Hellraisers Journal – Saturday March 25, 1899
New York, New York – Eugene Debs Speaks on Prison Labor
On Tuesday March 21st, Comrade Eugene Debs came before the wealthy members of the Nineteenth Century Club at Delmonico’s to lecture them on the evils of prison labor. The Indianapolis Journal quotes the speech in part; the full speech can viewed below.
From The Indianapolis Journal of March 22, 1899:
DEBS ON PRISON LABOR.
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Terre Haute Agitator Talks to Business,
Professional and Scientific Men.
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San Francisco Call – January 30, 1898
NEW YORK, March 21.-About 230 members of the Nineteenth Century Club gathered at the ballroom of Delmonico’s tonight to listen to an address to the organization by Eugene V. Debs, the labor agitator. There were a number of substantial business, professional and scientific men present. The interest in Mr. Debs’s words was rather out of the ordinary and the speaker was applauded mildly several times during his remarks. Mr. Debs spoke on “Prison Labor, Its Effects on Industry and Trade.” Among other things Mr. Debs said:
Here in this proud city, where wealth has built its monuments, grander and more imposing than any of the seven wonders of the world named in classic lore, if you will excavate for facts you will find the remains, the bones of toilers buried and imbedded in the foundations. They lived, they wrought, they died. In their time they may have laughed and sung and danced to the music of their clanking chains. They married, propagated their species and perpetuated conditions, which, growing steadily worse, are to-day the foulest blots the imagination can conceive upon our much vaunted civilization, and from these conditions there flow a thousand streams of vice and crime which have broadened and deepened until they constitute a perpetual and ever increasing menace to the peace and security of society. Jails, workhouses, reformatories and penitentiaries have been crowded with the victims, and the question how to control these institutions and the unfortunate inmates is challenging the most serious thought of the most advanced nations on the globe.
Hellraisers Journal – Friday March 21, 1919
Cleveland, Ohio – Eugene Debs Presented with Red Roses at Farewell Address
From The Ohio Socialist of March 19, 1919:
Eugene V. Debs’ Speech at West Side Turn Hall, Cleveland
[Wednesday Evening, March 12, 1919]
Before a capacity audience of 3,000 which filled West Side Turn hall one hour before his scheduled appearance Debs made his farewell speech.
Debs was calm, His opening words were accorded an instantaneous silence. He said:
How true it is that there is a divinity that shapes our ends, roughhew them how we will! It may seem strange to you, but in my plans, in my dreams, I did not think of going to the penitentiary-and I-I had a thousand times rather go there and spend my remaining days there than to betray this great cause.
So far as I am concerned it does not matter much. The margin is narrow, the years between now and the sunset are few, and the only care that I have personally is that I may preserve to the last the integrity of my own soul and my loyalty to the only cause worth living for, fighting for, and dying for.
It is so perfectly fine to me to look into your faces once more, to draw upon you for the only word I have ever had, the only word that I can ever speak for myself. I love mankind, humanity. Can you understand? I am sure you can.
We are close of kith and kin, we are human and when we get into close touch with each other we come to understand that our good depends upon the good of all humanity.
Opposed to System.
I am opposed to the system under which we live. I am opposed to the government that compels you, the great body of the American people, to pay your tribute to an insignificant few who enjoy life while the great body of the people suffer, struggle, and agonize without ever having lived. Can you understand? I am sure you can.
Let me get in touch with you for a while. I am going to speak to you as a Socialist, as a revolutionist, and, if you please, as a Bolshevist.
And what is the thing that the whole world is talking about? What is it that the ruling class power of the world are denouncing, upon which they are pouring a flood of all their malicious lies-what is it? It is the rise of the workers, the peasants, the soldiers, the common man, who for the first time in history said, “I have made what there is, I produced the wealth; I want to be heard.”
Hellraisers Journal – Monday March 15, 1909
Eugene Debs and Fred Warren Travel to Leavenworth, Visit Mexican Comrade
From the Appeal to Reason of March 13, 1909:
With Araujo in Prison
BY EUGENE V. DEBS.
Returning from Texas whither he had hastened to ascertain the true facts in the Araujo case, the managing editor of the Appeal, Fred D. Warren, was up in arms, declaring the affair a monstrous injustice and his determination to aid the convicted Mexican by all the means in his power. This determination was made stronger by the connection he discerned between the case and the cases pending in Arizona with which Appeal readers are familiar and by its important bearing upon the whole question of the war in Mexico.
