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EUGENE V. DEBS RALLYING IN CANTON,
OHIO - 1918
Address to the Court
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Go here for more about
 Eugene
V. Debs.
Go here for more about
Eugene
V. Debs' Address to the Court.
Photo above:
U.S. National Archives
It follows the full text transcript of
Eugene V. Debs' Address to the Court, sometimes
also called his The Bending Cross speech, delivered at
Cleveland, Ohio - September 18, 1918. |
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Your Honor, |
years ago I
recognized my kinship with all living beings,
and I made up my mind that I was not one bit
better than the meanest on earth. I said then,
and I say now, that while there is a lower
class, I am in it, and while there is a criminal
element I am of it, and while there is a soul in
prison, I am not free.
If the law under
which I have been convicted is a good law, then
there is no reason why sentence should not be
pronounced upon me. I listened to all that was
said in this court in support and justification
of this prosecution, but my mind remains
unchanged. I look upon the Espionage Law as a
despotic enactment in flagrant conflict with
democratic principles and with the spirit of
free institutions.
Your Honor, I have
stated in this court that I am opposed to form
of our present Government; that I am opposed to
the social system in which we live; that I
believed in the change of both—but by perfectly
peaceable and orderly means.
Let me call your
attention to the fact this morning that in this
system five per cent of our people own and
control two-thirds of our wealth; sixty-five per
cent of the people, embracing the working class
who produce all wealth, have but five per cent
to show for it.
Standing here this
morning, I recall my boyhood. At fourteen I went
to work in a railroad shop; at sixteen I was
firing a freight engine on a railroad. I
remember all the hardships and privations of
that earlier day, and from that time until now
my heart has been with the working class. I
could have been in Congress long ago. I have
preferred to go to prison. The choice has been
deliberately made. I could not have done
otherwise. I have no regret.
In the struggle,
the unceasing struggle, between the toilers and
producers and their exploiters, I have tried, as
best I might, to serve those among whom I was
born, with whom I expect to share my lot until
the end of my days.
I am thinking this
morning of the men in the mills and factories; I
am thinking of the men in the mines and on the
railroads; I am thinking of the women who, for a
paltry wage, are compelled to work out their
lives; of the little children, who in this
system, are robbed of their childhood, and in
their early, tender years are seized in the
remorseless grasp of Mammon, and forced into the
industrial dungeons, there to feed the machines
while they themselves are being starved body and
soul. I see them dwarfed, diseased, stunted,
their little lives broken, and their hopes
blasted, because in this high noon of our
twentieth century civilization money is still so
much more important than human life. Gold is god
and rules in the affairs of men.
The little girls,
and there are a million of them in this country,
this, the most favored land beneath the bending
skies, a land in which we have vast areas of
rich and fertile soil, material resources in
inexhaustible abundance, the most marvelous
productive machinery on earth, millions of eager
workers ready to apply their labor to that
machinery to produce in abundance for every man,
woman, and child—and if there are still vast
numbers of our people who are the victims of
poverty and whose lives are an unceasing
struggle all the way from youth to old age,
until at last death comes to their rescue and
stills the aching heart, it is not the fault of
the Almighty, it cannot be charged to nature,
but it is due entirely to the outgrown social
system that ought to be abolished, not only in
the interest of the working class, but in a
higher interest of all humanity.
I think of these
little children, the girls that are in the
textile mills of all description in the east, in
the cotton factories of the south, I think of
them at work in a vitiated atmosphere, I think
of them at work when they ought to be at play or
at school, I think that when they do grow up, if
they live long enough to approach the marriage
state, they are unfit for it. Their nerves are
worn out, their tissue is exhausted, their
vitality is spent. They have been fed to
industry. Their lives have been coined into
gold. Their offspring are born tired. That is
why there are so many failures in our modern
life.
Your Honor, the
five per cent of the people that I have made
reference to constitute that element that
absolutely rules our country. They privately own
all our public necessities. They wear no crowns;
they wield no scepters, they sit upon no
thrones; and yet they are our economic masters
and our political rulers. They control this
Government and all of its institutions. They
control the courts.
And Your Honor, if
you will permit me, I wish to make just one
correction. It was stated here that I had
charged that all federal judges are crooks. The
charge is absolutely untrue. I did say that all
federal judges are appointed through the
influence and power of the capitalist class and
not the working class. If that statement is not
true, I am more than willing to retract it.
The five per cent
of our people who own and control all of the
sources of wealth, all of the nation's
industries, all of the means of our common life,
it is they who declare war. It is they who make
peace. It is they who control our destiny. And
so long as this is true, we can make nu just
claim to being a democratic government, a
self-governing people.
I believe, Your
Honor, in common with all Socialists, that this
nation ought to own and control its own
industries. I believe, as all Socialists do,
that all things that are jointly needed and used
ought to be jointly owned—that industry, the
basis of life, instead of being the private
property of the few and operated for their
enrichment, ought to be the common property of
all, democratically administered in the interest
of all.
