Monday, April 30, 2012 — The following item ran in our “Admiral Fowle’s Piscataqua River Tidal Guide (Not for Navigational Purposes)” for this date:
“1894 — Five hundred unemployed workers led by Jacob Coxey arrive in Washington, D.C. from Massilon, OH, demanding work.”
The collapse of the publicly-subsidized, Congressional-bribe dispensing U.S. railroad industry in 1893 knocked the rest of the national economy into the worst depression to date, with unemployment rising to 18 percent.
Hundreds of scruffy-looking individuals took this unfortunate circumstance as an excuse to sully the Capitol. Authorities arrested them the next day for walking on the grass.