My day began with an early trip to the grocery store in Arlington. When it opens at 7:00 a.m., I enter and typically am the only customer in the store. Next up was a trip to the recycling yard better known as the junkyard. Keith's butcher shop is next to my garage. Last night we loaded scrap metal behind his shop unto my trailer and this morning I hauled it to the junkyard. (See photos and on my way home I saw camel corn.)
Having finished Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, Isabel Wilkerson, I'd intended to review it today. When I read about Eugene Debs in Today's Writer's Almanac (see below) I thought it was worth reprinting and decided to delay the book report.
Today is the birthday of the man who said: “While there is a lower class, I am in it. While there is a criminal class, I am of it. While there is a soul in prison, I am not free.” That’s the speaker and labor organizer Eugene Debs, born to poor Alsatian immigrants in Terre Haute, Indiana (1855). At the age of 14, Debs left high school to work as a paint scraper on the railroad. He soon joined the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen, became an influential member of the union, and went on to become editor of their national magazine. He first went to prison for support of the Pullman Strike of 1894. He emerged six months later a committed socialist, a charismatic speaker, and in 1900, ran for president on the Socialist ticket. He also co-founded the Industrial Workers of the World (the Wobblies) alongside Bill Haywood and Mother Jones.
A tall lanky man with piercing blue eyes, Debs was an animated
speaker, often bending far over the podium to look into the faces of the crowd.
He disliked the label of leader, saying: “Too long have the workers [...]
waited for some Moses to lead them out of bondage. I would not lead you out if
I could; for if you could be led out, you could be led back again. I would have
you make up your minds that there is nothing you cannot do for yourselves.”
In 1912, Debs campaigned for president on “The Red Special” locomotive,
traveling to the farthest corners of the country. He lost yet again, but this
time he received more than a million votes. Five years later, he was sentenced
to 10 years in prison for a speech in which he said, “The rich start the wars;
the poor fight them.” The Espionage Act had recently passed, making it a crime
to publicly oppose the American involvement in World War I. Debs represented
himself, called no witnesses, and his statement before the court is regarded as
a masterpiece of American oratory.
He continued to speak out from an Atlanta penitentiary on labor
issues, and ran yet another popular presidential campaign from behind bars. Now
in his early 60s, he refused any special treatment in jail and won over his
fellow inmates by constantly fighting on their behalf. When he was pardoned on
Christmas Day in 1921, the warden opened every cellblock and allowed more than
2,000 inmates to gather at the gates and bid farewell to Debs. As he turned the
corner and began to walk the gauntlet of prisoners, Debs opened his arms to the
men and began to weep as the crowd roared. Some 50,000 people greeted him upon
his return to Terre Haute.
His book on the prison industry, Walls and Bars, was published after
his death from heart failure in 1926.
Camel corn.
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