Although they are often called “the gay nineties,” some historians think they could more accurately be called “the heartbreaking nineties.”

It’s easy to forget that the 1890s were a time of labor troubles, massive unemployment and occasional violence that grew out of the financial panic of 1893.

Idaho certainly knew its share of the national woes of the 1890s, and probably nothing was more dramatic than the invasion of the state by “Coxey’s Army” in the spring of 1894.

Jacob S. Coxey of Ohio was a successful businessman who also had the zeal of the born economic and political reformer. He felt that bankers were responsible for most of the ills of the American economic system that had brought on the worst depression of the 19th century and that the government should correct this by free coinage of silver and the printing of more greenbacks.

In 1892, he developed a Good Roads bill and got it introduced into Congress. It called for the U.S. Treasury to issue $500 million in notes to be spent on building good roads throughout the country. There were virtually no paved roads outside of major American cities in 1892, and the automobile was in its infancy.

Under Coxey’s plan, the unemployed could go to work for $1.50 a day on much-needed road improvements. A later addition to his program would provide for public works of all kinds on a similar basis, through non-interest-bearing bonds.

Coxey’s ideas were promoted into a near-religious crusade after he was joined by an eccentric Westerner named Carl Browne, a former artist, editor, politician and labor agitator. The picturesque Browne, perhaps in imitation of Buffalo Bill Cody, always wore a fringed buckskin coat, cowboy boots, a sombrero and a string of beads. He was a persuasive preacher with odd, mystical ideas, and he and Coxey planned a march on Washington by the legions of unemployed.

Calling their army “The Commonweal of Christ,” these partners in one of the most fantastic adventures in American history appointed local “officers” and started thousands of unemployed men marching toward the capital city on Easter Sunday, 1894. Browne predicted that “The Army of Peace,” filled with the overwhelming power of “Christ’s soul,” would persuade the Congress to pass Coxey’s better roads and public works bills.

The collecting of armies of unemployed on the West Coast was treated humorously by the Idaho press at first. Hogan the Stiff, Boise’s noted town drunk, was facetiously quoted in the Idaho Statesman as saying he would organize a local branch of the “starvation army” and would, when he landed in Washington, “paralyze President Cleveland wid wan look o’ me two eyes.”

In small towns across Idaho, up to 200 hungry men could appear overnight, all needing food and shelter. At first, they were received in most places with sympathy and generosity, and contributions were made for their welfare, but as more and more bands of what the Statesman now called “wealers” showed up, local charity dried up.

U.S. Marshal Joseph Pinkham then took over the most arduous and demanding task of his long life as a lawman, and Idaho began one of the most exciting months in its history.

On April 28, 1894, the Statesman reported that the marshal was “somewhere in the north,” where the situation was described as “critical.” By May 10, more than 200 Coxeyites were in Huntington, Ore., waiting for an Oregon Short Line train that might give them a lift across Idaho. Other groups in North Idaho were hoping for free rides eastward on the Northern Pacific.

We’ll continue the story next week of “The Commonweal of Christ” in Idaho.

Arthur Hart writes this column on Idaho history for the Idaho Statesman each Sunday. E-mail histnart@mindspring.com.