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Hellraisers Journal – Sunday November 7, 1920
“Debs and the Poets” -New Book of Poems Dedicated to Our ‘Gene
From the Appeal to Reason of November 6, 1920:
Introduction by Upton Sinclair from Debs and the Poets:
INTRODUCTION
—————THE United States has an old man in prison in the Federal Penitentiary of Atlanta. The government regards this old man as a common felon, and treats him as such; shaves his head, puts a prison suit upon him, feeds him upon prison food, and locks him in a steel-barred cell fourteen consecutive hours out of each twenty-four.
But it appears that there are a great many people in the United States and other countries who do not regard this old man as a common felon; on the contrary, they regard him as a hero, a martyr, even a saint. It appears that the list of these people includes some of the greatest writers and the greatest minds of Europe and America. These persons have been moved to indignation by the treatment of the old man and they have expressed their indignation. Ruth Le Prade has had the idea of collecting their utterances. Here are poems by twenty-four poets, and letters from a score or two of other writers.
If you do not know ‘Gene Debs, you may be interested to read what such men have written about him. If you do know him and love him-everyone who knows him loves him, even his jailers-you will find this little book of use in opening the eyes of others. The compiler the book has given her services without royalty, and the publisher gives his without profit. Everything over the actual cost of printing and mailing the book will go to advertising it, as part of the campaign now being conducted by those Americans who wish their country to return to its old traditions of freedom of speech and of the press, and to abandon the evil custom of jailing men for expression of opinion.
Upton Sinclair.
[Emphasis added.]
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SOURCES & IMAGES
Quote EVD if Crime to oppose bloodshed, AtR p1, Oct 23, 1920
https://www.newspapers.com/image/612855160/
Appeal to Reason
(Girard, Kansas)
-Nov 6, 1920
https://www.newspapers.com/image/612855191
Debs and the Poets
-ed by Ruth Le Prade
-intro by Upton Sinclair
Pub by Upton Sinclair
Pasadena, Cal., 1920
http://moses.law.umn.edu/darrow/documents/Debs_and_the_Poets_Upton_Sinclair.pdf
See also:
The Butte Daily Bulletin
(Butte, Montana)
-Dec 20, 1920
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045085/1920-12-20/ed-1/seq-3/
Upton Sinclair Disappointed by Warden
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After Publishing Book of Debs’ Poems,
Informed Debs Will Not Be Allowed to Sign Them.
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Debs and the Poets
-ed by Ruth Le Prade
Pub by Upton Sinclair
Pasadena, Cal., 1920
http://moses.law.umn.edu/darrow/documents/Debs_and_the_Poets_Upton_Sinclair.pdf
https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/001155537
https://archive.org/details/debspoets00lepriala/page/n5/mode/2up
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Democracy’s Prisoner
Eugene V. Debs, the Great War, and the Right to Dissent
-by Ernest Freeberg
Harvard U Press, 2008
(search: amnesty)
https://books.google.com/books?id=3w30yADRLosC
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The Ghost of Tom Joad – Bruce Springsteen & Tom Morello