_Speech at Battery D, Chicago, on his release from Woodstock Jail,
November 22, 1895._
Manifestly the spirit of ’76 still survives. The fires of liberty and
noble aspirations are not yet extinguished. I greet you tonight as
lovers of liberty and as despisers of despotism. I comprehend the
significance of this demonstration and appreciate the honor that makes
it possible for me to be your guest on such an occasion. The vindication
and glorification of American principles of government, as proclaimed to
the world in the Declaration of Independence, is the high purpose of
this convocation.
Speaking for myself personally, I am not certain whether this is an
occasion for rejoicing or lamentation. I confess to a serious doubt as
to whether this day marks my deliverance from bondage to freedom or my
doom from freedom to bondage. Certain it is, in the light of recent
judicial proceedings, that I stand in your presence stripped of my
constitutional rights as a freeman and shorn of the most sacred
prerogatives of American citizenship, and what is true of myself is true
of every other citizen who has the temerity to protest against
corporation rule or question the absolute sway of the money power. It is
not law nor the administration of law of which I complain. It is the
flagrant violation of the constitution, the total abrogation of law and
the usurpation of judicial and despotic power, by virtue of which my
colleagues and myself were committed to jail, against which I enter my
solemn protest; and any honest analysis of the proceedings must sustain
the haggard truth of the indictment.
In a letter recently written by the venerable Judge Trumbull that
eminent jurist says: “The doctrine announced by the supreme court in the
Debs case, carried to its logical conclusion, places every citizen at
the mercy of any prejudiced or malicious federal judge who may think
proper to imprison him.” This is the deliberate conclusion of one of the
purest, ablest and most distinguished judges the Republic has produced.
The authority of Judge Trumbull upon this question will not be impeached
by anyone whose opinions are not deformed or debauched.
At this juncture I deem it proper to voice my demands for a trial by a
jury of my peers. At the instigation of the railroad corporations
centering here in Chicago I was indicted for conspiracy and I insist
upon being tried as to my innocence or guilt. It will be remembered that
the trial last winter terminated very abruptly on account of a sick
juror. It was currently reported at the time that this was merely a
pretext to abandon the trial and thus defeat the vindication of a
favorable verdict, which seemed inevitable, and which would have been in
painfully embarrassing contrast with the sentence previously pronounced
by Judge Woods in substantially the same case. Whether this be true or
not, I do not know. I do know, however, that I have been denied a trial,
and here and now I demand a hearing of my case. I am charged with
conspiracy to commit a crime, and if guilty I should go to the
penitentiary. All I ask is a fair trial and no favor. If the counsel for
the government, alias the railroads, have been correctly quoted in the
press, the case against me is “not to be pressed,” as they “do not wish
to appear in the light of persecuting the defendants.” I repel with
scorn their professed mercy. Simple justice is the demand. I am not
disposed to shrink from the fullest responsibility for my acts. I have
had time for meditation and reflection and I have no hesitancy in
declaring that under the same circumstances I would pursue precisely the
same policy. So far as my acts are concerned, I have neither apology nor
regrets.
Dismissing this branch of the subject, permit me to assure you that I am
not here to bemoan my lot. In my vocabulary there are no wails of
despondency or despair. However gloomy the future may appear to others,
I have an abiding faith in the ultimate triumph of the right. My heart
responds to the sentiments of the poet who says:
“Swing back today, O prison gate,
O winds, stream out the stripes and stars,
O men, once more in high debate
Denounce injunction rule and czars.
By Freedom’s travail pangs we swear
That slavery’s chains we will not wear.
“Ring joyously, O prison bell,
O iron tongue, the truth proclaim;
O winds and lightnings, speed to tell
That ours is not a czar’s domain.
By all the oracles divine
We pledge defense of Freedom’s shrine.
“O freemen true! O sons of sires!
O sons of men who dared to die!
O fan to life old Freedom’s fires
And light with glory Freedom’s sky.
