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, Sunday March 24, 1907
Appeal to Reason: Comrade Debs Exhorts Socialists to Stand Strong
To join the Socialist movement implies a declaration of war. War on the capitalist system and all its profit-fed institutions!
To issue such a declaration requires some measure of moral courage; to make it good requires a vast deal more.
Many a convert joins with enthusiasm to be extinguished a few months later in ignominy.
He lacks the nerve to stand his ground.
Many another joins the movement and grows stronger from the hour the battle begins; the more he is resisted the stauncher he stands; the more he is persecuted the more resolute he becomes, and in the storm of battle all the heroic fibre within him becomes steel and he rises to the stature of a full-grown man who has the strength to stand alone though all the world turn against him.
He has the nerve!
This is the secret of real heroism.
In writing this brief article on the subject of nerve, we have in mind a large number of Socialists and semi-Socialists who are more or less anxious to serve the movement, but who are so easily deflected from their purpose. They happen to hear of an uncomplimentary remark directed against them, and it strikes at the very heart of their allegiance to the cause. They hear of some temporary defeat of the party, or of some friction within the ranks, and they are at once discouraged.
The trouble is with their nerve. It is this that should have their immediate attention. The comrade lacking nerve, or having but a weak support of himself, will be kept in very hot water in the Socialist movement.
As previously stated, the man who joins the Socialist movement declares war against the capitalist system and capitalist society, and war of this kind is not a May festival. Ferdinand Lassalle, the brilliant social revolutionist, once said that the war against capitalism was not a rosewater affair. He was right. It is rather of the storm and tempest order. All kinds of attacks must be expected, and all kinds of wounds will be inflicted. The new comrade of tender sensibilities will soon get used to having his feelings torn and lacerated if he remains in the movement.
Many honest and well-meaning persons have been completely driven out of the movement because they could not stand the metaphorical shot and shell that were crashing about their heads.
Their hearts were right, but they lacked the nerve.
A fatal defect!
No matter what other good qualities a convert to Socialism may have, he must have the nerve to stick, the nerve to stay, if he is to be of any value to the movement. He must make up his mind that all the trials to which mortal man is subject will fall to his lot one after the other, and that if he lacks the nerve the weak spot in him will sooner or later be put to the test and he will go down and out, never to rise again.
But it is this very trial that serves a most beneficent purpose for both the individual and the movement; it eliminates the weak and unfit, and tempers those qualified for the higher service to which they are sure to be called, because they have the nerve and can stand the test.
It is therefore very essential that he whose conviction it is that Socialism is right, and whose sense or duty impels him to do battle for it, shall make sure that his nerve is equal to the test when it comes, for come it will, not once, but with frequent and increasing severity to every man and woman in the movement.
It is well for a member to be sensitive about his honor, but he must not permit his lack of nerve, coupled with his super-sensitiveness, to drive him out of the movement when he learns from others that he has joined it to promote his own individual and selfish ends.
He or she who declares war on capitalism by joining the Socialist party must make up his or her mind to tramp as thorny a pathway as led to Calvary, provided, of course, every duty such a course imposes is fearlessly met and every obligation faithfully discharged. Every Socialist who has proved his right to a place in the ranks can verify this fact by his own personal experience.
When you part company, so to speak, with capitalist society, when the war actually begins, the war of the revolution in which there can be no compromise, you will be driven back in humiliation and defeat unless you have the nerve to bear all the wounds that are sure to be inflicted.
You will be told that you joined the movement to seek notoriety, or because you have always been a failure, or a mischievous agitator; that you never had an honest motive, that you want to make money out of Socialism; that you are not sound, that you are only half-baked, and a hundred other things; you will be assailed within and without, spat upon by the very ones you are doing your very best to serve, and at certain crucial moments find yourself isolated, absolutely alone, as if to compel your surrender, but in those very moments, if you have the nerve, you become supreme, and instead of abjectly capitulating, you feel within yourself the thrill of new-born powers of which you never dreamed, and you realize for the first time the ecstacy of man’s greatest victory-the victory over self.
Nerve is necessary to such an enviable achievement. Some men are dowered with this quality, others lack it, but the weakest may cultivate it. So highly can this quality be developed that the human being may become absolutely impervious to dread and fear, to the weaknesses of the flesh, and walk among men almost as if he were a god.
The war we are waging, be it ever remembered, is not for brutal conquest, not for empty glory, but for the peace and happiness and civilization of the whole human race.
It is the grandest war in all the annals of mankind.
It will require the bravest warriors that ever gave up their lives upon the field of battle.
And they will be known as the world’s greatest heroes and rest in the blessings of a thousand generations yet unborn.
[Photograph of S. P. A. Button added.]
Also in this week’s Appeal, George Shoaf updates readers regarding news from the Moyer-Haywood-Pettibone Case:
BRYAN NOT TO ACT
—–
Declares He Will Not Sit in
the Moyer-Haywood-Pettibone Cases
-Calls Judge Wood to the Bench.
—–BY GEORGE H. SHOAF.
Staff Correspondent Appeal to Reason.
—–BOISE, Idaho, March 15.-Motions to dismiss the Moyer-Haywood-Pettibone case, and for a change of venue from Canyon county, will be made by Attorneys Richardson, Nugent and Miller in Judge Bryan’s court in Caldwell, Monday morning. Judge Bryan, however, will not preside. He has announced his disqualification to sit in the Federation [Western Federation of Miners] cases. He has called in Judge Fremont Wood, of Ada county. It is predicted that the motion to dismiss will be rejected, and that the motion for a change of venue will be granted, and the cases be transferred to Ada county to be tried before Judge Wood.
The action of Judge Bryan in voluntarily disqualifying himself is a virtual throw-down of the defense and has caused great indignation among the persons who supported him last fall when he ran and was elected on a straight Federation issue. Hundreds of trade unionists voted for him by reason of his election promises to handle the trial and handle it fairly. His present action in surrendering to Judge Wood, a virulent republican and outspoken enemy of organized labor, is regarded as a sell out. Judge Bryan is a democrat. If the cases are tried in Ada county under Judge Wood the attorneys for the defense will be at a disadvantage. Preliminary to this step much sneaking work has been effected by the prosecution that has no parallel in law or legislation. This will be exposed in next week’s Appeal. While the defense is optimistic and confident of acquittal, grave danger exists on account of the desperation of the prosecution. McPartland [McParland] is here in consultation with Gooding, and between the two a devilish plot is being made.
———-
[Photograph added.]
SOURCE
Appeal to Reason
(Girard, Kansas)
-Mar 23, 1907
“Hold Your Nerve” by EVD
https://www.newspapers.com/image/67586833/
“Bryan Not to Act” by Shoaf
https://www.newspapers.com/image/67586834
IMAGEs
Socialist Party Button
https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/eam/spa/socialistparty.html
HMP, Judge Fremont Wood, CD Collection
http://moses.law.umn.edu/darrow/photo.php?pid=571
See also:
Tag: Haywood-Moyer-Pettibone Case
https://weneverforget.org/tag/haywood-moyer-pettibone-case/
Ferdinand Lassalle (1825-1864)
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lassalle/