- Title:
- Industrial unionism; an address delivered at Grand Central Palace, New York, Sunday, Dec. 10, 1905
- Author:
- Debs, Eugene V. (Eugene Victor), 1855-1926.
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DEBS, EUGENE VICTOR: 1855-1926.
"Eugene Victor Debs (Nov. 5, 1855-Oct. 20, 1926), Socialist advocate, was one of the ten children of Jean Daniel and Marguerite Marie (Bettrich) Debs and was born in Terre Haute, Ind. The parents, who were married in New York City on Sept. 13, 1849, were both natives of Colmar, Alsace, and had come to America in that year. After some wandering they settled in Terre Haute in the fall of 1854. Young Debs attended school until the middle of his fifteenth year, when he went to work in the shops of the Terre Haute and Indianapolis Railway, later becoming a locomotive fireman. Four years later (1874) he quit his fireman's job and took a clerkship in a wholesale grocery house. In February of the following year he participated in the organization in his city of a lodge of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen, of which he was made secretary, and in 1878 he was appointed associate editor of the FIREMEN'S MAGAZINE. He continued with the grocery firm (doing his work for the labor-union at night) until September 1879, when he was elected city clerk. In 1880 he was appointed (and later in the year elected) national secretary and treasurer of the Brotherhood and editor of its magazine. By working incredibly long hours he contrived to fill all three offices until the close of his term as city clerk in 1883, thereafter for ten years giving most of his time to his union. On June 9, 1885, he was married to Katherine Metzel of Pittsburgh, Pa., and in the fall of the year was elected to the lower house of the Indiana Legislature. In 1892 he resigned his offices in the union, but against his protest was unanimously re-elected.
"From an early day he was an opponent of the organization of labor by crafts and an advocate of organization by industries. In June 1893, he took part in the formation of a labor society of the 'industrial' type, the American Railway Union, of which he was chosen president. In several minor contests with employers the new union won considerable prestige, and it came into nationwide prominence through the strike for higher wages (Apr. 13, 1894) against the Great Northern Railroad. Eighteen days later the employees returned to work with most of their demands granted. In June the employees of the Pullman Company, at South Chicago, went out, and an appeal was made to the A.R.U. to aid them by a sympathetic strike. Debs opposed the move as inexpedient, but at a hastily called convention of the union a boycott on the moving of Pullman cars was ordered, and he at once took energetic charge of the campaign. Against the protest of Governor Altgeld, President Cleveland ordered federal troops to Chicago; Judges Grosscup and Woods issued a sweeping injunction against the strikers, and on July 10 a federal grand jury, charging conspiracy to obstruct the mails, indicted Debs and three others, who were immediately arrested, and were again arrested on July 17 for contempt of court in violating the injunction. The trial before Judge Grosscup, Feb. 6-12, 1895, resulted in a discontinuance because of the illness of a juror, but on the charge of contempt Debs and six others were sentenced by Judge Woods to six months in the McHenry County jail at Woodstock. Here Debs spent much of his time in reading, with the result that he avowed himself a convert to Socialism. Released on Nov. 22, he returned to Chicago, where he was accorded one of the most remarkable demonstrations in the history of the city, and thence to Terre Haute.
"In 1896 he campaigned for Bryan, but, in June, 1897, brought about the transformation of what was left of the A.R.U. into the Social Democratic Party of America. Three years later a tentative combination was made with the faction of the Socialist Labor party that had seceded in 1899, and Debs, as the fusion candidate for president, polled 96,116 votes. In the following year the two wings were formally united under the name of the Socialist Party of America, and in 1904 Debs was again nominated for president, polling 402,321 votes. About this time he became associate editor of the Socialist weekly, the APPEAL TO REASON, of Girard, Kan., and for five or six years gave his time to editorial work and to lecture tours in behalf of the APPEAL and the Socialist party. At Chicago, June 27-July 8, 1905, he aided in founding the Industrial Workers of the World, but after a time became dissatisfied with the organization and withdrew, though frequently thereafter defending its members from charges he deemed unjust. In 1908 he was again the Socialist candidate, and in a train known as the 'Red Special' made a speaking canvass of the entire country; but though he drew large crowds, his vote (420,973) showed only a slight gain over that of 1904. In 1912 he was nominated for the fourth time, and he again made a general canvass. The year was one of an unparalleled social ferment; and though the liberal platform of Wilson and the specifically progressive platform of Roosevelt were expected to diminish the Socialist vote, it increased to 901,062, or nearly six per cent of the total. In 1916 Debs declined to be a candidate.
"The manifesto of the St. Louis convention of the party (April, 1917), denouncing the war and counseling party members to oppose it by all means in their power, was warmly approved by Debs, though later in the year he favored some modification of the language of the party's policy. But in the following year, stirred no doubt by resentment over the many convictions for sedition, he took more extreme ground. At the Socialist state convention in Canton, Ohio, June 16, 1918, he delivered a speech in which he bitterly assailed the administration for its prosecution of persons charged with sedition. Four days later, at Cleveland, he was indicted by a federal grand jury for a violation of the Espionage Act, and on Sept. 14, after a four-days trial, was sentenced to ten years' imprisonment on each of two counts, the sentences to run concurrently …
"He returned to his home, but the following year spent several months in the Lindlahr Sanitarium, at Elmhurst, near Chicago… In 1924 the Socialist party, with Debs's approval, joined the LaFollette forces. In the following year it established in Chicago a national weekly organ, the AMERICAN APPEAL, of which Debs was made editor. His health declining, early in 1926 he went to Bermuda. In April he returned home, but in September again became an inmate of the sanitarium at Lindlahr, where a month later he died …"
Condensed from W. J. G., Dictionary of American Biography, Vol. V.
- The American Movement. Terre Haute,
Ind., 1904.
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- The American Movement. Terre Haute,
Ind., 1904.
- Publication Year:
- 1905
- Source:
- New York: New York Labor News Co, 1905.
- Bookmark:
- https://purl.dlib.indiana.edu/iudl/inauthors/VAC0876
* * * * *
INDUSTRIAL UNIONISM
* * * * *
AN ADDRESSDelivered at Grand Central Palace,
New York.
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 10, 1905BY
Eugene V. Debs
Stenographically Reported by the Waldo Typewriting Co., New York City PRICE FIVE CENTS
* * * * *
New York Labor News Co. 28 City Hall Place, New York