Then swear by God’s eternal throne,
America shall be Freedom’s home.
“O workingmen! O Labor’s hosts!
O men of courage, heart and will;
O far and wide send Labor’s toasts
Till every heart feels Freedom’s thrill,
And freemen’s shouts like billows roar
O’er all the land from shore to shore.”
Liberty is not a word of modern coinage. Liberty and slavery are primal
words, like good and evil, right and wrong; they are opposites and
coexistent.
There has been no liberty in the world since the gift, like sunshine and
rain, came down from heaven, for the maintenance of which man has not
been required to fight, and man’s complete degradation is secured only
when subjugation and slavery have sapped him of the last spark of the
noble attributes of his nature and reduced him to the unresisting
inertness of a clod.
The theme tonight is personal liberty; or giving it its full height,
depth and breadth, American liberty, something that Americans have been
accustomed to eulogize since the foundation of the Republic, and
multiplied thousands of them continue in the habit to this day because
they do not recognize the truth that in the imprisonment of one man in
defiance of all constitutional guarantees, the liberties of all are
invaded and placed in peril. In saying this, I conjecture I have struck
the keynote of alarm that has convoked this vast audience.
For the first time in the records of all the ages, the inalienable
rights of man, “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” were
proclaimed July 4, 1776.
It was then that crowns, sceptres, thrones and the divine right of kings
to rule sunk together and man expanded to glorious liberty and
sovereignty. It was then that the genius of Liberty, speaking to all men
in the commanding voice of Eternal Truth, bade them assert their
heaven-decreed prerogatives and emancipate themselves from bondage. It
was a proclamation countersigned by the Infinite—and man stood forth the
coronated sovereign of the world, free as the tides that flow, free as
the winds that blow, and on that primal morning when creation was
complete, the morning stars and the sons of God, in anthem chorus, sang
the song of Liberty.
It may be a fancy, but within the limitless boundaries of the
imagination I can conceive of no other theme more appropriate to weave
into the harmonies of Freedom. The Creator had surveyed his work and
pronounced it good, but nothing can be called good in human affairs with
liberty eliminated. As well talk of air without nitrogen, or water
without oxygen, as of goodness without liberty.
It does not matter that the Creator has sown with stars the fields of
ether and decked the earth with countless beauties for man’s enjoyment.
It does not matter that air and ocean teem with the wonders of
innumerable forms of life to challenge man’s admiration and
investigation. It does not matter that nature spreads forth all her
scenes of beauty and gladness and pours forth the melodies of her
myriad-tongued voices for man’s delectation. If liberty is ostracized
and exiled, man is a slave, and the world rolls in space and whirls
around the sun a gilded prison, a doomed dungeon, and though painted in
all the enchanting hues that infinite art could command, it must still
stand forth a blotch amidst the shining spheres of the sidereal heavens,
and those who cull from the vocabularies of nations, living or dead,
their flashing phrases with which to apostrophize Liberty, are engaged
in perpetuating the most stupendous delusion the ages have known. Strike
down liberty, no matter by what subtle and infernal art the deed is
done, the spinal cord of humanity is sundered and the world is paralyzed
by the indescribable crime.
Strike the fetters from the slave, give him liberty and he becomes an
inhabitant of a new world. He looks abroad and beholds life and joy in
all things around him. His soul expands beyond all boundaries.
Emancipated by the genius of Liberty, he aspires to communion with all
that is noble and beautiful, feels himself allied to all the higher
order of intelligences, and walks abroad, redeemed from animalism,
ignorance and superstition, a new being throbbing with glorious life.
What pen or tongue from primeval man to the loftiest intellect of the
present generation has been able to fittingly anathematize the more than
satanic crime of stealing the jewel of liberty from the crown of manhood
and reducing the victim of the burglary to slavery or to prison, to
gratify those monsters of iniquity who for some inscrutable reason are
given breath to contaminate the atmosphere and poison every fountain and
stream designed to bless the world!
