Hellraisers Journal: Convention of Social Democracy of America Ends in Fracture; Debs, Keliher, Mailly, and Others Bolt

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EVD Quote, Revolutionary Solidarity, ISR Feb 1918~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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.

EVD, SDA Fdg Conv, Chg 6-15-97, wiki, Chg Chc, June 16, 1897
Debs Addressing Founding Convention of Social Democracy of America,
Chicago, June 15, 1897

From The Chicago Chronicle of June 12, 1898:

Debs Goes Out:
Social Democracy is Split into Two Factions

Eugene 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.

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Hellraisers Journal: Elizabeth Gurley Flynn Speaks in New York City: “Girl Socialist Amazes Hearers.”

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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.

EGF NY arrest Aug 22, Union Leader W-B PA, Sep 7, 1906

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.

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