This result puzzled Debs. He couldn’t understand how such a tremendous triumph could be turned into defeat.
He had to go to jail to find the solution of the problem.
In jail he studied Socialism. And straightway a great illumination burst upon his intelligence.
He turned from craft-consciousness to class-consciousness.
It was revealed to him that the entire theory of industrial organization as it existed was fundamentally false. He realized that any social benefit to be large and lasting must be also universal.
Moreover, he came to know the reason for the failure of the Pullman strike after it had been fairly and fully won; and he understood then that revolution was the only remedy for economic ills and that the only hope for government protection of proletarian interests lay in the capture of governmental power.
From the narrow confines of his cell and the not less narrow confines of craft interest he simultaneously stepped into physical freedom and into the world-wide sweep of the Social Revolution.
Debs had been so dangerous that the masters deemed it advisable to send him to jail. He left that prison a thousand times more dangerous than when he entered it.
For Debs is dangerous. This is the one truth plutocracy tells about him. He’s as dangerous as dynamite—to capitalistic interests.
Capitalism thought it had destroyed Debs. It merely had made him.