If they hang Moyer and Haywood,
they’ve got to hang me.
-Eugene Victor Debs
Hellraisers Journal, Sunday January 20, 1907
Girard, Kansas – Good News From the Appeal to Reason!
After the first forms of the edition for this issue were on the press the following letter came by special delivery from Comrade Eugene V. Debs. Every APPEAL reader will throw up his hat, yell for Debs, and go in for the greatest fight ever waged by the working class on its own behalf.
The toilers of the world have heretofore fought all the battles of the ages and have handed the spoils over to the masters.
Today the working class stands united and will make the last glorious fight in its own behalf!
Listen to Debs’ burning words and make up your mind to enlist under his banner:
I am getting over my rheumatic attack and I leave for Cincinnati Monday, where a specialist will treat my throat. I expect to be out in a few days. As soon as I get through with this and am in physical shape I will come to Girard and stay until the kidnaping edition is made up, and take a hand at helping you on the APPEAL. I am full of fire and want to pour it into the APPEAL. I would like a chance to edit the APPEAL for a couple of weeks, or help you edit it, or help in any way to do the thing that this supreme hour tells me must be done.
Now is the time to strike!
A few weeks more and it will be too late. I have a rush of ideas and want to fuse them with yours and I believe that in combination we can raise hell with the capitalist plans, so far as Moyer, Haywood and Pettibone are concerned. I believe furthermore, that we can do work in three or four weeks’ time that will give you a hundred thousand more subscribers and after the trial begins send it up to half a million and climbing towards a million. I say I believe this can be done and I would like a chance to try it. Should the trial be announced while I am in Girard I could go from there straight to Caldwell, for I propose to be in the center of the fight.
To do the kind of work I have in mind, and to make it blaze and flash, awaken and inspire, I would have to be on the ground. I feel burning within me the fire of righteous indignation, lightened by the supreme court decision and fanned into crackling flame by Roosevelt’s infamous action and attitude as set forth in Gooding’s message to the Idaho legislature. Besides the regular articles I have in mind, there is a variety of short stuff that can be used to great advantage, and included in the plan, the central part of it, in fact, is the attempt to raise the APPEAL circulation to the highest possible pinnacle. This will be the sure way, and, in fact, the only way to save our Idaho comrades. If we cannot arouse the people sufficiently to threaten revolt on a large scale they are gone. Nothing else can save them. The case in outline is already fully developed and its tragic culmination inevitable. To prevent the catastrophe we have got to reach out in all directions and into every state, township and county and take hold of and shake the people into action. If we let this chance go by unimproved the good Lord help us, for we will need it. The thing must be a tremendous victory or a tragic failure. If we grasp this opportunity in all its offers and use our brains in unison and our energies in harmony, to their full capacity, steadfastly following the dictates of our consciences and fearlessly faithful to our own souls, we shall achieve a glorious victory for our fellow-workers, ourselves and humanity. The great clock is striking an epoch! Yours always,
EUGENE V. DEBS.
[Photograph of Eugene Debs added.]
SOURCE
Appeal to Reason
(Girard, Kansas)
-Jan 19, 1907
(Also source for images of banner, headline,
and order blank-modified to fit format.)
https://www.newspapers.com/image/67586793/
IMAGE
Eugene Debs, Wilshire’s Magazine, Nov 1905
pdf! https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/parties/spusa/1905/1100-debs-winningaworld.pdf
See also:
Hellraisers Journal: Eugene V. Debs for the Appeal to Reason: “AROUSE, YE SLAVE!”
http://caucus99percent.com/content/hellraisers-journal-eugene-v-debs-appeal-reason-arouse-ye-slave
Hellraisers Journal: U. S. Supreme Court Rules Against Moyer, Haywood, and Pettibone in Habeas Corpus Cases
https://weneverforget.org/hellraisers-journal-u-s-supreme-court-rules-against-moyer-haywood-and-pettibone-in-habeas-corpus-cases/
For Governor Gooding’s messages to Idaho state legislature where he claims the support of President Roosevelt on behalf of the prosecution, see “Would Bar The Polygamists…Views on the Moyer Case…” And scroll down to “Case of Miners” and “Roosevelt Interested.” This reveals only the tip of the iceberg of Roosevelt’s prejudice against the Western Federation of Miners. Stay tuned to Hellraisers for further developments.
–The Salt Lake Herald of Jan 9, 1907:
http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn85058130/1907-01-09/ed-1/seq-5/
For Gene Debs – Anne Feeney
Bonus song especially for this day in US History-January 20, 2017