paper, calling attention to the unsatisfactory commercial and industrial conditions, limiting the session to the object of the call, which was the repeal of the Sherman Act, and using every argument thus far evoked by politicians and business men in favor of such repeal. The message was well received by the Republicans and Democrats who favored repeal, but it embittered all of both parties who favored free coinage of silver. As a vast majority of the latter were Democrats, the President ran great risk of disrupting his party and defeating the purpose of his call, but he trusted largely to his personal and administrative powers, to the value of the impressive" object lessons" he had set the country for the few preceding months, and to the necessity for party cohesion, especially on the threshold of his administration, to sustain him in his course.

The House went at once to work to achieve repeal. The Republicans were not hostile, except those of the freesilverite faction, but they took occasion to emphasize their belief that the existing crisis was due more to the threat upon the industries of the country, found in Democratic ascendency, than to any silver legislation. The bill passed the House, August 28, by a majority of 240 to 110. In the Senate the repealing bill was taken up in a leisurely way and discussed fully for a period of two months, its opponents being ever on the alert with long speeches and dilatory motions. It finally passed the Senate, October 30, by a vote of 43 ayes to 32 nays.

After this repeal bill became law, the country felt a sense of relief. But it was only momentary, for very soon it became manifest that the Sherman Act did not contain the ills attributed to it, and that the beneficial results expected to flow from its repeal were not being realized. Though banks felt easier and credit assumed a certain degree of con

fidence, there was now little use for money. Industrial enterprise was so completely paralyzed as to be utterly without ambition, and investment awaited a time when it could be assured of more adequate return than the present promised. The time for the meeting of the Fifty-third Congress in first regular session was near at hand, and the business world looked nervously forward to the attack upon, and overthrow of, the fabric of protection, together with that entire change in our commercial, industrial and economic conditions which that overthrow implied. It was a period of mental suspense and material suspension, an era of waiting and collapse, a continuous and demoralizing crisis, and was to be such during the entire period of the long session of Congress, which period, if not as to actual time, at least as computed results, measured the whole of the year 1894.

The approach of the winter of 1893 served to emphasize the crisis, by introducing into the gloom of existing conditions the elements of suffering and despair. Armies of idle operatives rose in the cities and about the mining and manufacturing centres, who became objects of charitable solicitude, and the problems of how to feed, clothe and warm them were as so many vexatious additions to those already distracting the land. Happily, philanthropy proved equal to the serious occasion, and the country was spared the horrors of witnessing scenes of starvation and the disgrace of bread-riots, which so often accompany enforced idleness and protracted want.

THE COXEY CRUSADE.

ONE of the most remarkable manifestations of the unrest that prevaded the years 1893 and 1894 was what became known as "Coxeyism." It was an ebullition of such a peculiar kind as to excite at the start only jeers and ridicule. Then, as it spread and insisted upon its importance, it drew unmeasured denunciation on the one hand, and excited curiosity and sympathy on the other. Finally it encountered the law, and was forced to yield its methods of procedure, which was equivalent to a disintegration of its elements.

In organized form, Coxeyism took the shape of an army, or armies, called variously the "Army of the Commonweal," the "Army of Industrials," "The Industrial Army of Christ," "The Commonweal of Christ," etc., and as such it was supposed to supplement its political, industrial and social aims with a religious enthusiasm akin to that which inspired the crusaders of old. In the midst of all the ridicule heaped upon it, it found comfort in the comparison of its beginnings with those of Christ, as he moved about with his apostolic band, and finally made triumphant entry into the Hebrew capital. Whether Coxeyism, in organized form, was a mere aggregation of tramps, as most people seemed to think, or whether the legitimate outcrop of serious conditions; whether it was only social froth, or the precursor of revolution, it was a fact, and one of sufficient significance to find a place among the problems which politicians, sociologists and moralists deemed worthy of discussion and solution.

Some have found its prototype in that English Chartism

of fifty years ago, which assumed the material form of the much-ridiculed "Manchester Insurgents," and marched on Parliament to present its petitions. Professor Hourwitch, of the Chicago University, likened it to the old Russian custom of organizing "petitions in boots." He said, “İn Russia it frequently happens that the peasants of some remote village or group of villages, finding no relief for their grievances from the home authorities, send their delegates to bring 'petitions in boots' to the seat of the central government. The 'weary walkers,' as they are called in Russia, march thousands of miles, very often begging for Christ's sake.' That men should come to the adoption of such methods of petitioning in America is a phenomenon so extraordinary that it deserves study from another than a policeman's standpoint."

Others, again, in treating the matter seriously, found the origin of Coxeyism, the source and secret spring of all its power, in the existence of the immense number of unemployed. In reasoning from this standpoint, a learned writer said: "Coxeyism is not the movement of one man. It is as little the handiwork of Coxey as the French Revolution was the work of Mirabeau or Robespierre. Coxeyism is a kind of sporadic growth-the adoption of petitions in boots by a widely scattered group of miserable men, all of whom have but one idea and one prayer. 'Work, give us work,' is their cry; and as it is to the government that they address their prayer, they set their faces toward Washington. Every newspaper blames the party to which it does not belong for the bad times. Politicians habitually speak as if prosperity were the gift of the administration. The Federal government is constantly called upon to play the part of an earthly providence. Coxeyism only asks that it shall secure work for the unemployed."

Another regarded Coxeyism as purely an evolution of Coxey's genius, by means of which he strove only for personal fame. This is the reasoning:

Every newspaper reader had grown weary of the discussion as to what should be done with tramps and out-ofworks. It seemed almost impossible to contrive any device by which this grim and worn-out topic could be served up in good salable newspaper articles. But Coxey did the trick. Coxey compelled all the newspapers of the country to devote from a column to six columns a day to reporting Coxeyism, that is to say, with echoing the inarticulate clamor for work for the workless. That was a great achievement. To have accomplished it shows that Coxey is not without genius. No millionaire in all America could, without ruining himself, have secured as much space for advertising his wares as Coxey commanded without the outlay of a red cent, by the ingenious device of his petition in boots."

On the theory that Coxeyism, which seemed to be a western emanation, had an origin in causes confined to that section and was perhaps an outcrop of Populism, certain prominent men were asked to give their opinions of it. Edward B. Howell, of Montana, wrote:

"The Northwest is not accurately represented by the industrial army movements of this region any more than Coxey represents Ohio. We have sympathized with these under-fed, ill-clad, penniless men. The wild flight of 'Hogan's Army' down the Yellowstone on a captured train, their speech-making at stopping-places on the way, their removing of obstructions on the track and their careful replacing of the same after their train had passed, and finally their capture by Federal troops called out by the President of the United States, all these things appealed