The Unpurchasable

April 5, 2000

“The only Jesus Christ I know is Eugene Debs.” Fifty-five years ago, or so, I clearly remember Dean John Murray Atwood quoting this in a class where he was advocating the merit of the occasional biographical sermon. The Dean was quoting a prisoner at Atlanta Penitentiary where Eugene Debs had been sentenced to ten years in prison for his opposition to the United States participation in World War I. He also strongly criticized the 1917 Espionage Act, under which conscientious objectors were imprisoned.

I am now reading a thoroughly engrossing biography of Eugene Debs, HARP SONG FOR A RADICAL, by Marguerite Young. My surmise is that you will read about Debs in more Musings than this particular piece.

Born in 1855, Debs went to work at the age of 14 in a railway shop. He became a locomotive fireman. In a few years, he was a leading organizer of the American Railway Union, which lost its strength in 1895 when Debs was jailed for contempt of a Federal injunction when he was leading a famous strike against the Pullman Sleeping Car Company.

Debs became a convinced Socialist [and] established the Socialist Party of America. He was the Socialist Party candidate for President of the United States:

In 1900, he received 96,000 votes
In 1904, he received 400,000 votes
In 1908, he received 400,000 votes
In 1912, he received [900,000] votes.

In [1920], Debs ran for the U. S. Presidency from Atlanta Penitentiary. He received the unanimous votes of his fellow inmates, but prisoners’ votes did not count. But he received 915,000 votes, 6% of the total votes cast – a remarkable number for a man who was in prison.* Through all the campaigns he was know as “Debs The Unpurchasable.” (Gore and Bush, take note, neither one of you will ever be honored by that title.)

President Harding, responding to demonstrations and pressures from working people, pardoned Debs in 1921, but did not restore his citizenship of which he had been deprived by the WWI Sedition Act.

Broken in health, Debs died in 1926. In 1976, Congress posthumously restored his citizenship.

For many people, his speech at the 1917 Espionage Act trial was relevant, pointed and eloquent:

“Your Honor, years ago I recognized my kinship with all living things and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest of the earth.... I said then, I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it; while there is a criminal element, I am of it; while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.”

Shakespeare had words that were prophetic of Eugene Debs. In JULIUS CEASAR (Act 1, Sc. 3), Cassius says to Casca:

“Therein, ye gods, you make the weak most strong;
Therein, ye gods, you tyrants do defeat;
Nor stony tower, nor walls of beaten brass,
Nor airless dungeon, nor strong links of iron,
Can be retentive to the strength of spirit....”

[* Editor’s note: It was in 1912 that Debs won 6% of the popular vote. Although he enjoyed a slightly greater number of votes in 1920, when he was imprisoned, the total represented a smaller percent of the popular vote – 3.4%.]