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

by Eugene V. Debs

But my personal dislike of the cowboy in imitation who has since become president, however justifiable, would scarcely warrant a public attack upon his official character, and this review, being of such a nature, is inspired, as will appear, by entirely different motives.

There are those, and they constitute a great majority of the American people, who stand in awe of their president, supposedly their servant, but in fact their master; they speak of him with a kind of reverential adulation as a lordly personage, a superior being to be looked up to and worshiped rather than a fellowman to be respected and loved. There are others who betray equal ignorance in a more vulgar fashion by coarse tirades for which there is often as little excuse as there is for the extreme adulation.

Regarding the president of the United States, as I do, simply as a citizen and fellowman, the same as any other, I shall speak of him and his acts free alike from awe and malice, and if I place him in the public pillory, where he has placed so many others, to be seen and despised of men, it will be from a sense that his official acts, so often in flat denial of his profession, merit the execration of honest men.

In arraigning President Roosevelt and his administration I have no private spite nor personal grudge to satisfy, but an obligation to redeem and a principle to vindicate.

I shall go about it as I would any other moral duty, asking no favors and prepared to accept all consequences.

In the first place, I charge President Roosevelt with being a hypocrite, the most consummate that ever occupied the executive seat of the nation. His profession of pure politics is false, his boasted moral courage the bluff of a bully and his "square deal" a delusion and a sham.

Theodore Roosevelt is mainly for Theodore Roosevelt and incidentally for such others as are also for the same distinguished gentleman, first, last and all the time. He is a smooth and slippery politician, swollen purple with self-conceit; he is shrewd enough to gauge the stupidity of the masses and unscrupulous enough to turn it into hero worship. This constitutes the demagogue, and he is that in superlative degree.

Only a few days ago he appeared in a characteristic role. Rushing into the limelight, as necessary to him as breath, he shrieked that he and "Root" were "horrified" because of certain scandalous and revolting charges made by one of his own former political chums. Of course, he and "Root" of Tweed fame, the foxiest "fixer" of them all, were "horrified" because of the shock to their political virtue, but it so happened that the horror took effect only when they found themselves uncovered. The taking of Harriman's boodle for corruptly electing him president and the use of the stolen insurance funds for the same criminal purpose did not "horrify" the president and "Root," nor would they be "horrified" yet if they had not been caught red-handed in the act with the booty upon their persons.

The cry of the exposed malefactor and all his pack of yelpers that he is the victim of a "plot" by his own friends and supporters, the very gentlemen (sic) who furnished him with free special trains, paid his campaign expenses and in fact bought the presidency for him, is so palpably false as to be absolutely ridiculous and only brings into bolder relief the hypocrisy and fraud it was designed to conceal.

This much is preliminary to the extraordinary official conduct of the president which has "horrified" not only its victims but millions of others, and now prompts this review and protest.