A Biography Worthy Of Eugene V. Debs
Oneal, James
A BIOGRAPHY WORTHY OF EUGENE V. DEBS McAlister Coleman's Vivid Book Brings Great Socialist To Life Again By James Oneal p H E labor movement of tbe world baa been enriched by great...
...Rumors that Whalen would resign started shortly after his pellce riot at the Communist unemployment demonstration March 6. Many citizens were disgusted at the brutal beating under his orders of men and women whose only offense was claiming' the right to present a petition en masse without a permit...
...It became evident even to bis friends that he lacked the discretion desirable in a police commissioner...
...Whalen was a pointed 18 months ago by Jimmy Walker, the Tammany fashion plate mayor, to distract public attention from the police scandal involving the unsolved murder of Arnold Rothstein, the big New York gambler...
...More courses were offered this year than have been offered f o r some years In the past...
...The growth of the area to be served by the new Eighth avenue subway will be sufficient to fill it...
...e • The turn of the century brought a mature Debs fired with a crusading seal and a clear vision of the world wide movement to reconstruct capitalism on a Socialist basis...
...This happened on the Sixth avenue L years ago when the Broadway Seventh was opened...
...However, there is strong reason to believe that this argument serves some ulterior purpose...
...personalities...
...We doubt whether this incident can be paralleled in the labor movement anywhere...
...For weeks the Mayor was deprived of noticeable mention while Whalen sunned htm self in the glare of publicity...
...He was nine years old when Lincoln was assassinated and 21 before the o r g y of military rule in the South had come to an end...
...W.U., George McFarland, Elevator Operators Union...
...Figures of the Interborough Rapid Transit Company and the Transit Commission show that approximately 250,000 people daily use the Sixth avenue elevated...
...There is n o need to point out that such a procedure serves to divert funds from other necessary city expenditures...
...Its importance has increased rather than decreased...
...Two biographical works have appeared regarding' Debs, one by Stephen Marion Reynolds and another by David Karsner hut they were far from being satisfactory...
...p . 218) but Theodore was...
...In 1877 he was opposed to strikes which he regards...
...Graduation At Rand School This Saturday 17 Students to Receive Certificates for Completion of Workers' Training Course F'R the first time in its history, the Rand School is going to award certificates of graduation to seventeen students who have creditably completed the T w o Year Evening Workers' Training Course...
...He was the moat loved and the most hated man in American life since the dawn of the present century...
...It is being done under the Sixth avenue elevated on Church street...
...Shapiro was heckled by a few who criticized his individualistic stand...
...A few minor errors may be noted...
...Hardie and Mac Donald in England...
...His experience in the legislature soured him...
...Thomas Presents Party View Tuesday, May 20, the question came up f o r discussion before the Board of Estimate and Apportionment...
...However, those benefited directly will not be assessed f or a portion of the cost of construction...
...Jacob Shur, Y.P.S.L...
...The literary atmosphere of the Debs home, later bis headship of the Occidental Literary Club, the fame of Wendell Phillips as an orator, all stimulated his desire for knowledge and the urge to learn the art of public speaking...
...On Sunday afternoons, or on those rare evenings when the store on Eleventh street closed before 9 o'clock, the t wo would pore over Jean's collection of French writings and prints, discuss the meager news that came to them from their common fatherland, or essay on Jean's cornet some old French songs...
...Lately, they have been silent on the question or have contented themselves with the statement that at the proper time the Board of Estimate wul determine how much, tbe coat should be met by the adjacent property particularly benefited...
...Debs came from a region similar to that which had shaped the Great Emancipator...
...The i d e a l of S o c i a l i s m is a d e m o - eratic...
...I n 1880 the union had reached a low stage in membership and finances and It appeared that It would disintegrate...
...Had Bryan and his western radicals not captured the machinery of the party in 1896 Debs would have cast his l o t with the Populists...
...Among those now numbered with our great dead Eugene V. Debs stands out as one of the most human, most colorful, and most lovable o f men...
...Debs, Berger and London in the United States, and others may be recalled who have made their impress upon the labor movement of their time...
...This was the first intimation that it was proposed to remove the elevated before a substitute transit facility had been provided...
...The Citizens Union after consultation with reputable engineers, reports that for a cost of $2,000,000, the columns of the elevated could be reinforced and thus all hazard eliminated...
...Gertrude declared that "If Theodore had thrown that watch, oat of the window on Sixty-sixth street, ft would have found its way-straight to the hockshop in cue Loop...
