Crossposted at my new Community Blog, My Left Wing
My GOD, doesn’t anyone know who Eugene V. Debs was? When listening to their “classic country” radio stations, do the George Bush-loving, Republican-voting, Limbaugh-bobbleheads ever stop to think about what the lyrics to Sixteen Tons actually MEAN?
One doubts it. If you’ve never heard of Eugene V. Debs, or have but don’t know the magnitude of the man’s contribution to YOUR OWN QUALITY OF LIFE TODAY, please read on.
By Studs Terkel
Renowned for his compilations of oral interviews with famous and mostly not-so-famous Americans, Studs Terkel has talked with thousands of people about their experiences on the job, serving their country in World War II, their perceptions of race and most recently, the challenges of growing old and facing death.
Born Louis Terkel, he grew up in the 1920s and 1930s in an environment filled with workers, union organizers and other progressives who gathered in the lobby of his parents’ Chicago rooming house. Starting his career as an actor, disc jockey and radio and television personality, Terkel ultimately turned to documenting oral interviews in a series of books. In Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do, Terkel elicited first-hand experiences of workers as varied as bus driver and strip miner, policeman and film critic. Blacklisted in the 1950s by the House Committee on Un-American Activities, Terkel went on to win a Pulitzer Prize in 1985 and a National Humanities Medal from President Bill Clinton in 1997.
Terkel, who has been called a “guerilla journalist” and a man “whose name is synonymous with Labor Day,” sprinkles his conversation with references to the ancient Greek mathematician Archimedes and American revolutionary Thomas Paine–yet has the unique ability to engage people in a way that draws forth the hopes, dreams and heartfelt experiences of everyday Americans.
The following is an excerpt from an AFL-CIO interview with Terkel in July 2005:
How did the eight-hour day come into being? It began in Chicago and four guys got hanged for it–the Haymarket affair in 1886. What were they fighting for? The eight-hour day.
There’s no knowledge what the labor movement did for the lives of people. Social Security came out of the New Deal, and the minimum wage idea, and the idea of national health, these all came out of [labor]. And that’s all being dismantled by what we have now. And so part of it is not knowing the past. No past, therefore there is no present and no future.
What was the first thing Ronald Reagan did as president of the United States? In 1981, he broke the air controller’s strike. You know what they were striking about? It wasn’t about pay. It was about R and R, rest and recreation. So the issue was passenger safety, right? And Ronald Reagan said, `No,’ and four out of five Americans applauded.
You start wondering, `Wait a minute. Are we a necrophiliac people?’ And you start thinking some more. `We’re the only industrialized country that still has the death penalty, right? We’re the only industrialized country that does not have national health insurance.’ So one is death, and the other is life. And so you start thinking, `My God, have we become so perverse?
If so, then all my books are junk? Because my books depended on the sense of decency of ordinary Americans and their native intelligence and it’s under assault today as never before.
[Americans’ sense of decency and native intelligence are] there, but the information has been siphoned through–we know what it’s siphoned through: Fox News, Rupert Murdoch and Rush Limbaugh. And thus we have a certain kind of news filter to it. Right? It becomes entertainment, it becomes banality, it becomes nothing. And there’s no past. The big thing is to revivify in one way or another the past and to show how we came to be.
So that’s part of the problem facing labor, to reacquaint these people with what happened. The new members are fresh and they have grievances and we’ve got to hit that and reach as many as possible–caregivers and…maids and get all the people who never thought of organizing, organized. And that’s what the oral histories I write are all about, I hope–to recapture our history. And I think we can do it–provided we…stick together.
Whatever split there is has to be healed–immediately. Because we agree on the big thing. Basically, it has to be under one big tent. I like the phrase `under one tent.’ And so, that’s pretty much the ticket.”
History
EUGENE VICTOR DEBS 1855-1926
Born: Nov. 5,1855, at Terre Haute, Indiana.
Died: Oct. 20,1926, Lindlahr Sanitarium, Elmhurst, Illinois. Buried in Terre Haute, Ind.
