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Outspoken leader of the labor movement, Eugene Debs opposed
Woodrow Wilson
as the Socialist Party candidate in the
1912 Presidential Election. Later, he would continue to rally
against President Wilson and his decision to take
America into war -- and
be jailed for it under the Espionage Act.
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Debs was born in Terre Haute, Indiana in
1855, the son of poor Alsatian immigrants. Though his parents
encouraged an intellectual spirit, Debs left high school after one
year to become a locomotive paint-scraper. There, among the
rough-and-tumble of railway men, Debs found his calling. From his
membership in the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen to his role
co-founding the Industrial Workers of the World (the "wobblies"),
Debs raised his voice in defense of the common man.
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The years leading up to the turn of the twentieth
century brought America unprecedented prosperity -- but
relatively few people, men like
Andrew Carnegie and
John D. Rockefeller Sr., controlled
the new wealth. For the nation's working class, and leaders like
Eugene Debs, it was a time to be angry. From steel
fabrication to mining American industries saw
major protests as workers tried
to secure 8-hour workdays, living wages, and other fundamental
improvements.
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After leading the American Railway Union in a confrontation with
federal troops sent to break up the Pullman strike of 1894, Debs was
jailed for six months for contempt of court. It was then that he
came to a set of beliefs that roughly mirrored the socialist tenets
of the European labor movements. Upon his release, Debs became a
featured speaker for the Socialist Party, and ran for president in
1900 as their nominee. He lost, but continued to be the partyís
candidate in several subsequent elections.
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Debs found his greatest success in the 1912 Election, when he
campaigned against Democratic nominee Woodrow Wilson, incumbent
President William Howard Taft, and former President Theodore
Roosevelt. Debs received almost a million votes - six percent of the
ballots cast.
After four consecutive losing presidential campaigns, in 1916
Debs decided to run for an Indiana Congressional seat. He campaigned
on a pacifist platform of American neutrality in the First World
War, and was elected. 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 1918.
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 1920, 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 1921.
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Debs lived until 1926, leaving a legacy best summed up in his own
words. "Yes, I am my brother's keeper," he wrote. "I am under a
moral obligation to him that is inspired, not by maudlin
sentimentality, but by the higher duty I owe myself."
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