61 Facts About Eugene Debs

Eugene Victor "Gene" Debs was an American socialist, political activist, trade unionist, one of the founding members of the Industrial Workers of the World, and five times the candidate of the Socialist Party of America for President of the United States.

Early in his political career, Eugene Debs was a member of the Democratic Party.

Eugene Debs was elected as a Democrat to the Indiana General Assembly in 1884.

Eugene Debs was instrumental in the founding of the American Railway Union, one of the nation's first industrial unions.

Eugene Debs led a boycott by the ARU against handling trains with Pullman cars in what became the nationwide Pullman Strike, affecting most lines west of Detroit and more than 250,000 workers in 27 states.

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In prison, Eugene Debs read various works of socialist theory and emerged six months later as a committed adherent of the international socialist movement.

Eugene Debs was a founding member of the Social Democracy of America, the Social Democratic Party of America and the Socialist Party of America.

Eugene Debs was a candidate for United States Congress from his native state Indiana in 1916.

Eugene Debs was noted for his oratorical skills, and his speech denouncing American participation in World War I led to his second arrest in 1918.

Eugene Debs was convicted under the Sedition Act of 1918 and sentenced to a ten-year term.

Eugene Debs died in 1926, not long after being admitted to a sanatorium due to cardiovascular problems that developed during his time in prison.

Eugene Victor "Gene" Debs was born on November 5,1855, in Terre Haute, Indiana, to Jean Daniel and Marguerite Mari Bettrich Debs, who immigrated to the United States from Colmar, Alsace, France.

Eugene Debs attended public school, dropping out of high school at age 14.

Eugene Debs took a job with the Vandalia Railroad cleaning grease from the trucks of freight engines for fifty cents a day.

Eugene Debs later became a painter and car cleaner in the railroad shops.

Eugene Debs decided to remain a fireman on the run between Terre Haute and Indianapolis, earning more than a dollar a night for the next three and half years.

In July 1875, Eugene Debs left to work at a wholesale grocery house, where he remained for four years while attending a local business school at night.

Eugene Debs joined the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen in February 1875 and became active in the organization.

Eugene Debs was elected associate editor of the BLF's monthly organ, Firemen's Magazine, in 1878.

Eugene Debs worked as a BLF functionary until January 1893 and as the magazine's editor until September 1894.

Eugene Debs served two terms as Terre Haute's city clerk from September 1879 to September 1883.

Eugene Debs married Katherine "Kate" Metzel on June 9,1885 at an Episcopal church.

Eugene Debs held the view that "labor and capital are friends" and opposed strikes as a means of settling differences.

Eugene Debs gradually became convinced of the need for a more unified and confrontational approach as railroads were powerful forces in the economy.

Eugene Debs was elected president of the ARU upon its founding, with fellow railway labor organizer George W Howard as first vice president.

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In 1894, Eugene Debs became involved in the Pullman Strike, which grew out of a compensation dispute started by the workers who constructed the rail cars made by the Pullman Palace Car Company.

President Grover Cleveland, whom Eugene Debs had supported in all three of his presidential campaigns, sent the United States Army to enforce the injunction.

An estimated $80 million worth of property was damaged and Eugene Debs was found guilty of contempt of court for violating the injunction and sent to federal prison.

Eugene Debs was represented by Clarence Darrow, later a leading American lawyer and civil libertarian, who had previously been a corporate lawyer for the railroad company.

Additionally, Debs was visited in jail by the Milwaukee socialist newspaper editor Victor L Berger, who in Debs's words "came to Woodstock, as if a providential instrument, and delivered the first impassioned message of Socialism I had ever heard".

Eugene Debs emerged from jail at the end of his sentence a changed man.

Eugene Debs would spend the final three decades of his life proselytizing for the socialist cause.

Eugene Debs started agitating for the ARU membership to form a Social Democratic organization.

