And ever will justice be done.”
And these celebrated cases are not exceptional, for history proves that, despite the purpose for which they were designed, prisons have always been the instruments of progress—unfailing agencies of human advancement.
The path of progress extends undeviating from Woodstock to Boise. The experience of a Debs was necessary to the evolvement of a Haywood.
In their effort to destroy Debs the money-masters overreached themselves. They crushed the American Railway Union—crushed it into the cohesion of the Social Democracy.
It is interesting to observe this operation—to watch the metamorphosis of Debs and trace the evolution of the industrial movement from the date of his imprisonment; in this process we find the philosophy of progress, the development of the social purpose.
Both Debs and his persecutors were involuntary instruments of sovereign economic forces; the latter an unconscious agency, responding blindly to conservatory impulsion, the former obedient to an intelligent enthusiasm logically directed toward a definite and an attainable object.
Under the pressure of prison walls Debs’ dynamic being developed until its expanding forces found expression in the Socialist idea, of which his own potent personality was the informing influence.
From the corporate wreck of the A. R. U. the Social Democracy was organized. Debs reformed this disintegration, he was the atom of attraction; his irresistible individuality was the core to which the others cohered—the compelling factor that drew to an integrative coalescence the shattered, scattered remnants of a vast industrial organism as surely as a magnet draws the metal.
The Pullman strike was not lost. It was won decisively and completely. A movement for industrial liberation as magnificent in its scope as any campaign of the immortal Corsican, had succeeded. For the first time in history Plutocracy was paralyzed in the clutch of Toil, directed by a man of intelligence and integrity.
But victory was plucked from the grasp of the strikers by the strong hand of federal power. They were robbed of the sweet fruits of their bitter struggle by the wealth-won favor of presidential authority.