Volume 16 , Issue 20

Great Depressions - 1897

It was 12 March 1897 that we found this piece in a Garnett, Kansas newspaper, Kansas Agitator, entitled: It Is Not a New Idea. Government had furnished employment. England at one time employed her idle population on the public roads. America could do the same.

In the Kansas Agitator the people's messenger stated, "The idea that the government shall furnish the people with employment in time of great depression, to enable them to earn a livelihood is not a new one by any means. Governments are instituted for the benefit of the governed. As money is hoarded, confidence is destroyed and all business enterprises drag or are suspended, the wage earners must of necessity suffer unless the government will lend a helping hand."

That could stand today in the twenty-first century (2014).

Back in 1897, Gen. Coxey did not claim his good roads idea was original. Being a studious and observant man he knows what had been done may be done again. And as England utilized the labor of her unemployed in a time of great depression by constructing good roads all over the island, and thus enabled the unfortunate to earn a livelihood for themselves and families he argued the United States can do the same thing, and thus disperse the army of four million tramps now roaming this country.

The idea that such a course was beyond the scope of government was absurd, and an investigation would disclose the fact that the employment of idle labor by the government would in the end be profitable rather than expensive.

Another advantage of the system is that it would be possible then to distinguish between the roving vagrant, who prefers to be a tramp rather than earn a living by honest labor and the truly unfortunate, who though seeking work, had been unable to find it.

The former could be made to earn his sustenance in the chain-gang and the latter would never be harassed with the terrible fear he may lose his job and his family come to want. Why not try the experiment in the interest of the 15,000,000 or 20,000,000 of our digressed fellow citizens rather than listen to the ridicule of the plutocratic press, that denounces the suggestion as a Coxeyism? Why not?   |  View or Add Comments (0 Comments)   |   Receive updates ( subscribers)  |   Unsubscribe

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