Eugene Victor Debs (November 5, 1855–October 20, 1926) was an American labor
and political leader, one of the founders of the International Labor Union and the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), as well as five-time Socialist Party of America candidate for President of the United States. [1]
Rise to prominence
Eugene Debs was born to parents from Colmar, Alsace,
France; he was born and lived most of his life in Terre
Haute, Indiana. His father Jean Daniel Debs (1820-1906) came from a prosperous family and owned a textile mill and meat
market. Eugene Debs was named after the French authors Eugene Sue and Victor Hugo.[2]
Eugene Debs married Kate Metzel on June 9, 1885; they had no
children.
At the age of 17, Debs left home to work on the railroads, becoming a fireman. He
returned home in 1874 to work as a grocery clerk and the next year was a founding member of a new lodge of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen. He rose quickly in the Brotherhood, becoming first
an assistant editor for their magazine and then the editor and Grand Secretary in 1880. At the same time, he became a prominent
figure in the community and in 1884 was elected to the Indiana state legislature as a
Democrat, serving one term.
The railroad brotherhoods were comparatively conservative unions, more focused on providing fellowship and services than in
collective bargaining. Debs gradually became convinced of the need for a more unified and confrontational approach. After
stepping down as Grand Secretary, he organized, in 1893, one of the first industrial
unions in the United States, the American Railway Union (ARU). The Union
successfully struck the Great Northern Railway in April 1894, winning most
of its demands.
Pullman Strike
Debs was jailed later that year for his part in the Pullman Strike, which grew out of
a strike by the workers who made the Pullman Company's cars and who appealed to the American Railway Union at its convention in
Chicago for support. Debs attempted to persuade the ARU members who worked
on the railways that the boycott was too risky, given the hostility of both the railways and the federal government, the weakness
of the ARU, and the possibility that other unions would break the strike. The membership ignored his warnings and refused to
handle Pullman cars or any other railroad cars attached to them, including cars containing U.S. mail.
The federal government did, in fact, intervene, obtaining an
injunction against the strike on the theory that the strikers had obstructed the railways by
refusing to show up for work, then sending in the United States Army on the grounds
that the strike was hindering the delivery of the mail. An estimated $80 million worth of property was damaged, and Debs was
found guilty of interfering with the mail and sent to prison.
A Supreme Court case decision, In
re Debs, later upheld the right of the federal government to issue the injunction.
Socialist leader
Campaign poster from his
1912 Presidential campaign. Debs was
a frequent
Socialist candidate for President in the early 1900s.
At the time of his arrest for mail obstruction, Debs was not a Socialist. However, while jailed, he read the works of
Karl Marx. After his release in 1895, he started his socialist political career. The
experience radicalized Debs still further. He was a candidate for President of the United States in 1900 as a member of the
Social Democratic Party. He was later the Socialist Party of America candidate for President in 1904, 1908, 1912, and 1920, the final
time from prison. His 1912 showing, 6 percent of the vote, remains the all-time high for a Socialist Party candidate.
Debs was, however, largely dismissive of the electoral process: he distrusted the political bargains that Victor Berger and other "Sewer Socialists" had made in winning
local offices and put much more value on the organization of workers, particularly on industrial lines. Debs saw the working
class as the one class to organize, educate, and emancipate itself by itself.
