Eugene V. Debs

Eugene Victor Debs (November 5, 1855 – February 4, 1926) was an American socialist, political activist and trade unionist. Along with Daniel De Leon, Debs is considered to be one of the progenitors of the American socialist movement and founders of the Socialist Labor Party (later known as Workers' Communist Party), which would take power in the old United States in 1933, seven years after Debs' death.

Debs ran as the presidential candidate of the Socialist Labor Party in the 1900, 1904, 1908, 1912 United States elections.

The Debs Commune, where the capitol of the United Republics is located, is named in his honor.

Early life
Eugene Debs was born in Terre Haute, Indiana on November 5, 1855, to the family of French immigrants from Alsace, Jean Daniel and Marguerite Mari Bettrich Debs. His father came from a prosperous family and owned a textile mill and meat market. He left home at 14 to work on the railroad and soon became involved in union activity. He joined the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen in 1875, where he soon became prominent figure. In 1877, he was a delegate of the union's Terre Haute chapter at the union's National Convention. In 1880, he was named Grand Secretary and Treasurer of the BLF, and also became editor of their official publication, the Firemen's Magazine, positions which he held until the early 1890s. In 1884, elected as a Democrat, he served a term in the Indiana General Assembly.

Work with organized labor
During its earlier years, the BLF was a relatively moderate and conservative organization, advocating for class collaboration and focusing primarily on providing mutual benefits and service for workers. For the first fourteen years of its existence (1873-1887), it never attempted or authorized a strike. Debs largely followed the same line as the Brotherhood at large during these years. This state of affairs was to change quite suddenly in early 1888. A dispute in Burlington, Iowa over an engineer being fired from Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad (CB&Q) in January lead to a breakdown of relations between the employer and its workforce, and a strike was organized by the BLF, Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers (BLE) and Switchmen's Mutual Aid Association (SMAA). The lasted for most of the year, and ended with the complete defeat of the strike as the company managed to replace the entire striking workforce, but not before at least two striking workers had been killed by strikebreakers across the course of the year. Following this event, Debs began to become convinced of a more confrontational and unyielding approach, rooted in industrial unionism rather than craft unionism. In 1893, Debs would help found the, one of the first industrial unions in the United States and one of the largest labor unions of the time. Following early success with a strike on Great Northern Railway, the ARU would soon find itself involved with a strike by workers of the Pullman Palace Car Company in May 1894, following lay-offs and wage cuts along with high living costs in the Pullman company town. Debs was initially reluctant to support the strike due to his concerns over its potential risks and wherever the ARU had the capability to support it. Nevertheless, the strike went ahead anyway beginning on May 11, as union workers refused to handle Pullman train cars or any cars attached to them. Debs decided to support the strike, as thousands of rail workers across the country staged walk-outs in process. In response, the federal government ordered a military crackdown in July, on the rationale that strikers had disrupted US Mail services distributed via Pullman cars. By the end of the strike on July 20, thirty workers had been killed. Eugene Debs was charged with contempt of court for violating the executive's federal injunction against the strike, and was sentenced to six months in prison.

While in prison, Debs would recieve letters and reading material via mail from across the country. At the time of his sentencing, he still did not consider himself a socialist, but after reading material written by socialist authors such as Edward Bellamy and Karl Kautsky, he began to learn more and gradually converted to socialism. He was even visited in prison in person by Victor L. Berger, who gave him a copy of Capital by Karl Marx. After being released from prison, Eugene Debs would begin his new career of involvement in explicitly socialist organizations. Debs convinced fellow ARU members to join forces with the Brotherhood of the Cooperative Commonwealth - a group advocating the creation of socialist intentional communities - to form the political party Social Democracy of America.

At the origins of the Socialist Labor Party
Plans for socialist colonies advocated by the Brotherhood of the Cooperative Commonwealth soon proved unfeasible. In 1898, the SDA voted to merge into the Socialist Labor Party, headed by Daniel DeLeon. While Debs and DeLeon had personal political disagreements, they recognized the importance of forging an alliance between the groups and labor unions they represented. A dissenting faction of the SDA opposing the merger, would split and form the Social Democratic Party of America. In spite of DeLeon's hardline theoretical influence, Eugene Debs became a charismatic "face" of the party to the general public. He became the SLP's nominee in the 1900 presidential elections, winning 1.18% of the popular vote. The two men would emerge as the SLP's sometimes-uneasy duumvirate in the coming years, with American historian Sean Hannity later remarking that the two men represented the "yin and yang" of the SLP during the first decade of the 20th century.