Debs: His Life, Writings and Speeches, with a Department of AppreciationsDebs, Eugene V. (Eugene Victor)
History
Debs: His Life, Writings and Speeches, with a Department of Appreciations
Debs, Eugene V. (Eugene Victor)
Socialism -- United States; Socialist Party (U.S.)
The only trouble, when the “deputies” were sworn in, followed by the
soldiers, was that there was no trouble. That is the secret of
subsequent proceedings. The railroads were paralyzed. Profound peace
reigned. The people demanded of the railroads that they operate their
trains. They could not do it. Not a man would serve them. They were
completely defeated and the banners of organized labor floated
triumphant in the breeze.
Beaten at every point, their schemes all frustrated, outgeneraled in
tactics and strategy, the corporations played their trump card by an
appeal to the Federal judiciary and the Federal administration. To this
appeal the response came quick as lightning from a storm cloud.
PEACE FATAL TO MANAGERS’ ASSOCIATION.
Peace and order were fatal to the railroad corporations. Violence was as
necessary to them as peace was to the employes. They realized that
victory could only be snatched from labor by an appeal to violence in
the name of peace.
First, deputy marshals. The very day they were appointed the trouble
began. The files of every Chicago paper prove it. The report of the
Strike Commission does the same.
That was what they were hired for and their character is sufficient
evidence of their guilt.
Second, fires (but no Pullman palace cars were lighted) and riots (but
no strikers were implicated).
Third, the capitalist-owned newspapers and Associated Press flashed the
news over all the wires that the people were at the mercy of a mob and
that the strikers were burning and sacking the city.
Fourth, the people (especially those at a distance who knew nothing
except what they saw in the papers) united in the frenzied cry: “Down
with anarchy! Down with the A. R. U.! Death to the strikers!”
DISTURBANCES STARTED BY DEPUTY MARSHALS.
The first trouble instigated by the deputy marshals was the signal for
the Federal Court injunctions, and they came like a succession of
lightning flashes.
Next, the general offices of the American Railway Union were sacked and
put under guard and communication destroyed. (Later Judge Grosscup
rebuked the Federal satraps who committed this outrageous crime, but he
did not pretend to bring them to justice.)
Next, the leaders of the strike were arrested, not for crime, but for
alleged violation of an injunction.
Next, they were brought into court, denied trial by jury, pronounced
guilty by the same judge who had issued the injunction, and sent to jail
for from three to six months.
THE CONCLUDING WORDS NOT YET WRITTEN.
The Supreme Court of the United States, consisting wholly of trained and
successful corporation lawyers, affirmed the proceeding and President
Cleveland says that they have “written the concluding words of this
history.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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