The Debs Decision
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Scott Nearing >> The Debs Decision
"I have been accused of expressing sympathy for the Bolsheviki of
Russia. I plead guilty to the charge. I have read a great deal about the
Bolsheviki of Russia that is not true. I happen to know of my own
knowledge that they have been grossly misrepresented by the press of
this country. Who are these much-maligned revolutionists of Russia? For
years they had been the victims of a brutal Czar. They and their
antecedents were sent to Siberia, lashed with a knout, if they even
dreamed of freedom. At last the hour struck for a great change. The
revolution came. The Czar was overthrown and his infamous regime ended.
What followed? The common people of Russia came into power, the
peasants, the toilers, the soldiers, and they proceeded as best they
could to establish a government of the people.
"It may be that the much-despised Bolsheviki may fail at last, but let
me say to you that they have written a chapter of glorious history. It
will stand to their eternal credit. Their leaders are now denounced as
criminals and outlaws. Let me remind you that there was a time when
George Washington, who is now revered as the father of his country, was
denounced as a disloyalist, when Sam Adams, who is known to us as the
father of the American Revolution, was condemned as an incendiary, and
Patrick Henry, who delivered that inspired and inspiring oration that
aroused the colonists, was condemned as a traitor.
"They were misunderstood at the time. They stood true to themselves, and
they won an immortality of gratitude and glory.
"When great changes occur in history, when great principles are
involved, as a rule the majority are wrong. The minority are right. In
every age there have been a few heroic souls who have been in advance of
their time, who have been misunderstood, maligned, persecuted, sometimes
put to death. Long after their martyrdom monuments were erected to them
and garlands were woven for their graves.
"I have been accused of having obstructed the war. I admit it.
Gentlemen, I abhor war. I would oppose the war if I stood alone. When I
think of a cold, glittering steel bayonet being plunged in the white,
quivering flesh of a human being, I recoil with horror. I have often
wondered if I could take the life of my fellow men, even to save my own.
"Men talk about holy wars. There are none. Let me remind you that it was
Benjamin Franklin who said, 'There was never a good war or a bad peace.'
"Napoleon Bonaparte was a high authority upon the subject of war. And
when in his last days he was chained to the rock of St. Helena, when he
felt the skeleton hand of death reaching for him, he cried out in
horror, 'War is the trade of savages and barbarians.'
"I have read some history. I know that it is ruling classes that make
war upon one another, and not the people. In all of the history of this
world the people have never yet declared a war. Not one. I do not
believe that really civilized nations would murder one another. I would
refuse to kill a human being on my own account. Why should I at the
command of anyone else or at the command of any power on earth?
"Twenty centuries ago one appeared upon earth whom we know as the Prince
of Peace. He issued a command in which I believe. He said, 'Love one
another.' He did not say, 'Kill one another,' but 'Love one another.' He
espoused the cause of the suffering poor--just as Rose Pastor Stokes
did, just as Kate Richards O'Hare did--and the poor heard him gladly. It
was not long before he aroused the ill-will and the hatred of the
usurers, the money-changers, the profiteers, the high priests, the
lawyers, the judges, the merchants, the bankers--in a word, the ruling
class. They said of him just what the ruling class says of the Socialist
today. 'He is preaching dangerous doctrine. He is inciting the common
rabble. He is a menace to peace and order.' And they had him arraigned,
tried, convicted, condemned, and they had his quivering body spiked to
the gates of Jerusalem.
"This has been the tragic history of the race. In the ancient world
Socrates sought to teach some new truths to the people, and they made
him drink the fatal hemlock. It has been true all along the track of the
ages. The men and women who have been in advance, who have had new
ideas, new ideals, who have had the courage to attack the established
order of things, have all had to pay the same penalty.
"A century and a half ago, when the American colonists were still
foreign subjects, and when there were a few men who had faith in the
common people and believed that they could rule themselves without a
king, in that day to speak against the kings was treason. If you read
Bancroft or any other standard historian, you will find that a great
majority of the colonists believed in the king and actually believed
that he had a divine right to rule over them. They had been taught to
believe that to say a word against the king, to question his so-called
divine right, was sinful. There were ministers who opened their bibles
to prove that it was the patriotic duty of the people to loyally serve
and support the king. But there were a few men in that day who said, 'We
don't need a king. We can govern ourselves.' And they began an agitation
that has been immortalized in history.
