Part 2

We do not flatter you and call you intelligent to keep you ignorant. We would have you understand that your masters rule because of your ignorance, because you still insist upon remaining in the Republican party or the Democratic party—and they are equally corrupt, only more so; both are financed from the same source, and our Comrade Chairman quite aptly quoted Sinclair, the oil king, in confessing to the United States Senate Committee investigating his deals that he contributes to both Republican and Democratic campaign funds. And why should he not? They are both his parties; both stand for his system; for the private ownership of this nation’s industries; for the exploitation of the working class; for wage-slavery, and if that is what you want, stay with them; they will fulfill that program to your heart’s content.

But have you not within you the holy spark of freedom, the glowing aspiration to be a man?—=not a slave but a MAN!= You must know what that is—a being with a soul that throbs with a desire and aspiration to know life. The working class do not know life. They are absorbed in maintaining an existence and that is not life; and while they are engaged in the endless struggle that taxes their energies, devitalizes and ages them prematurely, wears them out and casts them on the scrap-heap, they are not living. They are not permitted to know what life is in its larger, nobler and diviner meaning. They are never thrilled with those higher and holier emotions that put them in touch with all that lifts up and elevates men and women until they can, from the loftiest altitudes, sing to the stars. They do not know what music is. And the capitalists themselves are not very much better off. How wholly undeveloped they are in that higher intellectual, moral and spiritual sense! I have met many of them. I have been amazed at their ignorance. They are shrewd, to be sure; they are cunning; they can instinctively see an opening for profit; oh, they have a marvellous faculty for seeing a chance to skin somebody, and especially each other. (Laughter.) They belong to the same church; they go to the same prayer meeting but when they approach the edge of a “business” transaction, oh, how keenly they eye each other; not because they do not know each other, but because they do. Each is a good Christian and each is trying to avoid just what he is trying to do to the other. (Applause.)

Take them just as you find them; put them on this stand to-night; ask them a few questions about the history of their own country and you will be appalled by their ignorance. Point out to them a magnificent painting on canvas that breathes and throbs with genius; they have little or no capacity for its appreciation. Point out to them a great plumed monarch of the forest; the kind you can put your arms about it and hear its mighty heart throb; the kind that dominates the forest by its majesty and inspired Joyce Kilmer’s beautiful poetic homage. You remember Joyce Kilmer—put to death, murdered in the late war; one of the fine poetic souls slaughtered and sacrificed on the altar of Mammon. It was he who wrote: “A tree that in the spring may wear, a nest of robins in its hair. Poems are made by fools like me, but only God can make a tree!” And you point out that towering and venerable tree to the fully developed capitalist and he regards it soberly for a moment and then draws forth his lead pencil and figures out how many feet of commercial lumber there are in that proposition. (Laughter.)

I wish I had time enough—but I have not—to trace American history from the days of the Revolution when the “Fathers” made their monumental mistake by compromising with chattel slavery. Had they but taken the advice of Thomas Paine (applause) the Civil War would not have resulted; that terrible sacrifice would have been averted. Thomas Paine protested and wrote the first article ever written in this country against chattel slavery just as he wrote the first article ever written in this country in favor of woman’s rights—the same heroic Thomas Paine whose religious beliefs in “The Age of Reason” that followed completely isolated him from all intelligent understanding, from all human sympathy, and he is not yet forgiven for having had the courage to be true to himself and to the best he knew.

Thomas Paine inspired the Declaration of Independence that Thomas Jefferson wrote. (Applause.)

You call Washington to-day the “father of his country.” And yet in his day he was denounced as a “notorious outlaw.” (Applause.) The “father of his country” was the owner of chattel slaves as were the rest of the “fathers.” They thought that perfectly consistent with that period; it does not detract from their historic achievement.

I can understand why the Tory press—the press of the then ruling class—charged Washington with being a common thief for confiscating their property. He was literally despised by them when he unsheathed his sword to fight for independence.