...It cares for a large number of passengers each day, who would be seriously discommoded should it be removed and w ho would be forced to push into other rapid transit lines now already crowded beyond human endurance...
...At any rate at the age o f 14 the future Socialist left school t o scrape paint from cars in the old Vandalia shops and soon thereafter he was firing an engine...
...With the emergence of Debs at the head of the American Railway Union in June, 1893, at a salary ol $75 per month he entered upon that modern phase of life with which we are more familiar...
...Morris Feldman, Y.P.S.L...
...That district is in the west end while Bagdad is the Negro section in, the south end...
...Gertrude, his wife, shared the privations and there were days when there was little to eat and n o money to p ay the office rent A decorated gold watch received by Theodore tram his father waa pawned time after time to pay the office rent...
...The anti-DeLeon faction which nominated Harriman and Hayes in Rochester in 1900 was not "inside the S. L. P . " ( p . 204) as it h a d deserted the S . L. P . in July, 1899...
...Bebel and Liebknecbt in Germany...
...Leaders and delegates to the convention of that year turned to Debs and made him secretary-treasurer and editor of the official magazine...
...When Whalen openly boasted that his plain clethes men took part in the demonstration as provocative agents and that he was having Communists fired from their jobs...
...We feel that the welfare of our working masses is infinitely more important...
...Of course, it will be necessary t o reinforce the columns supporting the elevated...
...What a Santa Clans the city is to real estate boys...
...T h e T r a f f i c P r o b l em Business interests in the City of New York are reported to b e losing millions of dollars annually because of traffic congestion...
...We won't let you g o . " "We want Debs, Debs, Debs...
...There will be a presentation o f certificates on Saturday evening, May 24th in the Debs Auditorium of the Rand School, 7 E. 15 St_ The proceedings will n o t be v e r y ceremonious, and will be accompanied by a social program...
...The condemnation of the Sixth avenue L is going to cost the city well over 25 million dollars...
...Coleman follows him through his presidential campaigns, the negotiations that resulted in founding a united Socialist Party, the entrance of the United States into the World War, his trial and imprisonment, the aging of the agitator, tbe evening of his life, the shadows, and then the sleep he had earned...
...A heated question period followed...
...This will also result in a rise in land values...
...Thus ends the biography of the unforgettable Debs, the lion-hearted humanist and Socialist, child of the working class movement, certainly one of the greatest men in American history...
...If there is real danger of the elevated collapsing as a result of subway construction, there can be no question of the advisability of demolishing the elevated immediately...
...Plans are being perfected for the development of student activities on a much larger scale next year...
...Whether that period which Bowers has called "The T r a g i c Era" made any definite impressions on the youth we do not know...
...His argument may be briefly summarized as follows: The Sixth avenue L has not ceased t o be an important part o f our transit facilities...
...One has to go back to Garrison in the old anti-slavery struggle to find another man who evoked so widespread fears and hates, aversions and loyalties, admiration and dread...
...He became disgusted with fat brokers and the dummies Who sat in legislative seats...
...Several pages are devoted to the experience of Theodore in the first two years of financing the Social Democracy...
...When the proposal to condemn It was first broached by Borough...
...The students who will be presented with the certificates are A b e Belsky, Y J . S . L , Bert Bras tow, Jewelry Workers Union...
...Here that this hazard argument serves its purpose...
...If it is once accepted that the L must be removed for safety, the local property owners will be afforded the basis for a contention that the L removal was required by general consideration ef public safety and that, therefore, the cost should be carried b y the c i ty as a whole and not by the property benefited...
...The Walker faction in Tammany Hall feared the police commissioner waa grooming himself foi mayor when Walker's term is up...
...He purchased books, was captivated by Thomas Paine and Patrick Henry and the oratory o f Daniel W. Voorhees who later became United States Senator...
...Leaving his engine and after having snatched a few hours sleep he would hurry to a private school for instruction...
...Eugene D. Jonas, Urban League, Lillian Kaplan, Y.P.S.L...
...We also must dissent with Coleman's apparent justification of the phrase "labor faker" and assumption that DeLeon used it with accuracy, ( p . 192...
...Gene...
...It was the sending of troops by President Cleveland to Chicago to break the Pullman strike that completed Debs's aversion for the Democratic party...
...The Pullman strike is significant for two things...
...His great earnestness won him friends everywhere...
