On the morning of April 19, 1894, hundreds of unemployed men organized by William Hogan marched on a Northern Pacific freight yard in Butte. Calling themselves Commonwealers—Montana’s answer to Coxey’s Army—they surrounded train No. 60, hoping to ride east and demand federal jobs in Washington.

The freight lacked enough cars. The men fell back to camp, then pressed the campaign in the days that followed as marshals guarded yards across the line. The uprising climaxed days later in Billings with gunfire, a fatality, and a hard federal crackdown.

Montana’s hard times of the 1890s had pushed miners and laborers into open protest. Hogan’s April march made Butte a flashpoint in a national drama of depression, railroads, and men who refused to wait quietly for work.