October 13, 2022 • 34 mins
You may not have heard of Eugene V. Debs before this podcast -- but in his day this political activist was one of the most prominent (and at-times controversial) figures in the United States. In part one of this two-part series, Ben, Noel and Max explore Gene's origin story, from his early career in the railroad industry to his growing status as a trade unionist and agitator of the status quo.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
(00:27):
back to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always
so much for tuning in. Let's hear it for our
super producer, Mr Max Williams. HIHIHIHI indeed, Uh they called
me ben your nol and nol. I don't know about you, man,
but my voice might sound a bit rough today. Uh.
(00:49):
We were out pretty late for a school night because
we released a book. We did release a book and
we did an event wherein we spoke to the public. Uh,
a lovely gathering of folks that our local bookshop, Eagle
Eye Books Indicator. The truth is out there in the
form of a book called Stuff That It Wants you
(01:10):
to Know. It shares the name with the other podcast
you and I do with our buddy Matt uh. And
you can now get this book wherever books are sold
online or in stores. And there's also an audio book
do that we read. But yeah, I'm with you. I'm
a little husky myself now, I mean big boned. But
we are not going to let uh, We're not gonna
(01:32):
let a little bit of scratchy throat nous stop us
because you know there's some things that are so important
you want to pursue them regardless of your life circumstances.
There are people who have even run for the presidency
while incarcerated. Uh. Today we are going to dive into
the story of an amazing historical figure who may be
(01:57):
unfamiliar to a lot of our fellow ridiculous story and
it's a guy named Eugene V. Debs, or Gene to
his friends. That's right, Gene, that's the that's the familiar. Uh.
I like that. So it just sounds like like like
a guy you'd meet around the pub gene Um. He was,
in fact, early in his career in politics, the leader
(02:21):
of something called the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen. This is
this is a specifically fireman that put out locomotive fires
or the fires. Ah. Yes, So that's sort of a
fair and high frothty one situation, got it. We'll clarify
that somewhere along the way. But he was absolutely instrumental
(02:41):
figure and the modern what we know today is kind
of the modern labor movement. He went on to help
found the American Railway Union and the Socialist Party of America.
So or boy Bernie to his friends, would probably also
be intimately familiar with this fellow, and I think quite
highly of him. He also went on to form the
(03:03):
Industrial Workers of the World. He really is an important
figure in um, you know, the idea of of fair
treatment of of laborers. Uh and you know workers and
a proponent of you know, lessening wage disparities and all
of that kind of stuff. Um. One of the more
(03:23):
important figures of the twentieth century. Uh. In that respect.
He also ran for president on the US Socialist Party
ticket five times between the years nineteen hundred and nineteen
twenty and amassed significant numbers of votes. Uh. Spoiler alert.
He never actually, you know, won the presidency, but it's
(03:44):
an inspiring case just the same. No, let's learn a
little bit about Debs. So Gene is bored in Indiana
in eighteen fifty five, Tara Haut side note here, seven
years after this guy's named Marx and Ingalls published something
called the Communist Manifesto. I also, speaking of shout outs,
(04:08):
I want to shout out Mr Max Williams again, who's
also our research associate for this episode. So thank you backs,
big fan. Uh. Yes, so Debs Debs is h kind
of a scarecrow looking dude. He's tall, he's lanky, and
according to Max, he's lanky like a noodle. He is
(04:32):
a big gesticulator. He talks with his hands often, and
he is an electric orator. People are into it because
his passion is contagious and he actually didn't spend a
lot of time in academia, I think now in two
thousand and twenty two. There is a stereotype people sometimes
(04:54):
have about folks who describe themselves as socialist. You think
maybe they are a bit bookish. Do you think maybe
they're a bit professorial. Uh, he's none of those things.
