Chapter C: W. Post, president of the Citizens’ Industrial Association, and David (5)

I know by close study of the question exactly how men become idle. I don’t repel them when I meet them. I have never yet seen the tramp I was not able to receive with open arms. He is a little less fortunate than I am. He is made the same as I am made. He is a child of the same Father. Had I been born in his environment, had I been subjected to the same things to which he was I would have been where he is.

TOOLS AND TRAMPS.

Can you tell me why there wasn’t a tramp in the United States in 1860? In that day, if some one had said “tramp,” no one would have known what was meant by it. If human nature is innately depraved and men would rather ride on brake-beams and sleep in holes and caves instead of comfortable beds, if they would do that from pure choice and from natural depravity, why were they not built that way fifty years ago? Fifty years ago capitalism was in its earlier stages. Fifty years ago work was still mainly done by hand, and every boy could learn a trade and every boy could master the tools and go to work. That is why there were no tramps. In fifty years that simple tool has become a mammoth machine. It gets larger and larger all the time. It has crowded the hand tool out of production. With the machine came the capitalist.

There were no capitalists, nor was there such a thing as capital before the beginning of the present system. Capitalists came with machinery. Up to the time that machinery supplanted the hand tool the little employer was himself a workingman. No matter what the shop or factory, you would find the employer working side by side with his men. He was a superior workman who got more orders than he could fill and employed others to help him, but he had to pay them the equivalent of what they produced because if he did not they would pack up their tools and go into business for themselves.

Now, the individual tool has become the mammoth machine. It has multiplied production by hundreds. The old tool was individually owned and used. The modern tool, in the form of a great machine, is social in every conception of it. Look at one of these giant machines. Come to the Appeal office and look at the press in operation. Here the progressive conception of the ages is crystallized. What individual shall put his hand on this social agency and say, “This is mine! He who would apply labor here must first pay tribute to me.”

The hand tool has been very largely supplanted by this machine. Not many tools are left. You are still producing in a very small way here in Girard, but your production is flickering out gradually. It is but a question of time until it will expire entirely. In spite of all that can be said or done to the contrary production is organizing upon a larger and larger scale and becoming entirely co-operative. This has crowded out the smaller competitor and gradually opened the way for a new social order.

WILL MAKE HOME POSSIBLE.

Your material interest and mine in the society of the future will be the same. Instead of having to fight each other like animals, as we do today, and seeking to glorify the brute struggle for existence—of which every civilized human being ought to be ashamed—instead of this, our material interests are going to be mutual. We are going to jointly own these mammoth machines, and we are going to operate them as joint partners and we are going to divide all the products among ourselves.

We are not going to send our surplus to the Goulds and Vanderbilts of New York. We are not going to pile up a billion of dollars in John D. Rockefeller’s hands—a vast pyramid from the height of which he can look down with scorn and contempt upon the “common herd.” John D. Rockefeller’s great fortune is built upon your ignorance. When you know enough to know what your interest is you will support the great party that is organized upon the principle of collective ownership of the means of life. This party will sweep into power upon the issue of emancipation just as republicanism swept into power upon the abolition question half a century ago.

In the meantime, don’t have any fear of us Socialists. We don’t mean any harm! Many of you have been taught to look upon us as very dangerous people. It is amazing to what extent this prejudice has struck root. The capitalist press will tell you of a good many evil things that we Socialists are going to do that we never intend to do. They will tell you we are going to break up the home. Great heaven! What about the homes of the four million tramps that are looking for work today? How about the thousands and thousands of miserable shacks in New York and every great city where humanity festers? It would be a good thing if they were torn down and obliterated completely, for they are not fit for human habitation. No, we are not going to destroy the home, but we are going to make the home possible for the first time in history.

PROGRESS BORN OF AGITATION.

You may think you are very comfortable. Let me make you a little comparison. You may not agree with me. I don’t expect you to and I don’t ask you to. I am going to ask you to remember what I say this afternoon and perhaps before I am elected president of the United States you will believe what I say is true. Now there are those of you who are fairly comfortable under the present standard. Isn’t it amazing to you how little the average man is satisfied with? You go out here to the edge of town and you find a small farmer who has a cabin with just room enough to keep himself and wife and two or three children, which has a mortgage on it, and he works early and late and gets just enough in net returns to keep him in working order, and he will deliver a lecture about the wonderful prosperity of the country.

He is satisfied, and that is his calamity.

Now, the majority of you would say that is his good fortune. “It is a blessing that he is satisfied.” I want to see if I can show you that it is a curse to him and to society that he is satisfied.

If it had not been for the discontent of a few fellows who have not been satisfied with their condition you would still be living in caves. You never would have emerged from the jungle. Intelligent discontent is the mainspring of civilization.

Progress is born of agitation. It is agitation or stagnation. I have taken my choice.

