Legends: Honoring Eugene V. Debs

In 1920, Eugene Debs gained 1 million votes in his bid for president of the United States. At the time he was behind bars, serving his third year for speaking out against the first world war. Debs believed that the objective of entering the war was for the corporations of imperialistic countries to gain more money. This, especially considering the recent wars America has fought in, does not seem like too much of a stretch. Debs, the perennial Socialist Party of America candidate, had spoken to a crowd of fellow socialists in June 1918, urging them to reject the draft and refuse the war. This offense was punishable by 10 years in prison, a charge which he was condemned to soon thereafter. During his trial, Debs opted to monologue, and was able to speak for two hours. The contents of this speech will be mentioned later.
1884 first brought Debs to government, as a Democrat for the state legislature of Indiana. Debs was already involved in organizing with trade unions, and this soon brought him his first arrest soon thereafter. Debs apparently read the works of Marx in his jail cell delivered to him by Victor Berger, and turned socialist after emerging from jail. He, Berger, and other socialists worked to for the Social Democratic Party in 1897 though it later formed with a another radical party to create the Socialist Party of America. Though the party dissolved, the factions broken off from it now house members such as Noam Chomsky and Barbara Ehrenreich. Aside from 1916, Debs ran as presidential candidates for the parties  every election from 1900 to 1920 (SDP in 1900 and SPA for the rest). In 1912, Debs secured 6% of the vote for the socialist party, the greatest performance by a socialist in America in a presidential bid. In terms of electoral success, he is rivaled only by the current self-proclaimed democratic socialist senator of Vermont, Bernie Sanders.
In 1918, when Debs did officially announce his opposition to World War One, he said of those who would be imprisoned for their sentiments, "They may put those boys in jail—and some of the rest of us in jail—but they can not put the Socialist movement in jail."
Indeed, Debs became "one of the rest of us." Regardless of one's political affiliation, anyone who values democracy must take Debs' story as a lesson of when Democracy can fail in the face of war. Debs' legacy as a pacifist is strong, and equally strong is his legacy as a socialist. As mentioned earlier, while his own party has dissolved, there is still a direct faction that runs electoral campaigns, the Socialist Party USA, as well as an organizing committee which supports various progressives and works within the progressive caucus of the Democratic Party. After being released from prison in 1921, Debs went straight to an invited meeting with the president at the White House (he had pardoned him after around 3 years of jailing). He died in October of 1926, chronicled in the news like this: "On Christmas Day, 1921, President Harding pardoned a model prisoner, a broken prophet. Around him he saw his Socialist Party disintegrating; within him he felt his strength ebbing. His speeches seemed almost pathetic; his pen had lost its throb. A month ago he went to a sanitarium in Elmhurst, Ill., where he died, aged 71." (Time Magazine, Monday Nov. 1, 1926)
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,722648,00.html#ixzz1BuxsVxwl

Regardless of Eugene Debs' later speeches being regarded as "almost pathetic," his two hour monologue at his trial was certainly not. It was regarded by journalist Heyward Broun as, "one of the most beautiful and moving passage in the English language."

"Your honor, I have stated in this court that I am opposed to the form of our present government; that I am opposed to the social system in which we live; that I believe in the change of both but by perfectly peaceable and orderly means.

....

-Cheerio

Your honor, I ask no mercy, I plead for no immunity. I realize that finally the right must prevail. I never more fully comprehended than now the great struggle between the powers of greed on the one hand and upon the other the rising hosts of freedom. I can see the dawn of a better day of humanity. The people are awakening. In due course of time they will come into their own.

...

Let the people take heart and hope everywhere, for the cross is bending, midnight is passing, and joy cometh with the morning."