He actually left school at the age of fourteen to
work on the railroads, which would lead him to some
of those organizations we mentioned just a moment ago. Uh
(05:16):
he got he started scraping off paint and Greece. You know,
it's it's an entry level job. And then he eventually
was promoted to fireman, which in this case jokes aside,
it doesn't mean you're setting trains on fire. That'd be
a weird job for railroad to give people. It meant
that you were in the locomotive, your next to the engineer,
(05:38):
and you're the guy who shovels coal uh to power
the vehicle. So you can imagine quite back breaking labor.
I mean, if not breaking, definitely a lot of hunting
going on. Not great for your posture. Uh. And um,
you know, a position that could easily be exploited, um
(05:58):
with you know, low pay, long hours, all of that stuff. Um,
this is an individual who would shovel as much as
two tons of coal in an hour's time in order
to keep that that fire lit in that train a chugen.
These were in fact brutal hours, very unforgiving, sixteen hour days,
(06:21):
only one day off a week, inhaling lots of you know,
gnarly substances, lots of cold dust. Um. You know, eyes
and lungs being choked by the smoke coming off of
this thing. And also very very very dangerous because these
engines could become overheated and there could be you know, explosions,
(06:46):
and these were combustion engines also, you know, it was
something that had to be continuous ongoing shoveling or else
the engine could stall and that could be disastrous for
the payload. Uh uh and and and everyone onboard. I
mean it could really you know, because cause a crash. Yeah,
just so. I mean this is an issue that the
(07:10):
the issue of working conditions in the rails is remains
a problem in the modern day. You, if you are
in the US, you have probably heard a lot of
the news about how close the rail industry came to
a full strike. Uh And this, like this description is accurate.
People are still working very long hours without many opportunities
(07:32):
for a day off. We also want to shout out,
by the way, an excellent article Max found from the
New Yorker Eugene V. Debs and the Endurance of Socialism
by Jill Lapour. So thank you so much the poor.
This is already a tough job. But it's a job, right.
He is being productive, he's making money. Until the depression
(07:52):
occurs in eighteen seventy three. This is not the Great Depression.
This is another depression. There are a lot of depressions
in his three uh. So, Debs has to find a job.
He's a regular guy, he's got bills. He gets some
work as a clerk at a grocery store. And he
never goes back to the railroad as an employee of
(08:15):
the rail but his experiences there will go on to
shape the rest of his life. He has firsthand experience
with railroad work. He supports the cause of railroad workers
who want more rights. And because of all this, when
the Brotherhood of Locomotive Fireman start a chapter there in
(08:39):
Indiana in eight, he signs up and despite not you know,
working for the railroad, he is elected secretary, right, which
may seem like a menial task, but it really is
someone that's responsible for a lot of the organizational aspects
and probably knows the inner work kings of an organization
(09:01):
more than just about anybody, wouldn't you say, Ben, I
would say that's pretty accurate. And we can already tell
he's committed sharp learner. His learning curve must be crazy.