...Then began the herculean task of revival and organization with Debs raising money, ridjng freights in blazing summer and winter sleet and rain...
...On May 31, 1929...
...These owners have never made aa offer in a legally enforceable form...
...There are those who believe that once the Eighth avenue subway is open to the riding public, probably in October 1931, substantial relief will be proided f o r both the Broadway and Seventh avenue subways, so that the latter lines will be in a position to absorb more comfortably the former passengers on the Sixth avenue L. The Possible Hazards This question cannot be answered a priori...
...Whalen's resignation followed Mayor Walker's jealousy at his success in grabbing so much front page publicity...
...President Miller of Manhattan in 1923, It w a s h i s thought that the elevated should not be demolished* until the projected Sixth avenue subway was in o p eration...
...A BIOGRAPHY WORTHY OF EUGENE V. DEBS McAlister Coleman's Vivid Book Brings Great Socialist To Life Again By James Oneal p H E labor movement of tbe world baa been enriched by great H"TT»»T...
...as "anarchy and revolution...
...Gene was not at the Unity Convention in 1901...
...It revealed a President of the United States ignoring the constitutional requirements of awaiting the request o f the governor before sending troops into a state and it contributed the most drastic injunction in labor history...
...The technique, however, is well known to all engineers...
...We recall that he used it against Debs himself when he rat a s t o r y in the "Weekly People'' to the effect that railroad pasm made put to Debs were found a a r o om in a Milwaukee hotel...
...A number of new features have been added this year...
...Of the two Frenchmen Coleman writes: "Solomon and Jean Debs were cronies...
...In addition to the presentation of certificates there will be a general assembly of the student body of this year* and former students and friends...
...Most o f the 250,000, if the elevated is removed before the Sixth avenue subway is constructed, will j am their way into the B. M. T . Broadway subway between 59th street and the Battery, the I. R. T. Broadway and the Seventh avenue subway, or the Lexington avenue subway on the Jerome avenue line...
...He believed that all differences should be settled byarbitration but actual experience in the succeeding years when he found union ranged against union in important railroad strikes broadened his vision...
...They recognize that even the skilful subway construction will impede the flow of traffic...
...An entertainment will follow...
...This huge cost is not to be dismissed lightly on the ground that the removal will be paid for by the property owners of the property benefited...
...will leave their names and suggestions for next year...
...e d u c a t e d , self- r e l i a n t c o m m u nity ia which a l l i n d i v i d u a l s c o - o p - era** taawthcr t o p r o m o t e t h e h i r h e s i development a n d t h e f r e a t e s t h a p p i - neat of all—Philip Snowden...
...I t also Is not amiss t o point out that the same real estate speculators will be presented with another little gift at general city expense when the subway is constructed...
...He visions them as strong, calm, firm men who later walk over to the parks and climb on pedestals, and turn into statues erected by a grateful and affected people...
...We started," said Theodore, "without a lead pencil or a plugged nickel...
...Even assuming that there is a decrease In traffic on the Broadway-Seventh avenue subway, the passengers on this line are entitled to some measures of relief after all these years of discomfort and should not be deprived of it b y adding the passengers o f Sixth avenue L. There may be a genuine hazard to constructing a subway along Sixth avenue while the L remains standing...
...Gene died with his hand in Theodore's...
...Miller requested the Board of Estimate to initiate condemnation proceedings so that the removal of the elevated might be undertaken as soon as the new West Side Eighth avenue subway was in o p eration...
...He had a bill to protect his beloved railroad buddies but it was so mutilated when it came out of committee that he resolved never to have anything to do with politics...
...This brought Gene to the front and from that year he became the agitator and organizer...
...Those urging immediate condemnation base their position on three main arguments: 1. The Sixth avenue elevated is no longer a vital area of the city's transportation system a n d 1 i f removed its passengers can easily be carried on existing lines including the new Eighth avenue subway...
...Moreover, Debs was the central and most dramatic figure in t w o great events in American history, the Pullman strike and the World War...
...It is horrible to imagine what would happen should 250,000 more riders be forced to push their way into these lines...
...Coleman dramatizes the scene...
...A subway is n ow being constructed under Fulton street, Brooklyn, while the elevated continues to function...
...One always thinks of Debs as the radical and yet he reached his Socialist views through all the stages that begin with extreme conservatism in the labor movement...
...His boyhood had been spent under the soft shadows of the Cathedral of St...
...Assuming that greater traffic congestion will result if the L is left standing, the question then b e comes one of-weighing values...
