One learned to anticipate the character of reception by the look of the place. In poor, dilapidated communities there was always a hearty welcome with what food the people could spare, cheerfully bestowed; the better and more prosperous the community the worse for the Commonwealers.
I spoke of this to some of the more thoughtful men. They had noted the fact and made nothing of it. Then I spoke of it to one of the tramps, who knew the technique of begging; he said:
“Sure. Anybody’d know that. D’jew ever get anything at a big house? The poor give. We ought to stick to the poor towns.”
In those industrial communities where class distinctions had arisen,—that is to say, where poverty and affluence were separately self-conscious, the police invariably were disagreeable and the poor were enthusiastic over the Commonwealers. At Allegheny, where the steel mill workers had long suffered from unemployment, the Army received a large white silk banner, lettered:
“Laws for Americans. More money. Less misery.”
Here there were several collisions between, on one side, the Commonwealers and their welcomers, and, on the other, the police. At some towns the Army was not permitted to stop at all. At others it was officially received with music, speeches and rejoicings.
As these incidents became repetitious they ceased to be news, yet they were more important, merely by reason of recurring, than the bizarre happenings within the Army which as newspaper correspondents we were obliged competitively to emphasize, as, for example, the quarrel between Browne and the bandmaster, the mutiny led by Smith the Great Unknown, the development of the reincarnation myth and the increasing distaste for it among the disciples.
The size of the Army fluctuated with the state of the weather. Crossing the Blue Mountains by the icy Cumberland road in a snow storm was an act of fortitude almost heroic. Confidence in the leaders declined. Browne came to be treated with mild contempt. The line,—“Christ and Coxey,”—which had been painted on the commissariat wagon was almost too much. There was grumbling in the ranks. Everybody was discouraged when the expectation of great numbers had finally to be abandoned. Never did the roll exceed five hundred men, not even after the memorable junction in Maryland with Christopher Columbus Jones, forty-eight men and a bull dog, from Philadelphia.
Yet there was a cohesive principle somewhere. Nearly all of those who started from Massillon stuck to the very end. What held them together? Possibly, a vague, herd sense of moving against something and a dogged reaction to ridicule. This feeling of againstness is sometimes stronger to unite men, especially unhappy men, than a feeling of forness. The thing they were against was formless in their minds. It could not be visualized or perceived by the imagination, like the figure of the horrible Turk in possession of the Holy Sepulchre. Therefore it was a foredoomed crusade.
The climax was pitiably futile.