This farmer works all day long, works hard enough to produce enough to live the life of a man; not of an animal, but of a man. Now there is an essential difference between a man and an animal. I admire a magnificent animal in any form except in the human form. Suppose you had everything that you could possibly desire, so far as your physical wants are concerned. Suppose you had a million to your credit in the bank, a palatial home and relations to suit yourself, but no soul capacity for real enjoyment. If you were denied knowing what sorrow is, what real joy is, what music is, and literature and sculpture, and all of those subtle influences that touch the heart and quicken the pulses and fire the senses, and so lift and ennoble a man that he can feel his head among the stars and in communion with God himself—if you are denied these, no matter how sleek or fat or contented you may be, you are still as base and as corrupt and as repulsive a being as walks God’s green earth.

THE FARMER’S NEED.

You may have plenty of money. The poorest people on this earth are those who have most money. A man is said to be poor who has none, but he is a pauper who has nothing else. Now this farmer, what does he know about literature? After his hard day’s work is done, here he sits in his little shack. He is fed, and his animal wants are satisfied. It is at this time that a man begins to live. It is not while you work and slave that you live. It is when you have done your work honestly, when you have contributed your share to the common fund, that you begin to live. Then, as Whitman said, you can take out your soul; you can commune with yourself; you can take a comrade by the hand and you can look into his eyes and down into his soul, and in that holy communion you live. And if you don’t know what that is, or if you are not at least on the edge of it, it is denied you to even look into the promised land.

Now this farmer knows nothing about the literature of the world. All its libraries are sealed to him. So far as he is concerned; Homer and Dante and Dickens might as well not have lived; Beethoven, Liszt and Wagner, and all those musicians whose art makes the common atmosphere blossom with harmony, never have been for this farmer. He knows nothing about poetry or art. Never rises above the animal plane upon which he is living. Within fifteen minutes after he has ceased to live he is forgotten; the next generation doesn’t know his name, and the world doesn’t know he ever lived. That is life under the present standard.

You tell me that is all the farmer is fit for? What do I propose to do for that farmer? Nothing. I only want him to know that he is robbed every day in the week, and if I can awaken him to the fact that he is robbed under the capitalist system he will fall into line with the Socialist movement, and will march to the polls on election day, and instead of casting his vote to fasten the shackles upon his limbs more firmly, he will vote for his emancipation. All I have to do is to show that farmer, that day laborer, that tramp, that they are victims of this system, that their interests are identical, that they constitute the millions and that the millions have the votes. The Rockefellers have the dollars, but we have the votes; and when we have sense enough to know how to use the votes we will have not only the votes but the dollars for all the children of men.

WHO WILL SAVE US FROM CONGRESS?

This seems quite visionary to some of you, and especially to those of you who know nothing about economics. I could not begin to tell you the story of social evolution this afternoon; of how these things are doing day by day, of how the world is being pushed into Socialism, and how it is bound to arrive, no matter whether you are for it or against it. It is the next inevitable phase of civilization. It isn’t a scheme, it isn’t a contrivance. It isn’t anything that is made to order. The day is coming when you will be pushed into it by unseen hands whether you will or not. Nothing can be introduced until the people want it, and when the majority want it they will know how to get it.

I venture the prophecy that within the next five years you will be completely dispossessed. You are howling against the trusts, and the trusts are laughing at you. You keep on voting in the same old way and the trusts keep on getting what you produce. You say congress will give you some relief. Good heavens! Who will save us from congress? Don’t you know that congress is made up almost wholly of trust lawyers and corporation attorneys? I don’t happen to have the roll of this one, but with few exceptions they are all lawyers. Now, in the competitive system the lawyer sells himself to the highest bidder the same as the workingman does. Who is the highest bidder? The trust and corporation, of course. So the trust buys the best lawyer and the common herd gets the shyster.

POLITICS REFLEX OF ECONOMICS.

Now it is a fact that politics is simply the reflex of economics. The material foundation of society determines the character of all social institutions—political, educational, ethical and spiritual. In exact proportion as the economic foundation of society changes the character of all social institutions changes to correspond to that basis. Half of this country was in favor of chattel slavery, and half was opposed to it, geographically speaking. Why was the church of the south in favor of chattel slavery? Why was the church of the north opposed to chattel slavery? The northern capitalist wasn’t a bit more opposed to chattel slavery from any moral sense than was the southern plantation owner. The south produced cotton for the market by the hand labor of negro slaves. On the other hand, the north wasn’t dependent upon cotton—could raise no cotton. In the north it was the small capitalist at the beginning of capitalism, who, with the machine, had begun to manufacture, and wanted cheap labor; and the sharper the competition the cheaper he could buy his labor. Now, chattel slavery to the southern plantation owner was the source of his wealth. He had to have slaves, and what the plantation owner had to have in economics the preacher had to justify in religion. As long as chattel slavery was necessary to the southern plantation owner, as long as that stage of the economic condition lasted, the preachers stood up in the pulpits of the south and said it was ordained of God, and proved it by the Bible. I don’t know of any crime that the oppressors and their hirelings have not proven by the Bible.

