Debs: His Life, Writings and Speeches, with a Department of Appreciations

by Eugene V. Debs

But first of all he must suffer. To voice the cry of Labor he must first endure its agony; to speak the protest of the Doomed he must first endure the doom. Led by Destiny, he went the weary way of toil and tragedy, the way along which the dumb millions march in pain to their Golgotha. Each footfall tore his heartstrings; each fallen human wreck woke in his soul a yearning to speak their curse to the driving Power he could not see. Each human cry sank into his heart, each tortured curse he nourished as his own.

He heard voices and saw visions. Voices called him to a service he could not understand. As Joan of Arc listened to the unseen voices, so he listened. But he understood not. They cried out to him, bidding him voice the wrong. “Speak! Speak for the Dumb who cannot speak! Speak their protest! Speak their curse!”

He saw visions where other men saw only a black void. For him the blackness was peopled with tragic human shapes. He saw the Victims of the Centuries. He saw Labor bound to wheels. He saw Hunger rob the Cradle. He saw Death dance to the cries of Mocked Motherhood. And far off, like the Prisoner of Patmos, he saw a New Earth in which all human beings were comrades of the flowers and the stars, and sharers of the freedom of the birds.

He obeyed the voices. He spoke in the Assembly of the Law-makers—spoke for Labor and against Labor’s wrongs. He spoke for the Dumb, for the Doomed and Damned. He spoke their protest and their curse. He spoke for Childhood and for Motherhood—spoke for the Makers of Laws. And when he spoke they answered with the howl of the Beast.

But Labor heard him speak its own Protest; heard him hurl at the Makers of Laws and the Masters of Bread the curse its heart had fashioned and its lips failed to speak. Labor knew that Debs voiced its own dumb agony and cheered him on by glad applause and by its love. But while he spoke there was sadness in his heart, each speech was answered in his own soul by a sense of sadness and of shame. Perhaps it was vain to speak to the Makers of Laws and the Masters of Bread! Perhaps it was better to speak to the Slaves of Bread! Better to speak to Labor and to teach it speech!

But the new speech brought no heartease. Ever the sense of Failure shamed him and tore his soul. And yet the voices bade him speak. “Speak of the visions! Speak of the New Earth! Speak and lead the way!” they cried. And his tortured soul answered in agony: “I cannot show the way, for I know it not!”

The Masters of Bread knew nothing of the struggle of his soul; they knew not that his speech which woke their fears was but his whisper! They could not know that the things their Fear and their Hate bade them do would loosen his tongue and give it speech like thunder. In their ignorance they forged a thunderbolt with which the barriers to the pathway to the land of the vision would be shattered. They cast Debs into prison. And in his prison cell Debs was to find Freedom—the Freedom of his Soul.

When they prisoned Debs they unprisoned his soul. When they drew the bolts that pent his body in Woodstock jail they made Eugene V. Debs a free man. In the silences of that prison cell his tongue was loosed and his eyes saw the vision of the Comrade-world and the way by which it must be reached. In the prison cell the Angel of Freedom touched his lips with fire from the altar and set him free to proclaim the Revolution. In their rage the Masters of Bread thought that they could silence Debs, but instead they broke the only fetter upon his soul and upon his speech.

Thus was Debs trained to be our standard bearer. Thus did he become the Voice of the Revolution whose call to Labor was destined to shake the hemisphere. He bore the people’s banner as one marked for the mission by Inexorable Destiny. He bore it proudly, nobly, wherever the fight was fiercest, and when he shouted the battle cry of Socialism it echoed through the land from sea to sea, from snow-capped mountain and deepest valley. And Labor heard the battle cry and answered in speech both clear and strong. And when he took the banner and went forth a second time, louder and stronger grew the answering cry, so that the Masters of Bread trembled in their seats of power and privilege.

And now, once more, speeded by the love of fifty thousand comrades in the organized movement, and by half a million in the larger army, Debs goes forth bearing the banner and proclaiming the message of Socialism. Once more he goes forth to voice the cry of the Disinherited, the curse of the Doomed and Damned. Once more the Incarnate Spirit of the Revolution goes forth to point men to the Vision of a world rich with the glory of comradeship, throbbing with the joy of freedom, radiant with love—the New Earth, resonant with the mingled songs of free and happy human beings; resplendent with the beauty of unfettered life.