The Cause of It

Southern Congressmen refuse to cooperate with Northern and Western industries, abstaining from sending men to join “an army of peace”.

“The most significant fact connected with Coxeyism is that this sieving unrest and disordered state of mine among the unemployed is confined to the northern and western states, and a v States those that have been sustaining and been mostly benefited by the high protective policy of the Republican Party- a policy which has practically destroyed our foreign market and guitted the Home Market and the produced[ unintelligent]- the legitimate result of a false, selfish, greedy system of political economy. It is a matter for great congratulation that not a single Southern state has contributed so much as a squad or a corporal guard to this so-called “ Army of peace”-Kanasha Valley Democrat.

the South has been down for some time. It is the rest of the country coming down to the level of the South that is causing this on rest in the northern and western states. It is the war made by southern congressmen and Senators upon Northern and Western Industries that has force them into involuntary idleness,And invited the direst despair. The grasshopper and the white man are still sitting upon stumps With Tears in their eyes, the one thinking of the days when the Negroes were hoeing the corn, and the other about the Negroes he had at his disposal to do the hoeing. For both Prosperity seems to be on iridescent dream and they draw consolation from the fact that with a few more years of Cleveland, the rest of the country will be in misery with them for the it remembered that this condition likes company….

“The Cause of It,” Black Virginia: The Richmond Planet, 1894-1909, accessed November 9, 2025, https://blackvirginia.richmond.edu/items/show/1546.