"Washington, Adams, Paine--these were the rebels of their day. At first
they were opposed by the people and denounced by the press. You can
remember that it was Franklin who said to his compeers, 'We have now to
hang together or we'll hang separately bye and bye.' And if the
Revolution had failed, the revolutionary fathers would have been
executed as felons. But it did not fail. Revolutions have a habit of
succeeding, when the time comes for them. The revolutionary forefathers
were opposed to the form of government in their day. They were
denounced, they were condemned. But they had the moral courage to stand
erect and defy all the storms of detraction; and that is why they are in
history, and that is why the great respectable majority of their day
sleep in forgotten graves. The world does not know they ever lived.
"At a later time there began another mighty agitation in this country.
It was against an institution that was deemed a very respectable one in
its time, the institution of chattel slavery, that became all-powerful,
that controlled the president, both branches of congress, the supreme
court, the press, to a very large extent the pulpit. All of the
organized forces of society, all the powers of government, upheld
chattel slavery in that day. And again a few appeared. One of them was
Elijah Lovejoy. Elijah Lovejoy was as much despised in his day as are
the leaders of the I. W. W. in our day. Elijah Lovejoy was murdered in
cold blood in Alton, Illinois, in 1837, simply because he was opposed to
chattel slavery--just as I am opposed to wage slavery. When you go down
the Mississippi River and look up at Alton, you see a magnificent white
shaft erected there in memory of a man who was true to himself and his
convictions of right and duty unto death.
"It was my good fortune to personally know Wendell Phillips. I heard the
story of his persecution, in part at least, from his own eloquent lips
just a little while before they were silenced in death.
"William Lloyd Garrison, Garret Smith, Thaddeus Stevens--these leaders
of the abolition movement, who were regarded as monsters of depravity,
were true to the faith and stood their ground. They are all in history.
You are teaching your children to revere their memories, while all of
their detractors are in oblivion.
"Chattel slavery disappeared. We are not yet free. We are engaged in
another mighty agitation today. It is as wide as the world. It is the
rise of the toiling and producing masses who are gradually becoming
conscious of their interest, their power, as a class, who are organizing
industrially and politically, who are slowly but surely developing the
economic and political power that is to set them free. They are still in
the minority, but they have learned how to wait, and to bide their
time.
"It is because I happen to be in this minority that I stand in your
presence today, charged with crime. It is because I believe as the
revolutionary fathers believed in their day, that a change was due in
the interests of the people, that the time had come for a better form of
government, an improved system, a higher social order, a nobler humanity
and a grander civilization. This minority that is so much misunderstood
and so bitterly maligned, is in alliance with the forces of evolution,
and as certain as I stand before you this afternoon, it is but a
question of time until this minority will become the conquering majority
and inaugurate the greatest change in all of the history of the world.
You may hasten the change; you may retard it; you can no more prevent it
than you can prevent the coming of the sunrise on the morrow.
"My friend, the assistant prosecutor, doesn't like what I had to say in
my speech about internationalism. What is there objectionable to
internationalism? If we had internationalism there would be no war. I
believe in patriotism. I have never uttered a word against the flag. I
love the flag as a symbol of freedom. I object only when that flag is
prostituted to base purposes, to sordid ends, by those who, in the name
of patriotism, would keep the people in subjection.
"I believe, however, in a wider patriotism. Thomas Paine said, 'My
country is the world. To do good is my religion.' Garrison said, 'My
country is the world and all mankind are my countrymen.' That is the
essence of internationalism. I believe in it with all my heart. I
believe that nations have been pitted against nations long enough in
hatred, in strife, in warfare. I believe there ought to be a bond of
unity between all of these nations. I believe that the human race
consists of one great family. I love the people of this country, but I
don't hate the people of any country on earth--not even the Germans. I
refuse to hate a human being because he happens to be born in some other
country. Why should I? To me it does not make any difference where he
was born or what the color of his skin may be. Like myself he is the
image of his creator. He is a human being endowed with the same
faculties, he has the same aspirations, he is entitled to the same
rights, and I would infinitely rather serve him and love him than to
hate him and kill him.
