After the Industrial Revolution, All Things Happen At Once

After the Industrial Revolution, All Things Happen at Once

More than 2,500,000 men walked the streets
in search of work in the terrible winter
of 1893-94. . . . It was only
when government failed to act that
angry men began to take matters
into their own hands.

In Massillon, Ohio, Jacob S. Coxey
set about organizing
a massive march on Washington. . . .
On Easter Sunday
. . . 100 men set out for the Capitol,
accompanied by half as many reporters. . . .
No less than seventeen armies set
out for Washington in the spring of 1894.

Harold U. Faulkner
Politics, Reform and Expansion: 1890-1900



Now we enter a strange world,
where the Hessian Christmas
Still goes on, and Washington has not
reached the other shore;
The Whiskey Boys
Are gathering again on the meadows
of Pennsylvania
And the Republic is still sailing
on the open sea.


I saw a black angel in Washington dancing
On a barge, saying, Let us now divide
kennel dogs and hunting dogs;
Henry Cabot Lodge, in New York,
Talking of sugar cane in Cuba; Ford,
In Detroit, drinking mother’s milk;
Henry Cabot Lodge, saying,
“Remember the Maine!”
Ford, saying, “History is bunk!”
And Wilson saying,
“What is good for General Motors ... ”


Who is it, singing?
Don’t you hear singing?
It is the dead of Cripple Creek;
Coxey’s army like turkeys
are singing from the tops of trees!
And the Whiskey Boys are drunk
outside Philadelphia.


Robert Bly

Posted over on Poetry Foundation
Robert Bly, “After the Industrial Revolution, All Things Happen at Once” from The Light Around the Body. Copyright © 1967 and renewed 1995 by Robert Bly.