In Coxey’s Crusade for Jobs, Marquette University political scientist Jerry Prout provides an insightful examination of Coxey’s Army, born in response to the financial panic of 1893. Prout’s book offers a crisp synthesis of the historical conversation about the phenomenon of mass urban unemployment, a new concept in the 1890s, using the marchers of Coxey’s Army as exemplars. As the depression deepened and conditions around the nation grew more desperate, Americans considered turning to the federal government for unemployment relief on a grand scale for the first time. One of several promoters of federal infrastructure plans, Jacob Coxey called for a worker’s march on Washington to confront politicians with the reality of the situation and to offer a plan for public relief. Coxey proposed the creation of a federal infrastructure program wherein unemployed men could earn a wage while building an American highway system. A march of this kind had never been successfully attempted before 1893, and the idea of a successful march by unemployed “tramps” to beg for federal aid prompted immediate ridicule. Once the “army” arrived in Washington, it was crushed by police, and the leaders were arrested.

Coxey was a living example of self-motivated financial success, with leadership charisma and a fondness for Populism and the bimetallic currency movement. With his focus on Coxey and the other key figures of the march, Prout successfully reframes the historical discussion about the Panic of 1893 by contextualizing it as a rich man’s war and a rich man’s fight, rather than focusing on the rise of violent anarchism or international socialism that marred early labor organizing. Coxey, symbolizing the results of business savvy, hard work, and thrift, lent an entirely different air to the march, legitimizing the cause and drawing the press spotlight away from the unemployed men with him. By examining the organizational processes set by Coxey and the daily routines of the march and marchers from a vibrant array of backgrounds, Prout adds to the historical discussion of grassroots political activity in the Gilded Age.

Coxey’s march, Prout argues, has been mistakenly identified as emblematic of the Populist movement. Instead, the march to Washington was a transitional event, connecting frontier populism to the politics of the Great Depression and beyond and blurring issues of race, religion, and politics. Further, Prout argues, Coxey’s Army not only drove a nationwide discussion about permanent unemployment and a reevaluation of the Protestant work ethic, but it also laid the foundation for future nationwide marches, the creation of state unemployment agencies, and the programs of the New Deal. Prout does a fine job placing Coxey’s Army in a nationwide context, and carefully notes the other unemployment marches Coxey’s crusade inspired, as well as the failure of them all.

Coxey’s Crusade is a carefully researched, interesting examination of the nation’s first march on Washington, punctuated with side-splitting, Menckenesque commentary drawn from press coverage of the march. The text is carefully organized to examine each historical conversation about the march before synthesizing them into a whole under the idea of unemployment and the congressional response to it. Prout has scrutinized each important character involved in the march and incorporated them all into the book, a feature lacking in other accounts. As these individuals come alive and flesh out the narrative, readers will be swept quickly along to the conclusion by the seamless transitions in the narrative.

Prout, by examining press coverage and other eyewitness accounts of the march, successfully triangulates participants who were anonymous in other volumes. On several occasions, Prout was able to identify persons who played key roles in keeping the march organized yet remained anonymous in the firsthand reporting of events and in the historical scholarship that has followed. These characters each add an ideological or intellectual component to the march required for the proper examination of Coxey’s “army.” This ragtag band of men without work overcame the “tramp” stereotype and provided American newspapers with weeks of sensational news coverage as they marched from Ohio to Washington, led by an astrologer, a Theosophist, and Jacob Coxey, a businessman who survived the 1893 panic with his fortunes intact. Covering Coxey’s army was a band of future muckrakers led by Ray Stannard Baker, and the highly detailed, newly minted narrative style of reporting each of these men used provided Prout with an invaluable historical resource to flesh out the political discussions about unemployment.

Distracting from the text are Prout’s occasional, mild swipes at American capitalism at the turn of the last century. Little else interferes with an otherwise superior read. Unquestionably, Prout’s experience as a promoter of corporate social responsibility is showing through in these biting, if insignificant, comments in the text. These do not distract from the overall narrative or the historical detail. Coxey’s Crusade is an excellent book for course assignment and adds immensely to the conversation about Gilded Age America, journalism, and perceptions of unemployment in one concise and inexpensive volume.