thereupon
took up quarters in Maryland and shifted about from time to time.
Detachments from the Western bands arrived during June and July, but
the total number encamped about Washington probably never exceeded a
thousand. Difficulties in obtaining supplies and inevitable collisions
with the authorities caused the band gradually to disperse. Coxey, after
his short term in jail, traveled about the country trying to stir
up interest in his aims and to obtain supplies. The novelty of his
movement, however, had worn off, and results were so poor that on the
26th of July he issued a statement saying he could do no more and that
what was left of the army would have to shift for itself. In Maryland,
the authorities arrested a number of Coxey's "soldiers" as vagrants. On
the 11th of August, a detachment of Virginia militia drove across the
Potomac the remnants of the Kelly and Frye armies, which were then taken
in charge by the district authorities. They were eventually supplied by
the Government with free transportation to their homes.

Of more serious import than these marchings and campings, as evidence of
popular unrest, were the activities of organized labor which now began
to attract public attention. The Knights of Labor were declining in
numbers and influence. The attempt, which their national officers made
in January, 1894, to get out an injunction to restrain the Secretary of
the Treasury from making bond sales really facilitated Carlisle's effort
by obtaining judicial sanction for the issue. Labor disturbances now
followed in quick succession. In April, there was a strike on the Great
Northern Railroad, which for a long time almost stopped traffic between
St. Paul and Seattle. Local strikes in the mining regions of West
Virginia and Colorado, and in the coke fields of Western Pennsylvania,
were attended by conflicts with the authorities and some loss of life.
A general strike of the bituminous coal miners of the whole country was
ordered by the United Mine Workers on the 21st of April, and called out
numbers variously estimated at from one hundred and twenty-five thousand
to two hundred thousand; but by the end of July the strike had ended in
a total failure.

All the disturbances that abounded throughout the country were
overshadowed, however, by a tremendous struggle which centered in
Chicago and which brought about new and most impressive developments
of national authority. In June, 1893, Eugene V. Debs, the
se