It may be questioned if such interrogatories are worth the time required
to state them, and I turn from their consideration to the actualities of
my theme. As Americans, we have boasted of our liberties and continue to
boast of them. They were once the nation’s glory, and, if some have
vanished, it may be well to remember that a remnant still remains. Out
of prison, beyond the limits of Russian injunctions, out of reach of a
deputy marshal’s club, above the throttling clutch of corporations and
the enslaving power of plutocracy, out of range of the government’s
machine guns and knowing the location of judicial traps and deadfalls,
Americans may still indulge in the exaltation of liberty, though pursued
through every lane and avenue of life by the baying hounds of usurped
and unconstitutional power, glad if when night lets down her sable
curtains, they are out of prison, though still the wage-slaves of a
plutocracy which, were it in the celestial city, would wreck every
avenue leading up to the throne of the Infinite by stealing the gold
with which they are paved, and debauch Heaven’s supreme court to obtain
a decision that the command “thou shalt not steal” is unconstitutional.
Liberty, be it known, is for those only who dare strike the blow to
secure and retain the priceless boon. It has been written that the “love
of liberty with life is given” and that life itself is an inferior gift;
that with liberty exiled life is a continuous curse and that “an hour of
liberty is worth an eternity of bondage.” It would be an easy task to
link together gilded periods extolling liberty until the mind, weary
with delight, becomes oblivious of the fact that while dreaming of
security, the blessings we magnified had, one by one, and little by
little, disappeared, emphasizing the truth of the maxim that “eternal
vigilance is the price of liberty.”
Is it worth while to iterate that all men are created free and that
slavery and bondage are in contravention of the Creator’s decree and
have their origin in man’s depravity?
If liberty is a birthright which has been wrested from the weak by the
strong, or has been placed in peril by those who were commissioned to
guard it as Gheber priests watch the sacred fires they worship, what is
to be done? Leaving all other nations, kindred and tongues out of the
question, what is the duty of Americans? Above all, what is the duty of
American workingmen whose liberties have been placed in peril? They are
not hereditary bondsmen. Their fathers were free born—their sovereignty
none denied and their children yet have the ballot. It has been called
“a weapon that executes a free man’s will as lighting does the will of
God.” It is a metaphor pregnant with life and truth. There is nothing in
our government it can not remove or amend. It can make and unmake
presidents and congresses and courts. It can abolish unjust laws and
consign to eternal odium and oblivion unjust judges, strip from them
their robes and gowns and send them forth unclean as lepers to bear the
burden of merited obloquy as Cain with the mark of a murderer. It can
sweep away trusts, syndicates, corporations, monopolies, and every other
abnormal development of the money power designed to abridge the
liberties of workingmen and enslave them by the degradation incident to
poverty and enforced idleness, as cyclones scatter the leaves of the
forest. The ballot can do all this and more. It can give our
civilization its crowning glory—the co-operative commonwealth.
To the unified hosts of American workingmen fate has committed the
charge of rescuing American liberties from the grasp of the vandal horde
that have placed them in peril, by seizing the ballot and wielding it to
regain the priceless heritage and to preserve and transmit it without
scar or blemish to the generations yet to come.
“Snatch from the ashes of their sires
The embers of their former fires,
And he who in the strife expires
Will add to theirs a name of fear
That Tyranny shall quake to hear.”
Standing before you tonight re-clothed in theory at least with the
prerogatives of a free man, in the midst of free men, what more natural,
what more in consonance with the proprieties of the occasion, than to
refer to the incarceration of myself and associate officials of the
American Railway Union in the county jail at Woodstock?
