Debs, Eugene Victor

DEBS, EUGENE VICTOR

Eugene V. Debs (1855–1926) was a pioneer labor organizer and five-time Socialist Party candidate for the U.S. Presidency. Debs advocated abolition of child labor, the right of women to vote, unemployment compensation, and a graduated income tax. His proposals were radical in the early twentieth century, but later became standard public policy for both major political parties.

Born on November 5, 1855 in Terre Haute, Indiana, Debs left home at age 14 to work in a railroad shop, where he was paid 50 cents a day for scraping grease and paint from locomotives. He later became a locomotive fireman, and in 1875 Debs helped organize a local lodge of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen. An active union member, he became editor of the association's Firemen's Magazine in 1878 and was elected national secretary and treasurer of the union in 1880. He also served as city clerk of Terre Haute from 1879 to 1883 and as a member of the Indiana legislature in 1885.

Early in his career Debs gained recognition as an effective labor organizer. In addition to organizing numerous locals for the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen he was an organizer for other railroad-related labor organizations. They included the Brotherhood of Railroad Brakemen, the Switchmen's Mutual Aid Association, the Brotherhood of Railway Carmen, and the Order of Railway Telegraphers. Since these organizations failed to join together in their dealings with management, Debs found a union that would include all railroad workers, the American Railway Union in 1893. He later became its president. Against Debs's advice the new union participated in the Pullman Strike of 1894 in sympathy with Pullman Palace Car workers. One of the most famous strikes in U.S. labor history, it nearly paralyzed commerce in the western half of the nation before it was finally halted by a federal injunction. For his involvement in the strike, Debs was jailed for six months in 1895 in Woodstock, Illinois.

Debs spent much of his prison time reading and was deeply impressed by the works of Karl Marx. He became convinced that no single union could protect the rights of workers. In the presidential election of 1896 he campaigned for the Democratic-Populist candidate William Jennings Bryan, but a year later Debs announced his conversion to socialism.

For the next 30 years Debs was the leading spokesmen for democratic socialism to millions of U.S. citizens. He helped form the Socialist Party of America in 1898 and was its presidential candidate in 1900, 1904, 1908, 1912, and 1920. Debs attracted huge crowds during his energetic campaigns throughout the country; he was an exceptionally effective public speaker, winning wide support through his personal warmth, integrity, and sincerity. His speeches also raised much-needed funds for the Socialist Party. Though he failed to win a large percentage of the vote on election day, the number of people who voted for him was substantial, ranging from 96,000 in 1900 to 915,000 in 1920.

Debs's writings and speeches spread his ideas far beyond the confines of a relatively minor political party. In 1912 he ran for president against future president Woodrow Wilson (1913–1921), former president Theodore Roosevelt (1901–1909), and incumbent president William Howard Taft (1909–1913). At the time Debs found that both Wilson and Roosevelt were advocating many of the ideas he had introduced in earlier campaigns. In a spontaneous speech after he won the Socialist Party nomination in 1912 he eloquently expressed his underlying philosophy: "When we are in partnership and have stopped clutching each other's throats, when we have stopped enslaving each other, we will stand together, hands clasped, and be friends. We will be brothers and sisters, and we will begin the march to the grandest civilization the human race has ever known." Although he again lost the election, Debs considered the campaign a moral victory.

Instead of running for the presidency in 1916, Debs waged an unsuccessful campaign for Congress. In 1920 he ran for president as a Socialist candidate for the last time. He campaigned from a prison cell where he was serving a 10-year sentence for sedition under the 1917 Espionage Act. His case became a rallying point for those who believed he should be freed as a matter of freedom of speech. He was released from prison by order of President Warren Harding (1921–1923) in 1921, but he never regained his citizenship, which was taken away from him at the time of his sedition conviction. It was restored in 1976, forty years after his death.

Following his release from prison, Debs spent the remaining five years trying to improve his impaired health and attempting to reconstitute the Socialist Party. Yet, in spite of the large and enthusiastic crowds that flocked to hear him, the 1920s was an era of capitalist domination and the Socialist Party was in decline. Although many of his followers had joined the Communist Party, Debs refused to do so because he opposed the Soviet system and its suppression of free speech.

In his final years he concentrated on prison reform, since he had firsthand experience about prison conditions. He also became interested in the trial of Sacco and Vanzetti, two Italian anarchists accused of murder. This case involved heightened public attention towards labor and political radicals. In the summer of 1926 Debs returned to a sanitarium where he had spent extended periods in 1922 and 1924. He died in Elmhurst, Illinois, on October 20, 1926.

See also: William Jennings Bryan, Labor Movement, Pullman Palace Coach Company, Pullman Strike, Railroad Industry, Socialism, William Howard Taft, Woodrow Wilson

FURTHER READING

Constantine, J. Robert, ed. Letters of Eugene V. Debs. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1990.

Constantine, J. Robert. "Eugene V. Debs: An American Paradox." Monthly Labor Review, August, 1991.

Debs, Eugene V. Writings and Speeches of Eugene V. Debs. New York: Hermitage Press, 1948.

Ginger, Ray. The Bending Cross: A Biography of Eugene V. Debs. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1949.

Salvatore, Nick. Eugene V. Debs: Citizen and Socialist. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1982.

debs advocated abolition of child labor, the right of women to vote, unemployment compensation, and a graduated income tax. his proposals were radical in the early twentieth century, but later became standard public policy for both major political parties.