ANALOGIES FROM HISTORY.

Then competition between workers began as machines took the place of hand labor. Manufacturers wanted larger and larger bodies of labor and that competition spread out here to Kansas, and I have always felt when in Kansas that I stood on sacred soil. When I hear the name of Kansas I doff my hat in reverence. The free soilers came here, despised, hated and persecuted. They were the enemies of the human race. Why? Because they had hearts throbbing within their breasts. Because they looked with compassion upon the negro slave who received his wages in lashes applied to his naked back; who saw his crying wife torn from him and his children, pleading, snatched from his side and sold into slavery, while the great mass looked on just as the great mass is looking on today, and the preachers stood up in their pulpits and said: “It is all right. It is God-ordained.” And whenever an abolitionist raised his head he was persecuted and hounded as if he had been a wild beast.

I heard this story from Wendell Phillips one evening. I never can forget it. How I wish he were here this afternoon! We sat together and he said: “Debs, the world will never know with what bitter and relentless persecution the early abolitionists had to contend.”

Wendell Phillips was the most perfect aristocrat in the true sense I have ever seen; came nearest being a perfect man. And yet he was treated as if he had been the worst felon on earth. They went to his house one night to mob him, and why? Because he protested against sending a young negro girl back into slavery. They came to take her back, and the whole commonwealth of Massachusetts said, “Take her back! Obey the law!” That is what they are everlastingly saying to us—“Obey the law!” Just above the door of the state house there was an inscription: “God bless the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.” Wendell Phillips said: “If Massachusetts has become a slave hunter, if Massachusetts is in alliance with the slave catchers of the south, the inscription over that portal should be changed, and in place of ‘God Bless the Commonwealth of Massachusetts’ it should be: ‘God Damn the Commonwealth of Massachusetts!’” God smiled in that same instant.

GROWTH OF SOCIALISM.

All of the slave catchers and holders, all of the oppressors of man, all of the enemies of the human race, all of the rulers of Siberia, where a large part of this earth’s surface has been transformed into a hell—all have spoken in the name of the Great God and in the name of the Holy Bible.

There will be a change one of these days. The world is just beginning to awaken, and is soon to sing its first anthem of freedom. All the signs of the times are cheering. Twenty-five years ago there was but a handful of Socialists; today there are a half million. When the polls are closed next fall you will be astounded. The Socialist movement is in alliance with the forces of progress. We are today where the abolitionists were in 1858. They had a million and a quarter of votes. There was dissension in the whig, republican and free soil parties, but the time had come for a great change, and the republican party was formed in spite of the bickerings and contentions of men. Lincoln made the great speech in that year that gave him the nomination and afterward made him president of the United States.

If you had said to the people in 1858, “In two years from now the republican party is going to sweep the country and seat the president,” you would have been laughed to scorn. The Socialist party stands today where the republican party stood fifty years ago. It is in alliance with the forces of evolution, the one party that has a clear-cut, overmastering, overshadowing issue; the party that stands for the people, and the only party that stands for all the people. In this system we have one set who are called capitalists, and another set who are called workers; and they are at war with each other.

WILL ESTABLISH PRIVATE PROPERTY.

Now, we Socialists propose that society in its collective capacity shall produce, not for profit, but in abundance to satisfy human wants; that every man shall have the inalienable right to work, and receive the full equivalent of all he produces; that every man may stand fearlessly erect in the pride and majesty of his own manhood.

Every man and every woman will then be economically free. They can, without let or hindrance, apply their labor, with the best machinery that can be devised, to all the natural resources, do the work of society and produce for all; and then receive in exchange a certificate of value equivalent to that of their production. Then society will improve its institutions in proportion to the progress of invention. Whether in the city or on the farm, all things productive will be carried forward on a gigantic scale. All industry will be completely organized. Society for the first time will have a scientific foundation. Every man, by being economically free, will have some time for himself. He can then take a full and perfect breath. He can enjoy life with his wife and children, because then he will have a home.

We are not going to destroy private property. We are going to establish private property—all the private property necessary to house man, keep him in comfort and satisfy his wants. Eighty per cent of the people of the United States have no property today. A few have got it all. They have dispossessed the people, and when we get into power we will dispossess them. We will reduce the workday and give every man a chance. We will go to the parks, and we will have music, because we will have time to play music and desire to hear it.

Is it not sad to think that not one in a thousand knows what music is? Is it not pitiable to see the poor, ignorant, dumb human utterly impervious to the divine influences of music? If humanity could only respond to the higher influences! And it would if it had time.

Release the animal, throw off his burden; give him a chance and he rises as if by magic to the plane of a man. Man has all of the divine attributes. They are in a latent state. They are not yet developed. It does not pay now to love music. Keep your eye on the almighty dollar and your fellowman. Get the dollar and keep him down. Make him produce for you. You are not your brother’s keeper. Suppose he is poor! Suppose his wife is forced into prostitution! Suppose his child is deformed! And suppose he shuffles off by destroying himself! What is that to you?

