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Hellraisers Journal – May Day 1911
“The Cooperative Commonwealth” by Walter Crane
From The Coming Nation of April 22, 1911:
Tag: Cooperative Commonwealth
Hellraisers Journal: Eugene V. Debs, Socialists Candidate for President, Speaks at Arion Hall in Wheeling, West Virginia
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Hellraisers Journal – Friday October 26, 1900
Wheeling, West Virginia – Eugene V. Debs Speaks at Arion Hall
From The Wheeling Daily Intelligencer of October 25, 1900:
SOCIALISTIC DOCTRINE PROPOUNDED
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By Eugene V. Debs to a Large Crowd
At Arion Hall Last Evening.
——-HE EXPLAINS HOW AN UTOPIA
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Can Be Established in This Country. Would Make
Radical Change in Present Conditions.
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Eugene V. Debs, candidate for president on the Social Democracy ticket, addressed a large audience at Arion hall last night. Most of his hearers were of another political persuasion, however, attracted out of mere curiosity. Seated on the stage were the men prominent in socialist circles in this city. Mr Debs’ eloquence is well known and this fact alone was sufficient to attract a large crowd. He advanced nothing new along the line of socialism. Harry Leeds, the local socialist, acted as chairman of the meeting. He said they represented a body of workingmen whom strikes and lockouts had almost taken away their rights as American citizens. He said they were an embryonic party and they needed funds. He asked the audience to contribute to the campaign fund and before introducing Mr. Debs the hat was passed around the audience for contributions. Mr. Leeds introduced Eugene V. Debs, who was applauded as he stepped to the front of the stage.
Mr. Debs began by saying that a mighty social revolution was in progress. The world was gradually becoming co-operative instead of competitive. The social demoralization of the world was passing away. He would not appeal to the prejudice of his auditors. His sole purpose would be to appeal to their reason.
Hellraisers Journal: Ohio Socialist: May Day 1919, “The earth belongs to us, the people.” Co-operative Commonwealth
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Hellraisers Journal – Thursday May 1, 1919
For May Day of 1919: “A Better World’s in Birth”
From The Ohio Socialist of April 23, 1919:
Hellraisers Journal: Debs in Omaha, Believes Workingmen Will Soon be Ready for Economic Revolution by United Ballot
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Hellraisers Journal – Friday December 23, 1898
Omaha, Nebraska – Eugene Debs Tells Old Story of Wealth and Poverty
On Wednesday December 21st, Eugene Debs was interviewed in Omaha and said, in part:
It is the old, old story—economics—the concentration of industry. The middle class of middlemen are being obliterated; they buy goods in small quantities and pay more than the department stores which buy by the carload. The department store advertises cheap goods, gets the laboring man’s cash, and the little corner grocery has the “credit” business. The small dealer is crushed: labor is pinched and suicides have increased 200 percent in the last ten years…..
I believe the present system, so destructive to the better elements of mankind, is soon to be eradicated, and that by the workingmen. They are beginning to think, and from the products of their minds is developing an economic revolution.
From the Omaha World-Herald of December 22, 1898:
Morally I Mean to Pay Them
[Interview with Eugene Debs]
No, I did not attend the [A. F. of L.] convention at Kansas City. I am in deep sympathy with the meeting and wanted very much to go, but my lecture engagements prevented. I have been speaking every night for two weeks.
With what success?
At Boone, Iowa, I had a fair audience, but usually through Iowa my audiences were not large. You know, the railroads and other corporations have no love for me, and it is given out cold to the men, and many of them who would attend stay away, fearful of incurring the displeasure of the powers that be. Especially is this true in railroad towns. However I cannot complain: I speak and the papers report and thus I reach the masses.
Hellraisers Journal: Eugene V. Debs on “Social Democracy” and the Social Democratic Party of America
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Hellraisers Journal – Sunday October 9, 1898
Debs on Capitalism Run Riot and the Battle for Social Democracy
From the Social Democratic Herald of October 8, 1898:
Social Democracy
-by Eugene V. Debs
In the outset, and to “clear the deck” for action, some attention should be paid to definitions. What is meant by the term, “Social Democracy?” The term “social” as applied to “democracy” means, simply, a society of democrats, the members of which believe in the equal right of all to manage and control it. Reading this definition, men are likely to say, “There is nothing new in that,” and they speak understandingly. The men and women who are engaged in organizing the Social Democratic Party of America are not pluming themselves upon the novelty of their scheme for the improvement of social, industrial, and political conditions. They claim for their movement a common-sense basis, free from the taint of vagary and in all regards preeminently practical.
The wise man is credited with saying, “The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun” [Ecclesiastes 1:9]. Crediting the declaration of Solomon as conclusive, there must have been a time before he lived when something like “social democracy” of which I write existed in the earth, the germ idea of which, though latent for centuries, has aroused men from their lethargy from time to time in the processes of evolution, to find its most potent expression in the present era of “progress and poverty,” civilization and savagery, wealth and war, charity and greed, aroused them to an interest in socialism, which, with the chivalric courage of crusaders and the revolutionizing zeal of iconoclasts, has appeared to do battle for the regeneration of society.
No one hesitates to admit that the task is herculean; no one underestimates the power of opposing forces. Their name is legion, and they are organized forces—close, compact, resourceful, and defiant. They do not propose to surrender, compromise, nor arbitrate. They have the masses in the dust, their claws upon their throats and their hooves upon their prostrate forms. In the face of all the verified facts that startle thinking men, there is no requirement for extravagant speech.
