Eugene Victor Debs’ last hour of imprisonment ended with the first
second after midnight of November 22, 1895. He had gone to bed early and
was sleeping soundly when the hours of bondage merged into the hours of
freedom. He had his breakfast with the Sheriff and the Sheriff’s family
and then with his brother Theodore, in a cutter, he drove about
Woodstock and called on the various friends he had made while he was in
prison. He came in late for dinner. During the afternoon farmers in
great numbers came into the town to see the parade of the Chicago
working people who were to come out to greet him. School girls and boys,
young men and young women and all sorts and conditions of people
assembled at the station. The train was greeted with shouts when it
turned the curve southeast of the town, and when Reichart’s Band started
up the street everybody in the whole town followed to the public square.
The train had arrived at 5 o’clock. As the crowd marched toward the jail
the released prisoner stood on the stone steps in front of the Sheriff’s
residence. A crowd of big, burly workingmen rushed up and took Mr. Debs
in their outstretched arms.[3] The yelling and cheering was something
remarkable. Dozens hugged and kissed him. Others simply felt for his
hand and if it was no more than a touch they seemed to be satisfied and
went away yelling. The crowd called “Lift him up so we can all see him.”
Instantly he was hoisted up on the shoulders of the men. After the crowd
had partaken of coffee and sandwiches at the several restaurants in
Woodstock, the Chicago Special was entered and from Woodstock to Chicago
music, singing and cheering drowned the noise of the train. When the
trains arrived at the Wells street Station in Chicago, more than 100,000
people blocked the streets and bridges in the vicinity of the depot. The
streets were filled with mud and slush and a heavy rain was falling, but
the crowd did not seem to pay any attention. Mr. Debs himself refused to
enter the carriage hauled by six white horses and as he took his place
in the parade he said: “If the rest walk, I shall walk. What is good
enough for them is good enough for me.”
Battery D was crowded to its utmost capacity and his speech delivered
upon that occasion was scholarly, brilliant, beautiful. The following is
the closing paragraph relative to his life in prison:
“In prison my life was a busy one and the time for meditation and to
give the imagination free reign was when the daily task was over and
Night’s sable curtains enveloped the world in darkness, relieved only by
the sentinel stars and the Earth’s silver satellite ‘walking in lovely
beauty to her midnight throne.’ It was at such times that the reverend
stones of the prison walls preached sermons, sometimes rising in
grandeur to the Sermon on the Mount. It might be a question in the minds
of some if this occasion warrants the indulgence of the fancy. It will
be remembered that Aesop taught the world by fables and Christ by
parables, but my recollection is that the old stone preachers were as
epigrammatic as an unabridged dictionary. I remember one old divine
stone who one night selected for his text ‘George M. Pullman,’ and said
‘George is a bad egg; handle him with care. If you crack his shell the
odor would depopulate Chicago in an hour.’ All the rest of the stones
said ‘Amen’ and the services closed.
“Another old sermonizer who said he had been preaching since man was a
molecule declared he had of late years studied corporations and that
they were warts on the nose of national industries and that they were
vultures whose beaks and claws were tearing and mangling the vitals of
Labor and transforming workingmen’s homes into caves. Another old stone
said he knew more about strikes than Carroll D. Wright and that he was
present when the slaves built the pyramids; that God himself had taught
his lightnings, thunderbolts, winds, waves and earthquakes to strike and
that striking would proceed with bullets or ballots until workingmen, no
longer deceived and cajoled by their enemies, would unify, proclaim
their sovereignty and walk the earth free men.
“I have borne with such composure as I could command the imprisonment
which deprived me of my liberty. Were I a criminal, were I guilty of
crimes meriting a prison cell, had I ever lifted my hand against the
life or liberty of my fellowmen, had I ever sought to filch their good
name I could not be here. I would have fled from the haunts of
civilization and taken up my residence in some cave where the voice of
my kindred is never heard; but I am standing here with no
self-accusation of crime or criminal intent festering in my conscience,
in the sunlight, once more among my fellow-men, contributing as best I
can to make this celebration day from prison a memorial day, realizing
that as Lowell sung:
“‘He’s true to God who’s true to man;
Wherever wrong is done,
To the humblest and the weakest
’Neath the all-beholding sun,
That wrong is also done to us;
And they are slaves most base
Whose love of right is for themselves,
And not for all the race.’”