...When the era of prosperous stability had been realized Debs pleaded with the firemen for more solidarity, more inclusive organization, only to meet with rebuff at the convention in 1886...
...Anna Kula, Local 41, I.L.G...
...You can't do it...
...The firemen so toved this man that they insisted that he should remain editor of the magazine although not a member of the union...
...He lhsa again in the pages of this fine bk> graphy...
...It is hoped that students of former years who are interested in the above activities and in a choral club, orchestra, etc...
...Friedman presented a case for prohibition...
...The season which has j u s t closed has had an increase in attendance especially in the courses in the s o cial sciences, Labor problems, economics and socialism...
...Normas Thomas, appearing on behalf of the Public Affairs Committee of the Socialist Party, opposed this position...
...Although he promised to clear up the "mystery"—every detail of which was common Broadway gossip— a trial of one suspect blew up aa a farce and the Rothstein case was forgotten in a series of publicity stunts that ranged from traffic to beating up Communists...
...Rose Mintz, A. C. W. Local 5, Irving Nelson, Y . P.S.L., Reba Pushkoff, Y.P.S.L...
...Algernon Lee was chairman...
...Through these pages one obtains glimpses of Robert G. Ingersoil, Wendell Phillips, James Whitcomh Riley, Eugene Field, John Peter Altgeld, Susan B. Anthony, Samuel Gompers...
...This will be followed by dancing to Jack Wynnes orchestra which is to play at Camp Tamiment this summer...
...gathering the "scoopers", as Coleman calls the firemen, at roundhouses, shops and halls, and by shear force of will and his tremendous earnestness wresting victory out of ruin...
...a student organization was organized with a debating team, which held debates with various colleges, including one at Reading, P a , A l bright College, a book review club, a dramatic club and a school paper...
...These days of anxiety with Gene on the road aa organizer and speaker are aa dramatic in pathos, adventure and sacrifice as the early history of the Socialist movement in many other countries...
...Whalen Out As New York Police Chief Walker Cans Red-Baiting Commissioner Who Crowded Him Off Front Pages AFTER weeks of rumors, Grover A. Whalen, famous for administering law to strikers and radicals "at the end of nightstick" (his own words) and for stirring up the country over "Soviet documents" made by forgers in New York, has resigned as police commissioner of N ew York...
...Meantime Debs had been elected and re-elected City Clerk of Terre Haute and then to the legislature...
...Trains on these lines are already taxed to the breaking point...
...Martin, a fine old Gothic structure with magnificent sculptures...
...Gertrude Bronitsky, Millinery Workers Union...
...Sarah Kovener, Local 22, LL.G.W.U-, Lena Kritzer, Local 62, LL.G.W...
...Provided that an impartial committee of engineers judges that it is safe t o retain ther elevated structrue while the subway is in the building, we recommend that the Sixth avenue L continue in operation until a subway is ready to take its place Friedman and Shapiro In Hot Debate on Booze Samuel H. Friedman and Theodore Shapiro debated on the Socialist position on prohibition as a national policy at the Rand School, Friday, May Id...
...Therefore, the L must come down immediately...
...the superb agitator, the adorable man, the affectionate corarafc and courageous - spirit...
...Some excerpts from his early speeches and writings are amusing...
...Yet the "scoopers" idolized Gene and something like panic seized the delegates to the convention in 1802 when he announced his resignation...
...Both failed to reveal the youth in the Wabash Valley slowly emerging into the mature man and Socialist, the man whose name became known throughout the world and whose portrait was secretly cherished even by workmen in the old sad days of the heroic struggle against the criminal ruling class of Czarist Russia...
...This early period o f his life has been a blank even to his most intimate friends in the Socialist movement and they will be grateful for this record of the man whose ashes were interred at Terre Haute near-~ ly four years ago...
...Gene grows from cat, chapter to another, a stormy pare...
...It waa years later when he realized that politics was not at fault but that the politics of capitalist parties is hopeless for the working class...
...In the year that he entered the latter body, 1885, he married Katharine Metxei who was to share ia his life work till the end came at Lindlahr...
...This was the year of the g r e a t upheaval on tbe railroads...
...There was Pierre Solomon, a Frenchman, who at the Vandalia shops painted "strutting roosters and flapping eagles" on coaches and who introduced the " t ow head" Gene to "Old Man Peddle, Master of the Vandalia paint shops...
...Making allowance for that* ft* slips, we think that Coleman an made Debs tbe vivid figure that at was in life...