But you ought to be ashamed. Take the standard home and look it in the face. If you know what that standard means, and you are a success, God help the failure!

Our conduct is determined by our economic relations. If you and I must fight each other to exist, we will not love each other very hard. We can go to the same church and hear the same minister tell us in good conscience that we ought to love each other, and the next day we approach some business transaction. Do we remember what the minister told us? No; it is gone until next Sunday. Six days in the week we are following the Golden Rule reversed. Now, when we approach a business transaction in competition, what is more natural than that we should try to get the better of it?—get the better of our fellowman?—cheat him if we can?

And if you succeed that fixes you as a business man. You have all the necessary qualifications. Don’t let your conscience disturb you—that would interfere with business.

HUMANITY AND THE FUTURE.

Competition was natural enough at one time, but do you think you are competing today? Many of you think you are competing. Against whom? Against Rockefeller? About as I would if I had a wheelbarrow and competed with the Santa Fe from here to Kansas City. That is about the way you are competing; but your boys will not have even that chance—if capitalism lives that long. You hear of the “late” panic. It is very late. It is going to be very late. This panic will be with us five years from now, and will continue till then.

I am not a prophet. I can no more penetrate the future than you can. I do study the forces that underlie society and the trend of evolution. I can tell by what we have passed through about what we will have in the future; and I know that capitalism can be abolished and the people put in possession. Now, when we have taken possession, and we jointly own the means of production, we will no longer have to fight each other to live; our interests, instead of being competitive, will be coöperative. We will work side by side. Your interest will be mine and mine will be yours. That is the economic condition from which will spring the humane social relation of the future.

When we are in partnership and have stopped clutching each other’s throats, when we have stopped enslaving each other, we will stand together, hands clasped, and be friends. We will be comrades, we will be brothers, and we will begin the march to the grandest civilization the human race has ever known.

I did not mean to keep you so long this afternoon. I am sure I appreciate the patience with which you have listened to me. From the very depths of my heart I thank you, each of you—every man, woman and child—for this splendid testimonial, this beautiful tribute, which I shall remember with gratitude and love until memory empties its urn into forgetfulness.

APPRECIATIONS

FREDERIC AUGUSTE BARTHOLDI

The great sculptor who modeled the colossal statue, “Liberty
Enlightening the World,” in New York harbor, wrote of Debs:

“He is endowed with the most precious faculty to which one can
aspire—the gift of language, and he uses it for the proclamation of
the most beautiful and generous thoughts. His beautiful language is
that of an apostle.”
]

Mr. Debs an Artist in Expression

If the use of language to express thought is an art, Mr. Debs is an artist. If oratory is a science, he is a master of the science. If eloquence reaches and takes hold of the hearts and emotions of mankind, Mr. Debs has that which will make his auditors stand and deliver the goods. His address lasted over two hours and at its close, not only men, but women, surged to the platform to grasp his hand and congratulate him. This is something unique, for while it is customary for men to do so with labor leaders, women generally stay in the background if they attend these meetings at all.—_Detroit Times._

From Woodstock to Boise

_Walter Hurt in Appeal to Reason, November 23, 1907_

Capitalism made its first great mistake when it put Eugene V. Debs in jail. It made its second great mistake when it put William D. Haywood in jail. And it adds to its mistakes every time it wrongfully imprisons any member of the working class.

Woodstock was plutocracy’s Waterloo and Boise was its Bull Run.

Debs entered jail a labor agitator and emerged therefrom a Social Revolutionist.

Haywood went to prison defeated and left it victorious.

In each case it was a transformation and a triumph.

It should be understood that the word “defeat” is here used merely as a term of convenience. No man is truly defeated unless he is conquered, and Debs and Haywood are unconquerable.

Moreover, whatever its reverses, there can be no defeat for a righteous cause, for in the eternal equipoise of social conservation—

“Ever will right come uppermost
And ever will justice be done.”

And these celebrated cases are not exceptional, for history proves that, despite the purpose for which they were designed, prisons have always been the instruments of progress—unfailing agencies of human advancement.

The path of progress extends undeviating from Woodstock to Boise. The experience of a Debs was necessary to the evolvement of a Haywood.

In their effort to destroy Debs the money-masters overreached themselves. They crushed the American Railway Union—crushed it into the cohesion of the Social Democracy.

It is interesting to observe this operation—to watch the metamorphosis of Debs and trace the evolution of the industrial movement from the date of his imprisonment; in this process we find the philosophy of progress, the development of the social purpose.

Both Debs and his persecutors were involuntary instruments of sovereign economic forces; the latter an unconscious agency, responding blindly to conservatory impulsion, the former obedient to an intelligent enthusiasm logically directed toward a definite and an attainable object.

Under the pressure of prison walls Debs’ dynamic being developed until its expanding forces found expression in the Socialist idea, of which his own potent personality was the informing influence.

