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Hellraisers Journal – Saturday September 26, 1908
The Socialist Red Special Rolls On Across the Great Plains
The journey of the Red Special across the American Great Plains is well documented in the following article from the Appeal to Reason. An inspiring message from Comrade Debs describes the thousands of cheering supporters who greeted the Socialist Party’s presidential candidate in Colorado. As an added bonus, in this same edition of the Appeal, we find Comrade Haywood speaking in Enid, Oklahoma, and preparing for a tour of the great state of Kansas.
From the Appeal to Reason of September 19, 1908:
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From Debs.
DEAR APPEAL: The meeting at Denver last night can’t be described. The great Coliseum was packed and jammed and the surrounding streets filled with cheering, shouting Socialists. The scene can never be forgotten. Thousands could not get near the speakers. Have just left Colorado Springs, where we had a splendid meeting, notwithstanding the crowd, through a misunderstanding, was at the wrong depot. Five minutes after arrival at any station the “Red Special” has a crowd. We are thoroughly organized and take full advantage of every minute. We are ready to drop off at a minute’s notice and make a speech of half a minute to a hundred people, or two hours to twenty thousand people.
We are now up in the mountains and from far up the rock-ribbed sides of the Rockies can be seen the fluttering handkerchiefs of the Socialist miners and prospectors and their wives from the cabin doors and windows. It is great, thrilling, inspiring.
Marvelous transformation! The miracle is working out all around us and before our very eyes, and the Socialists seem to spring from the soil to join in the exultation. These grand old mountains all about us are smiling their benediction upon us and the green-plumed pines along our iron highway seem to sway in gladness and join in the applause.-E. V. DEBS.
A mighty wave of intense interest follows closely in the wake of the Red special as it rolls across the continent delivering the message of Socialism from the lips of the party’s presidential candidate. On the morning of September 3, loaded with speakers and literature, the little train with a big purpose sped northward out of Kansas City on the way to Omaha.
St. Joseph.
In addition to several stops not on the schedule, meetings were held in Leavenworth, Kan., and St. Joseph, Mo. In a twenty-minute speech at the latter city Debs called attention to the ridiculous and hypocritical attitude of the democratic party toward labor; when, with protestations of love for the workingman from the silver tongue of Mr. Bryan, the democratic governor of Alabama had just used the political and governmental power at his command to destroy the striking steel workers of that state.
A bad taste was left on the palates of the democratic politicians present when he reminded them of how Mr. Bryan, in his Commoner, had denounced Alton B. Parker as a tool of Wall street and then supported him for the presidency four years ago. Another bitter pill for the pie-hunters who long for federal jobs under a Bryan administration was the reminder of how the “peerless statesman of the Platte” had placed the notorious Roger Sullivan, of Illinois, in the same category with train robbers and highwaymen; but had found it necessary to win Sullivan’s support and to do so had gone to the length of inviting him to the Fairview estate and introducing him to the Bryan family.
Omaha.
An enthusiastic crowd met the train at the union station in Omaha and marched with the volunteer band which accompanies it the the Auditorium where over three thousand people assembled. In its account of the meeting at Omaha News says that while the audience was enthusiastic over his “sarcastic and dramatic address,” Debs was “quite sane” and made a strong appeal with argument following argument like the fall of a trip-hammer. The World-Herald and the Bee gave two-column accounts of the meeting remarkable for the comparative fairness of their reports.
The great audience seemed to want a talk on Gompers, but Debs passed up all the dead issues and devoted his time to an analysis of the capitalist parties and the leaders of both who masquerade for purposes of vote-getting as the champion of the man who works.
J. W. Walker, Socialist candidate for governor of Nebraska, also spoke briefly, the band played and literature was distributed through the audience. It is safe to say that hundreds of those who attended out of curiosity to see and hear what would happen in a meeting addressed by a Socialist candidate for president went away with a more wholesome idea of Socialism and more serious views of political issues.
At 2 oclock a. m. they were speeding on the way to North Platte which was reached at 10:25.
