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Jumbo and Mrs. General
Cantwell
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Copyright, 1960, Murray Morgan
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Jumbo and Mrs. General
Cantwell
 A
soft-spoken man with a trim mustache and rimless glasses, Jacob S.
Coxey looked more like a prosperous farmer than an economic
messiah. He proved ineffective at publicizing his proposals until
he teamed with Carl Browne, a hustler whose faults did not include
a lack of flamboyance. Browne had been a housepainter, cartoonist,
theosophist, snake-oil salesman, and private secretary to Dennis
Kearney during that demagogue's anti-Chinese agitation.
A
big fellow, notoriously reluctant to bathe, with long graying hair
and a beard worthy of a prophet, Browne decked himself out in
buckskin coat, fringed, of course, and with buttons made of
Mexican half dollars. His ensemble was completed with high boots,
sombrero, a fur coat of dubious derivation, and a necklace of
amber beads. His vocal range was from foghorn to buzz saw. As an
attracter of attention, Browne was a triple threat, combining
visual, vocal, and odoriferous pollution. He was also imaginative.
Browne
and Coxey decided to send Congress "a petition with boots on."
The unemployed would march on Washington to demand passage of a
Good Roads Bill and a Non-Interest-Bearing Bond Bill. Coxey took
credit for the idea of the march, Browne for calling the marchers
"The Commonweal Army of Christ."
Browne
painted a remarkable banner for the army to march under. It bore a
picture of Christ which critics felt looked suspiciously like a
Browne self-portrait, and it was captioned "Peace on
Earth, Good Will to Men, He Hath Risen, but Death to Interest on
Bonds."
The
first battalion of the Commonweal Army started for Washington from
Massilon on Easter Sunday, 1894.
A
color-bearer with Browne's banner led the way, followed by General
Coxey in a piano box buggy drawn by his forty thousand dollar
pacer Acolyte, and, in a separate carriage, the second Mrs. Coxey,
who held in her arms their infant son whose baptismal certificate
read, no mistake, Legal Tender Coxey. Marshall Browne rode a
spirited stallion.
The
others walked. Among those in the ranks were Cyclone Kirtland, an
astrologer who claimed that according to the stars the army would
be "invisible in war, invincible in peace"; Unknown
Smith, who had earlier been known as ringmaster for a disbanded
circus; David McCallum, author of an economic treatise which sold
under the title Dogs and Fleas, by One of the Fleas; Christopher
Columbus Jones, a five-foot apostle of reform who marched under a
silk hat; and Jones's private secretary, who "sustained a
plug hat with impressive dignity."
The
Commonwealers numbered only two hundred by the most favorable
count but they were accompanied down the glory road by forty-three
reporters, four telegraph operators, and two linemen.
Carl
Browne had done his public relations work well. Though the stories
the reporters filed were heavy with ridicule, they were numerous.
Coxey's tatterdemalion troops captured the national imagination as
they traipsed south. Others followed.
Tacoma
and Seattle organized separate contingents in April, Seattle
first. On the afternoon of Saturday, April 8, some two hundred men
gathered in a skid road hall furnished with only two chairs and a
card table. Harry Shepard, a soft-spoken engineer, made a quiet
speech that called on "the respectable unemployed" to
unite for the amelioration of their condition. He urged order,
discipline, and self reliance in gathering food and funds for a
protest march across the continent.
The
seventy-two who signed the muster roll the first day pledged
themselves "to uphold the constitution, recognize only honest
workmen, assist any officer in the lawful discharge of his duty,
repudiate all connections with drunkards, thieves and convicts,
and to protect life, liberty and property." They elected
Shepard their general.
Tacoma
organized a week later. The unemployed and their sympathizers
gathered in the National Theater, a run-down hall at Twelfth and A
streets. After considerable speechifying, the mantle of leadership
settled not on a quiet engineer like Shepard but on one of
Tacoma's loudest personalities, Frank P. "Jumbo"
Cantwell, long-time bouncer for Harry Morgan, occasional prize
fighter, and current husband of Morgan's common-law widow, Dora
Charlotte-usually called Charlotte.
Not
for Jumbo a tone of respectability or a demand that his followers
eschew association with thieves and drunkards. Cantwell himself
was not unknown in police court. Respectability he could do
without. Notoriety was the spur.
