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Hellraisers Journal – Sunday March 30, 1919
“…while Debs is in prison, you are not free, no honest man is free…”
From the Appeal to Reason of March 29, 1919:
—–The decision of the United States Supreme Court upholding the prison sentence passed upon Eugene V. Debs by a lower federal court came as a distinct shock to several millions of the American people. It is true that the hopes of these people were not pinned to the slender faith that Debs would find a just refuge in this high court of the powers that be. While the Supreme Court frequently sets aside laws with an astonishing alacrity, they are such laws as are obnoxious to privileged interests rather than to plain citizens. Setting aside the Espionage Act, especially to remove the threat of prison from Debs the spokesman of labor, was the last thing the Supreme Court could have been rationally expected to do.
The reply of the Appeal to the Supreme court is simply this: Whatever you can or cannot do, whatever you will or will not do, in the case of Debs makes little difference in the actual and final settlement of the issue. Where ignorance and prejudice are blissfully enthroned, ’tis folly to look for wisdom and tolerance. If you had it in your power and province to make Debs a free man by a mere effortless nod of the head, we know well that you would not do so. Politically you may safely defy any storm of public opinion, because you are secure in your arbitrary life jobs. But there are other branches of the government that depend upon the suffrage of the people and that must, unless madness has seized them and they are led to listen to the most stupid of counsels, place themselves responsive to the manifested will of public opinion. We believe that President Wilson and certain members of his official family are really inclined to favor action that a sufficient sentiment of the people, clearly expressed, may demand. That is to say, we believe that they are wise enough to listen to the people when the people talk loud enough and that they are not so wrapped in reactionary stupidity and prejudice that they will obdurately refuse to follow a course that demonstrates itself to be popular.
Public sentiment, then, and not the decision of your court or any court, will finally determine the case of Debs. Unless an executive amnesty should be speedily issued, Debs will have to go to prison within a few weeks in compliance with judicial decree, but that will not be the end. It marks the beginning of a more active and resolute fight to obtain freedom for Debs. The Appeal has for the moment thrust aside other issues that this issue of Debs and the other political prisoners who share his status may be given paramount publicity. Aiding the Appeal in its agitation is its army, whose parallel cannot be found in modern journalism, composed of thousands of devoted and determined workers who swear by ‘Gene Debs and who regard no effort or sacrifice too great to be readily offered in his behalf. The Appeal and its army have dedicated themselves to the present task of bringing freedom to Debs and the hundreds of others whom they call comrades. We are glad to say that the Appeal is not alone in this struggle for applied democracy but that the entire radical and liberal press of America is busily spreading the message of amnesty. Amnesty has rapidly become an issue; with the gathering force of enlightened public opinion, it will assuredly become a fact. To the people, then, does the Appeal direct its plea; and through the people to President Woodrow Wilson, who holds within his hands the power to free political prisoners who have been branded as criminals for their conscientious beliefs.
As we have said, there are several millions of the American people-the honest toilers of every trade, the honest thinkers of every belief-who were shocked by the announcement that Debs must actually enter prison there to spend what may be the last years of a life gloriously and prodigally spent in the courageous service of mankind. Knowing Debs as they do to be the most sincere and eloquent of living Americans in public life, these admirers of this great orator of emancipation were simply unable to conceive of this final blow being delivered by our government, how ever politically hostile to Debs and the ideas he embodies the present administration may be. There are those, however, who rejoice in Debs’ fate, who can hardly refrain from raising their shouts of glee at his imminent loss of liberty, who seek to make doubly certain that no mercy will be shown this “agitator” by heaping upon his helpless head wild and wanton tirades of malice and venom. The serpent press is showing its fangs, bursting with evil poison, distilling damnation to libelously stain the good name of this grand herald of a nobler race.
The most utterly depraved of all the exhibitions of hate and falsehood that has come to our notice is a bitter emanation from the poison vials of the Memphis Commercial Appeal. The clipping is sent in by a reader who accompanies it with a formidable bunch of subs to help in the Appeal’s amnesty fight:
For years Eugene V. Debs has been an evil influence in this country. He has played upon the restlessness and discontent that prevails among a certain element of our population. He has been a preacher of disorder and an evangel of violence. At times his radical views have bordered dangerously close upon criminal anarchy. He has exploited the laboring class for his own benefit. Violence as a means to victory in labor troubles has been the keystone of his creed, and sabotage as an instrument for labor to use in gaining its ends has been justified in his mind.