North Platte.
The train was filled with eager Socialists picked up on the way. These comrades ride from one station to another absorbing inspiration from the great propaganda enterprise. Farmers drive as far as fifty miles across country and congregate at the stations at every one of which well-attended meetings could be held if it were possible to do so without violence to the fixed program. Those on the train view these crowds with regret because of the necessity of sweeping by many of them without so much as reducing speed.
At Omaha the train was magnificently decorated, and the revolutionary colors of the decorations transformed the somber-colored coaches into a flaming meteor as they swept across the Nebraska plains. Farmers in the fields, busy with the hay harvest, threw up their hats. Passengers on passing trains waved their handkerchiefs and villages were aroused in the midst of the sleepy summer day to assemble at the stations and get a glimpse of the “red spectre” that has so long haunted the aristocracy of Europe and is now causing the plutes of the new world to sit up and take notice.
The Volunteer Band.
One feature of the train that attracts so much attention as to be indispensable is the band of fifteen volunteer musicians who came together from seven states to sound Socialism by note. From the hour they met they played in perfect tune and with the harmony inspired by the fine comradeship that unites all on the train, from the engineer in front to the porter in the rear, in one happy family.
At North Platte a platform had been prepared in front of the union Pacific hotel from which Debs spoke for nearly half an hour on the principles and purpose of the Socialist movement, showing the class character of government today and the impossibility of any change permanently helpful to the working class to be had from either the republican or democratic party.
[Said he:]
In the maintenance of class government, both the republican and democratic parties have been equally guilty.
At 11 o’clock the train left for Denver.
Denver.
The legal limits of Coliseum hall in Denver were crowded with five thousand people while overflow meetings were in progress outside. The success of the Denver meeting is apparent in the belligerent attitude and soreness of the Denver papers in their news reports and editorial comment of the following day.
The Post was very much aggrieved because Debs “wanted to trade adjectives for train money”-that is because funds were solicited with which to pay the expense of the train. The Times editorially called Debs down for saying that
There are two classes of people, one of which owns tools it doesn’t use and the other uses tools it doesn’t own.
The editor, with that deft manipulation of words by which his craft are able to make white black and black white, called his readers to witness that a man’s brain is his best tool-a tool possessed by all and which rewards all according to the energy with which each uses it. It is to be hoped that someone has by this time supplied the editorial rooms of the Times with an English dictionary from which it’s brilliant editor may learn that a tool is “an instrument used by a workman” while a brain, instead of being an instrument of use, is a physical organ and part of the man himself.
The Republican, official organ of the Mine Owners’ association, magnanimously notes that there were no red flags at the Coliseum meeting, then takes it back by saying that the speeches were of the “red flaggiest” order. It seems to have grieved the manager of the mine owners’ sheet above all things that the band played the Marseillaise while the speaker was mounting the platform. Perhaps it would have been better had the band given a few bars of ragtime for the benefit of the Republican man and his classic taste rather than the hymn of the Lyonnaise workingmen played for the benefit of the toilers; but it’s some times hard to please everybody, and the Red Special musicians are typical of Socialism in their disposition to serve the working class first.
Leadville.
On the morning of the 7th the journey was resumed; and, after crossing the backbone of the continent and holding a day meeting at Salida, the agitators reached Leadville “two miles high” in the early evening. Though it was circus day and many followed the band and gilded chariots to the “big tent” the Socialist meeting was too large to be contained within any hall in town and was therefore assembled on the corner of Sixth street and Harrison avenue. It is estimated that not less than two thousand were present, a large number being women who can vote in Colorado. Debs addressed himself to the workingmen present and among other things said:
They (the politicians) tell you that you ought to be proud of your horny hands. If that is so, then they ought to be ashamed of theirs. They certainly have no horns-on their hands. The workingman is paid more attention for the cultivation of his hands than of his brains. In this system he is merely a hand, and at the present time many of you are being reduced to a hand-out-a hand out of a job.