John D.
Rockefeller has today an income of sixty million
dollars a year, five million dollars a month,
two hundred thousand dollars a day. He does not
produce a penny of it. I make no attack upon Mr.
Rockefeller personally. I do not in the least
dislike him. If he were in need, and it were in
my power to serve him, I should serve him as
gladly as I would any other human being. I have
no quarrel with Mr. Rockefeller personally, nor
with any other capitalist. I am simply opposing
a social order in which it is possible for one
man who does absolutely nothing that is useful,
to amass a fortune of hundreds of millions of
dollars, while millions of men and women who
work all of the days of their lives secure
barely enough for existence.
This order of things cannot always endure. I
have registered my protest against it. I
recognize the feebleness of my effort, but,
fortunately, I am not alone. There are
multiplied thousands of others who, like myself,
have come to realize that before we may truly
enjoy the blessings of civilized life, we must
reorganize society upon a mutual and cooperative
basis; and to this end we have organized a great
economic and political movement that spreads
over the face of all the earth.
There are today upwards of sixty millions of
Socialists, loyal, devoted adherents to this
cause, regardless of nationality, race, creed,
color, or sex. They are all making common cause.
They are spreading the propaganda of the new
social order. They are waiting, watching, and
working through all the hours of the day and
night. They are still in the minority. But they
have learned how to be patient and to bide their
time. The feel—they know, indeed—that the time
is coming, in spite of all opposition, all
persecution, when this emancipating gospel will
spread among all the peoples, and when this
minority will become the triumphant majority
and, sweeping into power, inaugurate the
greatest social and economic change in history.
In that day we shall have the universal
commonwealth—not the destruction of the nation,
but, on the contrary, the harmonious cooperation
of every nation with every other nation on
earth. In that day war will curse this earth no
more.
I have been
accused, Your Honor, of being an enemy of the
soldier. I hope I am laying no flattering
unction to my soul when I say that I don't
believe the soldier has a more sympathetic
friend than I am. If I had my way, there would
be no soldiers. But I realize the sacrifice they
are making, Your Honor. I can think of them. I
can feel for them. I can sympathize with them.
That is one of the reasons why I have been doing
what little has been in my power to bring about
a condition of affairs in this country worthy of
the sacrifices they have made and that they are
now making in its behalf.
Your Honor, in a
local paper yesterday there was some editorial
exultation about my prospective imprisonment. I
do not resent it in the least. I can understand
it perfectly. In the same paper there appears an
editorial this morning that has in it a hint of
the wrong to which I have been trying to call
attention. [He reads:]
A Senator of
the United States receives a salary of
$7,500 to $45,000 for the six years for
which he is elected. One of the candidates
for Senator from a state adjoining Ohio is
reported to have spent through his committee
$150,000 to secure the nomination. For
advertising he spent $35,000; for printing
$30,000; for traveling expenses $10,000, and
the rest in ways known to political
managers.
The theory is
that public office is as open to a poor man
as to a rich man. One may easily imagine,
however, how slight a chance one of ordinary
resources would have in a contest against
this man who was willing to spend more than
three times his six years' salary merely to
secure a nomination. Were these conditions
to hold in every state, the Senate would
soon become again what it was once held to
be, a rich men's club.
Campaign
expenditures have been the subject of much
restrictive legislation in recent years, but
it has not always reached the mark. The
authors of primary reform have accomplished
some of the things they set out to do, but
they have not yet taken the bank roll out of
politics.
They never will take it out of politics,
they never can take it out of politics,
in this system.
Your Honor, I wish
to make acknowledgment of my thanks to the
counsel for the defense. They have not only
defended me with exceptional legal ability, but
with a personal attachment and devotion of which
I am deeply sensible, and which I can never
forget.
Your Honor, I ask
no mercy. I plead for no immunity. I realize
that finally the right must prevail. I never so
clearly comprehended as now the great struggle
between the powers of greed on the one hand and
upon the other the rising hosts of freedom.
I can see the dawn of a better day for humanity.
The people are awakening. In due course they
will come to their own.
When the mariner, sailing over tropic seas,
looks for relief from his weary watch, he turns
his eyes toward the southern cross, burning
luridly above the tempest-vexed ocean. As the
midnight approaches, the southern cross begins
to bend, and the whirling worlds change their
places, and with starry finger-points the
Almighty marks the passage of time upon the dial
of the universe, and though no bell may beat the
glad tidings, the lookout knows that the
midnight is passing and that relief and rest are
close at hand.
Let the people
everywhere take heart and hope everywhere, for
the cross is bending, the midnight is passing,
and joy cometh with the morning.
Your Honor, I
thank you, and I thank all of this Court for
their courtesy, for their kindness, which I
shall remember always.
I am prepared to
receive your sentence.
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