Produced by Fritz Ohrenschall, Martin Pettit and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net +-------------------------------------------------+ |Transcriber's note: | | | |Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.| | | |The Table of Contents is at the end of the text. | | | +-------------------------------------------------+ Labor and Freedom The Voice and Pen of Eugene V. Debs While there is a lower class I am in it; While there is a criminal class I am of it; While there is a soul in prison I am not free. Published by PHIL WAGNER St. Louis 1916 [Illustration: Logo. 115] _Introduction_ _I think if I had been asked to name this work that comes to us from the rare mind and tender heart of 'Gene Debs, I would have called it "The Old Umbrella Mender." It was this tragic, touching tale that I first read in the manuscript; and it is the memory of this that will always return to me when I think of the book. It is the perfect painting from the artist's brush--the sculptured monument from the master's chisel--that makes one lowly, loyal soul to live forever in the hearts of humanity's lovers._ _Not but that every line in the book is a treasure, and every sentiment brought forth an appeal to all that makes for justice, and equality, and freedom; nor will it detract from, but rather add to, the beauty and inestimable value of the entire collection if others, likewise, carry with them the image and memory of the old umbrella mender, as they travel with Debs the struggling, storm-tossed way of Labor and Freedom._ HENRY M. TICHENOR. St. Louis, March 1, 1916. MISCELLANY THE OLD UMBRELLA MENDER. Coming Nation, March 1, 1913. It was on a cold morning late in November last, just after the national election, and I was walking briskly toward my office. A stiff wind was blowing and a drizzling rain was falling. The threads in one of the ribs of my umbrella snapped asunder and the cover flew upward, as it has a way of doing, and I was about to lower my disabled shower-stick when I ran slapdash into an old itinerant umbrella mender with his outfit slung across his back and shuffling along in the opposite direction. He had noticed the ill-behavior of my umbrella. It snapped from its bearing even as he had his eyes upon it. Perhaps it understood. Anyway he had not a cent in his pocket and he had not yet breakfasted that cold and wet November morning. He was about 65. His clothes had evidently weathered many a storm and besides being worn and shabby were too light for that season. Overcoat he had none. Nor gloves, nor overshoes. Mine embarrassed me.