"We hear a great deal about human brotherhood--a beautiful and inspiring
theme. It is preached from a countless number of pulpits. It is vain for
us to preach of human brotherhood while we tolerate this social system
in which we are a mass of warring units, in which millions of workers
have to fight one another for jobs, and millions of business men and
professional men have to fight one another for trade, for practice--in
which we have individual interests and each is striving to care for
himself alone without reference to his fellow men. Human brotherhood is
yet to be realized in this world. It never can be under the
capitalist-competitive system in which we live.
"Yes; I was opposed to the war. I am perfectly willing, on that count,
to be branded as a disloyalist, and if it is a crime under the American
law punishable by imprisonment for being opposed to human bloodshed, I
am perfectly willing to be clothed in the stripes of a convict and to
end my days in a prison cell.
"The War of the Revolution was opposed. The Tory press denounced its
leaders as criminals and outlaws. And that is what they were, under the
divine right of a king to rule men.
"The War of 1812 was opposed and condemned; the Mexican War was
bitterly condemned by Abraham Lincoln, by Charles Sumner, by Daniel
Webster and by Henry Clay. That war took place under the Polk
administration. These men denounced the President; they condemned his
administration; and they said that the war was a crime against humanity.
They were not indicted; they were not tried for crime. They are honored
today by all of their countrymen. The War of the Rebellion was opposed
and condemned. In 1864 the Democratic Party met in convention at Chicago
and passed a resolution condemning the war as a failure. What would you
say if the Socialist Party were to meet in convention today and condemn
the present war as a failure? You charge us with being disloyalists and
traitors. Were the Democrats of 1864 disloyalists and traitors because
they condemned the war as a failure?
"I believe in the Constitution of the United States. Isn't it strange
that we Socialists stand almost alone today in defending the
Constitution of the United States? The revolutionary fathers who had
been oppressed under king rule understood that free speech and the right
of free assemblage by the people were the fundamental principles of
democratic government. The very first amendment to the Constitution
reads: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of
religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the
freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably
to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of
grievances." That is perfectly plain English. It can be understood by a
child. I believe that the revolutionary fathers meant just what is here
stated--that Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech
or of the press, or of the right of the people to peaceably assemble,
and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
"That is the right that I exercised at Canton on the 16th day of last
June; and for the exercise of that right, I now have to answer to this
indictment. I believe in the right of free speech, in war as well as in
peace. I would not, under any circumstances, gag the lips of my
bitterest enemy. I would under no circumstances suppress free speech. It
is far more dangerous to attempt to gag the people than to allow them to
speak freely of what is in their hearts. I do not go as far as Wendell
Phillips did. Wendell Phillips said that the glory of free men is that
they trample unjust laws under their feet. That is how they repeal them.
If a human being submits to having his lips sealed, to be in silence
reduced to vassalage, he may have all else, but he is still lacking in
all that dignifies and glorifies real manhood.
"Now, notwithstanding this fundamental provision in the national law,
Socialists' meetings have been broken up all over this country.
Socialist speakers have been arrested by hundreds and flung into jail,
where many of them are lying now. In some cases not even a charge was
lodged against them--guilty of no crime except the crime of attempting
to exercise the right guaranteed to them by the Constitution of the
United States.
"I have told you that I am no lawyer, but it seems to me that I know
enough to know that if Congress enacts any law that conflicts with this
provision in the Constitution, that law is void. If the Espionage law
finally stands, then the Constitution of the United States is dead. If
that law is not the negation of every fundamental principle established
by the Constitution, then certainly I am unable to read or to understand
the English language.
"War does not come by chance. War is not the result of accident. There
is a definite cause for war, especially a modern war. The war that began
in Europe can readily be accounted for. For the last forty years, under
this international capitalist system, this exploiting system, these
various nations of Europe have been preparing for the inevitable. And
why? In all these nations the great industries are owned by a relatively
small class. They are operated for the profit of that class. And great
abundance is produced by the workers, but their wages will only buy back
a small part of their product. What is the result? They have a vast
surplus on hand; they have got to export it; they have got to find a
foreign market for it. As a result of this, these nations are pitted
against each other. They begin to arm themselves to open, to maintain
the market and quickly dispose of their surplus. There is but the one
market. All these nations are competitors for it, and sooner or later
every war of trade becomes a war of blood.