I have no ambition to avail myself of this occasion to be sensational,
or to thrust my fellow prisoners and myself into prominence. My theme
expands to proportions which obscure the victims of judicial tyranny,
and yet, regardless of reluctance, it so happens by the decree of
circumstances, that personal references are unavoidable. To wish it
otherwise would be to deplore the organization of the American Railway
Union and every effort that great organization has made to extend a
helping hand to oppressed, robbed, suffering and starving men, women and
children, the victims of corporate greed and rapacity. It would be to
bewail every lofty attribute of human nature, lament the existence of
the golden rule and wish the world were a jungle, inhabited by beasts of
prey, that the seas were peopled with sharks and devil-fish and that
between the earth and the stars only vultures held winged sway.
The American Railway Union was born with a sympathetic soul. Its ears
were attuned to the melodies of mercy, to catch the whispered wailings
of the oppressed. It had eyes to scan the fields of labor, a tongue to
denounce the wrong, hands to grasp the oppressed and a will to lift them
out of the sloughs of despondency to highlands of security and
prosperity.
[Illustration:
WOODSTOCK JAIL, IN WHICH DEBS WAS CONFINED
]
Here and now I challenge the records, and if in all the land the
American Railway Union has an enemy, one or a million, I challenge them
all to stand up before the labor world and give a reason why they have
maligned and persecuted the order. I am not here to assert the
infallibility of the organization or its officials, or to claim
exemption from error. But I am here to declare to every friend of
American toilers, regardless of banner, name or craft, that if the
American Railway Union has erred, it has been on the side of sympathy,
mercy and humanity—zeal in a great cause, devotion to the spirit of
brotherhood which knows no artificial boundaries, whose zones are mapped
by lines of truth as vivid as lightning, and whose horizon is measured
only by the eye of faith in man’s redemption from slavery.
I hold it to have been inconceivable that an organization of workingmen,
animated by such inspirations and aspirations, should have become the
target for the shafts of judicial and governmental malice.
But the fact that such was the case brings into haggard prominence a
condition of affairs that appeals to all thoughtful men in the ranks of
organized labor and all patriotic citizens, regardless of vocation, who
note the subtle invasions of the liberties of the American people by the
courts, sustained by an administration that is equally dead to the
guarantees of the constitution.
It is in no spirit of laudation that I aver here tonight that it has
fallen to the lot of the American Railway Union to arouse workingmen to
a sense of the perils that environ their liberties.
In the great Pullman strike the American Railway Union challenged the
power of corporations in a way that had not previously been done, and
the analyzation of this fact serves to expand it to proportions that the
most conservative men of the nation regard with alarm.
It must be borne in mind that the American Railway Union did not
challenge the government. It threw down no gauntlet to courts or
armies—it simply resisted the invasion of the rights of workingmen by
corporations. It challenged and defied the power of corporations. Thrice
armed with a just cause, the organization believed that justice would
win for labor a notable victory, and the records proclaim that its
confidence was not misplaced.
The corporations, left to their own resources of money, mendacity and
malice, of thugs and ex-convicts, leeches and lawyers, would have been
overwhelmed with defeat and the banners of organized labor would have
floated triumphant in the breeze.
This the corporations saw and believed—hence the crowning act of infamy
in which the federal courts and the federal armies participated, and
which culminated in the defeat of labor.
Had this been all, the simple defeat of a labor organization, however
disrupted and despoiled, this grand convocation of the lovers of liberty
would never have been heard of. The robbed, idle and blacklisted victims
of defeat would have suffered in silence in their darkened homes amidst
the sobbings and wailings of wives and children. It would have been the
oft repeated old, old story, heard along the track of progress and
poverty for three-quarters of a century in the United States, where
brave men, loyal to law and duty, have struck to better their condition
or to resist degradation, and have gone down in defeat. But the defeat
of the American Railway Union involved questions of law, constitution
and government which, all things considered, are without a parallel in
court and governmental proceedings under the constitution of the
Republic. And it is this judicial and administrative usurpation of power
to override the rights of states and strike down the liberties of the
people that has conferred upon the incidents connected with the Pullman
strike such commanding importance as to attract the attention of men of
the highest attainments in constitutional law and of statesmen who, like
Jefferson, view with alarm the processes by which the Republic is being
wrecked and a despotism reared upon its ruins.
