He lost, but continued to be the party's candidate in several subsequent elections. Debs received almost a million votes - six percent of the ballots cast. After four consecutive losing presidential campaigns, in Debs decided to run for an Indiana Congressional seat.
He campaigned on a pacifist platform of American neutrality in the First World War. Once the United States entered the war, Debs was arrested for violating the Espionage Act after making what the district attorney of Canton, Ohio called an anti-war speech in Debs in fact only mentioned the war once, but under this repressive new law, was sentenced to ten years in a federal penitentiary. Nominated for a fifth time as the Socialist Party's presidential candidate in , Debs campaigned from his jail cell and garnered over a million votes.
Despite repeated pleas from Debs' supporters, President Wilson refused to release Debs from prison. President Harding finally ordered him set free on Christmas Day Debs lived until , leaving a legacy best summed up in his own words.
Soon it had nearly a hundred and fifty thousand members, with Debs, at its head, as their Moses. Three thousand workers from the Pullman Palace Car Company, many of them American Railway Union members, had already begun a wildcat strike in May of , a month before the A. After hearing from her, the A. That Curtis had a voice at all that day was thanks in part to Debs, who had supported the admission of women to the A.
He also argued for the admission of African-Americans. But, by a vote of to , the assembled members decided that the union would be for whites only. If two votes had gone the other way, the history of the labor movement in the United States might have turned out very differently.
Black men, closed out of the A. If working on a Pullman car was degrading, it was also, for decades, one of the best jobs available to African-American men. Its perks included safe travel at a time when it was difficult for black people to make their way between any two American cities without threat or harm. The A. Philip Randolph. The Pullman strike of , one of the single biggest labor actions in American history, stalled trains in twenty-seven states.
Pursued by a U. Attorney General who had long served as a lawyer for the railroads, Debs and other A. The U. He and seven other organizers were sentenced to time behind bars—Debs to six months, the others to three—and served that time in Woodstock, Illinois, in a county jail that was less a prison than a suite of rooms in the back of the elegant two-story Victorian home of the county sheriff, who had his inmates over for supper every night. Debs: A Graphic Biography. Very little of this is true.
He ran the union office out of his cell. He was allowed to leave jail on his honor. While in jail, he turned away overtures from socialists. The people elected Bryan, it was said, but money elected McKinley. On January 1, , writing in the Railway Times , Debs proclaimed himself a socialist. Money constitutes no proper basis of civilization. For Debs, socialism meant public ownership of the means of production. It recognizes the equality in men. In , he campaigned in thirty-three states, travelling on a custom train called the Red Special.
Debs was too sick to run in Debs spoke out against the war as soon as it began. In that war I am prepared to fight in any way the ruling class may make necessary, even to the barricades. And, as a member of the Senate, Sanders said it again. They had no children. Not a wheel moved on Great Northern and at end of 18 days, the railway granted demands of union. Finished sentences Nov. Given triumphal welcome by thousands on his arrival in Chicago, from Woodstock, Ill.
The weekly magazine achieved a circulation of several hundred thousand due to the powerful writing of Debs. The bound files of the Appeal to Reason for the years of to are part of the library in the Debs home. Debs circa — Ran for Congress in his home district in Terre Haute on the Socialist ticket and was defeated.
For this speech he was arrested and convicted in federal court in Cleveland, Ohio under the war-time espionage law. He was his own attorney and his appeal to the jury and his statement to the court before sentencing, are regarded as two of the great classic statements ever made in a court of law.
He was sentenced to serve 10 years in prison. April 12, — Debs began serving his sentence in Moundsville, W. State prison and was transferred to Atlanta, Ga. Federal prison two months later.
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