jailed in connection with the 1894
Pullman Strike.
(Standing, L-R): George W. Howard, Martin J. Elliott, Sylvester Keliher.
(Seated, L-R): William E. Burns,
James Hogan, Roy M. Goodwin,
Eugene V. Debs.Not Shown:
L. W. Rogers. At the time of his arrest for mail obstruction, Debs was not yet a
socialist. While serving his six-month term in the jail at
Woodstock, Illinois, Debs and his ARU comrades received a steady stream of letters, books and pamphlets in the mail from socialists around the country. Debs recalled several years later: I began to read and think and dissect the anatomy of the system in which workingmen, however organized, could be shattered and battered and splintered at a single stroke. The writings of Edward Bellamy|[Edward] Bellamy and Robert Blatchford|[Robert] Blatchford early appealed to me.
The Cooperative Commonwealth of Laurence Gronlund|[Laurence] Gronlund also impressed me, but the writings of Karl Kautsky|[Karl] Kautsky were so clear and conclusive that I readily grasped, not merely his argument, but also caught the spirit of his socialist utterance – and I thank him and all who helped me out of darkness into light. Debs emerged from jail at the end of his sentence a changed man. He spent the final three decades of his life proselytizing for the socialist cause. After Debs and Martin Elliott were released from prison in 1895, Debs started his socialist political career. Debs started agitating for the ARU membership to form a
Social Democratic organization. In 1896, Debs supported Democratic candidate
William Jennings Bryan in the
presidential election following Bryan's
Cross of Gold speech. After Bryan's loss in the election, a disappointed Debs decided for certain that the future for socialist policies lay outside the Democratic Party. In June 1897, the ARU membership finally joined with the Brotherhood of the Cooperative Commonwealth to form the
Social Democracy of America.
Split to found the Social Democratic Party The Social Democracy of America (SDA), founded in June 1897 by Eugene V. Debs from the remnants of his American Railway Union, was deeply divided between those who favored a tactic of launching a series of colonies to build socialism by practical example and others who favored establishment of a European-style socialist political party with a view to capture of the government apparatus through the ballot box. The June 1898 convention would be the group's last, with the minority political action wing quitting the organization to establish a new organization, the Social Democratic Party of America (SDP), also called the
Social Democratic Party of the United States. Debs was elected to the National Executive Board, the five-member committee which governed the party, and his brother,
Theodore Debs, was selected as its paid executive secretary, handling day-to-day affairs of the organization. Although by no means the sole decision-maker in the organization, Debs's status as prominent public figure in the aftermath of the Pullman strike provided cachet and made him the recognized spokesman for the party in the newspapers.
Presidential elections featuring Debs and vice presidential candidate
Emil Seidel Along with Elliott, who ran for Congress in 1900, Debs was the first federal office candidate for the fledgling socialist party, running unsuccessfully for president the same year. Debs and his running mate
Job Harriman received 87,945 votes (0.6 percent of the popular vote) and no electoral votes. Following the
1900 Election, the Social Democratic Party and dissidents who had split from the
Socialist Labor Party in 1899 unified forces at a Socialist Unity Convention held in Indianapolis in mid-1901 – a meeting which established the
Socialist Party of America (SPA). In both 1904 and 1908, Debs ran with running-mate
Ben Hanford. They received 402,810 votes in 1904, for 3.0 percent of the popular vote and an overall third-place finish.
Socialists split with the Industrial Workers of the World Although the IWW was built on the basis of uniting workers of industry, a rift began between the union and the Socialist Party. It started when the electoral wing of the Socialist Party, led by
Victor Berger and
Morris Hillquit, became irritated with speeches by Haywood. In December 1911, Haywood told a
Lower East Side audience at New York City'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". In response, Hillquit attacked the IWW as "purely anarchistic". The Cooper Union speech was the beginning of a split between Haywood and the Socialist Party, leading to the split between the factions of the IWW, one faction loyal to the Socialist Party and the other to Haywood. The rift presented a problem for Debs, who was influential in both the IWW and the Socialist Party. The final straw between Haywood and the Socialist Party came during the
Lawrence Textile Strike. The decision of the elected officials in
Lawrence, Massachusetts, to send police, who subsequently used their clubs on children, disgusted Haywood, who publicly declared that "I will not vote again" until such a circumstance was rectified. Haywood was purged from the National Executive Committee by passage of an amendment that focused on the
direct action and
sabotage tactics advocated by the IWW. Debs was probably the only person who could have saved Haywood's seat. 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, but times had changed and Debs, facing a split in the party, chose to echo Hillquit's words, accusing the IWW of representing anarchy. Debs thereafter stated that he had opposed the amendment, but that once it was adopted it should be obeyed. Debs remained friendly to Haywood and the IWW after the expulsion despite their perceived differences over IWW tactics. , in 1918, being arrested for sedition shortly thereafter 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, but it did not. In the election of 1912, many of the Socialists who had been elected to public office lost their seats.
Leadership style Debs was noted by many to be 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.
