To serve the working class is to me
always a duty of love.
-Eugene Victor Debs
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Hellraisers Journal, Sunday August 16, 1908
Eugene Debs Speaks to Delegates at Labor Gathering
Eugene Debs, Socialist Party candidate for President, was invited to speak at the State F. of L. convention. He arrived at the convention from Girard where he had been resting after touring through the eastern states.
Pittsburg, Kansas, August 12, 1908
Kansas State Federation of Labor Convention:
Introduction by Chairman Cable
Gentlemen of the Convention: I assure you it is a great privilege on my part to present to you at this time a gentleman who needs no introduction at my hands; a gentleman who is known to you and who is known to the workingmen throughout the length and breadth of this country as a true and tried trade unionist and the candidate of the Socialist party for President of the United States. I, therefore, take great pleasure in presenting to you Brother Eugene V. Debs.
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[Debs Speaks]
Mr. Chairman, Delegates and Fellow Workers: It is with pleasure, I assure you, that I embrace this opportunity to exchange greetings with you in the councils of labor. I have prepared no formal address, nor is any necessary at this time. You have met here as the representatives of organized labor and if I can do anything to assist you in the work you have been delegated to do I shall render that assistance with great pleasure.
To serve the working class is to me always a duty of love. Thirty-three years ago I first became a member of a trade union. I can remember quite well under what difficulties meetings were held and with what contempt organized labor was treated at that time. There has been a decided change. The small and insignificant trade union has expanded to the proportions of a great national organization. The few hundreds now number millions and organized labor has become a recognized factor in the economics and politics of the nation.
There has been a great evolution during that time and while the power of the organized workers has increased there has been an industrial development which makes that power more necessary than ever before in all the history of the working class movement.
This is an age of organization. The small employer of a quarter of a century ago has practically disappeared. The workingman of today is confronted by the great corporation which has its ironclad rules and regulations, and if they don’t suit he can quit.
In the presence of this great power, workingmen are compelled to organize or be ground to atoms. They have organized. They have the numbers. They have had some bitter experience. They have suffered beyond the power of language to describe, but they have not yet developed their latent power to a degree that they can cope successfully with the great power that exploits and oppresses them. Upon this question of organization, my brothers, you and I may differ widely, but as we are reasonable men, we can discuss these differences candidly until we find common ground upon which we can stand side by side in the true spirit of solidarity–and work together for the emancipation of our class.
Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: Debs Speaks at Kansas State Federation of Labor Convention on Labor Unity and Victory” →
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Mother Jones was deported by the military on orders of Governor Peabody on Saturday March 26th. With other organizers of the United Mine Workers of America, she was put aboard a Santa Fe train bound for La Junta, Colorado, some 65 miles north and east of Trinidad. They were all given deportation papers which warned them never to return. Mother sat all night in the station at La Junta, and the next morning, with the assistance of a sympathetic railroad conductor, she was able to board a train to Denver. From her hotel room, near the Governors office, she wrote the following letter:
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