Thomas Jefferson was denounced as a vicious incendiary, Sam Adams as a disreputable agitator and Patrick Henry—you know what they said of him. (Applause.) I stood not long ago upon the spot where he stood when he hurled his immortal challenge in the face of the Government and exclaimed: “Give me liberty or give me death”; and I fancied I heard the hisses of the aristocrats that thronged the gallery who despised and denounced him as a traitor to his country. What was the state of his country at that time? A great majority of the colonists in their ignorance believed that God had anointed a king from on high to rule over them, and to question the divine authority of that king was treason, and he who was guilty must be punished without mercy. That was the blind stupidity of the great majority. Here let it be observed that the minorities have made the history of this world. The popular and reactionary majorities have perished in oblivion in their own ignorance.

In every age there have been a few men and women with new ideas—ideas in conflict with the established order of things. The class in power have always insisted upon perpetuating that power; they want no change; they combat every idea that suggests a change; they want to feel secure in “the established order of things.”

In every age there have been a few men and women with moral courage, who stood erect and defied the storms of hatred and detraction. After a time—after they had been persecuted, vilified and imprisoned—after they had been burned at the stake and their ashes scattered to the winds by the hands of hate—the slow-moving world finally caught up to where they stood and fought for humanity and then it paused long enough to weave garlands for their graves and erect monuments where they sleep.

There were only a few of the American revolutionary leaders; only a few; and they stood face to face with a gainsaying populace who protested: “We believe in the king and we must be loyal to the king.” They did not believe that the people had capacity for self-government; they were too weak, too helpless and dependent, and God had to provide them with a king to rule over them. That is what they believed. There were only a few who said: “We do not need a king; we can govern ourselves”; and they persisted in their odious agitation until they finally aroused the colonists and then came the war and the king was overthrown; the divine right to rule was trampled under foot with contempt; the foundations of the Republic were laid; the immortal Declaration was issued, and for the first time in history, politically speaking, men stood forth clothed to a limited extent with sovereignty.

How many of you are aware of the fact that the first drop of blood shed in that revolutionary struggle was that of a Negro? Crispus Attucks, to whom Boston has now erected a monument, was the first to be shot down by the British soldiers in the Boston massacre. (Applause.) And he was a Negro—the man whose blood was first to be shed for American independence; but you do not read that in the school histories. (Applause.) The Negro gets no credit for that martyrdom.

If there is any institution in the history of the world, the recollection of which should turn the cheek of humanity crimson with shame, it is the infamous institution of chattel slavery in the United States. (Applause.) There is no parallel to it in sheer, stark brutality in all the history of the world. You have never been given the facts; you never will be by the standard historians—they who represent the interests of the ruling class who subsidize and support them. You will never get that history until it is written by the working class itself. And some day it will be written. Some time American history will be reviewed. You never hear much about the people in history. You read about the exploits of the murderous military chieftains. All history glorifies them, but about the common people—the people who alone make history, how little reference is made to them! McMaster made a departure in his history and for the first time you now read about the lives of the common people in American history. Hitherto their achievements have not been deemed of sufficient importance to place upon record.

We come down to the final development of the institution of chattel slavery which culminated in the terrible war. The great majority, of course, upheld that brutal institution. And likewise the politicians and statesmen (so-called), the editors and the preachers—oh, how many there were who solemnly opened their Bibles and quoted passages to show that slavery had been ordained of God himself and that it was wicked to oppose it! Of the few heroic souls who declared it a crime Elijah Lovejoy was one of the first, and appealed to me in my earliest boyhood. I think I can almost hear him even now; “I have sworn eternal opposition to slavery and by the help of God, I will not turn back.” And then they murdered him! Garrison followed and then Wendell Phillips (applause); and the great towering, commanding intellectual and moral figure in that fierce struggle was Wendell Phillips. (Applause.) He saw it most clearly of all, faced it most courageously of all, and never once faltered in his devotion to the colored race. (Applause.) After chattel slavery had been abolished Garrison believed that the struggle was over—but he was mistaken—Wendell Phillips knew better, and some estrangement resulted on that account.

Wendell Phillips, with discerning and prophetic vision, said: “This is the prelude—just the prelude to the far greater struggle—the struggle that will involve not only the black slaves but all the slaves of the earth in the mighty movement for their common emancipation.” That is what Wendell Phillips said and he wrote the first Socialist platform ever written in the United States. Read the platform he wrote as far back as 1871 and see how uncompromisingly he faced the situation. They threatened him with the vengeance of the mob but he did not falter, he never wavered.