From the corporate wreck of the A. R. U. the Social Democracy was organized. Debs reformed this disintegration, he was the atom of attraction; his irresistible individuality was the core to which the others cohered—the compelling factor that drew to an integrative coalescence the shattered, scattered remnants of a vast industrial organism as surely as a magnet draws the metal.

The Pullman strike was not lost. It was won decisively and completely. A movement for industrial liberation as magnificent in its scope as any campaign of the immortal Corsican, had succeeded. For the first time in history Plutocracy was paralyzed in the clutch of Toil, directed by a man of intelligence and integrity.

But victory was plucked from the grasp of the strikers by the strong hand of federal power. They were robbed of the sweet fruits of their bitter struggle by the wealth-won favor of presidential authority.

This result puzzled Debs. He couldn’t understand how such a tremendous triumph could be turned into defeat.

He had to go to jail to find the solution of the problem.

In jail he studied Socialism. And straightway a great illumination burst upon his intelligence.

He turned from craft-consciousness to class-consciousness.

It was revealed to him that the entire theory of industrial organization as it existed was fundamentally false. He realized that any social benefit to be large and lasting must be also universal.

Moreover, he came to know the reason for the failure of the Pullman strike after it had been fairly and fully won; and he understood then that revolution was the only remedy for economic ills and that the only hope for government protection of proletarian interests lay in the capture of governmental power.

From the narrow confines of his cell and the not less narrow confines of craft interest he simultaneously stepped into physical freedom and into the world-wide sweep of the Social Revolution.

Debs had been so dangerous that the masters deemed it advisable to send him to jail. He left that prison a thousand times more dangerous than when he entered it.

For Debs _is_ dangerous. This is the one truth plutocracy tells about him. He’s as dangerous as dynamite—to capitalistic interests.

Capitalism thought it had destroyed Debs. It merely had made him.

His cell was a chrysalis, from which his soul came forth with unfurled wings.

Defeat cannot come to such a man as Debs. His triumphal return to Chicago after his release from Woodstock jail is neither paralleled nor approximated in all history except by Napoleon’s victorious march upon Paris after his escape from Elba.

The kindest thing ever done to Debs was the act of his enemies. The greatest blessing mankind has received was bestowed by those who sought to enslave it.

When it sentenced Debs to jail, Capitalism signed its own death warrant.

Debs’ career from November 22, 1895, to July 28, 1907, spanning the years from Woodstock to Boise, forms the seven-hued bow of proletarian promise.

Here Comes a Man

_By George Bicknell_

Here comes a man with one free call;
He shouts aloud nor does he fear
The foolish threat of deafened ear;
Nor does he heed who would enthrall.

Here comes a man with love for men
As pure and broad as boundless space;
He gathers light from every race,
And sheds it on the world again.

His joy is not alone for self;
His life makes gladsome whom he meets
By turning bitter galls to sweets
And shaming every show of pelf.

Here comes a man whose like is rare;
A kindred heart for hearts that bleed;
A refuge in dark hours of need;
A burdened world his greatest care;

His call the call to Love and Faith,
To Love and Faith and Liberty;
But some decry, and some there be
Who say: “A Dream;” “A soulless wraith.”

Yet, though his call be but a dream,
The love he sheds in spreading this
Will give the world much lasting bliss
And purify a Hate-filled stream.

Then hail to him who loves so well!
The Brother of the Poor; the Friend
Of them that labor without end.
And hail the dawn he dares foretell!

Without Guile

No man ever looked into the frank, blue eyes of Eugene V. Debs but felt the thrill of seeing the open soul of a man without guile. In two years’ daily intercourse with him I never saw him change in mental attitude. He has won the love of every person who has met and talked with him. His soul takes in the universe. He is one of the great men who will leave his footprints on the sands of the road of human uplift. Like all men who have higher ideals than their time and generation, he will be better appreciated in the time to come. It is not that he is the peer of any orator who ever addressed an American public, but that what he says goes to the root of things. It is what he says more than the beautiful way he says it. It always reaches the heart, reaches the deep-hidden good that is in every creature. He is the same in the ordinary conversation that he is on the platform. No man can look into his frank soul and refuse to love him. His name will live in letters of light on the pages of the history of this nation. And his star will grow brighter as humanity better perfects its telescopes of perception. We love him for what he is.

J. A. WAYLAND.

Eugene V. Debs as an Orator

_By Max Ehrmann_

TERRE HAUTE, IND., August, 1907.

No man in America has been more hated, and few have been so much loved as Eugene V. Debs. His name is known and his face is familiar where the city of his birth was never heard of. His opinions are considered by men in high places as the countersign of bloodshed, anarchy and riot, and by millions of others they are regarded as the beacon light that is to lead humanity to a better life and a higher civilization. Whatever may be said of his philosophy, one thing is certain, that he has won a place in American history as one of its greatest orators; and in my opinion, there is not a man on the American platform today who is his equal. His is a new and different kind of oratory. He resorts to no tricks of rhetoric, no claptrap and stage effects, no empty pretense of deep emotion; but he stands frankly before his audiences and opens the doorways of his mind and heart that seem ever to be overflowing with terrible invective or the sweet waters of human kindness.

