Kelly'S Industrial Army was one of a number of "industrial armies," born of the panic of 1893, that pressed the federal government to help the unemployed. During the 1890s, Californian Charles T. Kelly rallied fifteen hundred men, many out of work, to this cause. In the spring of 1894, Kelly's followers boarded railroad boxcars bound for Washington, D.C. They planned to join Jacob S. Coxey's army, which had recently captured national headlines by marching from Ohio to the nation's capital. At Council Bluffs, Iowa, the railroad ejected Kelly's army. Many of Kelly's supporters, however, continued their journey on foot and eventually joined Coxey's army in Washington.
Bibliography
McMurry, Donald Le Crone. Coxey's Army: A Study of the Industrial Army Movement of 1894. 1929. Reprint, Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1968.
Schwantes, Carlos A. Coxey's Army: An American Odyssey. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1985.