Hellraisers Journal: Convention of Social Democracy of America Ends in Fracture; Debs, Keliher, Mailly, and Others Bolt
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Hellraisers Journal, Monday June 13, 1898
Chicago, Illinois – Debs Rejects Utopian Colonization Scheme
The Social Democracy of America was founded just one year ago in the same city where now that party is torn asunder as the result of a bitter disagreement between those who prefer to purchase themselves a refuge from the oppression of Capitalism and those who are willing to remain in thick of the fight against the forces of Capitalism.The latter group of Socialists includes Eugene Debs who has always and ever stood shoulder to shoulder with working class men, women and children,-injunctions, gunthugs, and prison bars be damned.
Chicago, June 15, 1897
From The Chicago Chronicle of June 12, 1898:
Debs Goes Out:
Social Democracy is Split into Two FactionsEugene V. Debs left the Social Democracy of America, which he founded and of which he was President, at 2:30 o’clock yesterday morning [June 11th] and the men who seceded under his leadership formed the Social Democratic Party of America. In one year’s experience he had determined that the colonization scheme which he had fathered was chimerical and that political action should be the purpose of the organization. When the convention in Ulhich’s Hall, after a night of bitter debate, upheld colonization by a vote of 52 to 36, Debs and his followers walked out and in the Revere House organized a new society and adopted a new platform.
While the old Social Democracy will embark at once on the establishment of its first cooperative community in the mining industry at Green Mountain Falls, Colorado, the Social Democratic Party will confine its work to propagating the principles of socialism by the use of the ballot. The division extends to the old leaders. Of the men who were imprisoned in Woodstock Jail in consequence of the great railroad strike of 1894 E.V. Debs and Sylvester Keliher are in the seceding faction, while W.E. Burns, James Hogan, Roy Goodwin, and J.F. Lloyd adhere to the old party. In both organizations the officers are new, but the former leaders are the ruling spirits.
Hellraisers Journal: Claude G. Bowers: “a tall, lean, long-legged man with…piercing eyes, stood on the platform…”
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Hellraisers Journal, Tuesday June 11, 1918
Fort Wayne, Indiana – Claude G. Bowers Describes Debs on Speaker’s Platform
Following a speech given May 20th by Eugene Debs at Moose Hall in Fort Wayne, Indiana, Claude G. Bowers devoted space in his column, “Kabbages and Kings,” to give a moving description of Debs as he appeared on the speaker’s platform:
Last week a tall, lean, long-legged man with a lean, thin, sharp face and piercing eyes, stood on the platform at the Moose hall in this city and talked for more than an hour on “Socialism and Democracy.” It was evident that the greater part of the audience was in sympathy with his ideas and more than ordinarily in love with the man. He was a socialist,-perhaps the most famous America has produced….
There was no bitterness against men. Very little mere bitterness against principles and systems. The most biting things were the flash of wit and humor. These cut like a knife but the audience laughed. The speaker was Eugene V. Debs. As an orator he is among the finest….
[Note: the entire column can be found below.]
[Inset is from The Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette of May 19th.]
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Hellraisers Journal: Elizabeth Gurley Flynn Speaks in New York City: “Girl Socialist Amazes Hearers.”
Prison bars do not frighten when
one has truth and right
deep in the heart.
-Elizabeth Gurley Flynn
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Hellraisers Journal, Tuesday January 1, 1907
New York, New York – Miss Flynn Lectures on Socialism
From the New York Sun of December 31, 1906:
HYPATIA INSTEAD OF HOPP.
—–Bread and Butter, Not Sentiment, Is the Universal Solvent of the Industrial Problem, in the Opinion of the Young Eyed Cherub-But Mr. Hopp Hangs On.
Sandwiched between sentiments by Julius Hopp on what the real drama ought to be an audience that half filled the orchestra of the Berkeley Lyceum Theatre yesterday afternoon listened to a lecture by Miss Elizabeth Flynn, aged 17 schoolgirl Socialist.
Mis Flynn is pretty, is not addicted to laughter and is self-possessed, as one might expect a girl to be who nonchalantly submitted to arrest for carttail talking without a license. Her remarks were on lines familiar to most Socialists, but she declared that they were unfamiliar to most capitalistic editors, who appeared to have room enough in their heads for only one idea at a time.
She said that she was a materialistic Socialist and advocated socialism purely on scientific grounds. It was a problem of bread and butter and not of sentimentalism. Mr. Stokes could not feel about the subject as the workingman could because he was not in the workingmen’s class.
The idea of the Socialist was the cooperative commonwealth. That could be attained only through a process of evolution that had first caused the destruction of slave labor and later the disappearance of the feudal system. The next step in the evolutionary plan would be the vanishing of the capitalistic system. All methods of production that capitalism had used would be used by the working folk in more enlightened fashion for the benefit of all. Production, transportation and distribution would all be done by the people themselves.
Hellraisers Journal: Eugene V. Debs in Wilshire’s Magazine on “Winning a World” for Socialism
Capitalism has had its day of carnage and its crimson sun
is slowly but surely sinking in the west.
-Eugene Victor Debs
is slowly but surely sinking in the west.
-Eugene Victor Debs
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Saturday November 25, 1905
From Wilshire’s Magazine: Eugene Debs on “Winning the World
The following article by Comrade Debs is from the most recent edition of Wilshire’s:
Winning a World.
by Eugene V. Debs—–
The Socialist movement is as wide as the world, and its mission is to win the world—the whole world—from animalism, and consecrate it to humanity.
What a tremendous task!
And what a royal privilege to share in it!
To win a world is worthy of a race of gods.
And in the winning, men develop godlike attributes, since all men are potential gods.
To the strained and vigilant eye of the Socialist on the watchtower all is well in point of outlook.
Capitalism has had its day of carnage
and its crimson sun is slowly but
surely sinking in the west.
Not more certain is the sunrise on the morrow
than the coming of the sure-evolving
Cooperative Commonwealth.