So while he is not currently working with the rails now,
not too much has changed unfortunately, right, so he is
(09:22):
still speaking from a relevant experience. Uh. The first real
national strike in U S history occurs with the railroads
in eight. By the way, if you're doing the math
at home here, folks, Gene is only twenty two when
(09:43):
this strike occurs, and he galvanizes the crowd that the
Brotherhood's annual convention with this electric speech and he says,
you know, the messages primarily that the union is not
doing anything wrong. The union is not the enemy that
the that the powers of the day want to paint
(10:04):
it as. They're not trying to encourage lawlessness. They don't
wake up every day excited to hold a strike. They're
just trying to get more rights for their workers. This
means that after the strike, Deb's remains popular. In fact,
he's the only officer in the Indiana Lodge who gets
re elected. He also becomes the associate editor of the
(10:28):
Locomotive Fireman's Magazine in eighteen seventy eight, and he continues
to rise through through the organization. He becomes the Grand
Secretary Treasurer and then also editor in chief of the
magazine in eighteen eighty. I love this idea. He was
already the secretary, now he's the Grand Secretary Treasurer. I
(10:50):
wonder if he was just so good at his job
they created a new position for him. He was absolutely
never heard of that before. Um. But also, obviously, you know,
with his input in the magazine, he's kind of starting
to help shape the public facing. I mean, you know, again,
this isn't exactly something that everyone's gonna grab. This is
more for industry folks, and you know, folks that are
associated with the with the union, but it is a
(11:12):
magazine is going to kind of be a way of
crafting policy and sort of like the more public facing,
communicative kind of like aspect of an organization. So he
obviously was seen as a really really powerful communicator and
and that sort of reflected and some of these jobs
that he was given at such an early age. Um,
he starts to enter into a broader kind of politics
(11:36):
during the eighties as he continued to give these speeches
just talking about, you know, how important it was for
industries to cooperate with one another and to discourage a
lot of this in fighting. Um that I think was
maybe the kind of thing that the bosses, you know,
(11:57):
the big bosses and the you know, corporate big wigs
wanted to see happen. It's like, let's pick these folks
against each other instead of having them see who the
real villains are, which is you know us. I was
jumping in real quick. I was just curious when you
guys were reading about the look of the mode of
Fireman's magazine, and I'm like, I wonder if you can
still get a copy of that, and yes you can. Finally, yeah,
(12:20):
I don't know. It seems like a real page turner,
and it seems probably very pernent to the day. Yes, yeah,
I love it. This episode is brought to you by
The Fireman's Magazine. We're kidding as far as we do.
Yeah yeah, peek behind our ridiculously expensive podcast curtain. We
don't always know what chads are gonna play. We know,
(12:47):
like you're saying. All that Deb's is seeing himself as
a champion of the common person, right, and he is
aware that he has the ability city to shape ideology,
and he tries to work within the system for a bit.
(13:08):
For quite a long time, he has disavowed socialism, and
he's saying, Okay, let's focus on democracy, the franchise or
the vote. Let's see what we can do with the
two party system. He says, the conflict is not between
capital and labor. It is between the man who holds
(13:28):
the office and the man who holds the ballot. However,
is the eighties grind on. More and more railroad workers
are going on strike, or they're getting maimed, or they're
dying because it's a dangerous job. Something like two thousand
railroad employees a year are killed on the job, another
(13:49):
twenty thousand, twenty thousand are injured. And this starts to
make him wonder the exact point you brought up, like,
maybe these corporations that are backed up by corrupt politicians
and armed fighters, maybe they're the real enemy. That's right,
(14:10):
And this all kind of coalesced or came to a head,
uh during a strike that lasted an entire year beginning
in eighteen eighties six UM, that was pitted against the Chicago,
Burlington and Quincy Railroad Company. During this time, you know,
devs really started to look a little bit closer and
started to see that perhaps these corporations weren't truly committed
(14:36):
to industrial cooperation and the idea of democracy, um, the
idea of you know, the power resting with the people,
the employees. He also thought that up to this point,
unions is kind of an organized more specifically along trade lines,
like you know, you'd have a railroad fireman's union, as
(14:58):
we know, the locomotive fireman Union, etcetera, or perhaps the
conductors union, you know, whatever it might be. Um. He felt,
in order to truly get what we now refer to
as things like collective bargaining, you have to have strength
and numbers, So you have to organize along broader kind
of industrial lines, rather than breaking out all of these
(15:20):
best specific unions that maybe in and of themselves weren't
going to have enough bargaining power to get the job done.
If you have caught our earlier episode on the Luddites
or on the emergence of unions in stuff they don't
want you to know, then you will see that this
(15:41):
problem has existed before. Like it. It's the difference between
having one union for milliners, a separate union for lace makers,
and a different union for the people who die the
fabric Why not just have them all be the Union
of fabric workers, right, or the the Union of clothing.
