Chapter C: S. McAuliffe, Wisconsin (1)

“We have assurances that within 48 hours every labor organization
will come to our rescue. The tide is on and the men are acquitting
themselves like heroes. Here and there one weakens, but our cause is
strengthened by others going out in their places. Every true man
must go out and remain out until the fight is over; there must be no
half-way ground. Our cause is gaining ground daily and our success
is only a question of a few days. Don’t falter in this hour but
proclaim your manhood. Labor must win now or never. Our victory will
be certain and complete. Whatever happens don’t give any credence to
rumors and newspaper reports.

“E. V. DEBS.”

This was sent to forty points. Then the troops were called and then telegrams like this were sent over the wires:

“To call out the troops was an old method for intimidation. Commit _no_ violence. Have every man stand pat. Troops cannot move trains. Not scabs enough in the world to fill places, and more help accruing hourly.”

Out of 9,000 telegrams, 150 were read to the jury and they were always proper and called upon the men to commit no violence. Among them was the famous: “Save your money and buy a gun” telegram. This was sent under the Debs’ half-rate frank, but as shown was not authorized by him or sent with his knowledge, and when the whole telegram is read it is seen to be very innocent and harmless. The jury seemed to be amused at the juvenile attempts to fasten acts of violence on Mr. Debs. One witness, Dennis Ryan, was asked if he heard anything about dynamite. He said the Great Northern strike was won by the men standing shoulder to shoulder; that they did not want violence. February 6 the Railroad Managers’ minutes were put in the case. Several defendants were examined. It was shown that the Managers’ Association had been preparing to have a strike, and Mr. Darrow read from their minutes dated August 31, 1893, a resolution declaiming it was desirable that a general combination of managers throughout the United States was desirable and that the wages of the railroad men were to be reduced and made uniform throughout the country. The resolution stated one of the hardest facts the managers had to contend with was the men would complain that they were not receiving equal pay to men on other roads doing similar work.

From the minutes of the meeting of September 21, 1893, a resolution was read to the effect that however much it was to be regretted, a general reduction in the wages of the men had become absolutely necessary. It was then shown by the defense that the Managers’ Association had established agencies to secure men to take the places of those who seemed likely to strike. The number of men so employed was shown by the evidence of Mr. B. Thomas, president and general manager of the Chicago & Western Indiana Railroad Company. He further testified that the Association was first organized on April 20, 1886, and among its objects wage schedules were to be agreed upon and stood by, by the railroads.

Mr. Debs was called February 7 and gave his testimony clearly and without hesitation. The examination was conducted by Clarence S. Darrow. He testified that the object of the A. R. U. organization was the unification of _all_ railroad employes for their mutual benefit and protection. The attorneys for the railroads tried hard to exclude many answers, but the court ruled them competent and Mr. Debs said there were several railroad organizations and they were at war with one another and had been for a long time. The same classes of men were eligible to different organizations and the Railroad Managers’ Association played off these organizations against one another. The railroads took advantage of this fact and made contracts with one or the other organizations and these would operate to the disadvantage of the others.

“The concentration of the smaller railroads into the larger had been going on for 20 years, and there had been a gradual reduction of wages.” These things compelled the idea of organization of the A. R. U.

The first strike was on the Great Northern and commenced April 13, 1894, and lasted eighteen days.

“I first learned of the Pullman strike May 11, 1894. It was done contrary to my advice. I investigated conditions at Pullman first May 4, 1894, and again May 18, 1894. I made an investigation among the Pullman employes and was helped by the Rev. Carwardine of Pullman. I came to the conclusion that the Pullman Company was in the wrong, that wages had been unjustifiably reduced at different times below the living point and that rents were much too high in comparison with what was charged for the same class of dwellings elsewhere. The Pullman Company owned the whole town of Pullman, streets, water works, houses and everything.”

Newspaper reporters were admitted to all sessions of the convention held at Chicago June 12, 1894, except one where finances were considered. All telegrams were subjected voluntarily to the examination of the press reporters.

Mr. Debs then gave a resume of his speech at the convention and stated that in his speech he spoke in particular about the victory on the Great Northern having been a peaceful one. He then testified as to the conference held by the convention committee with Manager Wicks of the Pullman Company and the committee reported June 16, that the manager of the Pullman Company said they had nothing to arbitrate. He testified as to the speech made to the convention by Rev. Carwardine; that the Rev. Carwardine told of his three years’ life in Pullman and that the men and their families were at the point of starvation. The convention voted $2,000 for the relief of the Pullman employes. A committee was appointed to notify the Pullman Company that unless arbitration was agreed upon by June 26 a boycott on Pullman cars would be ordered. He further testified that he had advised all committees coming to his headquarters to abstain from any acts of violence and in reply to a question put by the counsel, replied, “No, sir; never in all my life have I broken the law or advised others to do so.”

His testimony was listened to with marked interest by the jury.

A. R. U.

In the Chicago strike the strikers were not responsible for the burning of the property of the railroads. It was not done until after the arrival of the United States troops. It was done then at the instance of the railroads because the railroads knew that without violence they would lose the strike. People who doubt this statement are referred to the reports of Chief Brennan of the Chicago Police, Hon. Carroll D. Wright, head of the Labor Bureau, and the reports of the governor of Illinois, and the report of the Special United States Commission that heard witnesses of all sorts in their investigation of the A. R. U. strike.