...I t is conceivable that the Broadway and Seventh avenue subways will show an increase rather than a decrease...
...In short, the real, estate speculators who probably own Sixth avenue by this time, drill be presented with a gift of millions o f dollars at general city expense...
...One gets some charming portraits of tfte Debs family and other figures of the period...
...Told of these before he used them in Washington as a basis for urging a nation-wide investigation of radicals, he refused to look at them...
...2. The engineering difficulties involved in constructing the subway while the elevated is still standing are s o great that it will prove both costly and dangerous...
...However, they contend that subway construction with the elevated standing will create an impossible traffic situation...
...The Debs family house there wae a lean, five-story affair, a typical bourgeois home, Jean's father was a well-to-do merchant, and Jean had received a good education...
...To settle all doubts as to the hazard involved in constructing a subway, while the L remains standing, the question should be referred to an impartial committee of competent engineers for an opinion...
...Jean Daniel had been born in the prosperous town of Colmar, the capital of the district of Alsace, which reared its peaked roofs above a plain near the Vosges, ten miles west of the Rhine...
...At least two-thirds of the book relate to that period of his life that includes the boyhood of Debs and his emergence in 1900 aa the most noted orator of the American Socialist movement...
...Martin Kearn will render a piano solo, Andrew and Auna Kuybida of t he Ukrainian Center of Passaic will give Ukrainian dances and there will be a vocal number...
...Of the Debs who sleeps in the affection of his comrades I always think of that fine passage in William Allen White's "Some Cycles of Cathay" who pictures the men who are not fully appreciated till they pass from the scene...
...The Real Estate Interests * I n view of these facts, this danger argument may well be a smoke screen under cover of which approximately 200 millions in increased real estate values win be presented to favored property owners at general public expense...
...I t was the brooding fear o f b is mother that Gene would be hurt or killed In one o f the many railroad accidents of the time that Induced him to leave the engine and take a position as a clerk in the wholesale grocery house of Hulman and Cox in 1874 and the following year Joshua Leach came to Terre Haute to organize a lodge of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen...
...McAlister Coleman has filled in this vacuum in the life of Debs in a biography bearing the apt subtitle " A Man Unafraid" and published by Greenberg, New York ($8.50...
...a • • Debs soon regretted having left school...
...Most of the questions were directed to Friedman...
...To succeed the man who g o t more publicitJy of all kinds than any other officer of the city, Mayor Walker has chosen Assistant Chief Police Inspector Edward P. Mulrooney...
...George Goebel closed the discussion period with a talk on the evils of prohibition and the interests behind the fight against prohibition...
...William Stein, Socialist Party, Alexander Walker, Amalgamated Society of Engineers...
...Short addresses will be made b y Anna Kula, Eugene D. Jones and Anna Zuckerman, after which Paul Sorter, field Secretary of the League for Industrial Democracy will speak...
...Born five years before Lincoln came to the presidency...
...He waa early a lover of French and German classics, and had an ardor for collecting books against the time when he should have money t o quit work and go deeper into the history of his Alsace...
...The bulletin f o r next year is' to include many new courses and features, which will be announced within the next few weeks...
...P. M. Arthur, Theodore Debs and others...
...Shapiro favored ''allowing the individual to decide for himself...
...ho wee r, Mr...
...Though his violations of civil rights were clear, 600 of N ew York's prominent business men commended his methods at a dinner in his honor...
...A r e the losses of business men resulting from traffic congestion or the slow movement of automobiles more important than the health and safety of those using our rapid transit facilities...
...Realtors, Merchants Seek Millions In Gift From City Through "L" Demolition Thomas and Citizen's Union Fight Proposed Step at City Hall Hearing By Henry J. Rosner rR close to a decade the demolition of the Sixth avenue L in New Y o r k City has been recognized as a very desirable public improvement...
...3 3 ) is erroneous...
...The Lecture Bureau sponsored the debate...
...Jaurea and Guesde in France...
...3. The construction of the subway while the elevated stands will result in increased traffic congestion, which at present is responsible for great losses to business men...
...He was determined...
...The reference to "Bagdad" as the "red light" district In Terre Haute (p...
...Pierre was a regular visitor at the home of Debs's father, Jean Daniel...
...They were both Alsatians...
...His latest dud w a s the "Soviet documents," which* were shown up as forgeries by proofs in the hands of a New York newspaper...
Vol. 10 • May 1930 • No. 16