(16:03):
So this he's onto something here. You know, a strike
requires numbers to work, and he understands that the strike
is the weapon of the oppressed. We know he understands
that because he wrote that. That's a quote from him
in and he still didn't talk about socialism at this point. Now,
(16:24):
for some of us in the audience, that may sound like, ah,
this guy is uh died in the wool socialist. But
to him, he prefers the term Americanism. And he says this,
He makes a good point that I don't think a
lot of people realize. He says essentially that the American
(16:47):
Revolution the United States is kind of founded on something
like a strike. It was the lawmakers, the residents of
the colonies who said, Okay, we're not gonna work for
anymore United Kingdom. H And he starts like adding up,
adding up the amounts of money the very wealthy people
(17:10):
have versus the amount of money that common people have,
and he sees, uh some startling discrepancies. Oh for sure,
I mean, you know, it's unfortunately it's not like this
has uh changed too much today. The sums have just
gotten bigger and more disparate. But um, this is almost
like this this is like the nerdiest joke you could imagine,
(17:31):
but also really tells a very stark story. He did
some math about how Cornelius Vanderbilt, the grandson rather of
Cornelius Vanderbilt, started out with two million bucks, a million
from his grandfather and another million from his father. And
he went on to say, if a locomotive fireman could
(17:52):
work four thousand, four hundred and forty four years, three
hundred days each year at a dollar fifty per day,
he would be in a position to bet Mr Vanderbilt
too fifty that all men are born equal. Boom. Also,
I want to point out so this doesn't slip by
anybody three hundred days each year. So even in this example,
(18:18):
he Debs is saying everybody needs at least two months off.
He also acts on this right. He's a man of action.
So he resigns from his posh position as Grand Secretary Treasurer,
which paid four thousand a year in and he is
organizing something else, the American Railway Union. Hey bad, I
(18:42):
got a question for you. Yeah, should we inflation calculate
that number? Let's do it, Max, Let's make it happen
and pope poop people. What a wonderful idea. It's true,
folks are running the inflation calculator four thousand dollars a year,
(19:04):
and eight three was one hundred thirty one thousand, six
hundred and thirty one dollars and fifty six cents, So
a pretty healthy sum of money right to live by.
I think a lot of people say, this guy's making
the equivalent of six figures. He's hopefully not sweating his
light bill. But there's something more important than money to him.
(19:29):
It's the idea of making a more inclusive labor movement, right,
a more inclusive union. So if you want to join
the BLF, you have to be a locomotive fireman. So
what if you're not that, what if you have another job,
another skill, Well, now you can join the American Railway Union.
You just have to somehow be employed with the rails.
(19:52):
He also uh stepped down from his job as the
editor of Locomotive Fireman's magazine. I imagine this, you know,
just kind of he was the time thing, but I
think he also was more interested in the bigger picture
and UH was less concerned with the you know, specificity
of that magazine. You know, kind of like again, that
(20:13):
was a very kind of exclusionary, you know, specific area
of this whole conversation just around Locomotive Fireman. In eighteen
nine four, the Pullman Company, which was founded by George Pullman,
there's another railroad magnate um they specifically manufactured sleeping cars.
There was a strike at that company because the company
(20:37):
itself would not negotiate with the American Railway Union officials.
UH called for boycott of the specific cars across the
industry and asked that other railroad unions and solidarity backed
them up with this boycott and refused to work on
(20:58):
trains that contained in these sleeping cars. So that really
does show the power here, you know, in numbers, and
there was widespread support. But it also shows the equal
and opposite power, if not at times, you know, greater
power of the industry itself, of the magnates themselves. The
railroads convinced President Grover Cleveland to send in troops to
(21:23):
actually force in an injunction against interfering with the U
S mails they figured out like a weird kind of
work around. This is all being reported by the a
f l c i O website, which has fabulous information
on the history of labor movement. So this led to
a collapse of of the of the strike. Yeah, it
(21:46):
turns out that maybe one of the first unions was
the oligarchy, right the very well to do the plutocrats
of the world. So not only does the strike collapse,
but the leaders of the a r U, including Deb's,
(22:06):
get arrested on conspiracy charges and they get sent to
jail for around six months. Deb's time in jail. It's
gonna sound surprising to a lot of us in the audience. Today,
he's not doing bad. He's running the union office out
(22:27):
of his jail cell, and if he wants to go
out of his jail cell, he's allowed to do so.
