Volume 2, No. 5              Buffalo County Historical Society              May 1979

THE COMMONWEAL COMES TO KEARNEY, 1894

by Gene E. Hamaker

             The financial panic of 1893 had deepened into the most severe depression of the 19th Century by the spring of 1894. Banks and business firms across the nation had toppled and millions of people were unemployed. Local and private charitable agencies were hard pressed by the demands upon their resources. Kearney's economic problems had commenced earlier with the collapse of its own boom; the national depression only making matters worse while strengthening the appeal of Populism within Buffalo County.

          A half a continent away unemployed workmen in San Francisco and the bay area, seeking to return to the East and Midwest, were caught up in a nationwide movement known as Coxeyism. Jacob Coxey proposed to lead a march to Washington from Massillon, Ohio to persuade Congress to support a program of public works financed by legal tender money. The San Francisco workmen adopted this goal and, led by Charles Kelly, boarded a train of box cars after causing much excitement among the public and concern to authorities. These men, and their fellows across the country, were the frequent targets of insult, ridicule and vilification. They were described as shiftless tramps, disease carriers, radical visionaries and threats to public order. Wherever they went the authorities gathered and townspeople waited in trepidation, resentful at having to provide the men supplies from their own meager larders. There were sympathizers, too. The good of heart recognizing need, and especially, the Populists, who saw in the movement a fraternal cause. The armies were also to become a spectacle.

Gen. Chas. T. Kelly

            Kelly's army, after being unceremoniously dumped at Ogden, Utah Territory by the Southern Pacific, had caught a Union Pacific train and was coming eastward. At first it was thought they would swing down to Denver and miss most of Nebraska, but the twenty-seven boxcars, teeming with an estimated 1,200 men, pressed on into Nebraska as the disappointed authorities braced for trouble. That concern began to dissipate slowly as the army came closer. The "good people of Nebraska the men need fear no violence or disturbance or breach, of peace," the Omaha Bee reported. "These men are nearly all bona-fide workingmen and are sworn to uphold and obey the laws."

           To the people of the small towns and cities beside the tracks, the passage of the army was as if a carnival had come to town. Country dwellers and towns people alike flocked to see the show, even if it was only passing through. The correspondent of the Bee remarked that from the number of people turning out "one might well believe that every man, woman and child belonging in a town are at the depot" when the army passes. Unfortunately for those living in the panhandle, the train went through late at night. Few were there to witness the event and there was little to see, although Kelly made brief appearances. As morning dawned the 14th of April, there were crowds at every station, a very large one greeting the men at North Platte. Colonel William F. Cody sent the army three beeves from Scout's Rest ranch, but the train had departed before the cattle arrived. At Lexington a crowd estimated at over one thousand persons cheered the industrials.

           People had begun to assemble in Kearney long before the train came into view at 3 p.m., its twenty-seven cars "literally loaded with humanity, inside and out." Men were atop the cars, standing in the doorways, hanging from the ladders, and a huge soldier waved a big flag from the front of the flag bedecked engine. Scores of banners proclaimed such slogans as: "Government employment for the unemployed;" "Gold at a premium, humanity at a discount;" and, "Wealth produced only by Labor." There were more than 3,000 persons to welcome the army. Kearney had been asked to donate sugar and presented two one-hundred pound bags and "quite a sum" of money collected from local sympathizers. A few recruits boarded the train also, following a search and interrogation. The army was in Kearney twenty to thirty minutes awaiting the passage of a regular train, therefore the citizens had a good chance to talk with the "motley lookin array, dust-begrimed, bewhiskered, travel-stained and dirty, but withal smiling and good-natured." Kelly "a sprightly little fellow under medium size and weight" wearing a little blue cap and a short overcoat, as "pleasant and mild-mannered an individual as one would care to meet," was on hand and said he had been assured a Northwestern train would take them on to Chicago from Omaha. Asked about Coxey, Kelly replied his was a "purely western movement" but that as "their purposes were practically the same" the "two bodies would probably work together" as far as they could. For whatever reasons, the western armies tried to preserve a clear and independent identity. A Rev. Brooker of Kearney made an address to the mixed assemblage and led them in the singing of a hymn. The Kearney Journal pointed out afterward that Kelly's men were "anything but tramps" and their presence revealed "the desperation to which honest labor is being driven by the unpropititious times." The editor of the Hub impressed by the brief visit, compared the "good class of men" with Kelly to the "altogether ludicrous and burlesque" army of Coxey.

Kelly's arrival at the Transfer, Council Bluffs, Iowa

          Unnoticed at the time, two cars filled with the Reno section of Kelly's army went through Kearney a few days later. In their ranks was a tramp named Jack London. He would share the army's adventures in Nebraska and Iowa prior to deserting.