I have said that in the great battle of labor fought in 1894 between the
American Railway Union and the Corporations banded together under the
name of the “General Managers’ Association,” victory would have perched
upon the standards of labor if the battle had been left to these
contending forces—and this statement, which has been verified and
established beyond truthful contradiction, suggests the inquiry, what
other resources had the corporations aside from their money and the
strength which their federation conferred?
In replying to the question, I am far within the limits of accepted
facts when I say the country stood amazed as the corporations put forth
their latent powers to debauch such departments of the government as
were required to defeat labor in the greatest struggle for the right
that was ever chronicled in the United States.
Defeated at every point, their plans all frustrated, outgeneraled in
tactics and strategy, while the hopes of labor were brightening and
victory was in sight, the corporations, goaded to desperation, played
their last card in the game of oppression by an appeal to the federal
judiciary and to the federal administration. To this appeal the response
came quick as lightning from a storm cloud. It was an exhibition of the
debauching power of money which the country had never before beheld.
The people had long been familiar with such expressions as “money
talks,” “money rules,” and they had seen the effects of its power in
legislatures and in congress. They were conversant with Jay Gould’s
methods of gaining his legal victories by “buying a judge” in critical
cases. They had tracked this money power, this behemoth beast of prey,
into every corporate enterprise evolved by our modern civilization, as
hunters track tigers in India jungles, but never before in the history
of the country had they seen it grasp with paws and jaws the government
of the United States and bend it to its will and make it a mere travesty
of its pristine grandeur.
The people had seen this money power enter the church, touch the robed
priest at the altar, blotch his soul, freeze his heart and make him a
traitor to his consecrated vows and send him forth a Judas with a bag
containing the price of his treason; or, if true to his conviction,
ideas and ideals, to suffer the penalty of ostracism, to be blacklisted
and to seek in vain for a sanctuary in which to expound Christ’s
doctrine of the brotherhood of man.
The people had seen this money power enter a university and grasp a
professor and hurl him headlong into the street because every faculty of
mind, redeemed by education and consecrated to truth, pointed out and
illumined new pathways to the goal of human happiness and national
glory.
The people had seen this money power practicing every art of duplicity,
growing more arrogant and despotic as it robbed one and crushed another,
building its fortifications of the bones of its victims, and its palaces
out of the profits of its piracies, until purple and fine linen on the
one side and rags upon the other side, defined conditions as mountain
ranges and rivers define the boundaries of nations—palaces on the hills,
with music and dancing and the luxuries of all climes, earth, air and
sea-huts in the valley, dark and dismal, where the music is the dolorous
“song of the shirt” and the luxuries rags and crusts.
These things had been seen by the people, but it was reserved for them
in the progress of the Pullman strike to see this money power, by the
fiat of corporations, grasp one by one the departments of the government
and compel them to do its bidding as in old plantation days the master
commanded the obedience of his chattel slaves.
The corporations first attacked the judicial department of the
government, a department which, according to Thomas Jefferson, has
menaced the integrity of the Republic from the beginning.
They did not attack the supreme bench. A chain is no stronger than its
weakest link, and the corporations knew where that was and the amount of
strain it would bear. How did they attack this weakling in the judicial
chain?
I am aware that innuendoes, dark intimations of venality are not
regarded as courageous forms of arraignment, and yet the judicial
despotism which marked every step of the proceedings by which my
official associates and myself were doomed to imprisonment, was marked
by infamies, supported by falsehoods and perjuries as destitute of truth
as are the Arctic regions of orange blossoms.
Two men quarrelled because one had killed the other’s dog with an ax.
The owner of the dog inquired, “when my dog attacked you, why did you
not use some less deadly weapon?” The other replied, “why did not your
dog come at me with the end that had no teeth in it?”