This style is very different from that of such speakers as Senator Beveridge. Mr. Beveridge’s orations on occasions and in the Senate are finished, modeled, filed and practiced. Intonation and gesture are carefully arranged to fit the sentiment. It is a piece of good workmanship. But the whole effect lacks sincerity. You feel that Mr. Beveridge is secretly using you for his personal ends. None of these elements enter the oratory of Mr. Debs, and his sincerity is almost terrible in its reality. You feel that he will tell you what he thinks regardless of consequence.

The first time I heard Mr. Debs was more than ten years ago, when I was a student at Harvard. He was booked to lecture at Prospect Union, Cambridge. This was shortly after the great Chicago strike; and a good many Harvard students and some instructors came out to see the “monster.” Mr. Debs was late; but the audience waited. When he came there was no applause. He began to speak, and for more than two hours he held that audience as if riveted to the seats; and they who had come to scorn, hovered around him for more than an hour, and went away his friends. It was more than half an hour before I could get to the speaker’s stand and shake hands with him.

The night before that he had spoken to one of the largest audiences that had ever crowded into Faneuil Hall, Boston. And so generously was his message received that, as Dr. John Clarke Ridpath afterwards told me, he feared the audience would “tear him to pieces trying to shake his hand.” Dr. Ridpath was at that time editor of the _Arena_ and believed then that Mr. Debs was one of the most masterful orators that had ever been reared on American soil and that he had then already a secure place in American history.

The next time I tried to hear Mr. Debs was in Denver. The crowd was so great that I could not get within fifty feet of the door of the largest public hall in that city, and it was then said that up to that time there had never been such an audience in that hall.

I did, however, get to hear Mr. Debs the next Sunday, in the same city, where the day was celebrated as Debs-Day at Manhattan Beach Gardens—at that time a prominent summer garden of Denver. He spoke in the theater, and after the speech an opera was given by the splendid stock company playing there that summer. Everybody wore Debs badges and the day was generally observed in Denver as given to the great Socialist.

And Mr. Debs has gone on and on and spoken to more and larger audiences than any other speaker except Mr. Bryan, until every great rostrum in America has supported his tall figure, and the walls of every great public hall have resounded his words.

In some ways our distinguished fellow-townsman has wandered a stranger in the city of his birth. Here we have been the last to acknowledge his power and influence. We see him often, recognize him as a quiet, respected citizen, possessing those domestic virtues that all men and women admire; but the great Debs, the Debs who first arraigned the trust abuses in this country, who broke the first ground for the harvest of modern popular reforms—that Debs we have never yet recognized, nor that power of his—whatever one may think of his doctrines—which is the type that has made the names of men undying.

Lincoln, 1860—Debs, 1894

_By John Swinton_

NEW YORK, September, 1895.

When Eugene Victor Debs came to New York from Chicago last year he made a speech in Cooper Union which I heard. I sat near a spot at which I had sat at another meeting held in the same place thirty-four years previously, which was addressed by another speaker who came to New York from Chicago. The western speaker who stood on that platform in August, 1894, was to me a reminder of the other western speaker who stood there in February, 1860. Both men were tall and spare in figure; the complexion of each rather dark—darker in the one than in the other; the face of each was rather gaunt, that of the earlier speaker much more gaunt than that of the latter; both were men of good and strong features; there was something intense about the facial expression of each; both were men of commanding and impressive manners.

I recall the somewhat peculiar and shrill voice of the speaker of 1860; I heard another voice in 1894 which resembled it. As they spoke, it was easy for a New Yorker to discern that they were both men of the west.

The man to whose speech I listened in Cooper Union in February, of 1860, was Abraham Lincoln, of Illinois—born in Kentucky; the man who spoke from the same platform within my hearing last year was Eugene Victor Debs, of Illinois—born in Indiana.

I recalled the appearance, the manner, the voice and the speech of Lincoln as Debs stood before me thirty-four years afterwards.

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, generous manhood. I “took” to Lincoln in my early life, as I took to Debs a third of a century later.

In the speeches of both westerners there was cogent argument; there were apt illustrations; there were especially emphatic passages; there were moments of lightning; there were touches of humor, and there were other qualities which produce conviction or impel to action. Each speaker was as free as the other from gross eloquence. I confess that I was as much impressed with the closing words of Debs’ speech as I was with those of Lincoln, when he exclaimed, “Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith let us to the end dare to do our duty, as we understand it.”

As Lincoln stands in my memory while looking far back, Debs stands in it as I saw him in Cooper Union a year ago.

Lincoln spoke for man; so spoke Debs. Lincoln spoke for right and progress; so spoke Debs. Lincoln spoke for the freedom of labor; so spoke Debs. Lincoln was the foe of human slavery; so is Debs.