Howard Zinn opined that "Debs was what every socialist or anarchist or radical should be: fierce in his convictions, kind and compassionate in his personal relations."
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", Debs himself was not wholly comfortable with his standing as a leader. As he told an audience in Detroit in 1906:
Sedition conviction and appeal to U.S. Supreme Court and
Rose Pastor Stokes in 1918 Debs's speeches against the Wilson administration and the war earned the enmity of President
Woodrow Wilson, who later called Debs a "traitor to his country." On June 16, 1918, Debs made a speech in
Canton, Ohio, urging resistance to the military draft. He was arrested on June 30 and charged with ten counts of
sedition.
Seymour Stedman headed Debs' legal defense team. Seymour Stedman, in his opening statement, stated, "We ask you to judge Eugene V. Debs by his life, his deeds and his works. If you will do that we shall abide by your verdict." His trial defense called no witnesses, asking that Debs be allowed to address the court in his defense. That unusual request was granted, and Debs spoke for two hours. He was found guilty on September 12. At his sentencing hearing on September 14, he again addressed the court and his speech has become a classic.
Heywood Broun, a liberal journalist and not a Debs partisan, said it was "one of the most beautiful and moving passages in the English language. He was for that one afternoon touched with inspiration. If anyone told me that tongues of fire danced upon his shoulders as he spoke, I would believe it." Debs said in part: Your honor, I have stated in this court that I am opposed to the form of our present government; that I am opposed to the social system in which we live; that I believe in the change of both but by perfectly peaceable and orderly means. ... I am thinking this morning of the men in the mills and factories; I am thinking of the women who, for a paltry wage, are compelled to work out their lives; of the little children who, in this system, are robbed of their childhood, and in their early, tender years, are seized in the remorseless grasp of
Mammon, and forced into the industrial dungeons, there to feed the machines while they themselves are being starved body and soul. ... Your honor, I ask no mercy, I plead for no immunity. I realize that finally the right must prevail. I never more fully comprehended than now the great struggle between the powers of greed on the one hand and upon the other the rising hosts of freedom. I can see the dawn of a better day of humanity. The people are awakening. In due course of time they will come into their own. When the mariner, sailing over tropic seas, looks for relief from his weary watch, he turns his eyes toward the
Southern Cross, burning luridly above the tempest-vexed ocean. As the midnight approaches the Southern Cross begins to bend, and the whirling worlds change their places, and with starry finger-points the Almighty marks the passage of Time upon the dial of the universe; and though no bell may beat the glad tidings, the look-out knows that the midnight is passingthat relief and rest are close at hand. Let the people take heart and hope everywhere, for the cross is bending, midnight is passing, and joy cometh with the morning. Debs was sentenced on September 18, 1918, to ten years in prison and was also
disenfranchised for life. 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 and socialism. While Debs had carefully worded his speeches in an attempt to comply with the
Espionage Act of 1917, the Court found he had the intention and effect of obstructing the draft and military recruitment. 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's case was essentially the same as that of
Schenck v. United States, in which the court had upheld a similar conviction. Debs went to prison on April 13, 1919. accompanied his campaign. He received 914,191 votes (3.4 percent), a smaller percentage than he had won in 1912, when he received 6 percent, the highest number of votes for a Socialist Party presidential candidate in the United States. During his time in prison, Debs wrote a series of columns deeply critical of the prison system. They appeared in sanitized form in the
Bell Syndicate and were published in his only book,
Walls and Bars, with several added chapters. It was published posthumously. On December 23, 1921, President Harding
commuted Debs's sentence to time served, effective Christmas Day. He did not issue a pardon. A White House statement summarized the administration's view of Debs's case: There is no question of his guilt. ... He was by no means, however, as rabid and outspoken in his expressions as many others, and but for his prominence and the resulting far-reaching effect of his words, very probably might not have received the sentence he did. He is an old man, not strong physically. He is a man of much personal charm and impressive personality, which qualifications make him a dangerous man calculated to mislead the unthinking and affording excuse for those with criminal intent.
Last years When Debs was released from the Atlanta Penitentiary, the other prisoners sent him off with "a roar of cheers" and a crowd of fifty thousand greeted his return to Terre Haute to the accompaniment of band music. En route home, Debs was warmly received at the White House by Harding, who greeted him by saying: "Well, I've heard so damned much about you, Mr. Debs, that I am now glad to meet you personally." In 1924, Debs was nominated for the
Nobel Peace Prize by the Finnish Socialist
Karl H. Wiik on the grounds 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." The same year, he was named "national chairman" of the Socialist Party, a newly created office that allowed him to step away from the taxing work of the National Executive Committee. He spent his remaining years trying to recover his health, which was severely undermined by prison confinement. In late 1926, he was admitted to
Lindlahr Sanitarium in
Elmhurst, Illinois.:It matters not how strait the gate, How charged with punishments the scroll, I am the master of my fate I am the captain of my soul.He died there of
heart failure on October 20, 1926, at the age of 70. His body was
cremated and buried in
Highland Lawn Cemetery in Terre Haute, Indiana. == Legacy ==