![]() ![]() Instead, Debs reasoned that his recently formed American Railway Union (ARU) was the model organization to unite all railway workers in a powerful, national, and united voice in the industry. Page one of the injunction issued by federal judges in Chicago, July 2, 1894, barring strikers from interfering with trains carrying mail. ![]() Debs believed that small, disparate, class- and trade-driven unions possessed little power to influence social change for their members. The following year, Debs married Katherine Baur, the daughter of a well-to-do Terre Haute couple.īy 1894, Debs had resigned from the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen over internal disagreements about the organization’s philosophy and direction. Debs’s popularity was so great that he was elected to the state legislature for one term. Throughout the 1880s, Debs’s interest in organized labor activities brought him into contact with central Indiana’s politics, where he aligned himself with the Democratic Party’s platform. His acuity in organization and growing talent for public speaking fared him well, and he rapidly advanced in the organization’s hierarchy. Debs was a charter member and was elected recording secretary. That year also saw his initial foray into the labor movement, when he became a member of the town’s fledgling lodge of Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen. In 1875 Debs, now unemployed, accepted a position with H. ![]() Within a year he became a fireman for the railroad. In 1870 at age 14, Debs left high school against his parents’ protestations and worked for the Vandalia Railroad in Terre Haute as an unskilled paint scraper at 50 cents a day. Theodore idolized his brother and later became his devoted assistant.īy all accounts, Debs was a good student, but the excitement of working on the railroad was too much for the youngster to ignore. Debs’s only brother, Theodore, was born in 1864. Of six children born to Daniel and Marguerite, Eugene was the oldest son. His parents were Daniel and Marguerite Debs, immigrants from the Alsace region in France. Courtesy of Indiana State University, Cunningham Memorial Library)Įugene Victor Debs was born in Terre Haute, Indiana, on November 5, 1855. But the crowd also included a number of individuals who were decidedly not sympathizers or well-wishers, and their presence did not bode well for the featured speaker that day.Ī 14-year-old Eugene Debs (seated, far left) poses for a photograph with his fellow painters at the Vandalia Railroad in Terre Haute, Indiana, 1870. In the crowd, estimated in size between 250 and more than 1,000, were several hundred socialists, sympathizers, and interested bystanders. Debs himself, the country’s leading socialist and labor organizer, and four-time candidate for President, waited for his turn to address the crowd. They had come to hear the keynote speech at the Buckeye State’s annual Socialist Convention and Eugene V. On a sultry afternoon in 1918, the tall, lanky Hoosier walked up the bandstand’s steps and surveyed the growing crowd gathered in Nimisilla Park in Canton, Ohio, on Sunday, June 16. This photograph was used as Government Exhibit Number 17 for the prosecution. Eugene Debs delivers his famous antiwar speech at Canton, Ohio, June 16, 1918. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |