CHAPTER XI.
INDICTMENT OF PRESIDENT DEBS.
The railroad managers and federal courts were leaving no stone unturned to secure the indictment and incarceration of Eugene V. Debs. If successful, it was their intention to dispose of all the officers and directors of the American Railway Union in the same manner.
Attorney General Olney, acting for the railroads, was hatching a scheme to incarcerate the officers of the union and refuse them bail. Attorneys Walker and Milchrist were ready to prove that Debs ordered the boycott, that he conspired against the lives and liberty of the people, that he conspired to overthrow the government, in short, they were ready to prove anything that would further the ends of the corporations which they represented.
These diabolical plotters never doubted for one instant that the officers of the American Railway Union were innocent of the charges preferred against them. They knew very well that they (the officers) had no authority to order a boycott or strike, and that it was ordered by a majority vote of the men employed on each system. They also knew that from the inauguration of the strike, not one word or act of Eugene V. Debs could be construed into an offense and make him amenable to the law.
That he counseled moderation and appealed to the men to refrain from acts of violence from the start, was a well known fact. This was very clear to them, but the powerful magnetism of his presence in restraining the men from acts of violence would also have a tendency to keep their ranks firm and intact. This was also known to them and they must devise some scheme to shackle him or get him out of the way. With consummate skill they proceeded with the avowed effort to accomplish this end.
At 3:00 P. M., July 10, the special grand jury summoned by Judges Wood and Grosscup set the machinery of federal law in motion, and after one hour and seven minutes—most of which time was occupied in waiting for advice from the Western Union Telegraph Co., in New York, to its manager in Chicago—returned indictments against E. V. Debs, G. W. Howard, L. W. Rogers and Sylvester Kelliher. No sooner were the four officers of the American Railway Union indicted than they were arrested and the private papers as well as the documents of the union were seized.
The four men were admitted to bail and the joint bond of $10,000 was signed by J. W. Fitzgerald and Wm. Skakel.