Since the earth belongs to the capitalist class,
why should a grand jury concern itself
in such a small matter as
helping itself to the state of Idaho?
-Eugene Victor Debs
Hellraisers Journal, Tuesday May 14, 1907
From the Appeal to Reason: Eugene V. Debs Responds to The Statesman
On April 20th (see below), The Idaho Daily Statesman published an editorial in which it referred to the Appeal as the “Appeal to Treason” and insisted that the Socialists of the Appeal were actually “anarchists…wolves of society.” In the the May 11th edition of the Appeal, Comrade Debs asks, “Who Are the Wolves?” We will publish the entire response in two parts, beginning today with Part I:
WHO ARE THE WOLVES?
—–
An Inquiry Into Some of the Charges Made Against
the Appeal to Reason by the
Criminal Idaho Statesman.
—–BY EUGENE V. DEBS.
—–
UT few people are so blind or indifferent as to be oblivious of the mighty struggle now in progress in the existing social and economic order. It is true that only the few who have studied historic and social evolution have any proper understanding of the forces underlying society, or any clear perception of the trend of its development, but the fact that we are living in an era of industrial transformation and that economic conditions are rapidly changing is pretty generally understood by the whole people.
Now the system under which we live, like the one preceding it, and from which it sprang, has its historic limitations and when its mission is accomplished it will be relegated to the past, but this will happen only after the system that is to succeed it has evolved and taken its place in the orderly march of events and the unceasing progress of civilization.
Capitalist society, corner-stoned in wage slavery, will no more last forever than did the feudal system based upon serf-labor. It will serve its historic time and purpose and that will be the end of it. Another and better system will take its place, out of which will rise a higher civilization.
But the dominant class in every system want that system to last forever. They are on top and want to remain there. That is natural enough.
Revolutionary Struggle.
The tories who owned the colonies under British rule wanted no change. They were satisfied. Living on the fat of the land by absorbing in arrogant idleness what others produced in toil and self-denial, the story element was in clover and of course wanted to remain there. Its organs violently denounced as traitors those who ventured to suggest a change of program. These miscreants included Paine, Franklin, Adams, Hancock, Washington, Jefferson and a number of other “undesirable citizens,” who have since become quite respectable. The tory has gone the way of flesh and is remembered only as an abomination.
Chattel Slavery.
Later on the southern plantation owners developed a powerful aristocracy on a foundation of chattel slavery. They wanted no change and scouted the idea that there would ever be any. They were satisfied. Why shouldn’t they be? The exploiting element at the top of the social fabric, drawing its substance from the lower strata, has always wanted to be let alone, and that is as true today as ever before.
New Crop of Traitors.
So the cotton kings grew very angry when anyone even hinted at a change. But the great forces beneath them were at work, as they are today. Again the agitation, inseparable from social development, asserted it self, and again the organs of the slave power thundered their anathema. A new crop of traitors had come to the front as is always the case when they are needed. This time the list of “undesirables” included William Lloyd Garrison, Elijah Lovejoy, Gerrit Smith, Wendell Phillips, John Brown, Charles Sumner, Horace Greeley, Abraham Lincoln and a host of others, who, in the eyes of the ruling dynasty, were as tough a lot of anarchists and terrorists as ever cut a throat or scuttled a ship.
The plantation aristocracy is gone and forgotten and the traitors and anarchists have taken their places in history. So it has been in the past, and so it will be in the future. The exploiting element of a decaying society sees only traitors and degenerates in the pioneers of the advancing order that is to supplant it. All its organs and functionaries are on the alert for signs of the dread intruder.
Hirelings and “Anarchy.”
A vast brood of hirelings and mercenaries are it watchdogs. Their business is to sniff the air for “traitors” and “anarchists” and set up a furious barking when they scent such mortal enemies of the ruling class. Even the fleas on the dogs cry out “anarchy.” They want no change.
The word anarchy, so glibly used by petty hirelings of capitalism who have no more conception of its meaning than gophers, has been so sadly overworked that it is limp from exhaustion and on the verge of collapse. Anarchy has been regarded as a species of mental smallpox, infectious and fatal in every case.
