If they hang Moyer and Haywood,
they’ve got to hang me.
-Eugene Victor Debs
Hellraisers Journal, Sunday January 20, 1907
Girard, Kansas – Good News From the Appeal to Reason!
After the first forms of the edition for this issue were on the press the following letter came by special delivery from Comrade Eugene V. Debs. Every APPEAL reader will throw up his hat, yell for Debs, and go in for the greatest fight ever waged by the working class on its own behalf.
The toilers of the world have heretofore fought all the battles of the ages and have handed the spoils over to the masters.
Today the working class stands united and will make the last glorious fight in its own behalf!
Listen to Debs’ burning words and make up your mind to enlist under his banner:
I am getting over my rheumatic attack and I leave for Cincinnati Monday, where a specialist will treat my throat. I expect to be out in a few days. As soon as I get through with this and am in physical shape I will come to Girard and stay until the kidnaping edition is made up, and take a hand at helping you on the APPEAL. I am full of fire and want to pour it into the APPEAL. I would like a chance to edit the APPEAL for a couple of weeks, or help you edit it, or help in any way to do the thing that this supreme hour tells me must be done.
Now is the time to strike!
A few weeks more and it will be too late. I have a rush of ideas and want to fuse them with yours and I believe that in combination we can raise hell with the capitalist plans, so far as Moyer, Haywood and Pettibone are concerned. I believe furthermore, that we can do work in three or four weeks’ time that will give you a hundred thousand more subscribers and after the trial begins send it up to half a million and climbing towards a million. I say I believe this can be done and I would like a chance to try it. Should the trial be announced while I am in Girard I could go from there straight to Caldwell, for I propose to be in the center of the fight.