Wendell Phillips was a most wonderful combination of head and heart, soul and conscience (applause), and when the real truth is known about his commanding part in that historic struggle, the colored people will know that the real champion they had from first to last was Wendell Philips. (Great applause.)

I am not unmindful of the heroic part that William Lloyd Garrison took, or Theodore Parker, or Gerrit Smith who was driven insane by their brutal persecution; or Susan B. Anthony or Elizabeth Cady Stanton or Maria Childs, or any of those magnificent women who were in the forefront espousing the cause of their sex and at the same time the cause of the disfranchised Negro; who faced insult and persecution through many years. I have them all in mind and from my heart I pay the humble tribute of my gratitude and my admiration and love to them all.

But the greatest hero of them all was John Brown. (Thunderous applause.) I have taken time enough to go to Charlestown and to Harper’s Ferry, and I have walked in his footsteps all the way from the old engine house where he made his heroic stand until he gave up his noble life on the gallows—every step of the way. And I thought of his wondrous courage and consecration and of the majesty, the spiritual loftiness of a human being who could give up his life as freely as he did for a lowly and despised race that could not understand him. There were members of that race so subservient to the masters in their ignorance that they begged for the privilege of braining him while he was in prison; but they only excited his compassion because he knew it was due to the very institution of chattel slavery that they had been sunk to that bestial moral state.

John Brown, when the crisis came, stood forth almost alone and struck the blow—the immortal blow that put an end to that most infamous of human institutions. Victor Hugo from across the Atlantic protested: “Think of a republic murdering a liberator,” when they were about to put him to death; and after they had executed him for his heroism and his humanitarianism, Victor Hugo said: “The time will come when you Americans will realize that your John Brown was a greater liberator than your George Washington.” (Applause.)

I appreciate all these heroes and martyrs, including Lincoln, who was vilified as no other American statesman ever was by that cruel and relentless power that organized the Ku Klux Klan after the war, and which is now seeking to revive that fanatical institution for the persecution of the Negro.

I am on the colored man’s side as against all those that are attempting to keep him in servitude. (Applause.) And I am glad that the colored people are exercising self-restraint and facing this persecution with intelligence, which is commanding more and more respect. Let the Ku Klux spend its force. It consists of the self-appointed custodians of American liberty; but just let them alone; give them time and they will soon enough complete their round and close up their record. (Applause.)

I honor and appreciate all those who stood forth through the revolutionary conflict—through the struggle against chattel slavery—all who served and sacrificed to make it possible for me to stand on this platform to-night and to enjoy some degree of liberty and progress. I thank them all, and the only way I can repay them is by doing, as they did for me, what I can for those who are to come after us. And that is why I am here to-night.

I want to make my modest contribution to this campaign of education and organization that gives you the opportunity to register your protest against capitalist corruption and misrule as well as the degree of your class consciousness and intelligence. (Applause.)

A matter of local interest to you in this campaign is the housing proposition. The law expires in February coming. It will not be re-enacted by the old parties. All the combined landlords have launched a campaign of opposition to it. This is an issue in which the workers are especially concerned. The rich are not worried about housing conditions. It is the workers who will be the prey of the greedy landlords of New York. That is an important issue in this campaign and the Socialist Party stands squarely for the re-enactment of the housing law and for the curbing of capitalistic greed in the interest of better housing conditions for the benefit of the working class and the exploited and suffering poor. (Applause.)

There is another matter of local interest. I was waited on to-day at my hotel by a delegation of policemen and City firemen. When officers of the law call on me they usually have a warrant (laughter); but on this occasion they were on a perfectly friendly mission.

When we had our meeting at Brooklyn the other night they had half the police force of that section there, just as they had at Toledo, the police surrounding the Opera House. But Socialist meetings are uniformly orderly. (Applause.) You never hear of a disorderly Socialist meeting. We appeal to the intelligence of the people (applause); we seek to educate them. A Socialist meeting has something of a religious spirit in it.

But they sent the police force there because they said “he is a very dangerous man; there is no telling what may happen when he comes to town.” (Laughter.) You see they are afraid of a man who tells the truth (Applause); that is the one thing they cannot stand. (Applause.) And if you cannot be bribed or brow-beaten—if you cannot be intimidated, if you insist upon being true to your own soul’s integrity, and speak what is in your heart, then of course, you must expect to pay the penalty, and I have been and am now ready to pay to the limit. I went down to Atlanta for three years almost; that was my fifth term in one of the peculiar educational institutions of capitalism and it has all had its good results. (Laughter.) But I have no bitterness; I have no resentment. I felt sorry for the man who had to lock me up. He did not want to do it.