"Now, where there is exploitation there must be some form of militarism
to support it. Wherever you find exploitation you find some form of
military force. In a smaller way you find it in this country. It was
there long before war was declared. For instance, when the miners out in
Colorado entered upon a strike about four years ago, the state militia,
that is under the control of the Standard Oil Company, marched upon a
camp, where the miners and their wives and children were in tents. And
by the way, a report of this strike was issued by the United States
Commission on Industrial Relations. When the soldiers approached the
camp at Ludlow, where these miners, with their wives and children, were,
the miners, to prove that they were patriotic, placed flags above their
tents, and when the state militia, that is paid by Rockefeller and
controlled by Rockefeller, swooped down upon that camp, the first thing
they did was to shoot those United States flags into tatters. Not one
of them was indicted or tried because he was a traitor to his country.
Pregnant women were killed, and a number of innocent children slain.
This in the United States of America,--the fruit of exploitation. The
miners wanted a little more of what they had been producing. But the
Standard Oil Company wasn't rich enough. It insisted that all they were
entitled to was just enough to keep them in working order. There is
slavery for you. And when at last they protested, when they were
tormented by hunger, when they saw their children in tatters, they were
shot down as if they had been so many vagabond dogs.
"And while I am upon this point, let me say just another word. Working
men who organize, and who sometimes commit overt acts, are very often
condemned by those who have no conception of the conditions under which
they live. How many men are there, for instance, who know anything of
their own knowledge about how men work in a lumber camp--a logging camp,
a turpentine camp? In this report of the United States Commission on
Industrial Relations, you will find the statement proved that peonage
existed in the state of Texas. Out of these conditions springs such a
thing as the I. W. W.--when men receive a pittance for their pay, when
they work like galley slaves for a wage that barely suffices to keep
their protesting souls within their tattered bodies. When they can
endure the condition no longer, and they make some sort of a
demonstration, or perhaps commit acts of violence, how quickly are they
condemned by those who do not know anything about the conditions under
which they work.
"Five gentlemen of distinction, among them Professor John Graham Brooks,
of Harvard University, said that a word that so fills the world as the
I. W. W. must have something in it. It must be investigated. And they
did investigate it, each along their own lines; and I wish it were
possible for every man and woman in this country to read the result of
their investigation. They tell you why and how the I. W. W. was
instituted. They tell you, moreover, that the great corporations, such
as the Standard Oil Company, such as the Coal Trust, and the Lumber
Trust, have, through their agents, committed more crimes against the I.
W. W. than the I. W. W. have ever committed against them.
"I was asked not long ago if I was in favor of shooting our soldiers in
the back. I said, 'No. I would not shoot them in the back. I wouldn't
shoot them at all. I would not have them shot.' Much has been made of a
statement that I declared that men were fit for something better than
slavery and cannon fodder. I made the statement. I make no attempt to
deny it. I meant exactly what I said. Men are fit for something better
than slavery and cannon fodder; and the time will come, though I shall
not live to see it, when slavery will be wiped from the earth, and when
men will marvel that there ever was a time when men who called
themselves civilized rushed upon each other like wild beasts and
murdered one another, by methods so cruel and barbarous that they defy
the power of language to describe. I can hear the shrieks of the
soldiers of Europe in my dreams. I have imagination enough to see a
battlefield. I can see it strewn with the wrecks of human beings, who
but yesterday were in the flush and glory of their young manhood. I can
see them at eventide, scattered about in remnants, their limbs torn from
their bodies, their eyes gouged out. Yes, I can see them, and I can hear
them. I look above and beyond this frightful scene. I think of the
mothers who are bowed in the shadow of their last great grief--whose
hearts are breaking. And I say to myself: 'I am going to do the little
that lies in my power to wipe from this earth that terrible scourge of
war.'