Socialists split with the IWW
Yet Debs was equally uncomfortable with the apolitical stance of some within the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). He had been an early supporter of the IWW,
helping to organize it in 1905, along with Daniel De León, leader of the Socialist Labor Party. But the Wobblies (as IWW members were known) had grown tired of
bickering between the two socialist parties,[3] and
particularly of what they viewed as opportunism by De León.[4] At their convention in 1908, the Wobblies amended the IWW constitution to emphasize industrial
action, and to prohibit political action, i.e., alliance with any political party, in the name of the union. De León and Debs
both left the IWW in 1908.[5]
Later, the electoral wing of the Socialist Party led by Victor Berger and
Morris Hillquit became irritated with speeches by Big
Bill Haywood, a member of the National Executive Committee, but also a leader of the IWW.[6] In December of 1911, Haywood told a Lower East Side audience at New York's Cooper
Union that parliamentary Socialists were "step-at-a-time people whose every step is just a little shorter than the preceding
step." It was better, Haywood said, to "elect the superintendent of some branch of industry, than to elect some congressman to
the United States Congress."[7] In response, Hillquit
attacked the IWW as "purely anarchistic..."[8]
The Cooper Union speech was the beginning of a split between Bill Haywood and the Socialist Party.[9] The final straw came during the Lawrence textile strike when, disgusted with the decision of the elected officials in Lawrence
to send police who subsequently used their clubs on children, Haywood publicly declared that "I will not vote again" until such a
circumstance was rectified.[10] Haywood was purged from the
National Executive Committee of the Socialist Party by passage of an amendment that focused on the direct action and sabotage tactics advocated by the IWW.[11] Eugene Debs was probably the one person who might have saved
Haywood's seat.[12] In 1906, when Haywood had been on
trial for his life in Idaho, Debs had described him as "the Lincoln of Labor," and called for Haywood to run against
Theodore Roosevelt for president of the United States.[13] But times had changed and Debs, facing a split in the Party, chose to echo
Hillquit's words, accusing the IWW of representing anarchy.[14] Debs thereafter stated that he had opposed the amendment, but once it was adopted, it should be
obeyed.[15] Debs remained friendly to Haywood and the IWW
after the expulsion, in spite of their perceived differences over IWW tactics.[16]
Prior to Haywood's dismissal, the Socialist Party membership had reached an all-time high of 135,000. One year later, four
months after Haywood was recalled, the membership dropped to 80,000. The reformists in the Socialist Party attributed the decline
to the departure of the "Haywood element," and predicted that the party would recover. However, the Socialist Party's historical
high point of membership had already been reached. In the election of 1913, many of the Socialists who had been elected to public
office lost their seats.[17]
Debs giving a speech in Chicago in 1912.
Socialism and race
Although Debs criticized the apolitical "pure and simple unionism" of the railroad brotherhoods and the craft unions within
the American Federation of Labor, he practiced a form of pure and simple
socialism that underestimated the lasting power of racism, which he viewed as an aspect of
capitalist exploitation. As Debs wrote in 1903, the party had "nothing specific to offer the negro, and we cannot make special
appeals to all the races. The Socialist party is the party of the working class, regardless of color—the whole working class of
the whole world". Yet Debs was more advanced on this issue than many others in the Socialist Party: he denounced racism
throughout his years as a socialist, refusing to address segregated audiences in the South and condemning D.W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation.
Leadership style
Debs was a charismatic speaker who sometimes called on the vocabulary of Christianity and much of the oratorical style of
evangelism—even though he was generally disdainful of organized religion. As Heywood Broun
noted in his eulogy for Debs, quoting a fellow Socialist: "That old man with the burning eyes actually believes that there can be
such a thing as the brotherhood of man. And that's not the funniest part of it. As long as he's around I believe it myself."
Although sometimes called" King Debs,"[18] Debs
himself was not wholly comfortable with his standing as a leader. As he told an audience in Utah in 1910:
| “ |
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
the promised land if I could, because if I led you in, some one else would lead you out. You must use your heads as well as your
hands, and get yourself out of your present condition. |
” |
Opposition to World War I
Clifford Berryman's cartoon depiction of Deb's presidential run
On June 16, 1918, Debs made a speech in Canton, Ohio in opposition to World War I and was
arrested under the Espionage Act of 1917. He was convicted, sentenced to serve ten
years in prison and disenfranchised for life.
Debs made his best-remembered statement at his sentencing hearing:
| “ |
Your Honor, years ago I recognized my kinship with all living beings, and I made up my
mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on earth. I said then, and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am
in it, and while there is a criminal element I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free. |
” |
Debs appealed his conviction to the Supreme Court. In its ruling on Debs v. United
States, the court examined several statements Debs had made regarding World War
I. While Debs had carefully guarded his speeches in an attempt to comply with the Espionage Act, the Court found he still
had the intention and effect of obstructing the draft and recruitment for the war. Among other things, the Court cited Debs's
praise for those imprisoned for obstructing the draft. Justice Oliver Wendell
Holmes, Jr. stated in his opinion that little attention was needed since Debs' case was essentially the same as that of
Schenck v. United States, in which the Court had upheld a similar
conviction. In the decision Holmes wrote that free speech does not include "the right to shout 'fire' in a crowded theater."
