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Eugene Victor Debs ( November 5, 1855 - October 20, 1926) was an American labor and political leader and five-time Socialist Party candidate for President of the United States.1 Rise to prominence
Debs was born in Terre Haute, Indiana (where he lived most of his life), to middle-class immigrant parents. At the age of fourteen, he left home to work on the railroads, becoming a fireman. He returned home in 1874 to work as a grocery clerk, and the next year was a founding member of a new lodge of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen . He rose quickly in the Brotherhood, becoming first an assistant editor for their magazine and then the editor and Grand Secretary (in 1880). At the same time, he became a prominent figure in the community, even being elected to the Indiana state legislature (as a Democrat). The railroad brotherhoods were comparatively conservative unions, more focused on providing fellowship and services than in collective bargaining. Debs gradually became convinced of the need for a more unified (and confrontational) approach. After stepping down as Grand Secretary, he organized, in 1893, the first industrial union in the United States, the American Railway UnionOn June 20, 1893, railway workers gathered in Chicago, Illinois, and founded the American Railway Union (ARU), the largest union of its time, and the first industrial union in the United States. Under the leadership of long-time locomotive fireman Eugene (ARU). The Union successfully struck the Great Northern Railway in April 1894Events January 8 A fire at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago causes a good deal of damage. January 9 New England Telephone and Telegraph installs the first battery-operated telephone switchboard ( Lexington, Massachusetts). February 15 04:51 GMT.
2 Trouble with the law
He was jailed later that year as part of the Pullman StrikeThe Pullman Strike of 1894 occurred when 3,000 Pullman Palace Car Company workers went on a wildcat strike in Illinois on 11 May. Owner George Pullman was a " welfare capitalist" who hoped to prevent labor discontent, but was not willing to grant high wag, which grew out of the strike by the workers who made Pullman's cars. Debs tried to persuade the ARU members who worked on the railways that the boycott was too risky, given the hostility of both the railways and the federal government, the weakness of the ARU, and the possibility that other unions would break the strike. The membership ignored his warnings and refused to handle Pullman cars or any other railroad cars attached to them.
The federal governmentA federal government is the common government of a federation. Examples include: Government of Australia Government of Canada Government of Germany Government of Switzerland Government of the United States. did, in fact, intervene, obtaining an injunctionAn injunction is an equitable remedy in the form of a court order that either prohibits or compels ("enjoins" or "restrains") a party from continuing a particular activity. The party that fails to adhere to the injunction faces civil or criminal contempt against the strike on the theory that the strikers had obstructed the railways by refusing to show up for work, then sending in the United States ArmyThe Army is the branch of the United States armed forces which has primary responsibility for land-based military operations. As of fiscal year 2002 (FY02), it consisted of 480,000 soldiers on active duty and 555,000 in reserve (350,000 in Army National G on the grounds that the strike was hindering the delivery of the mail. That intervention only provoked a violent reaction from strikers in what had been a relatively peaceful strike. The strike was broken and the ARU destroyed.
3 Run for presidency
The experience radicalized Debs still further. He was a candidate for President of the United States in 1900 as a member of the Social Democratic Party. He was later the Socialist Party of America candidate for President in 1904, 1908, 1912, and 1920, the final time from prison.
On June 16, 1918 he made an anti-war speech in Canton, Ohio, protesting World War I, and was arrested under the Espionage Act of 1917. He was sentenced to serve 10 years in prison and disenfranchised for life. While in prison in Atlanta, he ran for President. On December 25, 1921 President Warren G. Harding released Debs from prison, commuting his sentence to time served.
In the 1920 election, while in jail, he received 913,664 votes, the most ever for a Socialist Party presidential candidate in the U.S. He was also a leader of the Industrial Workers of the World during this period.
