speeches during the 1932 campaign—and the dearest to his heart throughout the decade that it lasted. Alexander reveals how the work itself left a lasting imprint on the country’s terrain as the enrollees planted trees, fought forest fires, landscaped public parks, restored historic battlegrounds, and constructed dams and terraces to prevent floods. A uniquely detailed exploration of life in the CCC, The New Deal’s Forest Army compellingly demonstrates how one New Deal program changed America and gave birth to both contemporary forestry and the modern environmental movement.

My Lai

My Lai PDF Author: William Thomas Allison
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 1421406446
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 182

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Book Description
Allison tells the story of a terrible moment in American history and explores how to deal with the aftermath. On March 16, 1968, American soldiers killed as many as five hundred Vietnamese men, women, and children in a village near the South China Sea. In My Lai William Thomas Allison explores and evaluates the significance of this horrific event. How could such a thing have happened? Who (or what) should be held accountable? How do we remember this atrocity and try to apply its lessons, if any? My Lai has fixed the attention of Americans of various political stripes for more than forty years. The breadth of writing on the massacre, from news reports to scholarly accounts, highlights the difficulty of establishing fact and motive in an incident during which confusion, prejudice, and self-preservation overwhelmed the troops. Son of a Marine veteran of the Vietnam War—and aware that the generation who lived through the incident is aging—Allison seeks to ensure that our collective memory of this shameful episode does not fade. Well written and accessible, Allison’s book provides a clear narrative of this historic moment and offers suggestions for how to come to terms with its aftermath.

A March to Remember

A March to Remember PDF Author: Clara McKenna
Publisher: Kensington Publishing Corp
ISBN: 1617737283
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
Traveling secretary Hattie Davish is taking her singular talents to Washington, D.C., to help Sir Arthur Windom-Greene research his next book. But in the winding halls of the nation’s capital, searching for the truth can sometimes lead to murder . . . Hattie is in her element, digging through dusty basements, attics, and abandoned buildings, not to be denied until she fishes out that elusive fact. But her delightful explorations are dampened when she witnesses a carriage crash into a carp pond beneath the shadow of the Washington Monument. Alarmingly, one of the passengers flees the scene, leaving the other to drown. The incident only heightens tensions brought on by the much publicized arrival of “Coxey’s Army,” thousands of unemployed men converging on the capital for the first ever organized “march” on Washington. When one of the marchers is found murdered in the ensuing chaos, Hattie begins to suspect a sinister conspiracy is at hand. As she expands her investigations into the motives of murder and closes in on the trail of a killer, she is surprised and distraught to learn that her research will lead her straight to the highest levels of government . . . Praise for A Deceptive Homecoming “A well-written historical mystery that brought the period to life.”—Mystery Scene

American Colossus

American Colossus PDF Author: H. W. Brands
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 0307386775
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 706

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Book Description
From the two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, bestselling historian, and author of Our First Civil War: a "first-rate" narrative history (The New York Times) that brilliantly portrays the emergence, in a remarkably short time, of a recognizably modern America. American Colossus captures the decades between the Civil War and the turn of the twentieth century, when a few breathtakingly wealthy businessmen transformed the United States from an agrarian economy to a world power. From the first Pennsylvania oil gushers to the rise of Chicago skyscrapers, this spellbinding narrative shows how men like Morgan, Carnegie, and Rockefeller ushered in a new era of unbridled capitalism. In the end America achieved unimaginable wealth, but not without cost to its traditional democratic values.

Down & Out, on the Road

Down & Out, on the Road PDF Author: Kenneth L. Kusmer
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780195160963
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 358

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Book Description
"A definitive history of homelessness in the United States..." -- page 4 of cover.