"If I believed in war I could not be kept out of the first line
trenches. I would not be patriotic at long range. I would be honest
enough, if I believed in bloodshed, to shed my own. But I do not believe
that the shedding of blood bears any actual testimony to patriotism, to
love of country, to civilization. On the contrary, I believe that
warfare in all of its forms is an impeachment of our social order, and a
rebuke to our vaunted Christian civilization.
"And now, gentlemen of the jury, I am not going to detain you too long.
I wish to admit everything that has been said respecting me from this
witness chair. I wish to admit everything that has been charged against
me except what is embraced in the indictment from which I have read to
you. I cannot take back a word. I cannot repudiate a sentence. I stand
before you guilty of having made this speech. I stand before you
prepared to accept the consequences of what there is embraced in that
speech. I do not know, I cannot tell, what your verdict may be; nor does
it matter much, so far as I am concerned.
"Gentlemen, I am the smallest part of this trial. I have lived long
enough to appreciate my own personal insignificance in relation to a
great issue, that involves the welfare of the whole people. What you may
choose to do to me will be of small consequence after all. I am not on
trial here. There is an infinitely greater issue that is being tried
today in this court, though you may not be conscious of it. American
institutions are on trial here before a court of American citizens. The
future will tell."
5. DEBS TALKS TO THE JUDGE
The jury found Eugene Debs guilty and on Saturday morning the judge
pronounced sentence. Before the sentence was given, Debs had another
opportunity to tell someone about Socialism--this time it was the judge.
Debs never loses a chance. When the clerk asked him whether he had
anything to say he made another Socialist speech. Said he:
"Your Honor, years ago I recognized my kinship with all living beings,
and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest of
earth. I said then, I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am
in it; while there is a criminal element, I am of it; while there is a
soul in prison, I am not free....
"If the law under which I have been convicted is a good law, then there
is no reason why sentence should not be pronounced upon me. I listened
to all that was said in this court in support and justification of this
law, but my mind remains unchanged. I look upon it as a despotic
enactment in flagrant conflict with democratic principles and with the
spirit of free institutions.
"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 believed in the change of both--but by perfectly
peaceable and orderly means.
"Let me call your attention to the fact this morning that in this system
five per cent. of our people own and control two-thirds of our wealth,
sixty-five per cent. of the people, embracing the working class who
produce all wealth, have but five per cent. to show for it.
"Standing here this morning, I recall my boyhood. At fourteen, I went to
work in the railroad shops; at sixteen, I was firing a freight engine on
a railroad. I remember all the hardships, all the privations, of that
earlier day, and from that time until now, my heart has been with the
working class. I could have been in Congress long ago. I have preferred
to go to prison. The choice has been deliberately made. I could not have
done otherwise. I have no regret.
"In the struggle--the unceasing struggle--between the toilers and
producers and their exploiters, I have tried, as best I might, to serve
those among whom I was born, with whom I expect to share my lot until
the end of my days.
"I am thinking this morning of the men in the mills and factories; I am
thinking of the women who, for a paltry wage, are compelled to work out
their lives; of the little children who, in this system, are robbed of
their childhood, and in their early, tender years, are seized in the
remorseless grasp of mammon, and forced into the industrial dungeons,
there to feed the machines while they themselves are being starved body
and soul. I can see them dwarfed, diseased, stunted, their little lives
broken, and their hopes blasted, because in this high noon of our
twentieth century civilization, money is still so much more important
than human life. Gold is god and rules in the affairs of men. The little
girls, and there are a million of them in this country--this, the most
favored land beneath the bending skies, a land in which we have vast
areas of rich and fertile soil, material resources in inexhaustible
abundance, the most marvelous productive machinery on earth, millions of
eager workers ready to apply their labor to that machinery to produce an
abundance for every man, woman and child--and if there are still many
millions of our people who are the victims of poverty, whose life is a
ceaseless struggle all the way from youth to age, until at last death
comes to their rescue and stills the aching heart, and lulls the victim
to dreamless sleep, it is not the fault of the Almighty, it can't be
charged to nature; it is due entirely to an outgrown social system that
ought to be abolished, not only in the interest of the working class,
but in a higher interest of all humanity.