I was in the deepest sympathy with Lincoln when he came here, as I was also with Debs when he came here. I had striven for Fremont in my youth, as I have striven in later years for principles that are the logical sequence of those of Lincoln and are represented by Debs.

Let no admirer of Abraham Lincoln—I do not mean the apotheosized emancipator, but the Lincoln of 1860—offer objection to aught that has been here said. At the time I have spoken of Lincoln was regarded by millions of people as a cross between a crank and a monster. In hundreds of papers and by hundreds of speakers he was called the “Illinois baboon.” Every epithet that hate could invent was applied to him; every base purpose that malice could conceive was imputed to him. To the “Satanic press” of New York Lincoln was an object of loathing and derision, a “nigger lover,” a clown, a subverter of the constitution and the law; and above all, he was a blatant fool who would destroy that indestructible “system of labor” which had existed of old, which was upheld by the supreme court and the lynch law court, the church, the army, the press and the capitalist, as also by congress—both houses. Why, the Debs whom we have with us in our country today is a harmless citizen compared with the Lincoln of 1860, as he had been described before he came to New York. It looks to me as though the newspaper slubberdegullions and plutocracy in our time had lost that power of cantankerous invective which was possessed by their contemporaries of 1860, now mostly dead and forgotten. I have read some assaults upon Debs, but all of them were poorly done.

Lincoln’s name was less familiar to New York masses at the opening of 1860 than Debs’ was in 1894. Lincoln had campaigned in the west, but the west was much farther away then than it is now, and western men were less known in the east than they are now. Lincoln drew a crowd to Cooper Union, but not as large a crowd as Debs drew.

Well, when I heard Debs’ speech here I had half a notion that it might be the prelude to an incident like that which followed Lincoln’s speech. There were few people, at least in New York, who could have believed that within three months from the day of Lincoln’s speech here, Lincoln would be a candidate for the office of President of the United States. “Some say,” he said while in New York then, “some say they may make me Vice-President with Seward.”

It was always the opinion of my old friend Raymond, the founder of the _New York Times_, whom I long served as chief of his editorial staff, that it was the Cooper Union speech of Lincoln that made it possible for him to be a candidate for the presidency, and that it was most potent in making him acceptable to the Republican party in the east. It certainly was a factor of influence in the nomination in Chicago the following May.

No matter about that now. When, in Cooper Union, a year ago, I heard the speech of Eugene V. Debs, which, in so many ways reminded me of that of Abraham Lincoln long ago, I felt sure that nobody could deny that here again, in this new western leader in the struggle for labor’s emancipation, there might be the stuff for a presidential candidate.

And this suggestion would have been made by me at the New York meeting but for the jam of perversity on the platform.

Debs in Cooper Union reminded me of Lincoln there. As Lincoln, of Illinois, became an efficient agent for freedom, so, perchance might Debs, of Indiana, become in the impending conflict for the liberation of labor. Let us never forget Lincoln’s great words, “Liberty before property; the man before the dollar.”

Eugene V. Debs, Incarnate Spirit of Revolt

_John Spargo, June, 1908_

To be chosen standard bearer of the Socialist party in three successive electoral campaigns is to receive a unique tribute. For the candidates of the Socialist movement are not chosen by a few bosses, free to reward their favorite servitors with honors, place and pelf: they are chosen by the nearest approach to ideal democratic methods yet devised by any political party.

No man who had unworthily borne the Socialist banner in one campaign, or who had disappointed the hopes of his comrades, could possibly be nominated a second time. One act of cowardice or dishonor would be enough to make the renomination of any man impossible, no matter how gifted he might be.

Demos is a hard taskmaster. Some have said that Demos is ungrateful and unappreciative of loyal service. The annals of the Socialist movement certainly furnish some support to the charge. And yet, though its appreciation is not shouted from housetops, nor symbolized by golden crowns and hero-worship, those who have served longest and hardest in the ranks know that service to the Cause of Liberty is not unappreciated; that love and faithful comradeship are showered upon the true and brave soldiers in the great army of Labor.

No man in America has done nobler service for the cause of Socialism than Eugene V. Debs; no man has given more freely of his strength to keep the altar fires of the Revolution bright. And no man has been more richly and warmly loved than Debs has been. The love of his comrades has been his constant reward and inspiration.

And Debs has given love for love. How much the outpouring of his love upon the hearts of his comrades has meant to the Socialist movement will never be measured. To many a wearied fighter in the ranks his words of cheer, vibrant with love and appreciative sympathy, has been as a cooling draught from the deep fountains of life. To many a comrade walking in the dark and silent places his strong handclasp has brought strength and assurance. To many a soul swept from its moorings he has given the anchorage of a new faith. He has mingled his tears with the tears of many of his stricken comrades and borne upon his strong shoulders the burdens which bore too heavily upon them. Debs draws love from a million hearts as a well draws from showers and springs; and like a well he gives it back to all who thirst for love as they cross the desert of life.