There is an adage which says, “fight the devil with fire.” In this
connection why may it not be intimated that a judge who pollutes his
high office at the behest of the money power has the hinges of his knees
lubricated with oil from the tank of the corporation that thrift may
follow humiliating obedience to its commands?
If not this, I challenge the world to assign a reason why a judge, under
the solemn obligation of an oath to obey the constitution, should in a
temple dedicated to justice, stab the Magna Charta of American liberty
to death in the interest of corporations, that labor might be disrobed
of its inalienable rights and those who advocated its claim to justice
imprisoned as if they were felons?
You may subject such acts of despotism to the severest analysis, you may
probe for the motive, you may dissect the brain and lay bare the
quivering heart, and, when you have completed the task, you will find a
tongue in every gash of your dissecting knife uttering the one word
“pelf.”
Once upon a time a corporation dog of good reputation was charged with
killing sheep, though he had never been caught in the act. The
corporation had always found him to be an obedient dog, willing to lick
the hand of his master, and declared that he was a peaceable and
law-abiding dog; but one day upon investigation the dog was found to
have wool in his teeth and thenceforward, though the corporation stood
manfully by him, he was believed to be a sheep-killing dog. The world
has no means of knowing what methods corporations employ to obtain
despotic decrees in their interest, but it is generally believed that if
an examination could be made, there would be found wool in the teeth of
the judge.
I do not profess to be a student of heredity, and yet I am persuaded
that men inherit the peculiarities of the primal molecules from which
they have been evolved. If the modern man, in spite of our civilizing
influences, books, stage and rostrum, has more devil than divinity in
his nature, where rests the blame?
Leaving the interrogatory unanswered, as it has been in all the past, it
is only required to say that men with the ballot make a fatal mistake
when they select mental and moral deformities and clothe them with
despotic power. When such creatures are arrayed in the insignia of
authority, right, justice and liberty are forever in peril.
What reasons exist today for rhetorical apostrophes to the constitution
of the Republic? Those who are familiar by experience, or by reading,
with the pathways of the storms on the ocean will recall recollections
of ships with their sails rent and torn by the fury of the winds,
rolling upon the yeasty billows and flying signals of distress. Clouds
had for days obscured sun and stars and only the eye of omnipotence
could tell whither the hulk was drifting—and today the constitution of
our ship of state, the chart by which she had been steered for a
century, has encountered a judicial tornado and only the gods of our
fathers can tell whither she is drifting. True, Longfellow, inspired by
the genius of hope, sang of the good old ship:
“We know what master laid thy keel,
What workmen wrought thy ribs of steel,
Who made each mast and sail and rope,
What anvils rang, what hammers beat,
In what a forge and what a heat
Were shaped the anchors of thy hope.”
But the poet wrote before the chart by which the good old ship sailed
had been mutilated and torn and flung aside as a thing of contempt;
before Shiras “flopped” and before corporations knew the price of
judges, legislators and public officials as certainly as Armour knows
the price of pork and mutton.
Longfellow wrote before men with heads as small as chipmunks and pockets
as big as balloons were elevated to public office, and before the
corporation ruled in courts and legislative halls as the fabled bull
ruled in a china shop.
No afflatus, however divine, no genius, though saturated with the
inspiring waters of Hippocrene, could now write in a spirit of patriotic
fire of the old constitution, nor ever again until the people by the all
pervading power of the ballot have repaired the old chart, closed the
rents and obscured the judicial dagger holes made for the accommodation
of millionaires and corporations, through which they drive their
four-in-hands as if they were Cumberland gaps.
Here, this evening, I am inclined to indulge in eulogistic phrase of
Liberty because once more I am permitted to mingle with my
fellow-citizens outside of prison locks and bars.
Shakespeare said:
“Sweet are the uses of adversity,
Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head.”
I know something of adversity, and with such philosophy as I could
summon have extracted what little sweetness it contained. I know little
of toads, except that of the genus judicial, and if they have a precious
jewel in their heads or hearts it has not fallen to my lot to find it,
though the corporations seem to have been more successful.