Labor and Freedom: The Voice and Pen of Eugene V. Debs

by Eugene V. Debs

During the brief span of three years, embracing the whole period of his active life, from the time he began to stir up the people until "the scarlet robe and crown of thorns were put on him and he was crucified between two thieves," Jesus devoted all his time and all his matchless ability and energies to the suffering poor, and it would have been passing strange if they had not "heard him gladly."

He himself had no fixed abode and like the wretched, motley throng to whom he preached and poured out his great and loving heart, he was a poor wanderer on the face of the earth and "had not where to lay his head."

Pure communism was the economic and social gospel preached by Jesus Christ, and every act and utterance which may properly be ascribed to him conclusively affirms it. Private property was to his elevated mind and exalted soul a sacrilege and a horror; an insult to God and a crime against man.

The economic basis of his doctrine of brotherhood, and love is clearly demonstrated in the fact that under his leadership and teaching all his disciples "sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had need," and that they "had all things in common."

"And they, continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, did eat their meat with gladness and singleness of heart."

This was the beginning of the mighty movement Jesus had launched for the overthrow of the empire of the Caesars and the emancipation of the crushed and miserable masses from the bestial misrule of the Roman tyrants.

It was above all a working class movement and was conceived and brought forth for no other purpose than to destroy class rule and set up the common people as the sole and rightful inheritors of the earth.

"Happy are the lowly for they shall inherit the earth."

Three short years of agitation by the incomparable Jesus was sufficient to stamp the proletarian movement he had inaugurated as the most formidable and portentous revolution in the annals of time. The ill-fated author could not long survive his stupendous mischief. The aim and inevitable outcome of this madman's teaching and agitation was too clearly manifest to longer admit of doubt.

The sodden lords of misrule trembled in their stolen finery, and then the word went forth that they must "get" the vagabond who had stirred up the people against them. The prototypes of Peabody, McPartland, Harry Orchard, et. al., were all ready for their base and treacherous performance and their thirty pieces of blood-stained silver. The priest of the Mammon worshipers gave it out that the Nazarene was spreading a false religion and that his pernicious teachings would corrupt the people, destroy the church, uproot the old faith, disrupt the family, break up the home, and overthrow society.