In peace times Debs was able to escape the consequences of his evil designs. While conservative minds and good citizens realized the menace of his radical teachings they were more or less inclined to discount their effect. The law-abiding element counted upon the good sense of the masses to eventually repudiate Debs and all the lawless schemes he had fathered. Others feared to give him the opportunity of playing the role of martyr. He was allowed to continue his dangerous preachings and gained considerable of a following.
Eugene V. Debs has considerable oratorical ability. He has the knack of veneering his false teachings with the specious appearance of truth. His sophistries were dangerous because they contained for the incompetent and the unfit an explanation other than their own inability for their inferior position in the world,. The average man hates to admit that his failure in the world is due largely to his own incompetence, and he will listen readily to counsel that puts the blame upon other shoulders. This psychological fact has been the strength of the Debs influence among a certain element of the proletariat. He appealed to their emotions through exaggerated statements of the injustice heaped upon them and played upon their passions with highly colored pictures of the inequalities existing in the world.
This article is an apparent fabric of falsehood in which the texture of truth does not appear. Every line is a lie. There are but two phrases that conform to fact-that Debs has “gained considerable of a following” and that he “has considerable oratorical ability.” He has-and he has! With the exception of these two phrases, which may be regarded as accidental slips of the pen, where is there a truthful statement in the whole vulgar screed? Has ‘Gene Debs “been an evil influence in this country”? From his first entrance into public life Debs has pleaded for a recognition of the brotherhood of man, has exhorted men and women to respect themselves and love each other, has demanded for every man, every woman and every child equal opportunity to enjoy life and the full fruits of their labor, has contended that the rule of the people should be made supreme in everything that greatly concerns the common life, has attacked the domination of special privilege in industry, in politics, in every department of life where it has left the hateful impress of its iron hell [heel?]. Who is it that declares this splendid influence of Debs to have been evil? A capitalist paper whose editorials are written by the pen of a journalistic peon, a paper which would quickly decline to the point of disaster in business office receipts if it showed the bravery to make a manly declaration of independence from the commercial forces that control it.
What other statements are made by this defamer of Debs? That Debs “has been a preacher of disorder and an evangel of violence.” It is a lie. Debs’ public record for more than twenty-five years disproves it. Debs’ statements made from a hundred platforms and recorded in public print deny it. Debs has striven to free society from the disorder of capitalistic competition and class rule, from the violence of exploitation and oppression that has everywhere marked the private, virtually lawless control of industry by a few. We are told that “at times his radical views have bordered dangerously close upon criminal anarchy.” This is the same lie repeated in a different dosage for the sheer vicious love or it. Debs has ever been a peaceable advocate of the orderly establishment of Socialism which emphatically does not border upon “criminal anarchy.” Again this identical falsehood is reiterated (how lovingly this lie is lengthened out into a regular serial of mendacity!) in the statement that “violence as a means to victory in labor troubles has been the keystone of his creed.” But why waste time in the further profitless contemplation of the spewings of an evil and malicious mind? We are not here concerned with this editorial liar’s view of Debs’ “false teachings.” He is not a Socialist-we are not surprised. He doesn’t understand Socialism-we are still less surprised.
The thing that concerns us here is Debs’ record as written in a quarter-century of ceaseless and consistent agitation. The real beginning of Debs’ career as a labor leader stands today as a vindication. The man who is at all familiar with the strike of the American Railway Union led by Debs, and with Debs’ imprisonment for his activities in this strike, knows today that Debs and his fellow workers were most wrongfully and shamefully persecuted in that great struggle. They know today that it was the right of labor to organize and strike for its economic rights that was assailed by a constabulary, judiciary, soldiery and presidential administration working in harmony with the interests of a powerful corporation. Debs, deprived of his rights as a citizen, became Debs the leader of labor. Debs was then falsely denounced as a violent agitator; yet since then he has won a quality of respect from all honest men and women that few public characters have ever been able to boast.
When upon another critical occasion the cause of labor was shadowed with peril by the lawless kidnapping of Moyer, Haywood and Pettibone, then officials of the Western Federation of Miners, and these union leaders were set upon by all the lying hosts of capitalism, charged with cold-blooded assassination that they might be hung to make Colorado safe for the exploiting mine owners, Debs was among the first to spring to their rescue. His “Arouse, Ye Slaves!” flung broadcast under the fearless banner of the Appeal to Reason was a classic of burning defiance to class rule that will rest in the immortal archives of freedom by the side of Patrick Henry’s “Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death.”
It was in this crisis that Debs came to Girard and put his shoulders to the Appeal wheel, relaxing not a moment in his efforts until. Moyer, Haywood and Pettibone were declared innocent by a jury of their peers and restored to freedom and the labor movement.
