Eugene
Victor Debs was born in Indiana in 1855. He found work as a railroad
fireman in 1870 and eventually became active in the trade
union movement. Debs worked as editor of the Locomotive
Firemen's Magazine, before being elected national secretary
of Brotherhood of Locomotive Fireman in 1880. Debs, a member of the
Democratic Party, was elected to the
Indiana Legislature in 1884.
In 1893 Debs was elected the first president of the American Railway
Union (ARU). During the Pullman Strike
in 1894, Debs was arrested and charged with contempt of court. Despite
being defended by Clarence Darrow, he
was found guilty and sentenced to six months in prison.
Debs now became a socialist and believed
that capitalism should be replaced by a new cooperative system. Although
he advocated radical reform, Debs was opposed to the revolutionary
violence supported by the Communist Party.
In 1897 Debs joined with Victor Berger
and Ella Reeve Bloor to form the Social
Democratic Party (SDP). Debs was the party's presidential candidate
in 1900 but received only 97,000 votes. The following year some members
of the SDP left the party and established the Socialist
Party of America.
In
1904 Debs was the new party's presidential candidate and got 400,000
votes. He was also the party's candidate in 1908 (420,793 votes),
and 1912, when with his running-mate, Emil
Seidel, he increased this to 897,011 votes.
Debs believed that the First World War had been
caused by the imperialist competitive system. Between 1914 and 1917
Debs made several speeches explaining why he believed the United States
should not join the war. After the USA declared war on the Central
Powers in 1917, several Socialist Party
members were arrested for violating the Espionage
Act.
After making a speech in Canton, Ohio, on 16th June, 1918, criticizing
the Espionage Act, Debs was arrested
and sentenced to ten years in Atlanta Penitentiary. He was still in
prison when as the presidential candidate of the Socialist
Party, he received 919,799 votes in 1920. His program included
proposals for improved labour conditions, housing and welfare legislation
and an increase in the number of people who could vote in elections.
President Warren G. Harding pardoned
Debs in December, 1921. Critical of the dictatorial policies of the
Soviet Union, Debs refused to ally himself
with the American Communist Party.
Eugene Victor Debs died in 1926 and was replaced by Norman
Thomas as leader of the Socialist Party.
Eugene Debs
in prison in 1919
(1)
Eugene Debs, Appeal
to Reason
(29th December, 1900)
The machine became more perfect day by day; is lowered the wage
of the worker, and in due course of time it became so perfect that
it could be operated by unskilled labor of the woman, and she became
a factor in industry. The owners of these machines were in competition
with each other for trade in the market; it was war; cheaper and cheaper
production was demanded, and cheaper labor was demanded.
In the march of time it became necessary to withdraw the children
from school, and these machines came to be operated by the deft touch
of the fingers of the child. In the first stage, machine was in competition
with man; in the next, man in competition with both, and in the next,
the child in competition with the whole combination.
Today there is more than three million women engaged in industrial
pursuits in the United States, and more than two million children.
It is not a question of white labor or black labor, or male labor
or female or child labor, in this system; it is solely a question
of cheap labor, without reference to the effect upon mankind.
(2)
John Swinton, a journalist with the New
York Times, saw Eugene Debs make a speech in 1894. He later
wrote that Debs reminded him of Abraham Lincoln.
It seemed to me that both men were imbued with the same spirit. Both
seemed to me as men of judgment, reason, earnestness and power. Both
seemed to me as men of free, high, genuine and generous manhood. I
took to Lincoln in my early life, as I took to Debs a third of a century
later.
(3)
Eugene Debs wrote about the arrest of William
Haywood and Charles Moyer in Appeal
to Reason (10th March, 1906)
There have been twenty years of revolutionary education, agitation,
and organization since the Haymarket tragedy, and if an attempt is
made to repeat it, there will be a revolution and I will do all in
my power to precipitate it. If they attempt to murder Moyer, Haywood,
and their brothers, a million revolutionists at least will meet them
with guns.