Our love for Eugene V. Debs, the greatest lover of us all, entered into our choice of him as the bearer of our standard, the scarlet banner of the sacred cause, the symbol of a world-brotherhood to be. But it was not our love alone. Into our choice there entered another element than our love for Debs, namely, our consciousness that he was splendidly equipped for the task, Nature and Destiny seemed to have joined to dower Debs with the qualities of mind and soul needed for the task we gave him.

Inscrutable are the ways of Nature’s working, and we may not understand the fashioning of a human life in her mysterious workshop. Was it a father’s independence and pride which infused the son’s being with a rebel spirit? Was it the mother’s passion for beauty and freedom in life during the long days and nights when her unborn son stirred within her which caused the boy so soon to seek the companionship of the flowers and the stars, to envy the freedom of the birds and to shudder at all the ugly in life?

To such questions Science can give no answer. We only know that there was such a child, worshipping beauty and loving freedom; hating ugliness and pain. And this we know only as we know the man. The man must have been in the boy.

We know that there can be no living Socialist movement in any country which is not a product of its own life and experience. The Socialist movement is born anew out of the womb of capitalistic conditions in every country. And as with the Socialist movement itself, so must it be with the apostles of it’s faith. The greatest apostles of the emancipation must likewise be the products of the life and experience from which the movement springs. No amount of intellectual training can take the place of that proletarian psychology which is expressed in the irresistible passion for liberty of that great red army whose tread onward shakes the world.

The psychology and passion of the proletariat are incarnated in Eugene V. Debs. Life, Fate, Destiny—call it what you will!—added to Nature’s contribution the elements which made him the Genius of the Revolution. The little comrade of the stars and the flowers grew to be the human embodiment of the Spirit of the revolt of the Disinherited and Despoiled, the living Voice of the Doomed and Damned.

But first of all he must suffer. To voice the cry of Labor he must first endure its agony; to speak the protest of the Doomed he must first endure the doom. Led by Destiny, he went the weary way of toil and tragedy, the way along which the dumb millions march in pain to their Golgotha. Each footfall tore his heartstrings; each fallen human wreck woke in his soul a yearning to speak their curse to the driving Power he could not see. Each human cry sank into his heart, each tortured curse he nourished as his own.

He heard voices and saw visions. Voices called him to a service he could not understand. As Joan of Arc listened to the unseen voices, so he listened. But he understood not. They cried out to him, bidding him voice the wrong. “Speak! Speak for the Dumb who cannot speak! Speak their protest! Speak their curse!”

He saw visions where other men saw only a black void. For him the blackness was peopled with tragic human shapes. He saw the Victims of the Centuries. He saw Labor bound to wheels. He saw Hunger rob the Cradle. He saw Death dance to the cries of Mocked Motherhood. And far off, like the Prisoner of Patmos, he saw a New Earth in which all human beings were comrades of the flowers and the stars, and sharers of the freedom of the birds.

He obeyed the voices. He spoke in the Assembly of the Law-makers—spoke for Labor and against Labor’s wrongs. He spoke for the Dumb, for the Doomed and Damned. He spoke their protest and their curse. He spoke for Childhood and for Motherhood—spoke for the Makers of Laws. And when he spoke they answered with the howl of the Beast.

But Labor heard him speak its own Protest; heard him hurl at the Makers of Laws and the Masters of Bread the curse its heart had fashioned and its lips failed to speak. Labor knew that Debs voiced its own dumb agony and cheered him on by glad applause and by its love. But while he spoke there was sadness in his heart, each speech was answered in his own soul by a sense of sadness and of shame. Perhaps it was vain to speak to the Makers of Laws and the Masters of Bread! Perhaps it was better to speak to the Slaves of Bread! Better to speak to Labor and to teach it speech!

But the new speech brought no heartease. Ever the sense of Failure shamed him and tore his soul. And yet the voices bade him speak. “Speak of the visions! Speak of the New Earth! Speak and lead the way!” they cried. And his tortured soul answered in agony: “I cannot show the way, for I know it not!”

The Masters of Bread knew nothing of the struggle of his soul; they knew not that his speech which woke their fears was but his whisper! They could not know that the things their Fear and their Hate bade them do would loosen his tongue and give it speech like thunder. In their ignorance they forged a thunderbolt with which the barriers to the pathway to the land of the vision would be shattered. They cast Debs into prison. And in his prison cell Debs was to find Freedom—the Freedom of his Soul.

When they prisoned Debs they unprisoned his soul. When they drew the bolts that pent his body in Woodstock jail they made Eugene V. Debs a free man. In the silences of that prison cell his tongue was loosed and his eyes saw the vision of the Comrade-world and the way by which it must be reached. In the prison cell the Angel of Freedom touched his lips with fire from the altar and set him free to proclaim the Revolution. In their rage the Masters of Bread thought that they could silence Debs, but instead they broke the only fetter upon his soul and upon his speech.