COXEY'S ARMY.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1157, 4 May 1894, Page 19

COXEY'S ARMY.

- V } - Washington, May 1. Four hundred Coxeyites, headed by a - band, and carrying- banners inscribed with .attacks on financiers couched in blasphemous language, marched to the grounds 1 of the Capitol to-day. The entrance was barred by the police. Coxey, accompanied by his wife and daughter, wore in front of the procession. His daughter, fantastically attired as the goddess of peace, rode a white horse. f Coxey and another leader named Brown jumped over the wall surrounding the / Capitol, but wero pursued and captured before they could ascend the steps of the building or speak. Both were hustled out of the precincts, , whereupon the mob became excited, and were eventually dispersed by the police, after the free use of batons. 7 The movement was an entire fiasco. Seven thousand unemployed committed excesses at Cleveland, Ohio, and several persons wore injured. The police will not permit the unomployod to assemble at the Capitol, and they are sending delegates. J. B. Coxey, who is called the Commander of the Army of Peace, is in appearance a capable business man. He insists that his mission is one of peace, of securing means for the employment of the unemployed, and of a personal demonstration to the law-enacting powers at Washington that worthy,willing citizens of the United States have not the opportunity to earn bread for themselves and their hungering families. ! Ho claims that ho and his followers are engaged in an undertaking the greatest and grandest in the history of the world. Mrs Coxey, the divorced wife of the Commander, says that Coxey is persistent, and stubborn, and that when once ho gets an idea Heaven and earth cannot turn him from it. In answer to an • interviewer, Coxey said he and his people intended accomplishing their undertaking peaceably. At the head of the army, if it could be possibly arranged, ho wished his daughter Mamie to ride. She was to represent not the goddess of liberty, but tho goddess of peace. Mrs Coxey In vs the custody of the child, and she subsequently said that she would put a damper on that plan. However, from tho above cablegram, her objections appear to have been overcome. Mamie rode at the head of the procession. » ' 'V - •" • „ • '