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DEBS, EUGENE V. 1855-1926

LABOR ORGANIZER AND SOCIALIST PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE

A Political Life

Eugene Debs grew up in the small midwestern city of Terre Haute, Indiana, where his parents, Alsatian emigrants, operated a grocery store. In 1875 he was elected secretary of the Terre Haute lodge of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen. His intelligence and commitment attracted the attention of the brotherhood leaders. By 1881 he was national secretary of the brotherhood, increasingly its spokesman on labor issues, and its most tireless organizer. Debs entered politics as a Democratic candidate for city clerk in 1879. In 1885 he was elected to the Indiana State Assembly.

Union Stand

Debs's evolving views on labor disputes led to his involvement in the strike of the American Railway Union (ARU) in 1894 against the Pullman Company of Chicago. By working intimately with federal authorities, railroad management was able to break the strike. Federal troops occupied Chicago; federal injunctions prevented communication between ARU local unions; and federal judges sentenced Debs and other activists to jail terms. Upon release from jail, Debs had changed some of his views. He questioned the ability of trade unions to compete successfully with the capitalists and their economic power; and, after the 1896 elections, he looked upon socialism as the answer to working people's problems.

Presidential Candidate

Between 1900 and 1920 Debs was the Socialist Party's standard-bearer in five presidential elections. Between campaigns Debs was a tireless speaker and organizer for the party, and he traveled the nation defending workers in their strikes and industrial disputes. In 1905 Debs, William D. Haywood, and others founded the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), nicknamed the "Wobblies," with the aim of uniting all workingmen and gaining union control of production. Although many workers enthusiastically applauded Debs's vision, relatively few endorsed his political program. He conducted his last campaign for president in 1920 as prisoner number 9,653 in the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary while serving ten years for violation of the Espionage Act, having been arrested after he made a rousing antiwar speech in Canton, Ohio, in June 1918. He received nearly a million votes, and he was pardoned on Christmas Day 1921 by President Warren G. Harding. As the American Socialist Party fragmented in the aftermath of the Bolshevik Revolution, Debs remained with the party he had led for so many years. When he died he was buried in Terre Haute, his home throughout his life.