An extraordinary story comes in from America, which may be
'nonsense, and may be exceedingly important. A person named -Coxey, a Califoinian, who claims, according to the Herald, to be some sort of "Incarnation," has, it is said, produced a -sort of Union among the unemployed, and they intend to go to Washington, one hundred thousand strong, surround the Capitol, and demand of Congress a law or laws entitling them to obtain work. There are two organisations, one of which threatens force, and another that does not; but the substance of the story is a Peter-the-Hermit kind of march upon the Washington Jerusalem. There is no doubt that the distress in some States is dreadful ; and there is some kind of truth in the stories, for bodies of the pilgrims have seized trains, Judges are giving injunctions against the demands for unpaid trans- port, and the Government in Washington is making certain pre- parations ; but the account reads to us a little sensational. The -distances to be crossed are immense ; and how are one hundred thousand pauper crusaders to be fed, or supplied with water If the project were realised, the world would see a wildly dra- matic scene,—a hundred thousand citizens of the greatest Republic, and the only one with land to give away, begging at the doors of the Supreme Legislature for bare bread. Such a demonstration of the failure of Republican institutions to meet the social problem is however most improbable, and the end will probably be a mass meeting of badly clad folk in Washington, a big subscription, and perhaps a series of small xiots requiring the intervention of United States cavalry.
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