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.)
In closing this necessarily brief and meager biographical sketch of this
true, living, loving and lovable man, true neighbor, really “desirable
citizen,” and unimpeached and unimpeachable representative and servant
of the working class, I cannot tell in any better way of “Debs at Home”
than in the little pamphlet I wrote in 1904. It needs no change. He has
only grown every day in intellectual and spiritual stature, more wise,
more patient, more uncompromising and unconquerably aggressive and more
loving and lovable and, therefore, able more safely to teach the workers
and more to be feared by the exponents of the rapidly-dying system of
capitalism tottering to its inevitable grave, dying because it has
served its period of usefulness, because it now hurts, degrades and
humiliates all of the human family.
DEBS AT HOME.
Here, in Terre Haute, where “Gene” Debs lives, everybody admires him.
All who know him personally love him. He has no personal enemies; he has
enemies, but they do not know him. He has none in Terre Haute. Many here
would like to hang his ideas, but the man, the strong personality, the
gentleness and cordiality of his greeting when he meets his neighbors
and fellow-citizens, disarm all prejudice. Politicians here, as
elsewhere, fear him, for they know that his intrepid soul knows and
permits no intellectual fears, stoops to no intellectual prostitution.
He is as open and fearless when called upon for an opinion upon any
matters of local interest as he is when he assails the capitalist
system.
I remember first seeing him in the editorial office of the Locomotive
Firemen’s Magazine. I was struck by his alertness and the unhesitating
speed of his work, whether engaged in writing or arranging the details
of printing, mailing or distributing the great magazine among the
thousands of workers who read and had profitable enjoyment from its
pages. I next remember his home-coming after the A. R. U. had won the
Great Northern strike. An immense throng met him at the depot with the
Ringgold Band, drum corps and torchlights. They had a carriage for him,
but he protested and took his place in the ranks with the men,—only a
look of joy shone on his face, nothing of exultation; he was as
unconscious of himself then as he seems ever to be and is. The shouts of
“Welcome Home” seemed only to elate and inspire his soul to do more for
the cause of labor. Then I remember (I was a Republican at the time)
reading of the awful strike begun in Chicago in 1894. I shared with
others in my ignorance in condemnation of the things reported from
Chicago. I commiserated his confinement in jail at Woodstock but
believed, as millions equally as ignorant as I was then believed, that
the laws had been upheld. I know now the details of the wrongs that in
the name of Law and Order were heaped upon the cause of labor then and
understand the superb courage and patience of labor’s greatest and most
far-seeing leader,—Debs.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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