He can leave the joint on like an honor system.
And he is talking to a reporter for The New
York World named Nellie Bligh, maybe familiar to some folks,
uh amazing journalists at the time. She went to interview
(22:48):
him and he said, quote, the other night, I had
to lock myself in. There was no end. She goes
on to write, there was no sign of the prisoner
about Mr Deb's clothes. He wore a well made suit
of grades we the coat being a cutaway and a
white start shirt with a standing collar, and a small
black and white scarf tied in a bow knot. This
(23:08):
guy essentially is being um is forced to live in
what feels like an apartment building. At this point, For
anyone not familiar with the US incarceration system, it is
kind of extraordinary that you're able to leave and then
come back. The closest thing there is to that in
the modern version is a work release program. But he's
(23:31):
not on that. He could just come and go if
he wants Debs starts kind of a book club thanks
to a socialist from Milwaukee named Victor Berger. He brings
up a copy of Das Capital by Karl Marx and
Debs and his organizers who are also in the joint
with him. They spend most of their time reading. If
(23:54):
you like books, this sounds like a actually kind of cool.
You know, it's interesting. Man. We talked about doing this
a book event for the stuff they Don't want you
to KNOWE book. And one of the questions that came
up in the audience was about books in prison, was
about the popularity specifically of a book called Pale Pale
(24:16):
Horse or here comes up, I see what's that book called?
Ben Beyond a Pale Horse? Behold a Pale Horse? Correct, Yeah,
and just now that that was a very popular book,
and just the topic of reading in prison came up.
And the idea of kind of being caught in a
system like that that is uh, part and parcel of
a greater conspiracy to you know, essentially incarcerate people and
(24:41):
and and force them into slavery. You know, I mean,
there's there's there's no two ways about it. Even to
this day. Um, you know, the US Justice ironically named
justice system, uh is a form of of enforced slave labor,
you know. I mean like license plates are made by
prison labor, and a lot of industries outsourced labor to prisons.
(25:04):
So to be part of that, especially, you know, you're
you're a person like Debs, who is is um righteous
person who is supporting a cause, who is not a criminal,
you know, who is not out there causing chaos in
the streets or or are causing any kind of harm,
has been incarcetrated clearly because he is espousing a view
(25:27):
that the powers that be do not. Like, what better
way to empower someone like that than to have them
kind of smack dab in the middle of this system
that they're fighting against, seeing all of the injustices, and
then arm them with literature. Yeah, I'm glad you bring
that up, because when we're asked the question that our
book release, I spent a lot of time in the
answer I had volunteered in the past. I mean, phrases great.
(25:51):
I agree with everything you're saying. It's a lot of
what we were saying last night when I volunteered in
the past with prison literacy programs or jail literally you
programs depending on where you're at, it's very it can
be very difficult to get books in if they're not
religious works. There are a lot of rules about this
because people know that words have power, right, thoughts can
(26:14):
be weaponized. There's an alchemy that takes you from the
page two actions. It's amazing stuff and there are there
are a lot of good things that come from literacy,
but sometimes they're not good things for the powers that be,
the status quo. Uh So it is uh, it is
a little surprising that they were able to get a
(26:36):
copy of Thus Capital in in this in this prison.
But this, uh, I don't know. Now. It depends on
your political perspective. Some people who object to socialism might
say that this radicalizes our boy Gene, because he says,
I had heard but little of socialism before the Pullman strike,
(27:00):
and he says the reading he did in jail is
what converted him to become one of the most famous
socialists in US history. But yeah, but it's not clear really,
um how that how that change of heart happened. Because
(27:21):
he was speaking to a commission about the strike earlier
that year and he said, I don't call myself a socialist. Also,
I want to point out the president and these powerful
rail companies. They put them away. They conspired to put
Deb's in his crew away on conspiracy charges. I don't know.