For, be it understood, the war in Mexico has begun. The despotism of assassination has done its worst and at last the people have revolted, for which thank God!
In this Mexican war the working class of the United States is deeply and vitally interested, whether it knows it or not.
In Mexico fourteen million working people are in peon slavery. Their wages, in American money, will not average 25 cents a day.
American capitalists virtually own these millions of slaves and grind out their lives to amass fortunes to squander upon syphilitic parasites. These American capitalists, in collusion with Diaz, the despot, have taken possession of Mexico. Millions upon millions of wealth are in sight. Diaz and his government-government by assassination-keep down the slaves. No labor leaders there. They are shot. Strikers are hanged and agitators waylaid and assassinated.
The Mexican government is the slave herder of the American capitalists. Diaz is the chief herder in the service of Rockefeller, Morgan, Harriman and other American plutocrats who own Mexico.
Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday March 12, 1919
“The machinery of capitalism has completed its work…Debs must go to prison.”
From The Ohio Socialist of March 12, 1919:
DEBS GOES TO PRISON
The machinery of capitalism has completed its work and ground out the decision that Eugene V. Debs must go to prison.
No one who has studied the class character of the governmental institutions of this country expected a different verdict than that which has just been rendered by the United States Supreme Court.
It was inconceivable that the Supreme Curt would declare the Espionage law unconstitutional.
The interpretation of the constitution follows the needs of the ruling class. Only unsophisticated persons with a ludicrously naive belief in the “democracy” of modern capitalist government could imagine such a contingency as the Supreme cCourt declaring a law in the interest of the capitalist class unconstitutional in the hour of capitalism’s greatest need.
But if there was no hope for Debs, even though, as many people believe, the Espionage law violates clearly expressed provisions of the national constitution in regard to the right of free speech and free press, it did seem that the selfish interests of the ruling class of this country might save Debs from prison.
Capitalism in this country is resting upon a slumbering volcano-the volcano of a suppressed, oppressed and exploited working class.
In Russia and Germany the volcano has burst and is flinging the debris of capitalism to the four winds.
In England, France and Italy the rumbling which forecasts a similar activity can be distinctly heard.
Even here the warning signals are not wanting. Unemployment, strikes, discontent, Seattle’s [General Strike] and Lawrence’s [Textile Strike], all suggest a growing bitterness that is the sign of a coming eruption.
Well might the ruling class hesitate before adding another grievance, a grievance that will deepen and make more bitter the hatred of the working class of the system that holds them under its iron heel.
That is what the sending of Eugene V. Debs will mean to the ruling class of this country.
Hellraisers Journal – Thursday February 27, 1919
Terre Haute, Indiana – Eugene V. Debs on Deportations of Working Men
From The Butte Daily Bulletin of February 21, 1919:
Debs Brands Plot to Deport
Radicals “Crime of Crimes”
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Recalls Lincoln’s Birthday. Says Rail Splitter Was
Murdered by the Ruling Class, that Same Power That
Today Is Shipping Men Overseas Like Cattle Because
They Are Protesting Against Wage Slavery.
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By EUGENE V. DEBS.
Terre Haute, Ind., Feb. 12.-This is Lincoln’s birthday. It is a day rich with memory and dark with tragedy. Lincoln was and is the sweetest product of American soil. Like the Nazarene, he loved the poor, sympathized with the lowly, and was hated, vilified and finally murdered by the ruling class of his time.
The birthday of the immortal rail splitter is being celebrated in part by deportation from the land he loved of the men of honest toil, who, like himself, hated the money power and believed in government of and by and for the people. This is one of the beautiful ironies of capitalism. Its vaunted love of freedom is but the velvet cloak which conceals its iron-fisted despotism.
These men are charged by the ruling class and its prostitute press with being enemies of the government. Precisely the same charge that is being brought against these men today under capitalist despotism was brought against Abraham Lincoln by the slave power of his day. Lincoln was murdered by same power that is now tearing our brothers from their families and friends and shipping them over the wide seas like cattle for the crime of protesting against wage slavery and aspiring to walk the earth free men.