Education: Attended Terre Haute Public schools, dropping out of high school at age of 14 to take job as painter in railroad yards. In 1870 became fireman on railroad. In his spare time, he went to night classes at a local business college.
September 1874 –At his mother’s insistence he gave up job as railroad fireman and went to work in wholesale grocery firm of Hulman & Cox as a billing clerk.
February 27, 1875 –Became charter member and secretary of Vigo Lodge, Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen. He continued work at Hulman & Cox and used his salary to help the fledgling local union and conducted its work at night. Later the same year he became president of Occidental Literary Club of Terre Haute. Brought famous personages to Terre Haute including Col. Robert Ingersoll, James Whitcomb Riley, Susan B. Anthony and many others.
1878 — Made assistant editor of national Brotherhood of Locomotive Fireman’s Magazine.
1879 –Elected to first of two terms as City Clerk of Terre Haute on Democrat ticket.
1880 –Named Grand Secretary of Brotherhood of Railway Firemen and editor of the Magazine.
1884 –Elected state representative to the Indiana General Assembly as a Democrat representing Terre Haute and Vigo County. Served in 1885.
June 9, 1885 –Married to Kate Metzel whom he loved and cherished until his death. They had no children.
1890 –Built and moved into his beautiful Terre Haute home at 451 North Eighth Street, which is now a National Historic Landmark of the National Parks Department of the Department of Interior of the United States; an official historic site of the State of Indiana and is now the Debs Museum.
1891 –Announced his retirement from the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen as its Grand Secretary.
1892 –Convention of Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen prevailed on him to retain editorship of Magazine.
June 1893 –Organized in Chicago first industrial union in United States, the American Railway Union.
April 1894 –The American Railway Union struck Great Northern Railway. Not a wheel moved on Great Northern and at end of 18 days, the railway granted demands of union.
May 11, 1894 –Pullman Boycott and strike at Chicago began.
July 23, 1894 –Debs and leaders of ARU jailed.
May, 1895 –Debs and leaders of ARU sent to jail for contempt of court in connection with Pullman strike. Finished sentences Nov. 22, 1895. Given triumphal welcome by thousands on his arrival in Chicago, from Woodstock, Ill. jail where sentence was served.
1900, 1904, 1908, 1912, 1920 –Ran as candidate of Socialist Party for President of the United States in some of the most dynamic campaigning ever seen in the United States. Made his greatest showing in campaign of 1908 which featured the RED SPECIAL train which went to every section of the country.
1907-1912 –Named Associate Editor of the Appeal to Reason published in Girard, Kan. He was paid the then fabulous salary of $100 per week. The weekly magazine achieved a circulation of several hundred thousand due to the powerful writing of Debs. The bound files of the Appeal to Reason for the years of 1907 to 1914 are part of the library in the Debs home.
1916 –Ran for Congress in his home district in Terre Haute on the Socialist ticket and was defeated.
June 16, 1918 –Debs made his famous anti-war speech in Canton, Ohio, protesting World War I which was raging in Europe. For this speech he was arrested and convicted in federal court in Cleveland, Ohio under the war-time espionage law. He was his own attorney and his appeal to the jury and his statement to the court before sentencing, are regarded as two of the great classic statements ever made in a court of law. He was sentenced to serve 10 years in prison and disenfranchised for life, losing his citizenship.
April 12, 1919 –Debs began serving his sentence in Moundsville, W. Va. State prison and was transferred to Atlanta, Ga. Federal prison two months later. His humility and friendliness and his assistance to all won him the respect and admiration of the most hardened convicts.
1920 –For the fifth and last time, while a prisoner at Atlanta, he was nominated to run for president on the Socialist party ticket. Conducting his campaign from inside the prison, he was given nearly a million votes but was defeated by the Republican, Warren G. Harding. On Christmas Day, 1921 President Harding released Debs from prison, commuting his sentence to time served.
