Unsanctioned Voice; The Driver; Coxey's Army; run on gold; Pullman Strike

Click these links for discussions of the Writer's Note and Chapters 1 and 2 of Unsanctioned Voice.

Ramsey spent most of Chapter 3 discussing two passages from the The Driver that he believes reflect actual experiences that Garret witnessed in person.

While The Driver was a fictional story, Coxey's Army was an actual group and an actual event. I spent little time discussing it in my blog of The Driver because it had so little impact on the plot. I wrote briefly of the political attitudes expressed during the march and how those attitudes fit the political discussion early in People's Pottage.

Ramsey (pp. 13-16) believes that Garrett was present at the start of the Coxey march in 1894 (he would have been 16). That the description is so detailed with so little relation to the rest of the story serves as evidence that Garrett was relating his own experience. Ramsey fit this scenario very broadly into the basic outline of Garrett's movements during that general period.

Chapter 3 also quotes at length (pp.17-19) from The Driver's description of a gold run on the U.S. Treasury during this same period. I quoted this passage here. Ramsey believes that Garrett witnessed this event in person because the description is similarly vivid and because he wrote about it previously in his columns in the New York Times and the Saturday Evening Post. See p. 19, n. 6.

Ramsey also discusses Garrett's presence at the violent Pullman strike of 1894. pp. 16-17.

Click here for a discussion of Chapters 4-6.