Eugene V. Debs, American Socialist

D. Hanson, History 122, Virginia Western Community College

	A small town boy from Indiana, Eugene V. Debs led the Socialist Party of America and ran for the presidency with their support in 1904, 1908, 1912, and 1920.
Eugene V. Debs was born on November 5, 1855 in Terre Haute, Indiana. He was one of six surviving children and the first born son. His parents owned a small grocery store that was in one of the front of their two-story home.  He left home to work on the railroads when he was fourteen years old.  Railroad work was hard and dangerous, and five years later, at the urging of his parents who were worried about his safety, he returned to Terre Haute in 1874 and started working as a warehouse worker for a friend of his father.  Debs founded a local chapter of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and was elected assistant editor of the organization's magazine. In 1880, he was chosen to serve the position of Grand Secretary for the brotherhood.   Debs also served two terms as Terre Haute City Clerk and was elected to the Indiana General Assembly in 1884. After his term in the state legislature Debs decided to devote his full time to union affairs.   During the 1880's, Debs reputation grew with his successful organizing of the Brotherhood of Railroad Brakemen, the Switchmen's Mutual Aid Association, the Brotherhood of Railway Carmen and the Order of Railway Telegraphers. Also, helped organize several carpenters' and printers' locals and lent aid to the organization of labor in the Indiana miners' locals.  Debs strove to show a mutually productive link between labor and capitol.  He shunned union radicalism as alienating the public from the labor cause, but towards the end of the 1880's his philosophy and tactics on strikes began to slowly change.  This was due part to his growing interest in socialism and several contemporary books, notably Looking Backward, by Edward Bellamy.  Debs began to see strikes as a weapon of the oppressed that cold unite men capable of resisting injustice.    Debs saw the way management used dissention among union ranks to divide and weaken organized labor.  He tried to unite the brotherhoods into one collective bargaining unit.  In 1888 Debs was elected chairman of the committee to unite the brotherhoods. After a faltering start, his dream was realized with the formation of the American Railway Union (ARU) in 1893 with Debs as the President.    The Pullman Strike   In 1894, workers from the Pullman Company appealed to the American Railway Union to help them obtain better wages and working conditions.  The Pullman Company refused to negotiate and resolved to break the union.  (The Pullman Company was notorious for oppressing its employees.  Many lived in the Pullman company town, were paid in Pullman script, and purchased goods from company stores.)  Debs felt that a strike would be risky, but the ARU, which had grown to over 150,000 members, elected to go ahead anyways and began to refuse to work with any Pullman cars.  The boycott of all railroads using Pullman cars soon became the largest national strike in United States history, paralyzing the nation’s rail system.  Claiming that the union was interfering with the mail system (a federal offense), President Grover Cleveland ordered Attorney-General Olney to obtain a federal court injunction against the strike.  Over the objections of Illinois Governor John Altgeld, who hoped to settle the strike peacefully, the National Guard was sent in to break the strike  In the end, thirteen of the strikers were killed and another fifty-seven were wounded. The strike also caused nearly $100 million in property damage.  Debs and other officers of the ARU were arrested and sent to McHenry County Jail in Woodstock, Illinois.   During his six-month imprisonment (May to November 1895), Debs spent much of his time reading books, including the works of Karl Marx.  By the time of his release on November 22, 1895, Debs had become a hero of the socialist labor movement.  He spoke to a wildly cheering crowd of 100,000 supporters, urging the use of the ballot to rescue the country from the capitalist plutocracy.   Debs reached out to all working people and sought to unite them across trade, geographical and racial divides.  For example, Debs denounced racism throughout his years as a socialist, refusing to address segregated audiences in the South.  In 1903 he wrote, “The Socialist party is the party of the working class, regardless of color—the whole working class of the whole world.”  In 1905, Debs and delegates from numerous radical labor organizations helped found the Industrial Workers of the World. Through Debs' continued efforts with the Socialist Party of America, the movement had grown to the point that it held over 1000 elective offices in thirty-three states and 160 cities.    Debs was a charismatic speaker who sometimes called on the vocabulary of Christianity and much of the oratorical style of evangelism [see speech].  Debs 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.”    Debs ran as the Socialist candidate for President of the United States in 1904, 1908, 1912, and 1920.  He received over 900,000 votes in both 1912 and 1920.  The 1912 presidential election was a contest between incumbent Republican William Taft, Democrat Woodrow Wilson, Progressive Theodore Roosevelt, and Socialist Debs.  The four-way race opened the door for Wilson, who won with just 41% of the popular vote.  That year, Debs changed his goals and ran for Congress from his home district in Indiana. This campaign had an emphasis on keeping America neutral in the First World War.  (Wilson had also run on a promise to keep America out of the war.)   Antiwar Imprisonment   Debs' opposition to the war led to conflict with the federal government once again.  Wilson took the nation to war in April 1917 and promptly ordered a crack-down on the antiwar movement.  The Committee on Public Information, headed by George Creel, and the Justice Department, led by Attorney-General Mitchell Palmer, joined forces to target opponents of the war as treasonous enemies.  With this suspicious mindset Congress passed the Sedition and Espionage Acts.  On June 16, 1918, Debs gave a speech at Canton, Ohio protesting the the war. He was arrested for violating 1918 Sedition Act, which forbade any individuals from criticizing the government during a time of war.  He was convicted and sentenced to ten years in prison.  His case was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court on the basis of the First Amendment.  Debs’ conviction was upheld and he was sent to the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary on April 13, 1919 in Atlanta, Georgia. While in prison, Debs ran for the presidency in the election of 1920. He managed to amass 919,000 votes (about 3.5% of the total), getting the largest number of votes for a socialist candidate in United States history. Despite his failure to attain the presidency, he continued to write articles for newspapers demanding social justice. On December 25, 1921, Debs was ordered to be released from prison by President Warren Harding.  Debs remained active in the socialist movement despite failing health.  He was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1924 for his antiwar efforts.  Debs died on October 20, 1926.

 

[History 122]