Mr. Taft, who refers you to the Almighty when you ask for work, is the father of the injunction; and yet he has the audacity to come before you and ask you to give him your vote.
Mr. Bryan has posed as the champion of labor; but when Moyer, Haywood and Pettibone were kidnaped and in danger of being hanged, and Mr. Bryan was appealed to in their behalf, he maintained a silence as eloquent as his protestations of love for labor at election time. Yet Mr. Bryan comes to you workingmen and asks you for your votes.
Debs met many of the older residents who lived in Leadville when he was there in 1896 to assist the miners in a settlement of a strike. In the morning the Red Special passed on toward Glenwood Springs and Grand Junction. The next day the Herald-Democrat, republican, notwithstanding its name, made a brave effort in a half-column editorial to explain away Socialism and dismiss it as something that cannot grow in American soil; but the proof of the sowing is in the reaping, and that is yet to come.
Glenwood Springs.
The effectiveness of the Glenwood Springs meeting was reduced to some extent by the mistake of holding it in the grounds of a swell hotel not frequented by workers other than those employed on the premises. Several hundred workers would not cross the bridge that separated the abode of the wealthy from the town for much the same reason that workingmen in plain clothes do not feel free to enter a swell church or walk on velvet carpets. They stood in what they seemed to regard as their part of the town and looked on though unable to hear anything.
Grand Junction.
The band gave a concert on arrival at Grand Junction about 6 o’clock. In the evening the large street theater was filled with nearly two thousand people and an overflow meeting was held on the outside. Buffalo Bill was one of the visitors to the Red Special while it was at the Junction, and farmers, miners and city workingmen were all in evidence at all the meetings.
All through the mountains on the way from Denver west, ranchers and miners would spring to their feet waving and cheering as they realized the identity of the train from its decorations. Extra meetings were held at a number of mountain towns, including New Castle, Rifle and Du Buque.
Through some misunderstanding or error on the part of the railroad management there was no locomotive provided at Grand Junction to take the train on to Ogden and Salt Lake City. For that reason the coaches were attached to a regular train and time lost that interfered with the program.
Salt Lake City.
Three thousand people were present at Kennedy’s hall when the party finally reached the city by the salt lake, and the local papers say that the great audience not only stayed but that they cheered and gave other evidence of approval while Debs landed hard on republican and democrat and harder on Gompers whose charge that the Red Special had been financed with republican funds had been printed in the Salt Lake papers in connection with the announcement of the train’s coming. In the afternoon, while Debs was speaking at Ogden, A. M. Simons addressed a meeting at Liberty Park, near Salt Lake city.
Press dispatches from Portland, Ore., state that the use of the armory, owned by the state, had been denied for the proposed Debs meeting to be held on the arrival of the Red special September 14. Although the armory has been repeatedly used by the speakers of other parties, and although it is publicly owned, it seems that “undesirable citizens” are to be excluded, which is no surprise and only lends its emphasis to the Socialist contention that the present government is a class government that permits its buildings as well as its other property to be used in the interest of capital only. Socialists don’t feel bad over that sort of thing because they have become used to it.
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[Inset added is from same edition of the Appeal.]
[Photograph of “God Knows” Taft added.]
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SOURCE
Appeal to Reason
(Girard, Kansas)
-Sept 19, 1908
https://www.newspapers.com/image/67587449/
IMAGES
Eugene V Debs, EVD, Girard Prs p8, May 21, 1908
https://www.newspapers.com/image/183974520
EVD Hanford SPA, BBH Spks, AtR p3, Sept 19, 1908
https://www.newspapers.com/image/67587451
Taft God Knows Buttons re UE, AtR p3, June 27, 1908
https://www.newspapers.com/image/67587348/
See also:
Tag: Otto McFeely
https://weneverforget.org/tag/otto-mcfeely/
Note: The description of the journey of Red Special is not signed, but I suspect that it was written by Otto McFeely, correspondent for the Workers’ Press association, who was traveling with the Campaign aboard the Red Special.
Leadville Miners Strike of 1896
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leadville_miners%27_strike
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