It would be an ambitious task in one short article to recount the times that ‘Gene Debs has thrown himself into the breach in defense of labor, the times that he has responded to the cry of distress of the most obscure toiler grasped in the clutches of capitalist persecution. Wherever the great heart of humanity has beat in hope or despair, Debs has encouraged its hope and shared its despair. He has held aloft the stainless standard of the people on every battlefield of human rights these many years. He has been the voice of the voiceless masses, the champion of the lowly, the light of dreary and darkened lives. Debs is the friend of man; gifted with the genius of thrilling, rousing oratory and poetic expression, he nobly chose to use this gift in helping the working people to emancipate themselves from the thralldom of organized greed entrenched in the private ownership of industry. The thing that Debs has consistently advocated his whole life long is the collective ownership of industry by the people. Far from being the “evangel of violence,” he has urged unceasingly the uprooting of the most fruitful source of violence throughout all the ages of human agony-the relationship of master and slave, the subjection of man by man. A free earth and a free race has been the grand, broad creed of Debs. In common with all great souls Debs has felt the divine glow of human brotherhood. Debs once wrote in the columns of the Appeal [May 1, 1909] these beautiful sentences:
I care nothing for the world’s honors. Its prizes have no temptation for me. I began life, a wage slave. And there I stand today. The happiest privilege I have is to call the wage slave my comrade. He and I were long in the trenches together. We know each other. And we love and trust each other. I want nothing he may not have. He is my brother and when I clasp his honest hand I feel a thrill of joy.
There is no slave on earth who is not my equal. Through his mask of misery and his shreds and tatters I recognize in the vilest scavenger my brother. For him I am ready to fight and if need be die. There is where I stand and where all Socialists stand…
And when Socialism comes-as come it will, as certain as the Mississippi rolls to the Gulf-if I am still living, I shall strive to secure for my weaker brother and sister the same remuneration, the same treatment and the same even-handed justice I expect for myself.
The man who wrote those words of fraternal love is not a public enemy-an “evangel of violence.” He is not a man who can be honestly feared by any government that wishes to be honest with its people. The character of such a man is like a star, while that of his low maligners is like a stench. It is important that the people should know the kind of man ‘Gene Debs really is. The comrades of the Appeal Army know Debs-every reader of the Appeal knows Debs-none doubts him, none fears him, they know him, we repeat, and they gladly echo his cry of brother. They know that Debs is the kind of man who believes the worker should not be robbed when he bows his bent back in toil and when he extends his calloused hand in payment for the things he has produced. They know that Debs is the kind of man who believes no one has a right to hoard a billion dollars while some other poor devil is starving. They know that Debs is the kind of man who believes no man, however wise or great, has a single right that can be justly defended but what every other man, however unlettered and humble, has a clear title to that selfsame right. They know that Debs is the kind of man who believes that all should be started equal in the race of life insofar as man has power to enforce that equality. They know that Debs is the kind of man who believes that the people should govern themselves in the things where self-government counts most-in the things that concern their daily existence, their actual and intimate means of life.
Debs will soon go to prison-it has been so decreed. And we solemnly declare that our liberties-your liberties-will go with him. For as Debs himself has so magnificently said “While there is a soul in prison, I am not free.” And while Debs is in prison, you are not free, no honest man is free; to imagine himself free is to be the victim of the worst sort of intellectual slavery-the slavery of prejudice, the slavery of him who is withdrawn from sympathy with his fellows, minds blinded to social truth. When the prison doors swing open to release Debs, not only will Debs come forth a free man, but his restored freedom will signify that the encroachments upon our political and intellectual liberties during the war have been receded with the real return of peace, that our hope of wider and fuller liberty in the future is not an empty hope. Freedom for Debs means freedom for all of us.
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[Emphasis added.]
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SOURCE & IMAGES
Appeal to Reason
(Girard, Kansas)
-Mar 29, 1919
https://www.newspapers.com/image/67587304/
See also:
Appeal to Reason of May 1, 1909: “Debs’ Reply to Roosevelt”
https://www.newspapers.com/image/66981839
Debs: His Life, Writings and Speeches
-with bio by Stephen Marion Reynolds
CH Kerr, Chicago, 1908
https://books.google.com/books?id=1X3rXrzI5GgC
Walls and Bars
-by Eugene Victor Debs
Socialist Party, Chicago, 1927
https://archive.org/details/wallsbars00debs/page/n7
https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/001137043
Democracy’s Prisoner
-by Ernest Freeberg
Harvard University Press, 2008
https://books.google.com/books?id=3w30yADRLosC
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We Will Sing One Song – Six Feet In the Pine
Lyrics by Joe Hill