Dec. 28, 1921 –Debs arrived home in Terre Haute from prison and was given a tremendous welcome by thousand of Terre Hauteans. Debs spent his remaining days trying to recover his health which was severely undermined by prison confinement. He made several speeches, wrote many articles and finally in 1926 went to Lindlahr sanitarium just outside of Chicago.
Oct. 20, 1926 –Eugene V. Debs died in Lindlahr sanitarium. His body was brought back to Terre Haute where it lay in state in the Terre Haute Central Labor Temple. Great men and women from the world over came to Terre Haute for his funeral which was conducted by Norman Thomas from the front porch of the Debs home.
Thirty-eight years later, Thomas returned to Terre Haute to dedicate the Debs home as a memorial to the great humanitarian. Debs was cremated and his ashes were interred in Highland Lawn cemetery, Terre Haute, with only a simple marker. Ten years later his beloved wife, Kate, was buried beside him.
Over the years, hundreds have journeyed to his grave to pay tribute to this great man whose many reforms have now become a part of the American way of life. There is hardly any American alive today, rich or poor, whose life has not been touched in some beneficent way by the influence of Eugene Victor Debs.
“Too long have the workers of the world waited for some Moses to lead them out of bondage. I would not lead you out if I could; for if you could be led out, you could be led back again. I would have you make up your minds there is nothing that you cannot do for yourselves.”
From an address on Industrial Unionism delivered at Grand Central Palace. New York City, Dec. 18,1905.
In 19th century America, there was widespread employment of children in the factories and mines. Boys were hired to work in the mines, as their small bodies were readily accommodated in the tight, cramped work spaces below ground. They provided cheap labor for such chores as tending the mules or ponies and serving as “gophers” for the men doing the more physically demanding work.
Debs was a strong advocate of legislative restrictions on child labor, and the Socialist Party became the mechanism for forcing this issue on the agendas of the two major parties. It was for Debs an issue of human rights, but Debs was not unaware that such restrictions would lead to more jobs and better wages for America’s working men and women.
In 1920 Eugene V. Debs ran for the office of President of the United States. For the fifth time Debs placed himself, his ideas, and his ideals before the voters of America.
This election included for the first time a whole new class of voters–women. The Nineteenth Amendment to the U. S. Constitution was adopted in August of that year. The suffrage amendment was the culmination of a long and arduous struggle begun in 1848 at the first Women’s Rights Convention. This historic meeting was held in Seneca Falls, New York, a town resembling in size and development, Terre Haute, Indiana, Debs’s 1855 birthplace. From that time and place, women and their male allies marched, agitated, and sacrificed for the cause they knew to be right and good. Is it a surprise that Debs was a life long supporter of this movement?
The other unusual thing about the election of 1920 is that Debs conducted his campaign from the Atlanta Federal Prison. He was famously, “federal prisoner 9653,” incarcerated for violating the Espionage Act of 1917. He had chosen to speak out against war at a time when the U. S. government was pursuing a “total war” policy. The Espionage Act along with a relentless pro-war propaganda effort by the government succeeded in creating a climate in the country one historian has characterized as “mad, patriotic conformity.”
Equality, fraternity and justice. These great principles were a consuming passion for Eugene Debs. The case can be made, that more than being a Socialist or a union leader, Debs was first and foremost a Humanist and idealist, very much a product of the Enlightenment. Named after two French Enlightenment figures, Eugene Sey and Victor Hugo, Debs was inspired by their ideals. Hugo’s Les Miserables was his favorite literature and from his father, he learned also to appreciate the writings of Payne and Belamy. These are strange literary tastes for a person who quit school at age fourteen to work to help support the family. When Debs had a home built in 1890 for himself and wife Kate, the library was a prominent room on the main floor.
Inspired by such ideals in the name of social justice, Debs became an advocate, not only for the rights of workers, but also for women and children. He became concerned with the plight of African Americans as well. This Humanistic bent led him to become an outspoken peace advocate, and his anti-war speeches led to a second lengthy prison stay.
