Then competition between workers began as machines took the place of
hand labor. Manufacturers wanted larger and larger bodies of labor and
that competition spread out here to Kansas, and I have always felt when
in Kansas that I stood on sacred soil. When I hear the name of Kansas I
doff my hat in reverence. The free soilers came here, despised, hated
and persecuted. They were the enemies of the human race. Why? Because
they had hearts throbbing within their breasts. Because they looked with
compassion upon the negro slave who received his wages in lashes applied
to his naked back; who saw his crying wife torn from him and his
children, pleading, snatched from his side and sold into slavery, while
the great mass looked on just as the great mass is looking on today, and
the preachers stood up in their pulpits and said: “It is all right. It
is God-ordained.” And whenever an abolitionist raised his head he was
persecuted and hounded as if he had been a wild beast.
I heard this story from Wendell Phillips one evening. I never can forget
it. How I wish he were here this afternoon! We sat together and he said:
“Debs, the world will never know with what bitter and relentless
persecution the early abolitionists had to contend.”
Wendell Phillips was the most perfect aristocrat in the true sense I
have ever seen; came nearest being a perfect man. And yet he was treated
as if he had been the worst felon on earth. They went to his house one
night to mob him, and why? Because he protested against sending a young
negro girl back into slavery. They came to take her back, and the whole
commonwealth of Massachusetts said, “Take her back! Obey the law!” That
is what they are everlastingly saying to us—“Obey the law!” Just above
the door of the state house there was an inscription: “God bless the
Commonwealth of Massachusetts.” Wendell Phillips said: “If Massachusetts
has become a slave hunter, if Massachusetts is in alliance with the
slave catchers of the south, the inscription over that portal should be
changed, and in place of ‘God Bless the Commonwealth of Massachusetts’
it should be: ‘God Damn the Commonwealth of Massachusetts!’” God smiled
in that same instant.