Coxey’s Army on the March, 1894 During the severe depression of the 1890s, Ohio businessman Jacob Coxey organized unemployed men for a peaceful march to the U.S. Capitol to plead for an emergency jobs program. They called themselves the Commonweal of Christ but won the nickname “Coxey’s Army.” Though it failed to win sympathy from Congress, the army’s march on Washington — one of the nation’s first — inspired similar groups to set out from many cities. Here, Coxey’s group nears Washington, D.C. The man on horseback is Carl Browne, one of the group’s leaders and a flamboyant publicist. As the marchers entered Washington, Coxey’s seventeen-year-old daughter Mamie, dressed as the “Goddess of Peace,” led the procession on a white Arabian horse. Library of Congress.