ffected more than 90% of governmental employees. When Harrison was elected President a few years after the Pendelton Act, he followed Congress’s earlier tradition of reforming the civil service system to earn his fellow citizens’ support. On dealing with the issues of veterans, he passed the Pension Act of 1890, which provided that all widows of veterans, and veterans incapable of manual labor may receive a pension. This was a reformation of former President Cleveland’s policy that only veterans directly wounded in battle may receive a pension. Although these new Acts granted more democracy towards part of the working class, it failed to submit to the majority of the working class. As the depression worsened and the number of jobless people grew, the nation feared class war between capital and labor. They were especially alarmed by Coxey’s Army, a march to Washington by thousands of the unemployed led by Populist Joacod A. Coxey. Coxey demanded that the government spend half a billion dollars on public works programs to create jobs. Coxey himself and other protest leaders were arrested, while the rest of the “army” had to leave for home. The arrest of Coxey proved that the government is not at all sympathetic towards the majority of the unemployed working class. The number of jobless americans grew more everyday, for space available for jobs could not match the mass number of immigrants pouring into America every hour. The population of the United states more than tripled in the last half of the 19th century, resulting in 76.2 million people by the time the new century arrived. Out of these, 16.2 million belonged to the class of the unemployed immigrants. the year 1882 shocked the americans when it was calculated that over 2000 Europeans immigrants were received by the united states per day. In an attempt to decrease the mass immigration number, the Chinese Exclusion Act was passed in 1892, prohibitin...
