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 – 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.
Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday December 30, 1908
Trenton, New Jersey – Irish Socialist, James Connolly Speaks
From the Trenton Evening Times of December 28, 1908:
IRISH SOCIALIST MAKES ADDRESS
J. C. Connelly [Connolly], an Irish Socialist, and editor of the Harp, of New York, addressed a meeting of the Trenton Socialists last night in Arcade Hall. Mr. Connelly spoke of the conditions in Ireland as regards the two great classes, the capitalist and the laborer.
He stated that the capitalist there, and in all other countries, disregarded the question of race and religion. He said that the Irish people were beginning to realize the folly of attempting to liberate the Irish race and on the very next day to find it necessary to [beg?] the capitalist for means of sustenance; that, although Cardinal Logue and other eminent men of the Catholic Church have scouted the idea of Socialism in Ireland, nevertheless there are many Socialist clubs in Ireland.
He said that the revolutionist of Ireland is taking the same stand as the Socialist, that religion is a private matter; that clerical leaders will not necessarily be safe guides in politics whatever they might be in theology.
Hellraisers Journal – Friday December 27, 1918 New York, New York – Jack Reed & Art Young on Second Masses Trial
From The Liberator of December 1918:
-Defense Attorney Seymour Stedman by Art Young
SEYMOUR STEDMAN, attorney for the defense, in his eloquent summing up, referred as follows to the fact that the Masses editors asked an injunction compelling the Post Office to mail the very magazine for publishing which they were later indicted:
Do men who are committing a crime go into a Federal Court and face a District Attorney and ask the privilege of continuing it? A strange set of burglars! A strange set of footpads! A strange set o smugglers! A strange set of criminals! I ask Mr. Barnes to tell you when before in his experience, men in the City of New York came in and filed an appeal, opening all their proof and all their evidence and all their testimony and said, “if the Court please, we insist on the right to continue this deep, dark, infamous conspiracy, and have it sanctified by an advocate of the United States Court.” History finds no parallel that I know of in any criminal procedure which has ever taken place.
-John Reed on Second Masses Trial
About the Second Masses Trial
by John Reed
IN the United States political offenses are dealt with more harshly than anywhere else in the world. In the amendment to the Espionage Act [the Sedition Act] it is made a crime equivalent to manslaughter to “criticize the form of government.” The sentences in Espionage cases run anywhere from ten to twenty years at hard labor, with fines of thousands of dollars.
Hellraisers Journal – Monday November 16, 1908
Theresa Malkiel: “Prostitution is very seldom a voluntary choice…”
From The Socialist Woman of November 1908:
Our Unfortunate Sisters
THERESA MALKIEL
The quality of mercy is not strain’d, It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven Upon the place beneath: it is twice blest; It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.
It has been estimated that there are six hundred thousand women in the United States who sell their bodies for a living. I know that many of you will shudder reading of this number of unfortunates and will think of them with hatred and disgust.
But be merciful, women, those sisters of yours are not bond slaves like the prostitutes of ancient times, nor are they aliens like the medieval woman of the street. They are gathered from your very midst, from the girls who have by adverse circumstances been impelled to turn to prostitution as a means of livelihood.
Like ourselves, these unfortunates have been carried under a mother’s heart, like ourselves they have been born and destined for an honest life, but victims of force and fraud, or economic conditions, they soon reached the point where society held out nothing better for them than the life of shame.
Prostitution is very seldom a voluntary choice on the part of the fallen. Girls do not elect to cast themselves away, they are driven to the haunts of vice. A young working girl is an easy mark for a man’s designing. And the designers are not wanting. Their most fruitful recruiting grounds are the stores where girls work long hours for small pay; the homes that have few comforts and no pleasures; the streets where girls are often cast while still unknown to sin, but are in want and without shelter; in places where distress and temptation stand ever present.
You ought to be out raising hell.
This is the fighting age.
Put on your fighting clothes.
-Mother Jones
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Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday November 10, 1908
Chicago, Illinois – 5,000 Children Go to School Hungry
From The Socialist Woman of November 1908:
American School Children Starving
Chicago Tribune of October 5, 1908
When we are talking of the number of men who are tramping the country looking for work—hungry, broken-spirited, abject creatures, who once thought themselves men, as good as any of their kind—let us not forget the women, and the little children of these men.