           Two other armies would grace Kearney's environs in 1894, each staying longer than Kelly and each being much smaller in size. Both armies would originate amidst the Bennett army unemployed of Denver. The first group was known as the Grayson-Bennett army and it left Denver afoot on April 18th. Prevented from boarding a train by sheriff's deputies, the men had to walk to Evans just outside Greeley. From this point on they would mostly ride in wagons furnished by the towns or counties through which they passed. There were seventy to eighty men in the band coming down the south side of the Platte River toward Buffalo County May 8th. That night was spent in Elm Creek.

          Kearney's city council was in session for other reasons Wednesday morning, May 9th, when notified by Deputy Sheriff Gass of the imminent arrival of the commonwealers. Gass said the "best way to get rid of them" was to deliver provisions for one meal at the south end of the Platte River bridge. The council approved an order for fifty loaves of bread, fifteen pounds of coffee, twenty pounds of sugar, twelve dozen eggs, and fifty pounds of bacon. The editor of the Hub thought the industrials should "be escorted to the river, shot over the bridge and sent on their way towards Hall and Adams County rejoicing. "In the end, it was decided to house them in the pressed brick works west of Kearney.

            There was a strong Populist organization and active labor groups in the city in 1894, thus many people who sympathized with the Coxeyites. These interests invited the army into the city that night. The soldiers marched down Railroad avenue and up Central at eight, flags flying, Sherm Smith astride a coal black horse riding escort. On reaching their destination, Journal Hall, they broke ranks and filed in, soon to be joined by Companies A and B of the A. O. L. A. R. D. McCarthy of the Kearney Standard opened the meeting with an attack upon current conditions and a call for reform. His vigorous address "was greatly appreciated by those of his political faith who listened to it." Will Greene followed Smith to the podium and expatiated at length upon the ills besetting the nation, urging his auditors to vote Populist if they wished to improve matters. The Hub's editor later grumbled that the men had been used for political purposes by the Populists, therefore they should have footed the bill for the army's visit.

          Thursday morning, supplied with wagons by their local friends, the commonwealers struck out for Shelton, pausing as they crossed Central Avenue to give three cheers for Kearney. The Hub observed sourly that no more than two or three of the leaders knew why they were going to Washington.

          A much cooler reception would greet the third of the armies in June. Not even the Populists were to show an interest in Higginson's soldiers. The origins of this group, on the other hand, were spectacular. Several hundred men had embarked in hastily built flat boats, catching a flood tide on the South Platte River induced by heavy rains and melting the snow. They met almost immediate disaster with lives lost before most abandoned the boats at Brighton. The great majority of the men will reach Julesburg by train, there to be dispersed with large numbers arrested and brought to trial in Denver or Fort Sidney in Nebraska. A smaller group, perhaps a hundred men at times, stayed with the boats and slowly made their way down the river into Nebraska.

        Higginson's navy reached the Platte River bridge south of Kearney on June 26th. A delegation was sent into town to seek supplies, which were provided and hauled to the bridge. Otherwise, the town was content to keep the men at a distance. A "sorry looking outfit," the Hub grouched. The industrials said they had been making about forty miles a day when unimpeded by deputies. Farmers along the way had provided them some food and they had supplemented this with fish caught from the river. Their intent was to continue down the Platte to the Missouri and Mississippi, thence up the Ohio River. The next morning the navy "set sail" for Grand Island. The editor of the Kearney Sun wryly noted that scarcely a month had passed since Bennett's army was given a public reception. Has "Coxeyism so soon lost its power," he asked, or, in a gibe at the Populists," has the grandstand play of demagoguery had its run?"
 
          Kelly and many of his men were to reach Washington in the summer of 1894. Less is known about the fate of the others. The Bennett army, is last noted in central Missouri. Grayson, the army's first leader, will join a Nebraska contingent and can be traced as far as Peoria, Illinois. Higginson and his men simply disappear into the midst of history.

Gen. Kelly at  Camp Despair, Chautauqua

SOURCES

        This story of Kearney and the industrial armies is based on accounts found in the Kearney Daily Hub . The Omaha Bee , the Omaha World-Herald, the Nebraska State Journal , the Grand Island Independent and Grand Island Evening Times , the North Platte Tribune , the Denver Times , the Denver Republican ,and the Rocky Mountain News . For Jack London, see his book, The Road , 1907; and a special issue of The Palimpsest , (June, 1971), with six articles on" Jack London and Kelly's Army." The minute books for 1894 of the Kearney City Council and the Buffalo County Board of Supervisors have also been consulted. Two general studies are: Henry Vincent, The Story of the Commonweal, 1894; and Donald L. McMurry , The Story of the Industrial Army Movement ,1929.
 

  

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