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In their acts of faith, folly, wisdom and curiosity men are moved by ideas. Perhaps, therefore, the discrepancy between the unimportance of this incongruous Easter Day spectacle itself and the interest we bestowed upon it was explained by what it signified—that is, by the motivating idea. This thought I examined carefully.

Two years before this, Jacob S. Coxey, horse breeder, quarry owner, crank, whom no one had heard of until then, proposed to cure the economic disease then afflicting the country by the simple expedient of hiring all the unemployed on public works. Congress should raise half a billion dollars from non-interest bearing bonds and spend the money on national roads. This plan received some publicity as a freak idea; nobody had been really serious about it. What then happens?

One Carl Browne, theosophist, demagogue and noise-breaker, seeks out this money crank at Massillon and together they incubate the thought of calling upon the people to take the plan in the form of a petition and walk with it to Congress. The thing is Russian,—“a petition in boots,” a prayer to the government carried great distances by peasants on foot. The newspapers print it as a piece of light news. Then everybody begins to talk about it, and the response is amazing. People laugh openly and are secretly serious.