He went to prison on April 13, 1919. In protest of his
jailing, Charles Ruthenberg led a parade of unionists, socialists, anarchists and
communists to march on May 1 (May
Day) 1919, in Cleveland, Ohio. The event quickly broke into the violent
May Day Riots of 1919.
Debs in the Atlanta Penitentiary
Debs ran for president in the 1920 election while in prison in Atlanta, Georgia at
the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary. He received 913,664 votes (3.4 percent), the highest number of votes for a Socialist Party
presidential candidate in the U.S. and slightly more than he had won in 1912, when he obtained six percent of the vote. This
stint in prison also inspired Debs to write a series of columns deeply critical of the prison system, which appeared in sanitized
form in the Bell Syndicate and was collected into his only book, Walls and Bars, with several added chapters (published
posthumously).
On December 25, 1921, President Warren G. Harding commuted Debs' sentence to time served and Debs was released from prison. Debs died
five years later at the age of 70 in Elmhurst, Illinois.
In 1924, Eugene Debs was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by the
Finnish Communist Karl H. Wiik on the ground that "Debs
started to work actively for peace during World War I, mainly because he considered the war to be in the interest of
capitalism."[19]
References in popular culture
- The protagonist in the Kurt Vonnegut novel Hocus Pocus, Eugene Debs Hartke, is named after Eugene V. Debs. There are several other
references to Debs throughout the novel, and in other Vonnegut works. Vonnegut received the Eugene V. Debs Award in 1981 from the
Debs Foundation.
- Eugene Debs and his actions figure prominently in the Callen Harty play Debs in Prison. The 'voice' of Eugene Debs is heard as well as two of the main characters being devotees
of Debs. The play's setting is a female prison, just after a young woman protests America’s involvement in World War I at a
debutante ball in Canton, Ohio.[20]
- In the story collection Back in the USSA, Debs takes the role of Lenin in
the alternate history socialist revolution in the United States.
- In the John Nichols book The magic journey, Debs
is mentioned as inspiring for one of the main characters Virgil Leyba: "Young Eugene Debs in a Terre Haute meeting room
waiting alone for union recruits to arrive- recruits who never came."
References
- ^ "Eugene V. Debs", Time (magazine), Monday,
November 1, 1926. Retrieved on 2007-08-21. “He was Eugene Victor Debs, labor leader. He was in jail for the violation of an injunction.
Back of this event was the story of an Indiana grocery clerk, a locomotive fireman, who became the organizer of the American
Railway Union, who twice made the nation feel the fist of unionized labor. The second time was the great strike against the
Pullman Co. in 1894 when President Cleveland had to despatch troops to Chicago to quell the riotous bloodshed. Eugene Debs and
three others, indicted for conspiracy against the Government, were successfully defended by Clarence S. Darrow.”
- ^ Bill Roberts. The Socialist Worker.
Retrieved on 2007-07-19.
- ^ The I.W.W.: Its First Seventy Years, Fred W. Thompson & Patrick Murfin,
1976, page 20.
- ^ The I.W.W.: Its First Seventy Years, Fred W. Thompson & Patrick Murfin,
1976, page 38.
- ^ The I.W.W.: Its First Seventy Years, Fred W. Thompson & Patrick Murfin,
1976, page 39.
- ^ Roughneck, The Life and Times of Big Bill Haywood, Peter Carlson, 1983,
pages 156.
- ^ Roughneck, The Life and Times of Big Bill Haywood, Peter Carlson, 1983,
pages 157.
- ^ Roughneck, The Life and Times of Big Bill Haywood, Peter Carlson, 1983,
pages 159.
- ^ Roughneck, The Life and Times of Big Bill Haywood, Peter Carlson, 1983,
pages 159.
