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Hellraisers Journal, Monday September 16, 1918
Cleveland, Ohio – Eugene Debs Address the Court, Part II
On September 12th, Comrade Debs was convicted under the Espionage law on charges based upon his Anti-War Speech delivered at Canton, Ohio, on June 16th. On Saturday September 14th, Debs appeared at Federal Court in Cleveland, Ohio, in order to receive the sentence of Judge Westenhaver. The motion for a new trial was denied and Debs was asked if he had anything to say before sentence was pronounced. Comrade Debs faced the Judge and spoke:
STATEMENT TO THE COURT, PART II
I believe, Your Honor, in common with all Socialists, that this nation ought to own and control its own industries. I believe, as all Socialists do, that all things that are jointly needed and used ought to be jointly owned—that industry, the basis of life, instead of being the private property of the few and operated for their enrichment, ought to be the common property of all, democratically administered in the interest of all.
John D. Rockefeller has today an income of sixty million dollars a year, five million dollars a month, two hundred thousand dollars a day. He does not produce a penny of it. I make no attack upon Mr. Rockefeller personally. I do not in the least dislike him. If he were in need, and it were in my power to serve him, I should serve him as gladly as I would any other human being. I have no quarrel with Mr. Rockefeller personally, nor with any other capitalist. I am simply opposing a social order in which it is possible for one man who does absolutely nothing that is useful, to amass a fortune of hundreds of millions of dollars, while millions of men and women who work all of the days of their lives secure barely enough for existence.
This order of things cannot always endure. I have registered my protest against it. I recognize the feebleness of my effort, but, fortunately, I am not alone. There are multiplied thousands of others who, like myself, have come to realize that before we may truly enjoy the blessings of civilized life, we must reorganize society upon a mutual and cooperative basis; and to this end we have organized a great economic and political movement that spreads over the face of all the earth.
There are today upwards of sixty millions of Socialists, loyal, devoted adherents to this cause, regardless of nationality, race, creed, color, or sex. They are all making common cause. They are spreading the propaganda of the new social order. They are waiting, watching, and working through all the hours of the day and night. They are still in the minority. But they have learned how to be patient and to bide their time. The feel—they know, indeed—that the time is coming, in spite of all opposition, all persecution, when this emancipating gospel will spread among all the peoples, and when this minority will become the triumphant majority and, sweeping into power, inaugurate the greatest social and economic change in history.
In that day we shall have the universal commonwealth—not the destruction of the nation, but, on the contrary, the harmonious cooperation of every nation with every other nation on earth. In that day war will curse this earth no more.
I have been accused, Your Honor, of being an enemy of the soldier. I hope I am laying no flattering unction to my soul when I say that I don’t believe the soldier has a more sympathetic friend than I am. If I had my way, there would be no soldiers. But I realize the sacrifice they are making, Your Honor. I can think of them. I can feel for them. I can sympathize with them. That is one of the reasons why I have been doing what little has been in my power to bring about a condition of affairs in this country worthy of the sacrifices they have made and that they are now making in its behalf.
Your Honor, in a local paper yesterday there was some editorial exultation about my prospective imprisonment. I do not resent it in the least. I can understand it perfectly. In the same paper there appears an editorial this morning that has in it a hint of the wrong to which I have been trying to call attention. [Reading:]
A Senator of the United States receives a salary of $7,500 to $45,000 for the six years for which he is elected. One of the candidates for Senator from a state adjoining Ohio is reported to have spent through his committee $150,000 to secure the nomination. For advertising he spent $35,000; for printing $30,000; for traveling expenses $10,000, and the rest in ways known to political managers.
The theory is that public office is as open to a poor man as to a rich man. One may easily imagine, however, how slight a chance one of ordinary resources would have in a contest against this man who was willing to spend more than three times his six years’ salary merely to secure a nomination. Were these conditions to hold in every state, the Senate would soon become again what it was once held to be, a rich men’s club.
Campaign expenditures have been the subject of much restrictive legislation in recent years, but it has not always reached the mark. The authors of primary reform have accomplished some of the things they set out to do, but they have not yet taken the bank roll out of politics.
They never will take it out of politics, they never can take it out of politics, in this system.
Your Honor, I wish to make acknowledgment of my thanks to the counsel for the defense. They have not only defended me with exceptional legal ability, but with a personal attachment and devotion of which I am deeply sensible, and which I can never forget.
Your Honor, I ask no mercy. I plead for no immunity. I realize that finally the right must prevail. I never so clearly comprehended as now the great struggle between the powers of greed on the one hand and upon the other the rising hosts of freedom.
I can see the dawn of a better day for humanity. The people are awakening. In due course they will come to their own.
When the mariner, sailing over tropic seas, looks for relief from his weary watch, he turns his eyes toward the southern cross, burning luridly above the tempest-vexed ocean. As the midnight approaches, the southern cross begins to bend, and the whirling worlds change their places, and with starry finger-points the Almighty marks the passage of time upon the dial of the universe, and though no bell may beat the glad tidings, the lookout knows that the midnight is passing and that relief and rest are close at hand.
Let the people everywhere take heart and hope everywhere, for the cross is bending, the midnight is passing, and joy cometh with the morning.
He’s true to god who’s true to man; wherever wrong is done,
To the humblest and the weakest, ‘neath the all-beholding sun
That wrong is also done to us, and they are slaves most base,
Whose love of right is for themselves and not for all their race.Your Honor, I thank you, and I thank all of this Court for their courtesy, for their kindness, which I shall remember always.
I am prepared to receive your sentence.
———-
[Part II of II.]
[Newsclip added is from The Indianapolis Sunday Star of September 15, 1918.]
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SOURCES
Eugene Debs: Address to the Court, Bending Cross Speech
(Note: this speech was delivered on Sept 14, 1918, in court in Cleveland, just before he was sentenced to ten years in prison. By Sept 18th, Debs was back in Terre Haute.)
http://www.emersonkent.com/speeches/address_to_the_court.htm
Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen’s Magazine, Volumes 66-67
Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen, 1919
(search: “debs statement to the court)
https://books.google.com/books?id=D2wfAQAAMAAJ
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=D2wfAQAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&pg=GBS.RA6-PA4
Debs’ Address to the Jury
-and Statement to the Court
National Office Socialist Party
Chicago, 1918/1919 (?)
http://debs.indstate.edu/d288d37_1918.pdf
Note: see preface:
-“Argument to the Jury” delivered before verdict passed on September 12, 1918. (Begins on page 3.)
-“Statement to Court” delivered before sentence was passed on September 14, 1918. (Begins on page 12.)
IMAGE
EVD, Debs to Terre Haute, Ipl Str p2, Sept 15, 1918
https://www.newspapers.com/image/118513248
See also:
Tag: USA v Debs 1918
https://weneverforget.org/tag/usa-v-debs-1918/
Re: “He’s true to god who’s true to man…”
“On The Capture of Certain Fugitive Slaves Near Washington”
-by James Russell Lowell
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=rSQ_AAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&output=reader&hl=en&pg=GBS.PA126
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The Bending Cross – David Hanners