The substance of the report of the commission was as follows:

“The third smash-up comes from the commissioners appointed by
Cleveland, who make their report to Congress, that the Managers’
Association at Chicago who fought the A. R. U. threw the whole
country into turmoil and dismay, stopped traffic and destroyed
commerce, was an utterly illegal body. The twenty-four railroads,
including the Southern Pacific, Atchison and Southern California,
which so ruthlessly pursued the employes to crush and starve them
are now pronounced to have had no ‘standing in law.’ And yet, they
had the influence to bring into their support the Federal executive
and army and navy and all the machinery and power of the Federal
courts. The commission says: ‘If we regard its practical workings
rather than its profession, as expressed in its constitution, the
General Managers’ Association has no more standing in law than an
old trunk line pool. It cannot incorporate because railroad charters
do not authorize roads to form associations or corporations to fix
rates for service or wages, nor to battle with strikers. It is
usurpation of power not granted. In fact, this “usurpation” had
extended everywhere by courts as well as Railroad Managers’
Associations. The latter can be classed with the other cutthroat
organizations of hirelings and Hessians, who for money will start
out to kill any citizens at the order of the corporations—the
Pinkertons.’”

The commission says: “An extension of the Association, as above suggested, and the proposed legalization of pooling, would result in an aggregation of power and capital dangerous to the people and their liberties, as well as to their employes and rights.” And they might have added that with the aid of the Federal judiciary these twenty-four managers could have subverted the constitution and erected a despotism. The commission thoroughly endorses the legality of the actions of the A. R. U. and refutes the charge that they were guilty of violence or encouraging it. They say:

“It should be noted that until the railroads set the example, the great union of railroad employes was never attempted. * * * The refusal of the General Managers to recognize and deal with such a combination of labor as the American Railway Union, seems arrogant and absurd, when we consider its standing before the law, its assumption, and its past and obviously contemplated future action.”

Another signal reversal of the position assumed by the United States courts in the Chicago cases came in the shape of a reversal by the Federal Court of Appeals in the opinion of Justice Harlan against the use of equity proceedings to punish railway employes by means of contempt in injunctions and especially that the act of July 2, 1890, was totally inapplicable. Another was in the opinion filed by Attorney General Olney, who practically reversed himself when he declared in his brief to the United States Circuit Court that the position taken by the receiver of the Reading Railroad was entirely illegal and unjustifiable in his notice to the men that he would dismiss all who remained members of labor organizations of railways. It controverts everything that has been done in the Chicago cases and in other Federal courts on the subject of the A. R. U. and other brotherhoods.

After the appearance of the report of the strike commission, Mr. Debs wrote the following letter to the _New York World_, in reply to some criticisms of the report of the commission: To the Editor of the _World_:

The report of the strike commission is eminently fair and impartial and meets with the unqualified approval of not only the A. R. U. but of all people who believe in the American spirit of fair play and desire the enthronement of justice. The conclusions of the board are based on the testimony and both are presented with absolute impartiality. The result is a triumphant vindication of the American Railway Union and fixes the responsibility for the lawlessness, violence, arson and loss of life with the General Managers’ Association, where it properly belongs. Any intimation that I wrote the report or any part of it, or that I had anything to do with its preparation, directly or indirectly, is totally and maliciously false. I simply rendered my testimony in open session and then and there my connection with the board ceased. I never met or corresponded with any member of the board, either before or after my testimony was given.

EUGENE V. DEBS.

* * * * *

Mr. Debs made his first political speech for the Democratic party in 1878. He was tendered the nomination for Congress by that party and declined it.

In 1885 he was elected to the Indiana legislature and ran on the Democratic ticket with the avowed purpose of securing needed legislation for the working class in general, and railway employes in particular. In was this year, 1885, June 9, he was married to Katherine Metzel,[5]—“Kate” he affectionately calls her. She is one of the noblest types of women. She was born in Pittsburg, but her parents were Kentuckians. She is in thorough sympathy with him on social and economic questions and aids him materially in his work. She is always ready to give him up to the Cause and in every way adds to his strength, helping to keep his vast correspondence in order and all his books and papers are instantly accessible. No children have blessed their lives. A little nephew has his home with them and Gene is a lover of children and always has time for their companionship.

Gene is distinctively a “home man;” belongs to no social lodge or club, simply because he wishes to spend his evenings at home. The Sunday evenings are home meetings and three generations met Sunday evenings when father and mother were living. He said, “My father and I were boon companions,[6] and I tell you, I miss it when I cannot have my Sunday evening talks with him. When I am out traveling, every day seems alike, but when Sunday evening comes, I invariably feel something tugging at my heart strings.”

He said, without hesitation, “The dominant influence in my life has been my ‘mother.’ Whatever of good there is in me I owe to her. Do you know,” he said, “I care absolutely nothing for the praise or condemnation of the world so long as my wife and my mother think I am in the right.”

PERSONAL DESCRIPTION.

