Fry's Army

Fry's Army was the informal name given to a short-lived radical protest movement organized in Los Angeles, California in 1894 and headed by trade union and socialist political activist Lewis C. Fry. Fry's Army was one of about 40 "Industrial Armies" organized in 1894 to organized and transport unemployed workers for a march on Washington, D.C., the best remembered of which was the Ohio-based movement known as Coxey's Army.

Beginning with an enrollment of 850 people, the "army" made a difficult cross-country journey by foot following the refusal of railroads to transport the protestors. Two trains were stolen in the course of the march, which brought Fry's Army into conflict with the authorities. Key support was gained from the Governor of Texas, which prevented mass arrest or a worse outcome, but rail transport ended in St. Louis and the remaining members of the group began a difficult march by foot. In these adverse conditions the movement melted away, splitting into rival factions in Indiana. Only a small handful of protestors eventually arriving in Washington, DC with Fry, where their protest efforts were ineffectual.

The American economy went through a protracted depression during the decade of the 1890s, signaled by a dramatic drop of the stock market and a financial panic beginning in May 1893. By the end of 1893 more than 16,000 businesses and 500 banks had closed their doors, with approximately 2 million workers cast into the ranks of the unemployed. By the height of the depression in 1894 nearly 20 percent of the non-agricultural workforce would be idled by the crisis, remembered to history as the Panic of 1893.

Lewis C. Fry, a former soldier, was a general organizer for the fledgling American Federation of Labor and a member of the Socialist Labor Party of America. Fry was captivated by the idea of the Industrial Army movement of 1894, the notion of gathering and transporting unemployed workers stricken by the economic crisis for a mass march on the halls of Congress to force ameliorative and substantive change to end the economic crisis.

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