Labor and Freedom: The Voice and Pen of Eugene V. Debs — John Shaqi
Labor and Freedom: The Voice and Pen of Eugene V. DebsDebs, Eugene V. (Eugene Victor)
History
Labor and Freedom: The Voice and Pen of Eugene V. Debs
Debs, Eugene V. (Eugene Victor)
Labor -- United States; Socialism -- United States; Socialist Party (U.S.); Working class -- United States
In arraigning President Roosevelt and his administration I have no
private spite nor personal grudge to satisfy, but an obligation to
redeem and a principle to vindicate.
I shall go about it as I would any other moral duty, asking no favors
and prepared to accept all consequences.
In the first place, I charge President Roosevelt with being a hypocrite,
the most consummate that ever occupied the executive seat of the nation.
His profession of pure politics is false, his boasted moral courage the
bluff of a bully and his "square deal" a delusion and a sham.
Theodore Roosevelt is mainly for Theodore Roosevelt and incidentally for
such others as are also for the same distinguished gentleman, first,
last and all the time. He is a smooth and slippery politician, swollen
purple with self-conceit; he is shrewd enough to gauge the stupidity of
the masses and unscrupulous enough to turn it into hero worship. This
constitutes the demagogue, and he is that in superlative degree.
Only a few days ago he appeared in a characteristic role. Rushing into
the limelight, as necessary to him as breath, he shrieked that he and
"Root" were "horrified" because of certain scandalous and revolting
charges made by one of his own former political chums. Of course, he and
"Root" of Tweed fame, the foxiest "fixer" of them all, were "horrified"
because of the shock to their political virtue, but it so happened that
the horror took effect only when they found themselves uncovered. The
taking of Harriman's boodle for corruptly electing him president and
the use of the stolen insurance funds for the same criminal purpose did
not "horrify" the president and "Root," nor would they be "horrified"
yet if they had not been caught red-handed in the act with the booty
upon their persons.
The cry of the exposed malefactor and all his pack of yelpers that he is
the victim of a "plot" by his own friends and supporters, the very
gentlemen (sic) who furnished him with free special trains, paid his
campaign expenses and in fact bought the presidency for him, is so
palpably false as to be absolutely ridiculous and only brings into
bolder relief the hypocrisy and fraud it was designed to conceal.
This much is preliminary to the extraordinary official conduct of the
president which has "horrified" not only its victims but millions of
others, and now prompts this review and protest.
Something over a year ago Charles Moyer, William Haywood and George
Pettibone, of Colorado, leading officials of the Western Federation of
Miners, were overpowered and kidnaped by a gang of thugs and torn from
their families at night by conspiracy of two degenerate governors and
another notorious criminal acting for the Mine and Smelter Trust, one of
the most stupendous aggregations of force and plunder in all America.
Every decent man and woman was "horrified" by this infamy and the whole
working class of the nation cried out against it.
Was Roosevelt also "horrified"?
Yes!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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