The foregoing questions were put into the platform and issued by the Industrial Army of 1894 which was known as Coxey’s army. That year was one of great depression all over the United States. The causes for the depression were discussed very widely at the time. It was the year following the great World’s Fair in Chicago and hundreds of thousands of men were out of employment. There was suffering and deprivation in all the cities of the United States. Charitable institutions were taxed to their limit by the new responsibilities put upon them. The idea of having all the unemployed form themselves into a great army of peace, and march to Washington for the purpose of presenting to the President and Congress a petition for the right to labor, developed in the mind of a man named Coxey who lived at Masillon, Ohio. He gathered together the first army numbering several thousand men. These men were organized into companies, and officers were appointed after the fashion of the regular military customs. Similar armies mobilized in other parts of the country. One at Los Angeles, another at San Francisco, one in Boston, and one in the Northwest, started towards Washington at one time. There were about 10,000 men on the march. They were ridiculed, persecuted, and feared. When the army that started from San Francisco reached Sacramento, it encamped outside the city. On Sunday night this curious army marched down into the center of the town, halted before the first church it came to, then the men filed in and in an orderly fashion filled up every pew. The remainder of the army marched on to the next church and did the same thing. This was repeated until every church in the city was filled to its capacity. This was the first and probably the last time in the history of that city when church pews were at a premium on Sunday night. The men of this army were harmless for the most part. A great many of them were worthless fellows, but the vast majority were honest workingmen who had been thrown out of employment, and owing to the circumstances of the times were unable to find anything to do, and, consequently, were in despair. Their plan was to go quietly across the country and when they arrived in Washington simply to fold their arms and ask the government what it was going to do for them. Only a few of the men of Coxey’s army reached Washington and the spectacular scheme failed. It, however, emphasized the need of the time and showed up the extreme danger in the situation.