Every man the trusts cannot corrupt or browbeat, or otherwise control is an “anarchist.” It is the old, old cry in a different form. The cry of “anarchy” and “mad dog” have much the same effect, especially in an ignorant community. Brand a man, or set of men, with “anarchy” and they are at your mercy. You have but to say the word and the mob is ready to hang or burn them.
It is in that cunning way the ruling element contrives to poison the minds of the people against those who seek the people’s good. The word “anarchy” is the red flag they use to infuriate the mob for its fiendish work when they want the pioneers of the advancing order put to the stake.
The Idaho Statesman.
This brief summary of history will account for an editorial in the Idaho Statesman of April 20, in which the Appeal to Reason is called the “Appeal to Treason,” and those it represents are denounced as “traitors” and “anarchists.” It is the same cry that has been heard along the track of all the centuries. We understand it perfectly, for we have studied history and know the habits of the ruling element with reference to the “lower classes” in ancient and medieval as well as modern times. The same spirit and purpose run through all history. The Idaho Statesman, as one of the organs of the present ruling class and of the prevailing capitalist system, true to its nature and obedient to its function, barks furiously when the exploiting interests of its masters are menaced. The “anarchists’ and “traitors are hovering near. They are the “wolves of society,” a broad hint that they ought to be exterminated.
Fair Hearing Wanted.
Now the Appeal to Reason wants the people of Idaho to give it a fair hearing in what it has to say in answerer to the Idaho Statesman’s false and malicious charges. It asks no favors; all it wants is decent treatment. The Appeal is certain it will get this, sooner or later, for it knows the people and knows that while they may be deceived long and grievously, the scales will finally fall from their eyes and when duplicity is revealed to them they will make short work of the enemy.
To the Statesman’s charge of “treason,” the Appeal answers by asking treason to whom? To the Standard Oil company, the Mine and Smelter trust, the Lumber trust and other corrupt combines that have debauched Idaho, Colorado and Montana and are throttling the republic? Gladly does the Appeal plead guilty to that charge. If uncompromising hostility to these brigands in the interest of their victims is treason the Appeal has no apology to offer and no defense to make.
It is sufficient to say that treason to trusts is loyalty to the people.
Trusts and Treason.
The Statesman is not guilty of treason to the land, lumber and mining conspiracies that have held up the state, a few of which are now under grand jury investigation; nor to the Standard Oil trust, nor the Railroad trust, nor any of the other predatory aggregations that rob the people day and night, legally and otherwise, debauch their politics, buy their legislatures, corrupt their courts, hire swarms of disreputable mercenaries to serve as their pickets, lookouts and sandbaggers, and brand with “anarchy” and kidnap and hang men who are too decent to accept their soul-polluting and body-destroying bribes.
The difference between the Appeal to Reason and the Idaho Statesman is that the Appeal is loyal to the people and traitorous to the trusts, while the Statesman is loyal to the trusts and a traitor to the people.
Let us now put the good people of Idaho wise in reference to the Statesman’s furious denunciation of the Appel and the people it speaks for. The Statesman has had to shift its ground a trifle. Until the grand jury got on its trail it was hot after Moyer, Haywood and Pettibone, fairly thirsting for their blood, like a bloodhound in pursuit of the fugitive slaves of his master.
Struck by Lightning.
There was a sudden halt. Something happened. The grand jury had made a strange mistake. The Statesman’s friends were indicted. Grand juries are supposed to indict only poor and small offenders. The publisher of the Statesman suddenly left town. Later he was reported in Washington. So busy was the Statesman with the indictments returned and threatened that Moyer, Haywood and Pettibone were overlooked for several whole days. From hanging these workingmen, the Statesman had to turn its attention to keeping itself out of penitentiary. Some prompt and extraordinary wire-pulling had to be done. The big interests the Statesman serves were all invoked. The “representative” men had to come to the front. Senator Borah, the “honored man,” as the Statesman calls him, hastened to Washington. The “big stick” must head off the grand jury. These were honorable men, “all honorable men;” not an “undesirable citizen” in the list.
