Allegheny City officials kept close watch on the 200 or so members of Coxey's Army when the ragtag band arrived on the North Side on April 3, 1894.

The group's formal name was the "Commonweal of Christ." Led by businessman Jacob Coxey, the army was headed on foot from Massillon, Ohio, to Washington, D.C. Coxey's goal was to seek congressional support for his plan to issue $500 million in interest-free bonds. Proceeds would be used to pay unemployed men to build roads at a time when the country was in a deep economic depression.

"Enthusiastic Crowds Greet the Pilgrims of Poverty," the Pittsburgh Commercial Gazette reported on April 4.

The army was encamped in Exposition Park, a baseball field in what was then the independent City of Allegheny. The ballpark was located on the North Shore between modern-day Heinz Field and PNC Park.

While recognizing that they couldn't stop the marchers from entering Allegheny, municipal leaders did their best to limit their movements once they arrived.

Coxey's second in command, Marshal Carl Browne, had announced a public parade; the city banned it, while police barred sympathetic residents from visiting the camp. The management of Allegheny's Palace Theater invited marchers to attend a performance, but the men were forbidden to leave the ballfield.

"They have not treated us decently and have penned our men up like a lot of cattle," another of the army's marshals told a Gazette reporter in a story that appeared April 5. "But the plan of the leaders was to meet each new order with a new submission and defeat the police by sheer force of meekness."

While his army was small, Coxey and Browne knew how to draw and keep a crowd.

"Laugh and scoff at the Coxey movement, as many do, and more wish that they could, the scene on the [Monongahela] wharf yesterday afternoon was such as to convince any but the thoughtless that these be times of unrest and discontent with prevalent social conditions," the Gazette reported. "People came and went, but while the speaking was in progress, they mostly came, until the number of auditors at its maximum was estimated at from 15,000 to 20,000 people ... ."

If Allegheny police were hostile, many North Side and Pittsburgh residents gave both attention and supplies to the movement. "Just before the army was ready to move, Marshal Browne announced that a Pittsburgh firm had presented the commonweal with 500 pairs of shoes," the Gazette reported on April 6. "This was hailed with delight by the almost shoeless marchers."

Volunteers at the front of the army carried a banner on which were written the 19th-century equivalent of sound bites: "Pittsburgh and Allegheny ... Laws for Americans ... More Money, Less Misery ... Good Roads ... Non-interest Bearing Bonds."

"The army could hardly work its way through the crowd around the baseball grounds. ... When the army arrived at the Point it found the heads of the Pittsburgh police department there to meet it. ... They were given three cheers and the commonweal moved on."

Along Pittsburgh's Fifth Avenue, "the crowd ... was never grander. All business had been suspended and everybody was out to see the army. ... The crowd on Smithfield Street was even greater. ... On the south side the ovation was the same."

The army marched in a slight rain to Homestead, a working-class community still demoralized following an unsuccessful strike against Carnegie Steel Co. in 1892.

Residents perked up for the arrival of Coxey's Army. It was met at the edge of town by a cornet band and a welcoming committee of 400 men. "One of the foremost of the leaders of the escort was William Foy, the second man to be wounded in the battle of the barges on July 6, 1892," the Gazette reported. That fight was between strikers and Pinkerton detectives, who had arrived at the Homestead works by barge in the middle of the night.

It turned out that the army's warm reception in Pittsburgh and the Mon Valley was one of the campaign's high points. The "Commonweal of Christ" soon splintered following internal battles among its leaders.

The march on Washington ended with a whimper on May Day when police prevented Coxey from making a speech on the steps of the U.S. Capitol. The next day he was arrested, charged with trespassing on the grass around the building.