Today is celebrated as Labor Day in the United States.
One of the early heroes of what was called The Labor Movement was Eugene V. Debs.
From American Experience:
Outspoken leader of the labor movement, Eugene Debs opposed Woodrow Wilson as the Socialist Party candidate in the 1912 Presidential Election. Later, he would continue to rally against President Wilson and his decision to take American into war — and be jailed for it under the Espionage Act.
Debs was born in Terre Haute, Indiana in 1855, the son of poor Alsatian immigrants. Though his parents encouraged an intellectual spirit, Debs left high school after one year to become a locomotive paint-scraper. There, among the rough-and-tumble of railway men, Debs found his calling. From his membership in the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen to his role co-founding the Industrial Workers of the World (the “wobblies”), Debs raised his voice in defense of the common man.
The years leading up to the turn of the twentieth century brought America unprecedented prosperity — but relatively few people, men like Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller Sr., controlled the new wealth. For the nation’s working class, and leaders like Eugene Debs, it was a time to be angry. From steel fabrication to mining, American industries saw major protests as workers tried to secure 8-hour workdays, living wages, and other fundamental improvements.
After leading the American Railway Union in a confrontation with federal troops sent to break up the Pullman strike of 1894, Debs was jailed for six months for contempt of court. It was then that he came to a set of beliefs that roughly mirrored the socialist tenets of the European labor movements. Upon his release, Debs became a featured speaker for the Socialist Party, and ran for president in 1900 as their nominee. He lost, but continued to be the party’s candidate in several subsequent elections.
Debs found his greatest success in the 1912 Election, when he campaigned against Democratic nominee Woodrow Wilson, incumbent President William Howard Taft, and former President Theodore Roosevelt. Debs received almost a million votes – six percent of the ballots cast.
Link to the rest at American Experience.
Debs was accused of sedition because of the anti-WWI speech he’d given in Canton, Ohio, on June 16, 1918. Found guilty on ten counts under the Espionage and Sedition Acts, he would eventually be sentenced to 10 years.
Following is a reading of an excerpt of a speech Debs gave to the court on Sept 18, 1918.
.
A reminder that PG does not always agree with items he posts.
What truly astounds me, is that Debs, running for President from his prison cell in 1920, got 21 percent of the vote.
Wilson, IMHO, is truly one of America’s great bad guys.
There were reasons beyond Morgan. Herbert Croly was one of the founders of the New Republic in 1914. The magazine was the created to support, foster and spread the influence and power of Progressive movement. Wilson was a major Progressive leader
And, regarding WWI, Croly told us:
“The American nation needs the tonic of a serious moral adventure.”
There are other reasons for the US entry into WWI. It’s certainly not all on Morgan.
Just an aside:
I place the horrors of the 20th Century squarely at the feet of Woodrow Wilson. The evils of things like the Espionage and Sedition Acts was used to put hundreds of thousands in prison for demanding that we stay out of Europe’s Wars, all because of Woodrow Wilson(WW) helping the rich get richer. (I’m looking at you JP Morgan.[1])
There was a great series that you can watch:
American Experience: The Great War
The Great War Trailer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PaTZsEABfNU
Watch through the series a few times, and take notes. These are some of the implications.
– The British Empire would still rule the world.
– World population would be under 3 billion.
– America would be neutral, isolationist, not the World’s Police.
– We would be just now reaching 1950s level of technology.
– No consumerism, no organized manipulation of society by the government.
– There would be rail crossing the country, not the vast network of decaying highways that we have now.
– America would be less than half the population it is now, mostly rural. The big cities of today would not exist, no suburbs or urban sprawl, no people stuck in traffic for hours commuting to work.
– With America staying out of WWI, there is no WWII. Our presence made the war worse, and the Armistice disastrous.
When WWII ended we were the only industrial nation that was not bombed flat, thus our industry could rebuild the world, and we could charge whatever we wanted. That all collapsed in the 70s when the rest of the world was competing against us, and we had never learned how to actually compete with the world.
– Most of us would not be alive today, because most parents found each other cross country.
– No internet because no DARPA.
– No Silicon Valley because the CIA did not have access to vast numbers of scientists and technologists laid off from NASA after the Apollo Program shut down.
– No transistors because no missile programs.
– No satellites or space programs. Definitely no Billionaires to build their own space programs.
– No NASA because no German Rocket Scientists from WWII.
– No Cold War, so no Highway system. Eisenhower wanted to duplicate the German Autobahn to ease moving troops across the country if we were invaded.
– No WWII. No atomic bomb, no Cold War, no Military Industrial Congressional Entertainment Complex, no century of perpetual war for perpetual peace.
The list goes on. Each time I go through the series I find more.
All this is great material for my Story folders.
[1]From wiki – J. P. Morgan Jr.
Morgan brokered a deal that positioned his company as the sole munitions and supplies purchaser during World War I for the British and French governments. The results produced a one percent commission on $3 billion (that is, $30 million) to the company. Morgan was also a banking broker for financing to foreign governments both during and after the war.
Read the wiki page. We basically got into WWI to help J. P. Morgan get his money back.
Some people call me “Debs” as a nickname, and so I always see that name as “Eugene versus Debs” and wonder why a dead guy wants to sue me.
Very interesting, Deb, and your comment elicited the first chuckle of my morning.