The negro workers

by Eugene V. Debs

Take them just as you find them; put them on this stand to-night; ask them a few questions about the history of their own country and you will be appalled by their ignorance. Point out to them a magnificent painting on canvas that breathes and throbs with genius; they have little or no capacity for its appreciation. Point out to them a great plumed monarch of the forest; the kind you can put your arms about it and hear its mighty heart throb; the kind that dominates the forest by its majesty and inspired Joyce Kilmer’s beautiful poetic homage. You remember Joyce Kilmer—put to death, murdered in the late war; one of the fine poetic souls slaughtered and sacrificed on the altar of Mammon. It was he who wrote: “A tree that in the spring may wear, a nest of robins in its hair. Poems are made by fools like me, but only God can make a tree!” And you point out that towering and venerable tree to the fully developed capitalist and he regards it soberly for a moment and then draws forth his lead pencil and figures out how many feet of commercial lumber there are in that proposition. (Laughter.)

I wish I had time enough—but I have not—to trace American history from the days of the Revolution when the “Fathers” made their monumental mistake by compromising with chattel slavery. Had they but taken the advice of Thomas Paine (applause) the Civil War would not have resulted; that terrible sacrifice would have been averted. Thomas Paine protested and wrote the first article ever written in this country against chattel slavery just as he wrote the first article ever written in this country in favor of woman’s rights—the same heroic Thomas Paine whose religious beliefs in “The Age of Reason” that followed completely isolated him from all intelligent understanding, from all human sympathy, and he is not yet forgiven for having had the courage to be true to himself and to the best he knew.

Thomas Paine inspired the Declaration of Independence that Thomas Jefferson wrote. (Applause.)

You call Washington to-day the “father of his country.” And yet in his day he was denounced as a “notorious outlaw.” (Applause.) The “father of his country” was the owner of chattel slaves as were the rest of the “fathers.” They thought that perfectly consistent with that period; it does not detract from their historic achievement.

I can understand why the Tory press—the press of the then ruling class—charged Washington with being a common thief for confiscating their property. He was literally despised by them when he unsheathed his sword to fight for independence.

Thomas Jefferson was denounced as a vicious incendiary, Sam Adams as a disreputable agitator and Patrick Henry—you know what they said of him. (Applause.) I stood not long ago upon the spot where he stood when he hurled his immortal challenge in the face of the Government and exclaimed: “Give me liberty or give me death”; and I fancied I heard the hisses of the aristocrats that thronged the gallery who despised and denounced him as a traitor to his country. What was the state of his country at that time? A great majority of the colonists in their ignorance believed that God had anointed a king from on high to rule over them, and to question the divine authority of that king was treason, and he who was guilty must be punished without mercy. That was the blind stupidity of the great majority. Here let it be observed that the minorities have made the history of this world. The popular and reactionary majorities have perished in oblivion in their own ignorance.

In every age there have been a few men and women with new ideas—ideas in conflict with the established order of things. The class in power have always insisted upon perpetuating that power; they want no change; they combat every idea that suggests a change; they want to feel secure in “the established order of things.”

In every age there have been a few men and women with moral courage, who stood erect and defied the storms of hatred and detraction. After a time—after they had been persecuted, vilified and imprisoned—after they had been burned at the stake and their ashes scattered to the winds by the hands of hate—the slow-moving world finally caught up to where they stood and fought for humanity and then it paused long enough to weave garlands for their graves and erect monuments where they sleep.

There were only a few of the American revolutionary leaders; only a few; and they stood face to face with a gainsaying populace who protested: “We believe in the king and we must be loyal to the king.” They did not believe that the people had capacity for self-government; they were too weak, too helpless and dependent, and God had to provide them with a king to rule over them. That is what they believed. There were only a few who said: “We do not need a king; we can govern ourselves”; and they persisted in their odious agitation until they finally aroused the colonists and then came the war and the king was overthrown; the divine right to rule was trampled under foot with contempt; the foundations of the Republic were laid; the immortal Declaration was issued, and for the first time in history, politically speaking, men stood forth clothed to a limited extent with sovereignty.

How many of you are aware of the fact that the first drop of blood shed in that revolutionary struggle was that of a Negro? Crispus Attucks, to whom Boston has now erected a monument, was the first to be shot down by the British soldiers in the Boston massacre. (Applause.) And he was a Negro—the man whose blood was first to be shed for American independence; but you do not read that in the school histories. (Applause.) The Negro gets no credit for that martyrdom.