He is tall, six feet, two inches; is slim, powerfully built; a fine head, proudly set above broad shoulders; long, full neck; face clear, finely cut, smoothly shaven; blue, deep, searching, inquiring, frank, open eyes; a smile, childlike and sweet, usually upon his face; sometimes sad, as sad as Lincoln’s. He is plain, dresses plainly, neatly always; is rational, logical, epigrammatic; quick words fit his thoughts; incisive and unambiguous, they seem to flow to him from a vast, well-filled vocabulary. He quotes from the great writers and poets, is intimate with them all; speaks fluently, never hesitates, draws faultless word pictures, makes epigrams, plain, pointed and easily remembered; gestures almost only with the right hand, steps quietly, leans forward to his audience, poised and when speaking his eyes seem like the eyes of a painting—to look at each one everywhere in his audience.

In 1878 Mr. Debs met Wendell Phillips and Robert G. Ingersoll. Their great oratorical powers inspired him to study the power of speech to move men, and no American has been a more tireless student of literature and the art of expression than he. To the end of Mr. Ingersoll’s life he kept up an intimate correspondence with him upon all vital questions and was greatly aided by Mr. Ingersoll’s good advice and able suggestions. To further equip himself for speaking and debating, he became an active member of the one-time locally famous Occidental Literary Club, and was a live and aggressive member, writing great papers and acquitting himself in the highest manner in every debate.

His home library[7] is large and the books it contains are on all phases of human history, politics, government, philosophy, religion, poetry and the arts, and they bear the marks of having been intimately handled.

He is a great reader and he has a wonderful and most orderly lot of magazine articles which he has had bound in volumes; newspaper clippings arranged in scrap books of ready reference; letters carefully filed and indexed.

He has been heard before vast audiences at Chautauquas, colleges, opera houses, labor halls, mining camps, farmers’ festivals, etc.

In Faneuil Hall, Boston, under time-honored custom, no seats are allowed; audience and speaker stand. This permits the largest possible attendance. At Mr. Debs’ October speech, 1904, the old Cradle of Liberty was packed to the sidewalk. It would be a mistake to state that only laboring people are interested in his economic discussions. Business men are keenly awake to the fact that this subject is the question of our day. In 1899 Mr. Debs spoke before the Nineteenth Century Club at Delmonico’s, New York, and drew some word pictures that stood out like living flames. He touched the vulnerable spots in his listeners that left impressions for life. He never needlessly offends. At Harvard, Ann Arbor and before the greatest educational institutions he has been heard by wonderfully appreciative audiences. At Harvard the students were tremendously enthusiastic; at Ann Arbor the Professor of Elocution told his classes that they had never heard a more accomplished orator, and the demonstration that followed his address to the students in the vast university amphitheatre will never be forgotten by those having the fortune to have heard it.

The most prized memento of the great strike is a little note from Eugene Field, the Chicago poet, author of “The Little Boy Blue.” It seems that the poet had advance knowledge that Mr. Debs was to be arrested and he drove to Mr. Debs’ headquarters and as Gene was not in he left the note which read:

“Dear Gene: I hear that you are to be arrested. When that time comes
you will need a friend. I want to be that friend.

EUGENE FIELD.”

From a letter from F. L. Thompson, Lansing, Mich., in _Lansing Tribune_, February 3, 1899, after hearing Mr. Debs’ lecture on “Labor and Liberty:”

“I was pastor at Pullman some years ago and know the truth of all
Mr. Debs said of that place. He might have said much more and still
have been fully within the truth.”

From hundreds of letters and telegrams that poured in upon Mr. Debs during the A. R. U. strike and while he was in prison are here given a few, to show how his strength was increased and his courage fortified by loving words from home and friends everywhere:

DEBS.

Now and then out of the veiled universe comes a friend. In that hour, and in oft-repeated hours during our lifetime, he is the builder and the bearer of our dearest thought.

Now and then History, in her long, wavering, stumbling, but ever forward course, gives us a Hugo, an O’Connell, a Phillips, and now at last, thank Heaven, a Debs.

Seeing such men, we can realize why Emerson and Whitman can forever have patience and hope, and look to the sure-coming of the bright days.

Debs greets us and our day is brighter,—sweeter. His every word is a story. Every word a song. Every word is the bearer of purest love. His tones are sweet like tones of bells. His tones are firm like bell-tones. Greeting us, Debs leaves with us a bit of himself which will not leave us while we live. Debs comes to us with greatest love,—and the greatest lover is the greatest man.

GEO. F. HIBNER.

THEODORE DEBS

(See Page 5)
]

CAMDEN, Jan. 13, 1907.

Dear Brother: I know you are very busy. I don’t want to crowd in. But I want to send you my love. There is always time for love. You are a man upon whom love has showered its darling gifts. Cherish them. They are worth while. They are all that is worth while. You have troubles. I know about them. But you have lovers, and the light is full in your face, and you are leading men on towards the fulfillment of man’s noblest dream. I know that though sorrow comes you are still satisfied. A man with work in him, with love in him, may always be happy. He is always next the throne. Good-night.

TRAUBEL.

* * * * *

WOODSTOCK, ILL., Aug. 29, 1895.

Mr. Ed H. Evinger,
Labor Day Committee, Terre Haute, Ind.

Dear Sir and Brother: I am in receipt of your esteemed favor of the 19th inst., in which you say: “We have been unable to get a representative labor speaker for our Labor Day celebration and the committee ordered me to ask you to write us a letter to be read on the occasion.”

