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Hellraisers Journal – Saturday February 21, 1920
Power of Press Underestimated by American Socialist Movement
From the Cleveland Toiler of February 20, 1920:
The Power of the Press
—–– by Eugene V. Debs –
The power of the press is sadly underestimated in the socialist movement. The ruling class make no such mistakes. They are keenly alive to the power of the press in molding public sentiment and in shaping affairs in accordance with their interests. The capitalist papers do not suffer for the want of support and never die of starvation. They are fed fat and ungrudgingly by the class in power and in return serve that class with all their power.
Not so with the press of the working class. With scarcely an exception the papers and periodicals published in the interest of labor eke out a precarious existence. Ninety-five percent of them line the highway of the past with their skeletons. They lingered for a brief while and then gave up the ghost, falling victims to the chronic labor-paper malady, starvation.
Of course not all papers claiming to be labor papers are fit to exist. Many of them are fakes and run by political grafters. These often thrive in their blackmail and graft while an honest paper is allowed to die for the want of support.
Working men and women ought to have intelligence enough by this time to discriminate between an honest labor paper and a grafting sheet and they ought to be loyal enough to the working class to give their support to the paper that uses its influence to mold sentiment in favor of their cause and fights their industrial and political battles.
It is when the strike comes that the working class suffer most keenly the lack of a powerful press that reaches the people. They are always at a fearful disadvantage on this account. The capitalists get in a thousand licks to their one, not only because they can get their case before the people in its most favorable light and keep it there, but because they can put the case of the workers in the most unfavorable light and keep it there.
If the working people had a press the slugging methods of corporations in a strike and the activities of their murderous gunmen would not only be impossible but unthinkable.
The working class can expect nothing from the press of the capitalist class but misrepresentation and injustice in the struggle for its rights. The working class must build up a powerful press of its own and this vital fact it cannot realize too soon.
Thousands of workers subscribe to the capitalist papers without contributing a penny to their own and this is one of the reasons why the working class is still in slavery and will remain so until it rises in its might and asserts and develops its power to achieve its emancipation
[Emphasis added. Inset added from The Minneapolis Morning Tribune of February 2, 1920.]
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SOURCES
Quote AtR p1 Nominates EVD for President, May 24, 1919
https://www.newspapers.com/image/67587374/
The Toiler
(Cleveland, Ohio)
-Feb 20, 1920
https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/thetoiler/107-feb-20-1920-toiler.pdf
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn88078683/1920-02-20/ed-1/seq-1/
https://www.newspapers.com/image/174606477/
IMAGE
EVD f President by OK SP, Mpl Str Tb p2, Feb 2, 1920
https://www.newspapers.com/image/181311445/
See also:
Hellraisers Journal – Sunday May 25, 1919
Eugene V. Debs, No. 2253 of Moundsville Prison, for President
Appeal to Reason Nominates Debs for President & Kate Richards O’Hare for Vice-President
Eugene V. Debs Internet Archive
https://www.marxists.org/archive/debs/
1920
https://www.marxists.org/archive/debs/#1919
“The Power of the Press” by Eugene V. Debs
-from the Cleveland Toiler of Feb 20, 1920
https://www.marxists.org/archive/debs/works/1920/0220-debs-powerofthepress.pdf
Announcement:
The Eugene V. Debs Internet Archive in conjunction with Tim Davenport will be publishing a 6 volume collection of Eugene V. Debs writings. Haymarket Books will be the publishers of the 6 volumes. For weekly updates on this valuable historical project, please click here.
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We Have Fed You All For a Thousand Years – Bruce Brackney