Last winter in Chicago after the first flurry of the panic, I had occasion to visit a number of the “homes” of those who had been thrown out of work. In every case the men were out, hunting feverishly for the chance to make even a little money by any kind of hard labor. And in every case my heart ached and my soul grew sick when I thought of the future of the women and children of those families.
“It is awful when the children cry for food, and we cant give it to them,” said one woman who had never before known what it was to be down and out. Another mother, about thirty, and strong and handsome, had to sit by and watch her seven-year-old daughter burning with fever, and without the care of a doctor because she had lost her job in a department store, and there was no money even to buy food. She had applied for work at all the large stores again and again. She had tried everywhere—and was told that they might need her during the holidays. But the holidays were weeks away. Already she had moved into a questionable quarter because rent was cheap. And unless that mother got work within two weeks, there was but one resource left her, if she would save herself and her child from death through starvation. And that was the sale of her body.
It was for a charitable institution I was working—and I knew that those institutions were crowded to their utmost with destitute cases.
Such, indeed, was the condition of the poor in Chicago last winter, that the superintendent of compulsory education, W. Lester Bodine, took up the case of hungry school children, followed his investigations for six months, and finally ascertained that there are 5,000 starving children, and 10,000 that are underfed, in the schools of the city.
Hellraisers Journal – Thursday October 29, 1908
Candidate Eugene Debs on Ideals and Purpose of Socialist Party
From the Appeal to Reason of October 24, 1908:
Get This Magazine.
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The Independent, published at 130 Fulton st., New York, will, in its issue of October 15, contain an article by Eugene V. Debs, entitled “The Socialist Party’s Appeal!” As a plain statement of what Socialism is and the relation of the Socialist party to the real vital questions of the day, its equal has not appeared.
This article is one of a series contributed to the Independent by each of the seven presidential candidates. The number containing Comrade Debs’ article will be mailed postpaid by the publishers to any address for ten cents.
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From the New York Independent of October 15, 1908:
The Socialist Party’s Appeal
BY EUGENE V. DEBS
CANDIDATE OF THE SOCIALIST PARTY FOR PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES
At a public meeting in New York City some months ago the present Presidential candidate of the Republican party was asked this question: [“]What is a man to do who is out of work in a financial panic and is starving?”
This is an intensely human as well as a very practical question. It epitomizes the problem of the unemployed and places it in bold relief. It is not too much to say that the future welfare and progress of our country-aye, the fate of civilization itself-depends upon a correct solution of this problem. In view of the supreme importance of the question it might naturally be expected that the Republican party would offer some practical and well-defined method of dealing with it, and one might suppose that the party’s standard-bearer would be in a position clearly to expound that method in making reply to his interrogator. But how pitifully inadequate was the answer! It is at least creditable to Mr. Taft’s honesty that he frankly replied, “God knows!”
When Mr. Kern, the Vice Presidential candidate of the Democratic party, was asked recently what his party proposed to do for the relief of the unemployed, he is reported to have answered, “Nothing directly, nothing socialistic. We hope that carrying out the general ideas in our platform will so restore confidence that industry will start up again. But that’s about all. In fact, that’s enough.”
These answers are not cited for any partisan purpose, but because they serve admirably to illustrate the really essential difference between the Socialist party and its most formidable political rivals. The Socialist party does not refer this important problem to the Deity for solution. It recognizes the fact that it is of human creation and must be solved by human effort. It proposes to do something “directly,” something “socialistic,” for the relief of the unemployed. The Socialist party recognizes the serious nature of the unemployed problem and aims to solve it in the only way it can be solved, namely, by removing its cause. As means of temporary relief, applicable during the period of transition to a collective system of industry, the party proposes “immediate government relief for the unemployed workers by building schools, by reforesting of cut-over and waste lands, by reclamation of arid tracts and the building of canals, and by extending all other useful public works.” Both from the standpoint of effectiveness and that of practicability this program may be offered without comment in lieu of Mr. Taft’s “God knows!” and Mr. Kern’s “hope” of restored confidence.
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