In responding to your request I am disposed to recite a page of what all Christendom proclaims “sacred history.”

There existed some twenty-five hundred years ago a king clothed with absolute power, known as Darius, who ruled over the Medes and the Persians. He was not a usurper like Wm. A. Woods, the United States Circuit Judge. Darius was royal spawn. His right to rule was what kings then, as now, claimed to be a “divine right.” All the people in Darius’ empire were slaves. The will of the king was absolute. What the king said was law, just as we now find in the United States of America that what a United States judge says is law. Darius, the Persian despot, could imprison at will; the same is true of Woods, the despot. There is absolutely no difference. Do I hear an exception? Allow me to support my indictment by authority that passes current throughout the Republic. Only a few days ago the venerable Judge Trumbull, one of the most eminent jurists and statesmen America has ever produced, wrote these burning words: “The doctrine announced by the Supreme Court in the Debs case, carried to its logical conclusion, places every citizen at the mercy of any prejudiced or malicious federal judge, who may think proper to imprison him.” This states the case of the officers of the American Railway Union in a nutshell. They violated no law, they committed no crime, they have not been charged, nor indicted, nor tried, and yet they were arbitrarily sentenced and thrust in jail and what has happened to them will happen to others who dare protest against such inhumanity as the monster Pullman practiced upon his employes and their families.

More than twenty-five hundred years have passed to join the unnumbered centuries since Darius lived and reigned, and now in the United States we have about four score Darius despots, each of whom may at his will, whim or pleasure, imprison an American citizen—and this grim truth is up for debate on Labor Day.

It will be remembered that during the reign of Darius there was a gentleman by the name of Daniel whom the king delighted to honor. The only fault that could be found with Daniel was that he would not worship the Persian gods, but would, three times a day, go to his window, looking toward Jerusalem, and pray. This was his crime. It was enough. The Persians had a religion of their own. They had their gods of gold, brass, stone, clay, wood, anything from a mouse to a mountain, and they would not tolerate any other god. They had, in modern parlance, an “established church,” and as Daniel, like Christ, would not conform to the Persian religion, “the presidents of the kingdom, the governors and the princes, the counselors and the captains,” or as in these later days the corporations, the trusts, the syndicates and combines, concluded to get rid of Daniel and they persuaded Darius to issue an injunction that no man should “ask a petition of any God or man for thirty days save of thee, O king”—and the king, a la Woods, issued the decree. But Daniel, who was made of resisting stuff, disregarded the injunction and still prayed as before to his God. Daniel was a hero. In the desert of despotism he stands forever:

“As some tall cliff that lifts its awful form,
Swells from the vale and midway leaves the storm:
Though round its breast the rolling clouds are spread,
Eternal sunshine settles on its head.”

But the bigots triumph for a time. The king’s decree must stand, and Daniel, as a penalty for prayer, must be cast into the lion’s den and the bigots, the plutocratic pirates and parasites of that period, thought that would be the end of Daniel. They chuckled as in fancy they heard the lions break his bones and lap his blood. They slept well and dreamed of victory. Not so with the king. He knew he had been guilty of an act of monstrous cruelty and in this the old Persian despot was superior to Woods. The king could not sleep and was so pained over his act that he forbade all festivities in his palace. In this he showed that he was not totally depraved. The king had a lurking idea that somehow Daniel would get out of the lion’s den unharmed and that he would overcome the intrigues of those who had conspired to destroy him. Early in the morning he went to the mouth of the den. Daniel was safe. His God, unlike the Supreme Court, having found Daniel innocent of all wrongdoing, locked the jaws of the lions and Daniel stood before the king wearing the redemption of truth, more royal than a princely diadem. Then the king who had been deceived by the enemies of Daniel, the sycophants and the vermin of power, gave his wrath free reign and had them cast into the lion’s den where they were devoured by the ferocious beasts.

History repeats itself. I am not a Daniel but I am in jail by the decree of the autocrat. I appealed from one despot to a whole bench for justice, and the appeal was unheeded. I and my associates were innocent. There was no stain of crime upon our record but neither innocence nor constitution was of any avail. To placate the corporations, the money power, the implacable enemies of labor, we were sent to prison and here alone, contemplating the foul wrong inflicted upon me and my associate officials of the American Railway Union, with head and heart and hand nerved for the task, I write this letter to be read on Labor Day to friends and neighbors in the city of my birth.

It is not a wail of despondency nor of despair. The cause for which I have been deprived of my liberty was just and I am thrice armed against all my enemies. To bear punishment for one’s honest convictions is a glorious privilege and requires no high order of courage.