Since the earth belongs to the capitalist class, why should a grand jury concern itself in such a small matter as helping itself to the state of Idaho? It is an outrage. No wonder the Statesman is in a spasm about it. Never before was it questioned that Idaho was the private preserves of these “honorable gentlemen.”
And yet, strange perversity of this grand jury, it found that the “Law and Order” platform upon which these “honorable men” made their appeal to the people, the platform from which Taft, Gooding and the Statesman denounced “anarchists” and “traitors,” was made out of timber stolen from the people of Idaho.
This is an awful joke on the people of Idaho, though it is not at all probable that they will regard it in that light-when the light dawns on them.
In the meantime the “law and order” they voted for will be delivered in regular installments, according to contract, and the legislature will see that the bills, its own included, are all paid-by the people.
The grand jury phase of the case, for obvious reasons, will be but scantily treated at this time. These reasons relate wholly to the grand jury and its unfinished work and are not due to lack of material. The subject will be fully treated in its regular order. For the present it is sufficient to say that the Appeal has for some months been making an investigation of its own in Idaho and it has been very thorough with reference to certain “honorable men,” including the Statesman, their doings, and their interests; their pursuits and their methods, and before this contest is concluded these “honorable men” will realize that it will take something more than the “stop thief ” cry of “anarchy” and “treason” to turn the Appeal from its course.
To a Finish.
The Appeal is in this fight to a finish and the Statesman can have it along any lines and just as hot as it may choose.
The Statesman is the organ of the ‘System” that corrupts everything it touches and crushes what it cannot corrupt; it is the mouthpiece of the “interests” that are behind the land frauds and timber thefts; behind the corruption of courts, the buying of legislatures and United States senatorships and the wholesale use of slush funds at every election from a ward primary to the presidency of the nation.
Against this whole array, from Rockefeller, the plutocrat, to Jim Red, the republican heeler, the Appeal to Reason has declared war, eternal and uncompromising. It asks no favors and grants none. It is not a war against these enemies of free institutions merely, but against the system that produces conditions in which a relative few come in possession of the earth and fatten in the ignorance and misery of the people.
The Statesman represents the exploiting interests of the trusts and corporations; the Appeal represents the exploited people. Between these there will be relentless war until the parasites upon the nation’s industry, the corruptors of its political institutions and the debauchers of its social life have been forever driven from power.
[To be continued.]
From The Idaho Daily Statesman of April 20, 1907:
SERVING THEIR PURPOSE.
—–Elsewhere in this issue The Statesman republishes a story from the Appeal to Treason relative to the work of the United States grand jury here. It is republished for the purpose of advising the public how nicely the activities of certain federal officials here are serving the purposes of the defense in the Moyer-Haywood-Pettibone cases.
It is a deplorable condition, since the arrest of these men charged with the awful murder of our former governor, the anarchist press in all parts of the country has been diligent in attacking those connected with the prosecution, seizing upon any circumstances for their purposes and inventing stories of the most outrageous character. Now everything connected with the timber cases is to be magnified and falsified for the purpose of the anarchists, being used to blacken the names of men connected with the prosecution and such others as may be objectionable to these wolves of society. The Appeal to Treason, loaded with the most villainous stuff that the human mind can conceive, is being circulated widely for this purpose, and every effort will be made to prejudice the minds of people in this county in the hope that a fair-minded jury cannot be secured….
[Emphasis added.]
SOURCES
Appeal to Reason
(Girard, Kansas)
-May 11, 1907
(Also source for drawing by Ryan Walker.)
https://www.newspapers.com/image/67586863/
The Idaho Daily Statesman
(Boise, Idaho)
-Arp 20, 1907, page 10
https://www.genealogybank.com/
See also:
For a brief description of Borah and Timber Fraud:
http://moses.law.umn.edu/darrow/photo.php?pid=467