Early years Jacob Sechler Coxey was born on April 16, 1854, in
Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania, the son of the former Mary Ann Sechler and Thomas Coxey. His father worked in a sawmill at the time Jacob was born, but the family pulled up stakes to move to industrially thriving
Danville, Pennsylvania, in 1860, with Jacob's father taking a job working in an iron mill. Known as Jake, Coxey excelled in school, attending local
public schools and at least one additional year in a
private academy Coxey spent eight years at the iron mill, advancing through the ranks from water boy to machine oiler, boiler tender, and finally to stationary engineer. Coxey liked the town so much that he decided to stay, cashing out of the scrap iron business and using the proceeds to purchase a large farm and establish a quarry producing
silica sand for the manufacture of glass and iron. Horse racing was among the most popular spectator sports in the United States and Coxey's horse-breeding enterprise was prosperous, but he fell into gambling on racing, which contributed to the end of his first marriage in 1888, after 14 years and four children.
First political interests Coxey was born to parents who supported the
Democratic Party and he entered politics under this banner. With the coming of the economic crisis of 1877, Coxey became a partisan of the
United States Greenback Party, which ascribed the nations economic woes to faulty economic principles which led to a severe contraction of the money supply in the years after the
American Civil War. Prosperity could be restored, Greenbackers believed, by the issuance of sufficient quantities of paper money. When the
People's Party emerged at the start of the 1890s, it earned the support of Coxey and most other Greenbackers and he shifted his allegiance to that political organization. Coxey had experience as a laborer and an employer; he was also aware of the agricultural situation. He was a reformer who was willing to spend time and money to promote his plans for the betterment of the social order.
bank runs paralyzed the local financial system, and credit dried up, while a protracted period of
deflation put negative pressure on wages, prompting widespread
lockouts and strikes. Never one to be short of either self-confidence or political ambition, Coxey believed that he had a cure for the nation's economic woes and began espousing a plan of
public works, specifically road improvement, to be financed through the issuance of $500 million in paper money, backed by government bonds. This expenditure would in one swoop improve infrastructure, put unemployed workers to work, and loosen the strangled credit situation, Coxey believed. Coxey and his close political associate
Carl Browne devised a novel political strategy designed to force the United States government into action. Rather than attempt to form a conventional political organization to capture decision-making offices, Coxey decided upon a course of what would later be known as
direct action — the assembly of a mass of unemployed workers who would boldly march on Washington, D.C., to demand immediate satisfaction of their needs by Congress. This plan began to take shape early in the spring of 1894, to the point that by March the managing editor of the
Chicago Record would assign young reporter
Ray Stannard Baker to cover the "queer chap down there in Massillon" who was "getting up an army of the unemployed to march on Washington." Many members of Coxey's family were opposed to his involvement in
Coxey's Army. His father refused to talk to reporters and called his son "stiff necked", "cranky", and "pig-headed". He joined the
Socialist Party around 1912.
Presidential election of 1932 1914 In the
1932 presidential election, Coxey was considered for the
Farmer–Labor Party's presidential nomination; however,
Frank Elbridge Webb was instead nominated, with Coxey receiving the party's vice-presidential nomination. Coxey later sought the nomination of the
Kansas City-based contingent of the
Liberty Party at its July convention, delivering a well-received speech. However, the party ultimately nominated Webb, who had been removed as the Farmer–Labor Party's nominee after the party alleged he was a spy for
Herbert Hoover. With
Julius Reiter, the mayor of
Rochester, Minnesota, replacing him as the party's vice-presidential nominee. Appearing on the ballot in 16 states, the ticket carried none and received 7,431 votes, most from Minnesota, where the
state Farmer–Labor Party was dominant, though Coxey and Reiter did not have the support of the state party.
Death and legacy Coxey died on May 18, 1951, aged 97, in
Massillon, Ohio. When asked his secret to longevity, he told reporters an array of reasons from elixirs to not resisting temptation. ==See also==