No judicial tyrant comes to my prison to inquire as to my health or my hopes, but one sovereign does come by night and by day, with words of cheer. It is the sovereign people—the uncrowned but sceptered ruler of the realm. No day of my imprisonment has passed that the bars and bolts and doors of the Woodstock Jail have not been bombarded by messages breathing devotion to the cause of liberty and justice, and as I read and ponder these messages and as I grasp the hands of friends and catch the gleam of wrath in their defiant eyes and listen to their words of heroic courage, I find it no task to see the wrath of the sovereign people aroused and all opposition to the triumphant march of labor consigned to oblivion, and as an earnest of this from every quarter come announcements that the American Railway Union is growing in membership and strength, destined at an early day to be, as it deserves to be, an organization, which by precept, example and principle will ultimately unify railroad labor in the United States and make it invincible. There is a mighty mustering of all the forces of labor throughout the country. Labor is uniting in one solid phalanx to secure justice for labor. When this time comes, and coming it is, peacefully, I hope no judicial despot will dare to imprison an American citizen to please corporations. When this time comes, and coming it is as certain as rivers flow to the sea, Bullion and Boodle will not rule in Congress, in legislatures and in courts, and legislators and judges and other public officers will not be controlled, as many of them are, by the money power. There is to come a day, aye, a labor day, when from the center to the circumference of our mighty Republic, from blooming groves of orange to waving fields of grain, from pinelands of Maine to the Pacific Coast, the people shall be free and it will come by the unified voice and vote of the farmer, the mechanic, and the laborer in every department of the country’s industries.

I notice in your letter that you say: “We have been unable to get a representative labor speaker for our Labor Day celebration,” and here let me say that on Labor Day all men who wear the badge of labor are “representative speakers”—not “orators,” perhaps, as the term is accepted to mean, and yet orators in fact, from whose lips fall “thoughts that breathe and words that burn;” coming warm from the heart, they reach the heart and fan zeal in a great cause into a flame that sweeps along like a prairie fire. It has been the good fortune of labor to produce from its ranks men who, though unlearned in the arts or oratory, were yet orators of the highest order, if effect instead of fluency is considered. It is the occasion that makes the orator as it is the battle that makes the veteran. Mark Antony said, “I am no orator like Brutus,” but when he showed Caesar’s mantle to the populists of Rome and pointed out where the conspirators’ daggers had stabbed Caesar, the oratory of Brutus paled before his burning words. And every man, however humble he may esteem himself, may on Labor Day hold up the Constitution of the United States and point to where the judicial dagger stabbed liberty to death, and make the people cry out for the re-enthronement of the constitution—and Terre Haute has a hundred such orators.

I write in the hurry and press of business. Before me are a hundred letters demanding replies. I pass them by to respond to an appeal from my home, and in fancy, as I write, I am with you. I am at home again. My father bending beneath the weight of many years salutes me. My mother, whose lullaby songs nestle and coo in the inner temple of my memory, caresses me—her kiss baptizes me with joy and as if by enchantment:

“Years and sin and folly flee,
And leave me at my mother’s knee.”

In this mood I write with the hope that the celebration at Terre Haute will inspire renewed devotion to the interests of labor, and with a heart full of good wishes, I subscribe myself,

Yours fraternally,
E. V. DEBS.

Dict. E.V.D.

TELEGRAM.

INDIANAPOLIS, IND., July 18, 1894.

To Hon. Eugene V. Debs,
Cook County Jail.

My wife, my boys and myself give you our greatest love. The helpless world now acknowledges you, the whole world will crown you.

Devotedly,
FRANKLIN W. HAYS.

* * * * *

Received at Chicago.

Dated Terre Haute, Ind., July 18, 1894.

To Eugene V. Debs.

Stand by your principles, regardless of consequences.

YOUR FATHER AND MOTHER.

* * * * *

RESOLUTION OF INMATES OF WOODSTOCK JAIL.

We, the undersigned, inmates of Woodstock Jail, desire to convey to you our heartfelt thanks and gratitude for the many acts of kindness and sympathy shown us by you during your incarceration in this institution.

We selfishly regret your departure from here into the outer world and scenes of labor. Your presence here has been to us what an oasis in a desert is to the tired and weary traveler, or a ray of sunshine showing thro’ a rift in the clouds.

With thousands of others we rejoice and extend to you our most earnest congratulations upon your restoration to liberty.

Hoping you may have a long, prosperous and happy life, success in all of your undertakings, especially “The American Railway Union,” we all join in wishing you Godspeed and beg to subscribe ourselves,

Your friends,
CHARLES E. ANDERSON,
EDWARD MADDEN,
PAUL WAMBACH,
W. E. HORTON.

To Eugene V. Debs, Esq.,
Woodstock, Ill., Nov. 22, 1895.

DEBS AND THE POETS.

(_Clipping from New York Socialist, June 20, 1908._)

An infallible instinct for heart-analysis appears to be an attribute of the poets. For the most part they possess an unfailing judgment of character-worth, and whomsoever they know well and call good is apt to be a pretty safe pilgrim to tie to. President Roosevelt, of vituperative vocabulary, may loudly denounce him as an “undesirable citizen,” but when the poets with deeper discernment and prophetic vision pronounce him a “desirable citizen” they voice the sure verdict of the justifying years.

To Eugene V. Debs have the poets been especially kind, for in him have they recognized a kindred spirit. In him they have detected the true impulse of the brotherhood, concerning which no poet can well be deceived. They have found that his mind is a garden in bloom, and that his soul is filled with fragrance. So right blithely have they sung him of their best, and many of Fame’s favorites have been proud to call him friend—they who “sit at wine with the Maidens Nine and the gods of the elder days.”

It was James Whitcomb Riley who thus characteristically expressed himself concerning this beloved Apostle of Advancement:

“God was feeling mighty good when he created ’Gene Debs, and He didn’t have anything else to do all day.”