(4)
Eugene Debs, Appeal to Reason (23rd March, 1907)
Ferdinand Lassalle, the brilliant social revolutionist, once said
that the war against capitalism was not a rose water affair. It is
rather of the storm and tempest order. All kinds of attacks must be
expected, and all kinds of wounds will be inflicted. You will be assailed
within and without, spat upon by the very ones that you are doing
your best to serve, and at certain crucial moments find yourself isolated,
absolutely alone as if to compel surrender, but in those moments,
if you have the nerve, you become supreme.
(5)
Eugene Debs was the Socialist Party
candidate for president in 1912. He wrote about his views in the article
Why You Should Vote for Socialism (31st August, 1912)
You must either vote for or against your own material interests
as a wealth producer; there is no political purgatory in this nation
of ours, despite the desperate efforts of so-called Progressive capitalists
politicians to establish one. socialism alone represents the material
heaven of plenty for those who toil and the Socialist Party alone
offers the political means for attaining that heaven of economic plenty
which the toil of the workers of the world provides in unceasing and
measureless flow.
Capitalism represents the material hell of want and pinching poverty
of degradation and prostitution for those who toil and in which you
now exist, and each and every political party, other than the Socialist
Party, stands for the perpetuation of the economic hell of capitalism.
For the first time in all history you who toil possess the power to
peacefully better your own condition. The little slip of paper which
you hold in your hand on election day is more potent than all the
armies of all the kings of earth.
(6)
Eugene Debs, When I Shall Fight, Appeal
to Reason
(11th September, 1915)
I am not opposed to all war, nor am I opposed to fighting under
all circumstances, and any declaration to the contrary would disqualify
me as a revolutionist. When I say I am opposed to war I mean ruling
class war, for the ruling class is the only class that makes war.
It matters not to me whether this war be offensive or defensive, or
what other lying excuse may be invented for it, I am opposed to it,
and I would be shot for treason before I would enter such a war.
Capitalists wars for capitalist conquest and capitalist plunder must
be fought by the capitalists themselves so far as I am concerned,
and upon that question there can be no compromise and no misunderstanding
as to my position. I have no country to fight for; my country is the
earth; I am a citizen of the world. I would not violate my principles
for God, much less for a crazy kaiser, a savage czar, a degenerate
king, or a gang of pot-bellied parasites.
I am opposed to every war but one; I am for the war with heart and
soul, and that is the world-wide war of social revolution. In that
war I am prepared to fight in any way the ruling class may make necessary,
even to the barricades.
There is where I stand and where I believe the Socialist Party stands,
or ought to stand, on the question of war.
(7)
Eugene Debs,
speech in Canton, Ohio (16th June 1918)
The other day they sentenced Kate Richards O'Hare to the penitentiary
for five years. Think of sentencing a woman to the penitentiary simply
for talking. The United States, under plutocratic rule, is the only
country that would send a woman to prison for five years for exercising
the right of free speech. If this be treason, let them make the most
of it.
Let me review a bit of history in connection with this case. I have
known Kate Richards O'Hare intimately for twenty years. I am familiar
with her public record. Personally I know her as if she were my own
sister. All who know Mrs. O'Hare know her to be a woman of unquestioned
integrity. And they also know that she is a woman of unimpeachable
loyalty to the Socialist movement. When she went out into North Dakota
to make her speech, followed by plain-clothes men in the service of
the government intent upon effecting her arrest and securing her prosecution
and conviction - when she went out there, it was with the full knowledge
on her part that sooner or later these detectives would accomplish
their purpose. She made her speech, and that speech was deliberately
misrepresented for the purpose of securing her conviction. The only
testimony against her was that of a hired witness. And when the farmers,
the men and women who were in the audience she addressed - when they
went to Bismarck where the trial was held to testify in her favor,
to swear that she had not used the language she was charged with having
used, the judge refused to allow them to go upon the stand. This would
seem incredible to me if I had not had some experience of my own with
federal courts.
