Commissioner Worthington: "Will government supervision answer the purpose?"
Mr. Debs: "I don't think so."
Mr. Worthington: "Will arbitration answer?"
Mr. Debs: "I fear not. No good can come from compulsory arbitration, that is a contradiction of terms, even if some means of enforcing the decree could be devised. Those against whom the decree was rendered would not be satisfied. The basis must be friendship and confidence."
Commissioner Worthington: "Admitting that there is some contradiction in the term compulsory arbitration, it expresses what we mean though compulsory attempts at conciliation would express it better. Would it be of no avail in any case?"
Mr. Debs: "It would undoubtedly in many cases where trouble is local and the conditions homogeneous, so that all of them could be considered as for instance in the Pullman troubles. It could be put in force if there was a trial by jury or something of that sort, as other courts are constituted, but in interstate matters on railroads extending over thousands of miles where conditions vary, no decree could be made to fit the case. It is easy to compass local matters but not widespread matters because the conditions are not homogeneous. It would be impossible to force the decree."
"MR. DEBS' TESTIMONY."
An extract from the Chicago Times.
"People who read an Editorial from the Chicago Times of Eugene V. Debs before the strike commission, as printed in the Times yesterday, cannot, if they be fair-minded, fail to be convinced of the justice of the cause in which he is working and of the sincerity and ability of the man himself.
"In a struggle for the rights of humanity individuals are nothing. He will be but a poor champion of the cause of the people who will pause to eulogize certain champions when he should be fighting for principles. But when a leader like Debs is attacked, as he has been attacked, and all the agencies and all the influence of capitalism are set in motion to 'make an example of him'—i. e., to so persecute him that no other man will be willing to encounter like danger in the wageworkers' cause—then must every spokesman of the working classes speak out in defense of the leader so attacked.