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Hellraisers Journal – Thursday July 25, 1901
Pullman’s Injunction Judge, William Woods, Is Dead
From the Social Democratic Herald of July 20, 1901:
Debs and Judge Woods
The death of Judge Wm. A. Woods of the United States circuit court naturally brings up a chain of thought which may be useful and instructive at this time. Woods was the judge who prostituted his high and exalted office to serve the railways and crush the laboring men who were struggling for enough of the products of their labor to keep their families from starving. He it was who sent Eugene Debs to prison [at Woodstock, Illinois] for six months [in 1895] without trial for “contempt” of his most contemptible court, simply because Debs opposed with manly firmness the usurpations of this judicial scoundrel. It was this same judge Woods who set free “Blocks of Five” Dudley and the other bribers and ballot-box stuffers at Indianapolis in 1880, and was promoted from the district to the circuit court by the republican administration for his rascality. In his charge to the jury Judge Woods said that “advising or counseling bribery is not punishable unless briery is committed.”
In the coming time when the co-operative commonwealth shall have been established, when each man shall receive the product of his toil and have time and leisure to think upon the various steps and acts which have led up to industrial emancipation, then these two men, Debs and Woods, will each be held in proper estimation by the world. Posterity alone can properly write epitaphs. The memory of Debs will then be revered as one willing to suffer for his fellow men, while Woods will rank with Judas Iscariot, Grover Cleveland and Benedict Arnold.
[…..]
All the robber elements of this country will pronounce encomiums upon Judge Woods, while they have and will continue to cast odium upon Debs. But posterity will pass just judgment upon these two men, and memory of Debs will be enshrined in glory, while that of Woods will be shrouded in eternal infamy.-Equality, Deadwood, S. D.
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[Photographs and emphasis added.]
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SOURCES
Quote EVD Brush the Dust, Saginaw Eve Ns p6, Feb 6, 1899
https://www.genealogybank.com/
Social Democratic Herald
(Chicago, Illinois)
-July 20, 1901
https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/social-democratic-herald-us/010720-socdemherald-v04n05w159.pdf
IMAGES
EVD ARU Officers Sent to Woodstock Jail 1894 Pullman Strike, photo ab 1895
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Railway_Union
EVD Notice, Railway Times, Jan 1, 1895
https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/social-democrat-us/950101-railwaytimes-v2n01.pdf
See also:
Debs Plaque Unveiled in Woodstock
https://debsfoundation.org/index.php/2017/11/24/1032/
Debs: His Life, Writings and Speeches
-With a Department of Appreciations
–Authorized
The Appeal to Reason, 1908
https://books.google.com/books?id=4qs9AAAAYAAJ
“The Federal Government and the Chicago Strike [of 1894]”
-pages 180-206
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=4qs9AAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&output=reader&hl=en&pg=GBS.PA180
“Liberty-Speech at Battery D, Chicago, on his release from Woodstock Jail, November 22, 1895
-pages 327-344
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=4qs9AAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&output=reader&hl=en&pg=GBS.PA327
Manifesto to the American People Issued from Woodstock Jail
-by Eugene V. Debs, Jan. 8, 1895
https://www.marxists.org/archive/debs/works/1895/950108-debs-manifestofromjail.pdf
Interview with Eugene V. Debs at Woodstock Jail,
-by Nellie Bly, January 19, 1895
https://www.marxists.org/archive/debs/works/1895/950119-bly-debsatwoodstock.pdf
A Day With Debs in Jail at Woodstock: How the Imprisoned Labor Leader and His Associates Lived in Confinement…
-by A.C. Cantley, July 7, 1895, St Louis Post-Dispatch
http://www.marxisthistory.org/history/usa/unions/aru/1895/0706-cantley-daywithdebsatwoodstock.pdf
Open Letter to the Evansville [IN] Tribune from Eugene V. Debs in Woodstock Jail, Aug. 8, 1895
https://www.marxists.org/archive/debs/works/1895/950808-debs-toevansvilletribune.pdf
Eugene Debs, “How I Became a Socialist”
-April, 1902, The Comrade
https://www.marxists.org/archive/debs/works/1902/howi.htm
“From the Red Special, Debs Re-visits Woodstock Jail in Last Days of Long Journey”
-Nov 7, 1908, Appeal to Reason, page 4
https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/appeal-to-reason/081107-appealtoreason-w675.pdf
Social Democracy Red Book
A Brief History of Socialism in America
-by Frederic Faries Heath
Debs Publishing Company, 1900
(search: pullman strike)
https://books.google.com/books?id=46A0AQAAMAAJ
The Pullman Strike (Documents)
http://moses.law.umn.edu/darrow/trials.php?tid=10
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L’Internationale