One Carl Browne, theosophist, demagogue and noise-breaker, seeks out this money crank at Massillon and together they incubate the thought of calling upon the people to take the plan in the form of a petition and walk with it to Congress. The thing is Russian,—“a petition in boots,” a prayer to the government carried great distances by peasants on foot. The newspapers print it as a piece of light news. Then everybody begins to talk about it, and the response is amazing. People laugh openly and are secretly serious.
A day is set for the march to begin, a form of organization is announced and Coxey Army contingents begin to appear spontaneously all over the country. This also is news, to be treated in the same light spirit, and no doubt it is much exaggerated for sportive reasons. As the day approaches little groups of men, calling themselves units of the Christ Army of the Commonweal, set out from Missouri, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Kansas, Michigan, from anywhere east of the Missouri River, footing it to Massillon to merge their numbers. Then it rains. For three weeks there is nothing but rain, and the flesh fails. That is why there is but a scant one hundred to make the start. Coxey believes the bemired and tardy units will survive and catch up. He still hopes to have tens of thousands with him when he reaches Washington.
But all of this vibration is unmistakably emotional. That is a fact to be accounted for. When did it become possible to emotionalize the human animal with a financial idea?—specifically, a plan to convert non-interest bearing bonds into an unlimited amount of legal tender money? Never. The money theory is merely the ostensible aspect, the outwardness of the matter. Something else is signified. What is it?
I come back to what the Cleveland man said. Why are people hungry in a land of surplus food? Why is labor idle? Labor applied to materials is the source of all wealth. There is no lack of materials. The desire for wealth is without limit. Why are men unemployed instead of acting on their unfinished environment to improve it?
And now, though I had thought my way around a circle, I began to glimpse some understanding of what was taking place in a manner nominally so preposterous. People had tormented themselves with these questions until they were weary, callous and bitterly ironic. The country was in the toils of an invisible monster that devoured its heart and wasted its substance. The name of this monster was Hard Times. The problem of unemployment was chronic, desperate and apparently hopeless. The cause of it was unknown. People were sick of thinking and talking about something for which there was no help. They had either to despair or laugh. Then came Coxey, fanatic, mountebank or rare comedian,—so solemn in his egregious pretensions that no one knew which,—and they laughed. It might become serious. Mass psychology was in a highly inflammable condition. There was always that thought in reserve to tinge the laughter with foreboding. But if there came a conflagration, then perhaps the questions would be unexpectedly answered; nobody cared much what else happened.
Cincinnati turned over with a frightful snort and was suddenly quiet. I prayed that he might be dead and went to sleep.
The next morning the New York Herald man took me aside.
“I’ve been recalled from this assignment to go to Europe,” he said. “I’m waiting for a man to relieve me. He will pick us up some time to-day.”
I said I was sorry; and I was, for we were made to each other’s liking.
“I don’t care for the man who is relieving me,” he continued. “Besides, he isn’t competent to do what I’m about to ask you to undertake in my place.”