Rose Pastor
Stokes! And when I mention her name I take off my hat. Here we have
another heroic and inspiring comrade. She had her millions of dollars
at command. Did her wealth restrain her an instant? On the contrary
her supreme devotion to the cause outweighed all considerations of
a financial or social nature. She went out boldly to plead the cause
of the working class and they rewarded her high courage with a ten
years' sentence to the penitentiary. Think of it! Ten years! What
atrocious crime had she committed? What frightful things had she said?
Let me answer candidly. She said nothing more than I have said here
this afternoon. I want to admit - I want to admit without reservation
that if Rose Pastor Stokes is guilty of crime, so am I. If she is
guilty for the brave part she has taken in this testing time of human
souls I would not be cowardly enough to plead my innocence. And if
she ought to be sent to the penitentiary for ten years, so ought I
without a doubt.
What did
Rose Pastor Stokes say? Why, she said that a government could not
at the same time serve both the profiteers and the victims of the
profiteers. Is it not true? Certainly it is and no one can successfully
dispute it. Roosevelt said a thousand times more in the very same
paper, the Kansas City Star. Roosevelt said vauntingly the
other day that he would be heard even if he went to jail. He knows
very well that he is taking no risk of going to jail. He is shrewdly
laying his wires for the Republican nomination in 1920 and he is an
adept in making the appeal of the demagogue.
Rose Pastor
Stokes never uttered a word she did not have a legal, constitutional
right to utter. But her message to the people, the message that stirred
their thoughts and opened their eyes - that must be suppressed; her
voice must be silenced. And so she was promptly subjected to a mock
trial and sentenced to the penitentiary for ten years. Her conviction
was a foregone conclusion. The trial of a Socialist in a capitalist
court is at best a farcical affair. What ghost of a chance had she
in a court with a packed jury and a corporation tool on the bench?
Not the least in the world. And so she goes to the penitentiary for
ten years if they carry out their brutal and disgraceful graceful
program. For my part I do not think they will. In fact I feel sure
they will not. If the war were over tomorrow the prison doors would
open to our people. They simply mean to silence the voice of protest
during the war.
(7)
In July, 1920, the journal, Appeal
to Reason , reported on
Kate Richards O'Hare visiting Eugene
Debs in prison.
In a visit full of dramatic incidents, Kate Richards O'Hare
visited Eugene V. Debs in the Federal penitentiary in Atlanta on 2nd
July, to carry to him the love of Socialists everywhere.
Kate O'Hare was ushered into the prison; the two comrades met and
embraced; Kate Richards O'Hare recently freed from the Federal prison
and Eugene V. Debs in prison garb with nine years of prison life before
him, with both his hands still upon her shoulders, said, "How
happy I am to see you free, Kate."
"Your coming here is like a new sunlight to me. Tell me about
your prison experiences," said Debs. She answered, "Gene,
I am not thinking of myself, but of little Mollie Steimer who now
occupies my cell at Jefferson City and of her appalling sentence of
fifteen years. She is a nineteen-year-old little girl, smaller in
stature than my Kathleen, whose sole crime is her love for the oppressed.
Then Kate opened her leather card-case and showed Debs her family
group picture which she had carried with her during the fourteen months
of prison life. The sight of that picture had afforded her much consolation
through the hours of dreaded prison silence and monotony.
(9)
Max Eastman, Love and Revolution (1965)
Debs was a poet, and more gifted of poetry in private speech than
in public oratory. He was the sweetest strong man I ever saw. There
is both fighting and love in American socialism, and Debs knew how
to fight. But that was not his genius. His genius was for love, the
ancient real love, the miracle love that really identifies itself
with the needs and wishes of others. That gave him more power than
was possessed by many who were better versed in the subtleties of
politics and oratory.
(10)
Lincoln Steffens, Autobiography
(1931)
Debs was a happy man in prison. He loved
everybody there, and everybody loved him - warden, guards, and convicts.
Debs wanted to hear "all about the Russian Revolution,"
the outrages of which he had denounced. It was not socialist, he pleaded,
just as Emma Goldman declared it was not an anarchist revolution.
Like so many reds who rejected Bolshevism, Debs the socialist could
not abide the violence, bloodshed and tyranny.
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