Although the marches failed, Coxey's Army was an early attempt to arouse political interest in an issue that grew in importance until the Social Security Act of 1935 encouraged the establishment of state unemployment insurance programs.

[3] Coxey spent eight years at the iron mill, advancing through the ranks from water boy to machine oiler, boiler tender, and finally to stationary engineer.

[4] Coxey would remarry in 1891, siring two more children, including a son named "Legal Tender" in honor of his father's quirky monetary obsessions.

Unemployment skyrocketed,[8] bank runs paralyzed the local financial system, and credit dried up, while a protracted period of deflation put negative pressure on wages, prompting widespread lockouts and strikes.

Never one to be short of either self-confidence or political ambition, Coxey believed that he had a cure for the nation's economic woes and began espousing a plan of public works, specifically road improvement, to be financed through the issuance of $500 million in paper money, backed by government bonds.

[9] This expenditure would in one swoop improve infrastructure, put unemployed workers to work, and loosen the strangled credit situation, Coxey believed.

[11] Rather than attempt to form a conventional political organization to capture decision-making offices, Coxey decided upon a course of what would later be known as direct action — the assembly of a mass of unemployed workers who would boldly march on Washington, D.C., to demand immediate satisfaction of their needs by Congress.