Another poet of world-wide fame—Eugene Field—who was extremely discriminating in his friendships and exceedingly sparing of compliment, said: “’Gene Debs is the most lovable man I ever knew. Debs is sincere. His heart is as gentle as a woman’s and as fresh as a mountain brook. If Debs were a priest the world would listen to his eloquence, and that gentle, musical voice and sad, sweet smile of his would soften the hardest heart.”

There have been paid to Debs enough tender tributes in verse to fill a large volume. At one time when Riley was confined to his room by illness, Debs sent him a bouquet of the poet’s favorite flowers, which called forth the following appreciation:

THEM FLOWERS.

(To My Good Friend, Eugene V. Debs.)

Take a feller ’ats sick, and laid up on the shelf,
All shaky, and ga’nted and pore,
And all so knocked out he can’t handle hisself
With a stiff upper lip any more;
Shet him up all alone in the gloom of a room
As dark as a tomb, and as grim,
And then take and send him some roses in bloom,
And you kin have fun out o’ him!

You’ve seed him, ’fore now, when his liver was sound,
And his appetite notched like a saw,
A chaffin’ you, mebby, for romancin’ round
With a big posey bunch in yer paw.
But you ketch him, say, when his health is away
And he’s flat on his back, in distress,
And then you can trot out your little bokay
And not be insulted, I guess!

You see, it’s like this, what his weaknesses is,
Them flowers makes him think of the days
Of his innocent youth, and that mother o’ his,
And the roses she used to raise;
So here all alone with the roses you send,
Bein’ sick and all trimbly and faint,
My eyes is—my eyes is—my eyes is—old friend,
Is a-leakin’—I’m blamed ef they ain’t!

And in the “Hoosier Bard’s” poem “Regardin’ Terry Hut,” appears these lines:

And there’s ’Gene Debs—a man ’at stands
And jest holds out in his two hands
As warm a heart as ever beat
Betwixt here and the Jedgment Seat.

The picturesque genius, Capt. Jack Crawford, renowned as “The Poet-Scout,” wrote of Debs:

The same old pard of long ago,
The whole-souled ’Gene I used to know,
With the love of Truth writ on Justice’s scroll,
With a woman’s heart and a warrior’s soul.

At a reception given to Debs by the Denver Press Club Walter Juan Davis recited these lines, written for the occasion:

DEBS.

It is not his craft or creed,
It is not the winged word
That springs from his soul to his lips, at need,
And, flying, is felt and heard;
But something down in us all
That makes us respect the man
Who says unto great and small:
“You’ve a right to do what you can;
You’ve a right to preserve and keep
Such things as the gods gave you;
You’ve a right to your hours of sleep
And the worth of the things you do;
You’ve a right to the million or dime
That your brain or your brawn has won;
But not in the length of time;
In the light of the moon or sun,
Have you a right to a thing
That you steal or wring
From me or from any one.”

* * * * *

In 1904 he made such a campaign as no other man ever endured. He began at Indianapolis September 1, and from that date traveled to New York, and thence to California, thence to Portland, Maine, thence to his home, Terre Haute, closing his campaign in his home city before an audience of several thousands, and at least 2,000 could not gain entrance. During this time he did not miss an appointment by even one minute. He spoke every day and some days two, three and even four times. The crowds were so great in the large cities it seemed impossible for him to enter or go from the building at the close of the meetings. On several occasions it became necessary to stop and speak a few minutes to the waiting thousands on the streets. He had gone alone during all this time except from October 17 to November 8, when from Chicago to Portland and thence to Terre Haute, Comrade Reynolds, of Terre Haute, was with him, assisting in all possible ways to lighten the heavy work.

Owing to the lack of funds of the working class party Mr. Debs had been attending to baggage, hotels, time tables, and the vast correspondence necessarily following him. The old parties had the noise, brass bands, Pullman trains, luxuries of every sort, torch-lights and plenty of money. The Debs meetings were held in the largest obtainable audience rooms in the larger cities and were paid for by tickets of admission, and these meetings in every case netted to the campaign fund of the Socialist party considerable sums of money, from which Mr. Debs received only the expenses of travel, which were not very heavy.

In spite of the facts stated, most of the great capitalist papers either ignored these meetings or belittled them, or flatly misrepresented them, but the people are quick nowadays to get the truth about these things and there will be more wonderful meetings in the campaign of 1908 than ever before known by a rising militant minor political party. Those who heard him, heard the polished American orator; those who agreed with him were strengthened and confirmed in their beliefs; those who came seeking Truth were moved by his oratory and convinced by his array of facts and unerring logic, in making conclusions from them, while those who disagreed were disarmed of prejudice and commended him as a sincere, earnest man.

In 1880 he persuaded Susan B. Anthony to speak in Terre Haute in a series of meetings advocating Woman’s Suffrage, and with her he walked and stood the odium that ignorance and prejudice poured out upon that great human question, at that time not so popular as it now is, when 100,000 women may surround the Parliament of England and demand that the voices of women be counted in the rules of life that concern them and their children as it does men and their children.

Mr. Debs has always stood for equality of rights, equality of opportunity for men and women everywhere without distinction of race, religion, color, or sex, and no Socialist platform fails to clearly state its attitude upon these great vital questions. Search the old party platforms and you may find terms of evasion but not of real affirmation of these fundamental demands.

