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The Commonweal In The Heartland: Charles T. Kelly And Iowa's Industrial Army, Ryan James Sprau

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

Decades before the 1930s, or the period most Americans refer to as the Great Depression, the United States suffered through one of the worst economic crises in national history. While not as devastating nor as prolonged as the economic disaster that affected the United States in the 1930s, the depression that gripped the nation from 1893 to 1897 forced millions out of work. The Commonweal of Christ, more commonly known as the industrial army movement of 1894, offered one solution to the nation's crippling unemployment problem. Crusade founder Jacob S. Coxey planned to lead the nation's unemployed and discontented into …