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.)
But occasionally some old bald-headed ashler, with a heart beating
responsive to every human joy or sorrow, would preach a sermon on love
or sympathy or some other noble trait that in spite of heredity still
lived even in the heart of stones. One old divine, having read some of
the plutocratic papers on the Pullman strike and their anathemas of
sympathy, when one workingman’s heart, throbbing responsive to the
divine law of love, prompted him to aid his brother in distress,
discussed sympathy. He said sympathy was one of the perennial flowers of
the Celestial City, and that angels had transplanted it in Eden for the
happiness of Adam and Eve, and that the winds had scattered the seed
throughout the earth. He said there was no humanity, no elevating,
refining, ennobling influences in operation where there was no sympathy.
Sympathy, he said, warmed in every ray of the sun, freshened in every
breeze that scattered over the earth the perfume of flowers and glowed
with the divine scintillation of the stars in all the expanse of the
heavens.
Referring to the men and women of other labor organizations who had
sympathized with the American Railway Union in its efforts to rescue
Pullman’s slaves from death by starvation, the old preacher placed a
crown of jeweled eulogies upon their heads and said that in all the
mutations of life, in adversity or prosperity, in the vigor of youth or
the infirmities of age, there would never come a time to them when like
the Peri grasping a penitent’s tear as a passport to heaven, they would
not cherish as a valued souvenir of all their weary years that one act
of sympathy of the victims of the Pullman piracy, and that when
presented at the pearly gate of paradise, it would swing wide open and
let them in amidst the joyous acclaims of angels.
From such reflections I turn to the practical lessons taught by this
“Liberation Day” demonstration. It means that American lovers of liberty
are setting in operation forces to rescue their constitutional liberties
from the grasp of monopoly and its mercenary hirelings. It means that
the people are aroused in view of impending perils and that agitation,
organization, and unification are to be the future battle cries of men
who will not part with their birthrights and, like Patrick Henry, will
have the courage to exclaim: “Give me liberty or give me death!”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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