Mr. Debs was nominated by the Socialist party for President in 1900, receiving 97,000 votes; again in 1904, receiving 409,000 votes; again in 1908.

Debs has said these immortal words to the working people:

“I am not a Labor Leader; I do not want you to follow me or anyone else; if you are looking for a Moses to lead you out of this capitalist wilderness, you will stay right where you are. I would not lead you into this promised land if I could, because if I could lead you in, someone else would lead you out. YOU MUST use your heads as well as your hands, and get yourselves out of your present condition; as it is now the capitalists use your heads and your hands.”

To teach, to serve is his mental and moral mission. He seeks no place of power or profit,—did not want to be nominated either time for the presidency, but when the rank and file lead and order, he has never hesitated to obey, and he believes, with unquestioning faith and love for the people, that when they are educated and understand, they will peacefully and intelligently set government about its proper business,—the government of the forces of production and the same arrangements of distributing the things the people need, and must have, if they are ever to rise to complete physical, mental and spiritual freedom.

In closing this necessarily brief and meager biographical sketch of this true, living, loving and lovable man, true neighbor, really “desirable citizen,” and unimpeached and unimpeachable representative and servant of the working class, I cannot tell in any better way of “Debs at Home” than in the little pamphlet I wrote in 1904. It needs no change. He has only grown every day in intellectual and spiritual stature, more wise, more patient, more uncompromising and unconquerably aggressive and more loving and lovable and, therefore, able more safely to teach the workers and more to be feared by the exponents of the rapidly-dying system of capitalism tottering to its inevitable grave, dying because it has served its period of usefulness, because it now hurts, degrades and humiliates all of the human family.

DEBS AT HOME.

Here, in Terre Haute, where “Gene” Debs lives, everybody admires him. All who know him personally love him. He has no personal enemies; he has enemies, but they do not know him. He has none in Terre Haute. Many here would like to hang his ideas, but the man, the strong personality, the gentleness and cordiality of his greeting when he meets his neighbors and fellow-citizens, disarm all prejudice. Politicians here, as elsewhere, fear him, for they know that his intrepid soul knows and permits no intellectual fears, stoops to no intellectual prostitution. He is as open and fearless when called upon for an opinion upon any matters of local interest as he is when he assails the capitalist system.

I remember first seeing him in the editorial office of the Locomotive Firemen’s Magazine. I was struck by his alertness and the unhesitating speed of his work, whether engaged in writing or arranging the details of printing, mailing or distributing the great magazine among the thousands of workers who read and had profitable enjoyment from its pages. I next remember his home-coming after the A. R. U. had won the Great Northern strike. An immense throng met him at the depot with the Ringgold Band, drum corps and torchlights. They had a carriage for him, but he protested and took his place in the ranks with the men,—only a look of joy shone on his face, nothing of exultation; he was as unconscious of himself then as he seems ever to be and is. The shouts of “Welcome Home” seemed only to elate and inspire his soul to do more for the cause of labor. Then I remember (I was a Republican at the time) reading of the awful strike begun in Chicago in 1894. I shared with others in my ignorance in condemnation of the things reported from Chicago. I commiserated his confinement in jail at Woodstock but believed, as millions equally as ignorant as I was then believed, that the laws had been upheld. I know now the details of the wrongs that in the name of Law and Order were heaped upon the cause of labor then and understand the superb courage and patience of labor’s greatest and most far-seeing leader,—Debs.

When he came from Woodstock Jail to Terre Haute it had been raining all day. Mr. Debs’ train arrived at 7:00 o’clock. There were several hundred people at the depot, among them 200 miners with the Coal Bluff Band. Escorted by the band he walked to his home, a few squares from the depot. There he found his aged father and mother, and they clung to him, kissing him again and again. After he had had his supper he was escorted to the Armory through the rain, along the route blazing with Roman candles. After the enthusiastic cheering and greeting had subsided, Mr. Debs made a short speech to the audience and afterwards he was kept busy shaking hands with his friends.

I do not know much of those long, fallow years when he went deep into the movement of things. I became a Socialist in 1899, entirely uninfluenced and alone. I emerged and found myself and a new life, a new outlook, and stand now serenely, knowing that the end of capitalism is in sight and the day of better things is certain.

I feel yet the throb of his heart in his great, strong hand when I told him I had taken my place on the side of the Barricades, where the cause of labor must soon entrench itself. From that time I have seen him intimately at all hours of the day, under all circumstances, and found him always sure in knowledge of the future, with unlimited faith in humanity and never once faltering. I know unnumbered things he has done for the “A. R. U. Boys,”—know he has gone to their personal assistance, not only with inspiring sympathy but with substantial help. His mail often brings him words of courage and good cheer from those who have come into the light with him, and these are the things that go deepest to his heart. He keenly suffers with the workers in all their industrial battles, but sees now only the greater lesson to them he himself learned in the A. R. U. strike. In that strike he learned that labor was powerless with the courts, the laws, police, the military and every power of government in the hands of capital, and always ready to weaken, if not destroy, unions, unionism and union leaders. He often speaks of Woodstock jail as the greatest school where he learned to study and understand the value of the only weapon by which labor can ever come to its own,—“The Ballot.”