Feels like a cover up to me. So uh he uh.
(27:44):
He also has socialists who are trying to court him,
get him further on board with the cause, and he
turns them away. I gotta say them, I gotta say
well before he gets out in and in Max, I
know this is this is like your boy. You actually
call him Max's daddy in the outline. Do you do
(28:05):
you do? Sir? Uh? Do we think do we think
that Deb's is being sincere when he's issuing socialism or
do we think he's kind of like trying to be
the good kid so he can get out of jail.
You know what I mean? I mean, I think that
his view of socialism is not the same. It's not
(28:26):
the same as like he look would look like marks
and stuff like that. He's like, I like some of
these concepts, but I don't agree with at all. Because
you know, at this point of his career and his organizing,
he was had been pretty pro capitalistic for most most
of the time. I mean, he was against strikes for
a long period of time. I think he saw this
communist movement. He's like, I like some of these ideas,
(28:48):
especially the protection for the workers, but I don't like
this all the way. I think he was like very
much like I like kind of being in the middle.
I don't like being all the way to one side
of all the way to the other. Like I think
we should use some of these things, and spoiler, I
think a lot of a lot of stuff did end
up becoming part of this country, like social security. Yeah,
And I think that's kind of where he was. I
(29:09):
don't think he was. I think it's easy excial people
who are against his ideas to paint him as like, oh,
you're all the way over there. You're just the same
as Lenin and Marx and all those guys, which I
but I just I don't think he was that. I
think he believed in these concepts and he was much
more middle of the road than people want to pay
him as. Yes, yes, agree can I I want to
(29:30):
pull out one of my favorite quotations from Gene It's
one that I agree with wholeheartedly. He has this quote
where he says, I am for socialism because I am
for humanity. Money constitutes no proper basis of civilization. That's true.
That it's true. It's like it's like you always say
been money is a cult or religion in and of itself.
(29:53):
And again, so to keep bringing up the stuff that
I wants you to know. But we have an episode
coming out about the Saluritian a to the idea of
like a lost epoch, you know, of interdimensional perhaps or
just like at least extra galactic civilizations that may have
achieved industrialization before we did. And the idea of economy
(30:15):
comes up, and the idea of like what industrialization means
comes up, and um, I think we all were kind
of on the same page in terms of like the
economy is in some ways kind of the nasty byproduct
of humanity of civilization, and it causes all of these
toxic problems that then beget more problems. You know, Um,
(30:37):
there could very well be a civilization that just is
adapted to sustain itself and isn't about all this kind
of competition and all of this like other ing and
things that require forming unions and making sure people aren't exploited. Yeah,
and this, uh it just hit me, guys. No, Max
(31:00):
Gene would totally have a podcast. He would have been
podcasting from jail. It would be such like a low
tech podcast to like he might record it on a
computer microphone and stuff, and it have a like a
million millions of listens. But he would just like scream
into a computer microphone for hours on end, unaddited to
(31:20):
just these straight to tape. He's one of those guys
who gets the veins when he's really in his forehead
when he's talking about stuff. Here's actually little Key famous
for that. But but he is not spouting gobbledegook. And
despite not having a podcast, he decides that he is
(31:41):
going to get involved with politics. And as you might
be able to tell by a subtle turn in the
sound design, this is a two parter. We are only
uh we've only gone about halfway, not even halfway through
our journey with you, ge V Debs. We're getting to
(32:02):
some really startling, exciting stuff and uh no, I gotta say,
I know, sometimes we don't want to have a two
parter that publishes on Thursday and comes out on Tuesday,
but I think this one is gonna be worth the way.
Yeah it is, and honestly it's it's it's pretty modular.
