I drank deeply of its waters and every particle of my tissue became saturated with the spirit of the working class. I had fired an engine and been stung by the exposure and hardship of the rail. How could I but feel the burden of their wrongs? How the seed of agitation fail to take deep root in my heart? In the American Railway Union was organized and a braver body of men never fought the battle of the working class.
Up to this time I had heard but little of Socialism, knew practically nothing about the movement, and what little I did know was not calculated to impress me in its favor. I was bent on thorough and complete organization of the railroad men and ultimately the whole working class, and all my time and energy were given to that end. My supreme conviction was that if they were only organized in every branch of the service and all acted together in concert they could redress their wrongs and regulate the conditions of their employment.
The stockholders of the corporation acted as one, why not the men? It was such a plain proposition—simply to follow the example set before their eyes by their masters—surely they could not fail to see it, act as one, and solve the problem. Attorney General who had long served as a lawyer for the railroads, Debs and other A. The U. He and seven other organizers were sentenced to time behind bars—Debs to six months, the others to three—and served that time in Woodstock, Illinois, in a county jail that was less a prison than a suite of rooms in the back of the elegant two-story Victorian home of the county sheriff, who had his inmates over for supper every night.
Debs: A Graphic Biography. Very little of this is true. He ran the union office out of his cell. He was allowed to leave jail on his honor. While in jail, he turned away overtures from socialists.
The people elected Bryan, it was said, but money elected McKinley. On January 1, , writing in the Railway Times , Debs proclaimed himself a socialist. Money constitutes no proper basis of civilization. For Debs, socialism meant public ownership of the means of production. It recognizes the equality in men. In , he campaigned in thirty-three states, travelling on a custom train called the Red Special. Debs was too sick to run in Debs spoke out against the war as soon as it began. In that war I am prepared to fight in any way the ruling class may make necessary, even to the barricades.
And, as a member of the Senate, Sanders said it again. I am talking about a war being waged by some of the wealthiest and most powerful people against working families, against the disappearing and shrinking middle class of our country. After Debs, socialism endured in the six-time Presidential candidacy of his successor, Norman Thomas.
Socialism has been carried into the twenty-first century by way of Sanders, a Debs disciple, and by way of the utter failure of the two-party system. Last summer, a Gallup poll found that more Democrats view socialism favorably than view capitalism favorably. Was it too white?
It lacks sand. In the meantime, you can buy your Bernie hats and A. T-shirts on. Debs was arrested in Cleveland in , under the terms of the Espionage Act, for a speech protesting the war that he had given two weeks earlier, on June 16th, in Canton, Ohio.
Debs was one of thousands of socialists jailed during the First World War and the Red Scare that followed, when the Justice Department effectively tried to outlaw socialism. After being sentenced to ten years, he was taken, by train, from Cleveland to a prison in West Virginia, where he was held for two months before being transferred to the much harsher Atlanta Federal Penitentiary.
On the wall of a cell that he shared with five other men, he hung a picture of Jesus, wearing his crown of thorns. Refusing to ask for or accept special treatment, he was confined to his cell for fourteen hours a day and was allotted twenty minutes a day in the prison yard. He wore a rough denim uniform. The picture, lurid as a chamber of horrors, becomes complete in its gruesome ghastliness when robed ministers of Christ solemnly declare that it is all for the glory of God and the advancement of Christian civilization.
The campaign this year will be unusually spectacular. The Republican Party "points with pride" to the "prosperity" of the country, the beneficent results of the "gold standard" and the "war record" of the administration.
The Democratic Party declares that "imperialism" is the "paramount" issue, and that the country is certain to go to the "demnition bow-wows" if Democratic officeholders are not elected instead of the Republicans. The Democratic slogan is "The Republic vs. Needless is it for me to say to the thinking workingman that he has no choice between these two capitalist parties, that they are both pledged to the same system and that whether the one or the other succeeds, he will still remain the wage-working slave he is today.
What but meaningless phrases are "imperialism," "expansion," "free silver," "gold standard," etc. The large capitalists represented by Mr. McKinley and the small capitalists represented by Mr. Bryan are interested in these "issues," but they do not concern the working class. What the workingmen of the country are profoundly interested in is the private ownership of the means of production and distribution, the enslaving and degrading wage system in which they toil for a pittance at the pleasure of their masters and are bludgeoned, jailed or shot when they protest-this is the central, controlling, vital issue of the hour, and neither of the old party platforms has a word or even a hint about it.
As a rule, large capitalists are Republicans and small capitalists are Democrats, but workingmen must remember that they are all capitalists, and that the many small ones, like the fewer large ones, are all politically supporting their class interests, and this is always and everywhere the capitalist class.
Whether the means of production-that is to say, the land, mines, factories, machinery, etc.
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