(_Quoted from the Chicago Chronicle, November 23, 1895._)
The arrival of the train bearing the party with Mr. Debs, which was
carefully awaited, was the signal for a mighty yell. The crowd on the
platform started it and it was taken up by those who thronged the stairs
leading down to the platform and those who were above in the street.[4]
The cheering became deafening. When Debs appeared on the platform of the
coach the cheers became a tumult of frantic yells. Those who were
nearest the labor leader rushed to him and seized him in their arms and
bore him from the car into the surging, struggling, pushing, cheering,
yelling throng. Sitting on the shoulders of men and raised above the
heads of the crowd, bareheaded and smiling, Debs acknowledged the
salutes of the crowd, bowing and waving his hat. Whichever way the labor
leader turned there was a fresh outburst of cheers but so great was the
crowd that it remained wedged together. No one could move. The police
cried in vain but they could hardly hear their own voices. They pushed
and struggled and pleaded with those that were nearest them to make way
but the crowd stood as an immovable wall. Those who were near enough
reached out to touch the leader’s garment and those who were not were
madly striving to do so. The men who were bearing Debs on their
shoulders had not gone ten paces from the car when they could go no
farther. From every direction the crowd faced toward their idol. Men
cried for air and egress from the pressing mass, but no one heard them.
The policemen were as powerless as everyone else. Could they have made
themselves heard, they might have accomplished something. For twenty
minutes there was not a move in the packed center. It was oppressive and
suffocating and men were being crushed and trampled. The slender form of
the man whose presence brought out the outpouring was all the while held
aloft and safe from the crush. A smile was playing over his clean-cut
features. His face was aglow with the triumph of the hour. It was only
by the efforts of the policemen and the officers of the Trades Unions
which were on the outskirts of the crowd that the jam was worked apart
and got in motion. They succeeded in getting those who were on the
street above to move back, then those who were on the broad stairway
were forced upon the street, and finally the congestion on the platform
below was gradually relieved; but it was far from being dispersed. Two
policemen managed to fight their way to where the labor leader was held
and they made a path for two more and the four policemen succeeded by
their combined strength in making a way for Debs. Inch by inch they
moved, pushing, struggling and almost beating the crowd until they
gained the stairs. As they started up, twice the tide of the throng
carried them back down to the platform after they had gained the first
step. They struggled on and on up the stairs, the great mass swaying and
sometimes retreating, and all the time and above all the mighty cheering
went on. Never did men strive and struggle to so demonstrate their love
for a fellowman just released from a convict’s cell. Their’s was no
outward show alone. There was no sycophancy in them. Debs was borne on
the shoulders of strong men all the way along the depot platform and up
the stairs and along the street. When he reached the Wells street bridge
he asked those who bore him to set him down where his old lieutenant,
William E. Burns, who was also a prisoner with Debs in Woodstock Jail,
had gotten near enough to speak to him. They halted then to form a line
to march in order to Battery D.
More than fifty of the Labor Unions of Chicago were represented in the
six coaches that went out to Woodstock to receive Mr. Debs. The
procession that marched through the storm was composed of the members of
every Trade Union in the city, wearing badges and marching in his honor.
COMMISSION APPOINTED BY THE GOVERNMENT TO INQUIRE INTO THE CHICAGO
STRIKE.
In the hearing before the Commission appointed in September,
Superintendent of Police, Mr. Brennan, stated that the acts of violence
in the strike in Chicago were perpetrated by a lot of hoodlums and
vicious people mixed with women and children. Fire Marshal Fitzgerald
testified that he attended nearly all of the fires and was on duty at
all the fires of any magnitude. He stated that there was no interference
with the firemen at any time; the cause of the fires was due to the
action of youngsters who lighted waste and other inflammable material
and threw it in the cars where it would catch the woodwork. “I stopped a
number of boys whom I saw doing such work. There was no interference
attempted by railroad men. A number of railroad men helped the firemen
pull an engine into position at Forty-fifth street and the Fort Wayne
tracks. I did not ask aid at any time during the fires.”