The guy's gut like a storied career, and a lot
(32:22):
of the moments in his life that we're talking about
are really just kind of representative of moments in the
history of the labor movement. And I think it is
appropriate to kind of make it a little more bite size.
And you know, you and I have been kind of
slamming away over the last few weeks between promoting this
book that we talked about in these podcasts out the Door,
(32:42):
so I think we owe it to ourselves to make
this one too, partter and and let it hit the weekend.
But we'll be back on Tuesday with part two of
Eugene debs Uh, where also I will I will reference
a huge Deb's impersonator on the internet that I learned
quite a bit about Deb's is Late or life front.
Oh yes, yeah, we'll do the reference in part two.
(33:04):
I'll reference the reference in part one and do the
actual reference in part two. Correct, there we go. Okay,
as long as we have our order of operations reference wise,
before we turn into a reference work podcast, we are
going to call it a day. Thank you so much
to our super producer, the one and only Mr Max Williams.
Thank you as well to our research associate Mr Max Williams,
(33:26):
and to while we're doing the Williams kick, Alex Williams
who could pose this banging track and Zach Williams are
one half of our research associate team. Christopher Hastiot is
here at Spirit thanks to you. He's Jeff Coates as
always out in the world doing amazing things. That Jonathan
Strickland the quiz to you, dashing monster. We love and
(33:47):
miss you and we'll see you very very soon. Hopefully
you're shadow will dock in our doorstep before long or
also please never never come again. Uh. He also he
got stranded on a cruise ship. He was lost at
sea for a little while. That's a true story. He's
back now, so if you're hearing this, quister, uh, stay safe.
(34:08):
Also big thanks to Jeff Bartlett's recently appeared on the
show to tell us about the michelin Man. It's a
research associate and friend of ours. Let's see. Thanks to
gene V Debs. Why are we saying thank you? There
was a little bit of a spoiler in part one,
but but you'll see why why in part two. You
don't have to agree with him, but there are some
(34:30):
things you should thank him for. If you live in
the United States, we'll see you next time, folks. For
more podcasts for my Heart Radio, visit the I heart
Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
(00:27):
back to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always
so much for tuning in. Let's hear it for our
super producer, Mr Max Williams. HIHIHIHI indeed, Uh they called
me ben your nol and nol. I don't know about you, man,
but my voice might sound a bit rough today. Uh.
(00:49):
We were out pretty late for a school night because
we released a book. We did release a book and
we did an event wherein we spoke to the public. Uh,
a lovely gathering of folks that our local bookshop, Eagle
Eye Books Indicator. The truth is out there in the
form of a book called Stuff That It Wants you
(01:10):
to Know. It shares the name with the other podcast
you and I do with our buddy Matt uh. And
you can now get this book wherever books are sold
online or in stores. And there's also an audio book
do that we read. But yeah, I'm with you. I'm
a little husky myself now, I mean big boned. But
we are not going to let uh, We're not gonna
(01:32):
let a little bit of scratchy throat nous stop us
because you know there's some things that are so important
you want to pursue them regardless of your life circumstances.
There are people who have even run for the presidency
while incarcerated. Uh. Today we are going to dive into
the story of an amazing historical figure who may be
(01:57):
unfamiliar to a lot of our fellow ridiculous story and
it's a guy named Eugene V. Debs, or Gene to
his friends. That's right, Gene, that's the that's the familiar. Uh.
I like that. So it just sounds like like like
a guy you'd meet around the pub gene Um. He was,
in fact, early in his career in politics, the leader
(02:21):
of something called the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen. This is
this is a specifically fireman that put out locomotive fires
or the fires. Ah. Yes, So that's sort of a
fair and high frothty one situation, got it. We'll clarify
that somewhere along the way. But he was absolutely instrumental
(02:41):
figure and the modern what we know today is kind
of the modern labor movement. He went on to help
found the American Railway Union and the Socialist Party of America.
