_Walter Hurt in Appeal to Reason, November 23, 1907_
Capitalism made its first great mistake when it put Eugene V. Debs in
jail. It made its second great mistake when it put William D. Haywood in
jail. And it adds to its mistakes every time it wrongfully imprisons any
member of the working class.
Woodstock was plutocracy’s Waterloo and Boise was its Bull Run.
Debs entered jail a labor agitator and emerged therefrom a Social
Revolutionist.
Haywood went to prison defeated and left it victorious.
In each case it was a transformation and a triumph.
It should be understood that the word “defeat” is here used merely as a
term of convenience. No man is truly defeated unless he is conquered,
and Debs and Haywood are unconquerable.
Moreover, whatever its reverses, there can be no defeat for a righteous
cause, for in the eternal equipoise of social conservation—
“Ever will right come uppermost
And ever will justice be done.”
And these celebrated cases are not exceptional, for history proves that,
despite the purpose for which they were designed, prisons have always
been the instruments of progress—unfailing agencies of human
advancement.
The path of progress extends undeviating from Woodstock to Boise. The
experience of a Debs was necessary to the evolvement of a Haywood.
In their effort to destroy Debs the money-masters overreached
themselves. They crushed the American Railway Union—crushed it into the
cohesion of the Social Democracy.
It is interesting to observe this operation—to watch the metamorphosis
of Debs and trace the evolution of the industrial movement from the date
of his imprisonment; in this process we find the philosophy of progress,
the development of the social purpose.
Both Debs and his persecutors were involuntary instruments of sovereign
economic forces; the latter an unconscious agency, responding blindly to
conservatory impulsion, the former obedient to an intelligent enthusiasm
logically directed toward a definite and an attainable object.
Under the pressure of prison walls Debs’ dynamic being developed until
its expanding forces found expression in the Socialist idea, of which
his own potent personality was the informing influence.
From the corporate wreck of the A. R. U. the Social Democracy was
organized. Debs reformed this disintegration, he was the atom of
attraction; his irresistible individuality was the core to which the
others cohered—the compelling factor that drew to an integrative
coalescence the shattered, scattered remnants of a vast industrial
organism as surely as a magnet draws the metal.
The Pullman strike was not lost. It was won decisively and completely. A
movement for industrial liberation as magnificent in its scope as any
campaign of the immortal Corsican, had succeeded. For the first time in
history Plutocracy was paralyzed in the clutch of Toil, directed by a
man of intelligence and integrity.
But victory was plucked from the grasp of the strikers by the strong
hand of federal power. They were robbed of the sweet fruits of their
bitter struggle by the wealth-won favor of presidential authority.
This result puzzled Debs. He couldn’t understand how such a tremendous
triumph could be turned into defeat.
He had to go to jail to find the solution of the problem.
In jail he studied Socialism. And straightway a great illumination burst
upon his intelligence.
He turned from craft-consciousness to class-consciousness.
It was revealed to him that the entire theory of industrial organization
as it existed was fundamentally false. He realized that any social
benefit to be large and lasting must be also universal.
Moreover, he came to know the reason for the failure of the Pullman
strike after it had been fairly and fully won; and he understood then
that revolution was the only remedy for economic ills and that the only
hope for government protection of proletarian interests lay in the
capture of governmental power.
From the narrow confines of his cell and the not less narrow confines of
craft interest he simultaneously stepped into physical freedom and into
the world-wide sweep of the Social Revolution.
Debs had been so dangerous that the masters deemed it advisable to send
him to jail. He left that prison a thousand times more dangerous than
when he entered it.
For Debs _is_ dangerous. This is the one truth plutocracy tells about
him. He’s as dangerous as dynamite—to capitalistic interests.
Capitalism thought it had destroyed Debs. It merely had made him.
His cell was a chrysalis, from which his soul came forth with unfurled
wings.
Defeat cannot come to such a man as Debs. His triumphal return to
Chicago after his release from Woodstock jail is neither paralleled nor
approximated in all history except by Napoleon’s victorious march upon
Paris after his escape from Elba.
The kindest thing ever done to Debs was the act of his enemies. The
greatest blessing mankind has received was bestowed by those who sought
to enslave it.
When it sentenced Debs to jail, Capitalism signed its own death warrant.
Debs’ career from November 22, 1895, to July 28, 1907, spanning the
years from Woodstock to Boise, forms the seven-hued bow of proletarian
promise.