The issue is Socialism versus Capitalism.
I am for Socialism because I am for humanity.
We have been cursed with the reign of gold long enough.
-Eugene Victor Debs
Hellraisers Journal, Monday March 21, 1898
Eugene V. Debs on Tour-Found in Wilmington, Baltimore, & Washington
From the Wilmington Every Evening of March 19, 1898:
Debs on Social Democracy.
Eugene V Debs, head of the Social Democracy movement, and C. Wesley Callahan, the secretary, explained the movement to a fair-sized audience in Turn Hall last evening. B. Lundy Kent presided. The aim of socialism is industrial equality, to be obtained by the co-operative commonwealth. The people, as explained by Debs are to seize the instruments and all means of production. The State is to run business as well as government. The local Social Democracy is to meet on Sunday afternoons at 610½ Market street.
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[Ad for The Social Democrat is from the Duluth Labor World]
From the Baltimore Sun of March 19, 1898:
From the Washington Times of March 20, 1898:
Eugene V. Debs at Odd Fellows’ Hall.
Every person who is interested in the great reforms of the day as well as those who through any other motive are invited to attend a meeting at Odd Fellows’ Hall, on Seventh Street northwest, between D and E Streets, on Monday evening, March 21, at 7:30 p. m. Eugene V. Debs, president of the “Social Democracy of America,” and Sylvester Keliher, secretary and treasurer of the same body, will address the meeting. Mr. Debs and his associate are finishing a speaking tour through the Atlantic States, in which they have everywhere addressed large audiences and been received with marked interest and courtesy.
Mr. Debs is an orator of great power, an original thinker, with a brave and engrossing way of putting things. Mr. Keliher is an able and forceful speaker. Both men know their theme, and have in their own lives proven their fidelity to principle and the cause they maintain. They will explain the objects and purposes of the social Democracy, and should be heard by all progressive thinkers regardless of party.
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[Photograph added.]
SOURCES
Every Evening
( Wilmington, Delaware)
-Mar 19, 1898
https://www.newspapers.com/image/159892900
The Sun
(Baltimore, Maryland)
-Mar 19, 1898
https://www.newspapers.com/image/371679358/
The Times
(Washington, District of Columbia)
-Mar 20, 1898
https://www.newspapers.com/image/80795773/
IMAGE
AD, The Social Democrat of SDA, LW p5, Mar 19, 1898
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn78000395/1898-03-19/ed-1/seq-5/
EVD, New Time Magazine, Feb 1898
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=ixhGAQAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&pg=GBS.PA79
See also:
Social Democracy of America
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Democracy_of_America
SPA, Party History (1897-1946)
-The Social Democracy of America
–founded in Chicago, June 15-17, 1897
http://www.marxisthistory.org/subject/usa/eam/socialistparty.html
The Social Democrat, Volume 2
-for Jan-Dec 1898
Twentieth Century Press, 1898
https://books.google.com/books?id=0isrAAAAYAAJ
-March 1898
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=0isrAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&output=reader&hl=en&pg=GBS.PA66
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=0isrAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&output=reader&hl=en&pg=GBS.PA67
L’Internationale
Lyrics by Eugène Pottier – Paris, June 1871
Music by Pierre Degeyter, 1888
https://www.marxists.org/history/ussr/sounds/lyrics/international.htm