He loves to tell the stories of his childhood experiences and the experiences of his early manhood as Town Clerk and as a member of the Indiana Legislature one term, his five years’ experience in Hulman’s Wholesale Grocery House, of his joy in firing a locomotive on the Vandalia Railroad, and of his grief because his aged mother could not sleep when he started out with the engine, fearing something might befall him, and how, to make her happy, he quit the job.

I find him very often, even in these days of pressing work, reading all alone to his old father, who is eighty-three years of age and almost blind. It is good to see this man, who is known in more countries and to more human beings than any other living man, surrendering himself completely to his friends when they call upon him. Three weeks ago he and his comrade wife, Katherine Debs (he calls her “Kate”), came to spend the evening with my family. We had many neighbors with us and the precise hour agreed upon “Gene” came down the street on his bicycle and went to the kitchen and without assistance prepared the supper. You, comrades, who have seen this man of heart and soul poised like a panther when he steps upon the platform and hurls the words that scorch and flash like fire, should have seen the gleam of domestic pleasure and joyous comradeship when he stood in the long apron and enthusiastically cooked a good supper in the kitchen of the “Old Red House” on Sixth Street, where so many “Soapbox Travelers and Apostles of Truth” have found shelter and food and repaired their raiment. And then after supper, until after midnight, we saw his soul aflame upon his face as he recited the wrongs of labor in Colorado and told of the heroism of the outraged comrades and workers in accursed Telluride.

Again, he loves best, I am sure, to go out into the country. We often go together. The last time we drove ten miles under the trees along the Wabash and when his quick eye saw a Kentucky cardinal in the woods, he stopped the horse and sat listening to the clear falling notes of this sweet whistler, and when we heard a mocking bird, like a child, he clasped his hands together and was lost as long as the song lasted in worshipful adoration of the wondrous music that stirred the still atmosphere into responsive vibration. After our dinner at a farmhouse we sat on a fallen “naked sycamore” on the “Banks of the Wabash,” and there I saw deeper into the soul of this great comrade and brother. The universality of his vision was revealed and he poured forth, as though inspired, an analysis of world conditions, a forecast of things certain to occur, that made almost the waters in the river stop, listen and applaud. He described with great particularity the Chicago Republican convention (it was before it occurred, sometime in early May), its certainty to be a dull, apathetic, heartless proceeding, and the St. Louis convention marking the disintegration of a great political party,—Bryan’s dying struggle to save the Democracy and the utter impossibility of preventing the coming together of capitalists, powers and influences, the effect upon the minds of the workers, the revelation of the true position of Capital vs. Labor and the tremendous and resistless growth of the Socialist movement. If he had had ten thousand workers before him, he could not have uttered more polished sentences, more words of deep significance, more prophetic epigrams than I heard alone, sitting on the fallen sycamore. But such things are not lost; he has uttered as great things to men who seemed as trees, but some day these same men will move as though a tornadic wind was upon them and then they will remember when and where they heard the first great words that inspired them.

It was near six o’clock when we came home and the toil-stained workers were going in all directions to their cottages, huts, hovels, boat-houses and tents. I shall never forget the look of compassionate understanding that came into his face as he reiterated some of the things he had so eloquently uttered in their behalf to the Wabash sycamore that afternoon, but now his words find open ears and go clear and welcome to hungry hearts. The words of this great comrade are finding lodgment and bearing fruitage, and the time of emancipation is not far off.

You comrades do not mistake the significance of events.

I know a million men and women are alive in America today, and millions more will soon be ready to help create the Co-operative Commonwealth, where men and women, great in soul and mind and strong in bodies and sure in life, shall be industrially free and realize the beneficence and uplifting power of Industrial Democracy. In that day we can know more of and better understand “Debs at Home,” for now he is tireless and literally a wandering agitator, an apostle of truth, an awakener of the dead in spirit.

What would humanity be without such men, produced from their longings and aspirations? When you see him, give him the best love of your heart; inspire and encourage him for yet better efforts in your behalf. His life is of yours, ye toilers; his heart, his brain, his body, his soul are aflame with truth in your cause. Go the journey with him for your own sake. He is bone and marrow, flesh and blood of and for you. You will not soon see his like again. There are everywhere now, in all countries of the world, other great comrades, but nature will not soon conspire again to produce another Debs.

STEPHEN MARION REYNOLDS.

Terre Haute, Indiana, July 28, 1908.

WRITINGS

MARGUERITE MARIE DEBS
]

Where Daisy Sleeps

_To Mother!
Sweetest to us of all the earth.
We called her “Daisy.”_
Terre Haute, Ind., May, 1906

The grass grows green
Where Daisy sleeps;
The Mulberry tree its vigil keeps
Where Daisy sleeps.

The wind blows soft
Where Daisy sleeps;
The modest, blue-eyed violet peeps
Where Daisy sleeps.

The birds sing sweet
Where Daisy sleeps;
The mournful willow bends and weeps
Where Daisy sleeps.

The sun shines bright
Where Daisy sleeps;
Each changing season sows and reaps
Where Daisy sleeps.

The flowers bloom fair
Where Daisy sleeps;
The evening shadow softly creeps
Where Daisy sleeps.

Our hearts beat true
Where Daisy sleeps;
And Love its watch forever keeps
Where Daisy sleeps.

How I Became a Socialist

_New York Comrade, April, 1902_