- ^ Roughneck, The Life and Times of Big Bill Haywood, Peter Carlson, 1983,
pages 183.
- ^ Roughneck, The Life and Times of Big Bill Haywood, Peter Carlson, 1983,
pages 200.
- ^ Roughneck, The Life and Times of Big Bill Haywood, Peter Carlson, 1983,
pages 199.
- ^ Roughneck, The Life and Times of Big Bill Haywood, Peter Carlson, 1983,
pages 109.
- ^ Autobiography of Big Bill Haywood, William Dudley Haywood, 1929, page
279.
- ^ Roughneck, The Life and Times of Big Bill Haywood, Peter Carlson, 1983,
pages 199.
- ^ Autobiography of Big Bill Haywood, William Dudley Haywood, 1929, page
279.
- ^ Roughneck, The Life and Times of Big Bill Haywood, Peter Carlson, 1983,
pages 199.
- ^ "King" Debs. Harper's Weekly (July 14 1894). Retrieved on 2006-04-21.
- ^ Nobel Foundation. The
Nomination Database for the Nobel Prize in Peace, 1901-1955. Retrieved on 2006-04-21.
- ^ Debs in Prison. Retrieved on 2007-01-13.
See also
Further reading
- Chace, James. 1912 : Wilson, Roosevelt, Taft and Debs—The Election that Changed the Country. 336 pages. Simon
& Schuster. July 26, 2005. ISBN 0-7432-7355-9.
- Debs, Eugene. Debs: His Life, Writings and Speeches. 544 pages. University Press of the Pacific. July 1, 2002. ISBN
1-4102-0154-6.
- Debs, Eugene. Gentle Rebel: Letters of Eugene V. Debs. Edited by J. Robert Constantine. 312 pages. University of
Illinois Press. June 1, 1995. ISBN 0-252-06324-4.
- Debs, Eugene. Walls & Bars: Prisons & Prison Life In The "Land Of The Free". 264 pages. Charles H. Kerr
Publishers Company; 1st edition, 1983 edition ISBN 0-88286-010-0. 2000 edition ISBN 0-88286-248-0.
- Debs, Eugene V. The papers of Eugene V. Debs, 1834-1945: A guide to the microfilm edition. 163 pages. Microfilming
Corporation of America, 1983. ISBN 0-667-00699-0.
- Ginger, Ray. The Bending Cross: A Biography of Eugene Victor Debs. Rutgers
University Press: 1949. (Reprinted by Thomas Jefferson University Press: 1992. The reprint edition has numerous historic
photographs and an introduction by J. Robert Constantine.)
- Radosh, Ronald (ed). Great Lives Observed: Debs. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1971. ISBN
0-131-97681-8.
- Salvatore, Nick. Eugene V. Debs: Citizen and Socialist. Reprinted by University of Illinois Press, 1984. ISBN
0-252-01148-1.
- Stone, Irving. Adversary in the House. Doubleday: 1947. ISBN 0-385-04003-2.
- Young, Marguerite. Harp Song for a Radical: The Life and Times of Eugene Victor
Debs. Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.: 1999. ISBN 0-679-42757-0.
- Vonnegut, Kurt. Hocus Pocus. 336 Pages. Berkely Trade: 1991. ISBN
0-425-13021-5.
Archives
- Debs
Collection. Indiana State University Library Special Collections. Searchable pamphlet collection, abstracts of correspondence,
photographs, surveillance records, etc. Online collection guide retrieved August 30, 2006.
- Eugene Victor Debs Papers, 1881-1940. Indiana Historical Society Manuscript Collection. Call Number: SC 0493. Online collection
guide retrieved May 16, 2005.
- Bernard J. Brommel - Eugene V. Debs Papers, 1886-2003. Research material and works of Eugene V. Debs biographer
Bernard J. Brommel, including notes, photocopies, photographs, pamphlets, newsclippings, and memorabilia. Also primary sources
about and by Debs himself, including correspondence, works, and miscellanea. 4 cubic ft. Call Number: Midwest MS Brommel-Debs.
Held at Newberry Library. Online catalog retrieved April 26, 2005.
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