The record-union., 1894-05-23
COXEY AND THE PARK ORDI-
NANCE.

Coxey and Browne go to Jail for viola
ton of a Congressional ordinance that has
been the law for nearly century.
of course, the cry will be raised that
this is persecution. ''What Send men
to Jail for displaying banner on the
Capitol grounds?'
But let reflection take the place of hasty
judgment. These men knew it to be the
law that banners shall not be carried
upon the grounds. They were warned
not to violate that law. But they did it
deliberately and with intent to bring
about a test of the validity of the ordi-
nance
Now, shall the laws be suspended to
please Coxey and Browne and enforced
as against others {? What kind of Gov
ernment shall we have if the laws are to
be rendered nugatory whenever any
body of men SO resolves? Coxey and
Brownies crew is not the people; they are
not commissioned by the people of the
United States to speak for them, not if
they were hundred times as strong as
they are, for the people issue their COM
missions only at the ballot box.
Coxey and Browne knew that only one
week before they carried banners upon
the Government grounds the ordinance
had been enforced against an Odd Fell
lows procession; that it was enforced last
fall against the Grand Army of the Re-
public; that it always has been enforced
and never has been dead letter.
1t is a wise ordinance. Without it
there could be no sort of order preserved
in and around the Capitol. The park
would become the stamping ground for
all sorts of political gatherings and reg
ular sandlot resort; every fakir in the
country could set up his perambulating
counter on the steps of the Capitol, and
the grounds would not only become a
waste. but the people having business to
transact in the Capitol would be impeded
and prevented.
No one would have stopped Coxey or
Browne if, like other citizens, they had
walked up the park ways and into the
Capitol building. They would have vio-
lated no law by so doing. But they
chose to defy the law, to carry banners
around which to rally crowd, to de-
liver harangues from the steps of the
Capitol, not to address Congress in the
manner provided by the law and open to
every citizen no matter what his or her
station.
The people are sensible and will not be
carried away with sympathetic blubber-
ings over Coxey and Browne because
they are punished for willful violation of
a law that is enforced against all alike,
and that moments reflection will con-
vince any one is an absolute necessity.
a similar law prevails over all public
parks and public buildings in the land.
No one can call public meeting or move
professions in the Capitol or its grounds
in this city; in Golden Gate Park. San
Francisco; in Central Park. New York;
in Paramount Park, Philadelphia, or in
any Capitol building or grounds or park
in the Union without permission of the
lawful guardians Of these properties.
These regulations are necessary and wise,
the result of the common judgment of the
people and of their experience. That the
such regulations means nothing more
than if any other body of men had sought
to beat down the ordinance and defy the
administrators of law made before time
was burdened with the existence of
Coxey.