Mr. Miller, reporter for the _Chicago Tribune_, also testified that he
had an extensive acquaintance among railroad men. He said: “The trouble
was caused by hoodlums and toughs. In my reports I characterized them as
hoodlums. Many of them were boys. Sobriety was the rule among the
strikers.” Mr. Miller said: “The speakers at the public meetings advised
against violence or lawlessness. I believe they were speaking
sincerely.” The testimony of many other reporters was in the same line.
Mr. Harding of the _Times_ testified that there was comparatively little
disorder at the Stock Yards, but that the newspaper reports contained
the accounts of fights and riots almost every night. “Captain O’Neil of
the Stock Yards police told me,” said Mr. Harding, “that volleys of
shots were fired by the soldiers or the militia every day or night,
which, on investigation, proved to have no cause other than the desire
to create excitement. A crowd would naturally gather, newspaper
reporters would flock around and they would gather something to tell, to
brag about in the papers. I know this is so from talks with the men
themselves.”
Mr. Debs was on the stand an entire day. His testimony in the following
words brought out very interesting points which the Commissioners
elicited by direct question. Mr. Debs said: “Government supervision
would not answer the purpose of preventing strikes. No good could come
from compulsory arbitration; that is a contradiction in 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. Government ownership of railroads would be
better than railroad ownership of Government,” said Mr. Debs. Mr. Debs
stated that the railroads do not obey the decisions of the Interstate
Commerce Commission. If they do not obey this Commission, he did not
think they would be likely to obey the decisions of a court of
arbitration, unless it suited their convenience.
Commissioner Worthington asked Mr. Debs, “What about strikes in other
industries?” Mr. Debs replied, “The replacement of the wage system by
the co-operative commonwealth could alone solve the problem; as long as
a man is dependent on another for work, he is a slave. With labor-saving
machinery, which term is now a misnomer, as it is really
labor-displacing machinery, unrestricted emigration and ten men bidding
for a job, wages are bound to go lower and lower. Capitalists
instinctively feel their affinity. I want the working people to feel the
same way. To illustrate—in the late strike we did nothing to interfere
with the _Chicago Herald’s_ business, yet the _Herald_ felt its kinship
to the capitalists who owned the railroads and made unmitigated war on
the railroad employes.”
Commissioner Kernan asked Mr. Debs, “If such a unification of working
people was accomplished, would it not have a dangerous power?” Mr. Debs
replied, “A little power is more dangerous than great power. If you have
100 switchmen working in a yard and ten or twelve of them are organized,
you will have a strike on your hands very soon. The unification of labor
would mean the abolition of the wage system.”
Chief Deputy U. S. Marshal Donnelly was one of the most interesting
witnesses before the government, because his testimony proved that the
railroads run the government. Mr. Donnelly said, “We had a regular force
of men sworn in of between fourteen and fifteen hundred, and then we
swore in 4,000 for the railroads. The government armed and paid the
regular force and the railroads armed and paid the others. The first lot
of men we got were a poor lot. We went on the street and got such men as
we could. The better class of men said they wouldn’t serve against the
strikers. At first we didn’t ask for any certificates of character or
fitness. We received our instructions from Attorney General Olney. He
told us to hire all the men we needed. The number we needed was decided
on at conferences between the United States District Attorney and Mr.
Walker, Special Assistant District Attorney, and attorney for the
Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railway. The railroads would send in a
batch of men, saying they were all right, and we gave the stars to the
railroads and took their receipt for them. These railway deputies were
not under our orders; they made their reports to no one except the chief
detectives of the railroads. They derived their authority from the
United States. All the violence I saw and the car burning was done by
boys—tough kids.”