Soon after I was in prison I came in touch with a colored man who had a most tragic history. He had been there for thirty years and ten years of that he had been placed in solitary confinement because they couldn’t break his spirit. When they insulted him he resented it and defended himself. When I got down there I heard about him. His name was Sam Moore. He was one of the many, many colored men who never had a chance in life. In his childhood—in his very infancy he was tossed out into the world; he knew only poverty and neglect; his mother was dead seven years before he knew it. He was never in school; no one had ever given him a kind word; buffeted about he tried to help himself and fight his way along; he got arrested, as they all do, was put in jail, got into a quarrel and in a fight that followed he chanced to kill another prisoner when they sent him to the penitentiary, more than thirty years ago, and he has been there ever since. When I came in touch with him they said “he is a bad man.” I soon found him to be a brother. The Chaplain was asked: “What has Debs done to Sam Moore, he is an entirely different man?” The Chaplain answered: “Just loves him; that’s all.” (Applause.) Oh, the magic and the power of human love, were it but understood! Sam Moore had never been touched by the hands of kindness; everything that was combative in his nature was developed by the cruel, inhuman treatment he had been subjected to all his life. And when I came down there and we met face to face on the same level, I said to myself, if I had been born as Sam Moore was and under the same condition, I would be Sam Moore; I would be where he is now. I am not one bit better than he. On the contrary I was reminded of the divine Easterner who prayed to his Allah: “Be Thou merciful to the vicious and forgive them; Thou hast already blessed the virtuous by making them so.”

As I thought of Sam Moore and of the environment and conditions under which he had been reared and had to suffer and struggle, I made allowance accordingly, and he was the last inmate I saw when I left that prison.

There were almost three thousand human beings there. The prison is the poor man’s institution; the rich don’t go there, no matter what crime they may commit. About one-third of the prisoners were colored people, and they used to come to me when they had petitions to make or there was some little service I could render them. I used to write their letters and I could not but sympathize with them. They tried to segregate them in the prison. We were occasionally permitted to see moving pictures. They admitted the white men to one side of the auditorium and the colored men to the other side. Some of the white “superior” element said: “Let the Niggers sit in the rear”; and so on the next occasion they allowed the white men to occupy all the front seats and put the colored men in the rear where they could hardly see the stage. They appointed a committee to call on me to see what they could do about it. I said “I am with you; we will protest against the injustice.” We did and we put an end to it. After that the colored men were given the same consideration as the white prisoners.

I loved all of those almost three thousand prisoners, charged with every conceivable offense against society. I treated them all as if they had been members of my own family, and there was not one of them I would not have invited to my table or to my home. They were poor, most of them ignorant; they never had a fair chance. They had, for the most part, committed some petty offense and were pushed into the penitentiary and branded as “convicts.”

The lowest thing about a prison is often the prison guard—the only fellow I was ashamed to associate with. (Laughter.) The last inmate I saw when I left prison was Sam Moore. There was a fine woman in that neighborhood whose sympathy had been enlisted, and on the day I left she brought a beautiful cake she had baked. She said: “This is for Sam,” and the warden said: “I will send it to him”; I said: “No; please send for Sam, I wish to place it in his hands and bid him good-bye.” Sam came. There was something of the majesty of the man about him, notwithstanding his thirty years of cruel usage and persecution. He was like some monarch of the forest that the tempest had riven and denuded. But he still stood erect, unbroken in spirit. I presented him with the cake and the tears rolled down his face. At parting we put our arms around each other and wept together. That was my farewell scene in the Atlanta prison. I can still hear, in broken words, the sobbing entreaty: “I want to get out of here and to be where I can do for you and your family anything in my power all the rest of my life.” That was Sam Moore, the man they had said was a desperado, an incorrigible and dangerous criminal. He was as tender and responsive as a child; the divine within him had not been extinguished; all he needed was the touch of human kindness; and that is what has been denied him and his race through all the centuries.