In 1896, Eugene Debs supported Democratic candidate William Jennings Bryan in the presidential election following Bryan's Cross of Gold speech.

Eugene Debs was elected to the National Executive Board, the five-member committee which governed the party, and his brother, Theodore Eugene Debs, was selected as its paid executive secretary, handling day-to-day affairs of the organization.

Eugene Debs was the Socialist Party of America candidate for president in 1904,1908,1912, and 1920.

In 1912, Eugene Debs ran with Emil Seidel as a running mate and received 901,551 votes, which was 6.

Finally, in 1920, running with Seymour Stedman, Eugene Debs won 913,693 votes, which remains the all-time high number of votes for a Socialist Party candidate in a US presidential election.

The size of the vote is nevertheless remarkable since Eugene Debs was at the time a federal prisoner in jail for sedition, though he promised to pardon himself if elected.

Eugene Debs put much more value on organizing workers into unions, favoring unions that brought together all workers in a given industry over those organized by the craft skills workers practiced.

Eugene Debs stated: "We are here to perform a task so great that it appeals to our best thought, our united energies, and will enlist our most loyal support; a task in the presence of which weak men might falter and despair, but from which it is impossible to shrink without betraying the working class".

The rift presented a problem for Eugene Debs, who was influential in both the IWW and the Socialist Party.

Eugene Debs was probably the only person who could have saved Haywood's seat.

In 1906, when Haywood had been on trial for his life in Idaho, Eugene Debs had described him as "the Lincoln of Labor" and called for Haywood to run against Theodore Roosevelt for president, but times had changed and Eugene Debs, facing a split in the party, chose to echo Hillquit's words, accusing the IWW of representing anarchy.

Eugene Debs thereafter stated that he had opposed the amendment, but that once it was adopted it should be obeyed.

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Eugene Debs remained friendly to Haywood and the IWW after the expulsion despite their perceived differences over IWW tactics.

Eugene Debs was noted by many to be a charismatic speaker who sometimes called on the vocabulary of Christianity and much of the oratorical style of evangelism, even though he was generally disdainful of organized religion.

On June 16,1918, Debs made a speech in Canton, Ohio, urging resistance to the military draft of World War I He was arrested on June 30 and charged with ten counts of sedition.

Eugene Debs was for that one afternoon touched with inspiration.

Eugene Debs was sentenced on September 18,1918, to ten years in prison and was disenfranchised for life.

Eugene Debs presented what has been called his best-remembered statement at his sentencing hearing:.

Eugene Debs ran for president in the 1920 election while in prison in Atlanta, Georgia, at the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary.

The President and his Attorney General both believed that public opinion opposed clemency and that releasing Eugene Debs could strengthen Wilson's opponents in the debate over the ratification of the peace treaty.

Eugene Debs was by no means as rabid and outspoken in his expressions as many others, and but for his prominence and the resulting far-reaching effect of his words, very probably might not have received the sentence he did.

Eugene Debs is a man of much personal charm and impressive personality, which qualifications make him a dangerous man calculated to mislead the unthinking and affording excuse for those with criminal intent.

When Eugene Debs was released from the Atlanta Penitentiary, the other prisoners sent him off with "a roar of cheers" and a crowd of fifty thousand greeted his return to Terre Haute to the accompaniment of band music.

Eugene Debs spent his remaining years trying to recover his health, which was severely undermined by prison confinement.

Eugene Debs died there of heart failure on October 20,1926, at the age of 70.

Eugene Debs's body was cremated and buried in Highland Lawn Cemetery in Terre Haute, Indiana.

Vermont senator and presidential candidate Bernie Sanders has long been an admirer of Eugene Debs and produced in 1979 a documentary about Eugene Debs which was released as a film and an audio LP record as an audio-visual teaching aid.

The scholar Bernard Brommel, author of a 1978 biography of Eugene Debs, has donated his biographical research materials to the Newberry Library in Chicago, where they are open to researchers.