Hellraisers Journal – Saturday February 11, 1899
-Mother Jones News Round-Up for the Year 1898, Part II
Kansas City Star October 9, 1898
In the pages of the Appeal to Reason of July 2, 1898, Mother Jones was found as “Mary G. Jones” on the list of delegates who bolted the Convention of the Social Democracy, held in Chicago during June of 1898. The disgruntled delegates immediately set about to establish a rival organization called the “Social Democratic Party of America,” and are now calling for “every loyal supporter of socialist principles” to “promptly come to the front and join” the new party. Mother Jones finds herself in good company as Eugene V. Debs and his brother, Theodore, are among the prominent Socialists who have joined the newly founded S. D. P.
July 1898 also found Mother Jones speaking in Omaha to packing house strikers. It was reported that she was speaking as “a traveling representative of the paper known as the “Appeal to Reason.”
In October 1898, Mother Jones was found in the “two Kansas Citys” preaching socialism along with Mrs. Anna Ferry Smith of San Diego. It was reported that the two women had traveled by a horse-drawn wagon from Chicago, speaking on street corners along the way.
In December 1898, Mother Jones was found leaving Kansas City and heading towards Texas “in a prairie schooner drawn by one white horse.” She was next found in Fort Scott and Mound City, Kansas. The Mound City Torch reported:
She is on her road to Texas, traveling in a private carriage alone. She is distributing literature and lecturing on needed reforms as she goes.
Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday February 8, 1899
Saginaw, Michigan – Eugene Debs Speaks on “Labor and Liberty”
From The Saginaw Evening News of February 6, 1899:
LABOR AND LIBERTY
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Subject of Eugene V. Debs’
Address Yesterday.
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SOCIALISM WILL COME.
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Is His Belief-Urges Workingmen
to Read, Think and Study.
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The Saginaw Evening News February 4, 1899
Yesterday afternoon [February 5th] a fair-sized house greeted Eugene V. Debs, the noted labor leader, who spoke upon “Labor and Liberty” at the academy of music. Preceding the lecture the academy orchestra rendered a number of selections.
Upon the stage, besides the speaker of the afternoon, were seated Mayor Baum, W. D. Mahon of Detroit, president of the Amalgamated Street Railway Employes, James F. Welch, president of the Central Labor union of this city, and the presidents of the various unions of Saginaw.
At the appointed hour C. E. Lewn, president of the Barbers’ union, introduced Mayor Baum, who in turn in a few brief words expressed his pleasure at being able to present to the audience the speaker of the afternoon, Eugene v. Debs. Mr. Debs spoke eloquently and entertainingly. Indeed, his remarks evoked applause from every portion of his audience, which was composed largely of employers and business men. He said:
There are those who view with widespread alarm the proposition of self-government. There are those who fear the sun of the republic is to set in universal gloom. But I am persuaded that the grand old ship of state will breast all the storms and billows and safely reach the haven port. The social system is in the process of dissolution. A new system of order is evolving from competitive chaos. We stand upon the eve of the greatest change the world has ever seen. Lamentable is the fact that the man who works longest and hardest has the least to show for his labors.
Hellraisers Journal – Friday February 3, 1899 Eugene V. Debs: “The name of the Social Democratic Party suits me precisely.”
From the Social Democratic Herald of January 28, 1899:
The March of Socialism
[by Eugene V. Debs]
Each passing day adds new testimony to the progressive march of socialism throughout the civilized world. A letter just received from Russia contains words of greeting and congratulation, and prompts me to pen this article for The Herald. The Social Democratic Party of the United States commands the confidence and respect of the leading socialists of other nations, and they look to our party to organize the socialists of this country and bring them into harmonious alliance with the hosts of international socialism, in the universal battle for the overthrown of capitalism.
The work accomplished during the past few months is as gratifying and inspiring to socialists as it is abhorrent and alarming to their enemies. The superb victory at Haverhill sent a thrill of joy and consternation, hope and horror through the country. The plutocratic press is still harping upon it, wondering how it happened and predicting all sorts of evils if there is any spread of this dread affliction. They are straining their old power to scare the people and make them mind their masters, as they have been so long in the habit of doing. Riley’s nursery tale warning aptly illustrates the situation:
The plutocrats and their parasites will not contemplate with calm indifference the march of socialism. Every artifice known to their Machiavellian resources will be employed to resist the advance. The ignorant and servile can be easily deflected from their course, but the thinking and vigilant will do ceaseless sentinel service and be prepared to parry every blow and expose every device and intrigue of the enemy.
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