The Aporia
Zito, S. (2026, October 15). What Pittsburgh can teach the next House majority. Washington Examiner. https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/4767808/what-pittsburgh-can-teach-the-next-house-majority/
Zito, Salena. “What Pittsburgh can teach the next House majority.” Washington Examiner, 15 Oct. 2026, https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/4767808/what-pittsburgh-can-teach-the-next-house-majority/.
Zito, Salena. “What Pittsburgh can teach the next House majority.” Washington Examiner, October 15, 2026. https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/4767808/what-pittsburgh-can-teach-the-next-house-majority/.
Dated from the outlet's own feed. Check the original for its byline.
In April 1894, Jacob Coxey, an Ohio businessman, led a group called Coxey’s Army through Pittsburgh during the second year of a severe four-year depression. The city, affected by recent labor strife and violence from the Homestead Strike, did not allow them to enter. Seven months later, in the 1894 midterm elections, Republicans made significant gains, winning 125 additional seats in the House, which remains the largest swing in U.S. congressional history. In Pennsylvania, Democrats kept only two of their original thirty seats, while in Pittsburgh, Republican John Dalzell won with more than three-quarters of the vote.
The country was in the second year of a four-year depression, the worst in its history up to that time, and the city, still scarred by the violence and deaths of the Homestead Strike, did not allow them to enter its limits, so they marched on along the Monongahela River.
Seven months later, the country did something the marchers might not have predicted. It voted overwhelmingly for the party of the steel tariff.