Cantwell
told the would-be marchers that they could hire a train at
cutrates to carry them to Washington. How to pay for it?
"Every feller
who follers us from Tacoma, we'll make him dig up ten cents;
militia, police, I don't care who he is-we'll make him dig up.
Then we'll use the money to pay our way. But when we come back to
Tacoma, we won't hang out at the Old National. Oh, no. We'll go to
the Tacoma Hotel and be the elite."
Or
so said the Ledger in a report on his speech. The Ledger
complained that Jumbo's followers were "the best dressed,
best fed lot of unemployed to be found on the Coast," and
disapproved of "emigrants going not west but east, with no
purpose but to present a demand that the government shall help
them, shall take them in its charge and provide for them. The Army
is marching to the unknown in search of the impossible and the
impractical." The paper suggested that the government simply
draft the unemployed, ship them out of the country to Nicaragua,
furnish them with pick and shovel, and set them to digging a
canal.
The
Commonwealers were not to be dissuaded by such suggestions. They
organized into companies, or "cantons," of sixty men,
drilled at marching by morning and in the afternoons rustled
provender for the mess. "General" Cantwell helped out by
boxing an exhibition and turning over his purse to the commissary.
Two meals were served daily. They were long on clams, crab,
salmon, and beans, short on meat and bread.
Cantwell
and Shepard arranged that their Tacoma and Seattle armies would
meet at Puyallup at the end of the month. They would then ask the
Northern Pacific for train service east. While preparations were
being made for the Puyallup encampment, a Commonweal contingent
from Butte, Montana, flagged down a freight train, piled four
hundred men into fourteen empty boxcars, put an unemployed
engineer at the throttle, and headed east.
The
Coxeyites regarded this as hitching a ride, the NP as stealing a
train. Railroad officials obtained a court order forbidding anyone
to deprive rightful owners of the use of their boxcars. Fifteen
deputy marshals were hastily sworn in. They caught up with the
train at Billings, where a crowd had gathered to wish the Butte
army godspeed.
The
deputies started shooting and several bystanders were wounded
before the engine was uncoupled from the freight and the engineer
arrested. The townsfolk sided with the unemployed. They helped the
army liberate another engine and supplied the Commonwealers with
food. The train pulled out for the East with flags flying and a
live rooster perched on the locomotive. President Cleveland called
out the United States Army. Regulars from Fort Koegh found the
freight parked on a siding at Forsythe, Montana, the engineer
catching some sleep. The Industrials surrendered without
resistance.
A
reporter asked Jumbo Cantwell his views about commandeering
trains. Cantwell at the time was trying on a uniform that had been
presented him by fellow members of Tacoma's gambling fraternity: a
longtailed coat with epaulets, dark pants with blue stripes down
the leg, a broad-brimmed black hat heavy with braid.
"We'll get back
there one way or another," he promised, admiring his finery
in a mirror. "We ain't too proud to steal a train. Them
fellers in Congress has broke the law. Why can't we?"
United
States Marshal James C. Drake began swearing in deputies to guard
railroad property. Deputies were easy to find: why, the pay was
five dollars a day, and room and board. Drake dispatched a dozen
to Puyallup where the Commonweal armies were to rendezvous; others
patrolled train yards in Seattle, Ellensberg, Yakima, and Spokane.
They
were armed with .45s and Winchester rifles requisitioned from
Tacoma sporting goods stores, and they carried copies of a
restraining order issued by United States Circuit Court Judge C.
H. Hanford of Seattle. It prohibited any action which would
deprive the receivers of the bankrupt Northern Pacific from the
regular use of the line's locomotives, cars, and equipment.
The
Seattle Commonwealers under "General" Shepard started
for Puyallup on April 28, Jumbo's Tacoma troops a day later. A
light drizzle was falling as the unemployed marched down Pacific
Avenue that Saturday afternoon, through a thin line of spectators
on the plank sidewalks. A guard of honor carried a flag presented
the Commonwealers by the local post of the Grand Army of the
Republic. It hung limply.
General
Cantwell, his uniform partly concealed by a macintosh, followed
the flag. He kept the Colonel, his pet Saint Bernard, on a long
leash. Some four hundred Coxeyites marched after him. They sang as
they went down Pacific to Puyallup Boulevard then over to the
river, Civil War songs, and "Good Night, Ladies," and,
to an old tune, the new words of "Coxey's March":
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