So or boy Bernie to his friends, would probably also
be intimately familiar with this fellow, and I think quite
highly of him. He also went on to form the
(03:03):
Industrial Workers of the World. He really is an important
figure in um, you know, the idea of of fair
treatment of of laborers. Uh and you know workers and
a proponent of you know, lessening wage disparities and all
of that kind of stuff. Um. One of the more
(03:23):
important figures of the twentieth century. Uh. In that respect.
He also ran for president on the US Socialist Party
ticket five times between the years nineteen hundred and nineteen
twenty and amassed significant numbers of votes. Uh. Spoiler alert.
He never actually, you know, won the presidency, but it's
(03:44):
an inspiring case just the same. No, let's learn a
little bit about Debs. So Gene is bored in Indiana
in eighteen fifty five, Tara Haut side note here, seven
years after this guy's named Marx and Ingalls published something
called the Communist Manifesto. I also, speaking of shout outs,
(04:08):
I want to shout out Mr Max Williams again, who's
also our research associate for this episode. So thank you backs,
big fan. Uh. Yes, so Debs Debs is h kind
of a scarecrow looking dude. He's tall, he's lanky, and
according to Max, he's lanky like a noodle. He is
(04:32):
a big gesticulator. He talks with his hands often, and
he is an electric orator. People are into it because
his passion is contagious and he actually didn't spend a
lot of time in academia, I think now in two
thousand and twenty two. There is a stereotype people sometimes
(04:54):
have about folks who describe themselves as socialist. You think
maybe they are a bit bookish. Do you think maybe
they're a bit professorial. Uh, he's none of those things.
He actually left school at the age of fourteen to
work on the railroads, which would lead him to some
of those organizations we mentioned just a moment ago. Uh
(05:16):
he got he started scraping off paint and Greece. You know,
it's it's an entry level job. And then he eventually
was promoted to fireman, which in this case jokes aside,
it doesn't mean you're setting trains on fire. That'd be
a weird job for railroad to give people. It meant
that you were in the locomotive, your next to the engineer,
(05:38):
and you're the guy who shovels coal uh to power
the vehicle. So you can imagine quite back breaking labor.
I mean, if not breaking, definitely a lot of hunting
going on. Not great for your posture. Uh. And um,
you know, a position that could easily be exploited, um
(05:58):
with you know, low pay, long hours, all of that stuff. Um,
this is an individual who would shovel as much as
two tons of coal in an hour's time in order
to keep that that fire lit in that train a chugen.
These were in fact brutal hours, very unforgiving, sixteen hour days,
(06:21):
only one day off a week, inhaling lots of you know,
gnarly substances, lots of cold dust. Um. You know, eyes
and lungs being choked by the smoke coming off of
this thing. And also very very very dangerous because these
engines could become overheated and there could be you know, explosions,
(06:46):
and these were combustion engines also, you know, it was
something that had to be continuous ongoing shoveling or else
the engine could stall and that could be disastrous for
the payload. Uh uh and and and everyone onboard. I
mean it could really you know, because cause a crash. Yeah,
just so. I mean this is an issue that the
(07:10):
the issue of working conditions in the rails is remains
a problem in the modern day. You, if you are
in the US, you have probably heard a lot of
the news about how close the rail industry came to
a full strike. Uh And this, like this description is accurate.
People are still working very long hours without many opportunities
(07:32):
for a day off. We also want to shout out,
by the way, an excellent article Max found from the
New Yorker Eugene V. Debs and the Endurance of Socialism
by Jill Lapour. So thank you so much the poor.
This is already a tough job. But it's a job, right.
He is being productive, he's making money. Until the depression
(07:52):
occurs in eighteen seventy three. This is not the Great Depression.
This is another depression. There are a lot of depressions
in his three uh. So, Debs has to find a job.
He's a regular guy, he's got bills. He gets some
work as a clerk at a grocery store. And he
never goes back to the railroad as an employee of
(08:15):
the rail but his experiences there will go on to
shape the rest of his life. He has firsthand experience
with railroad work. He supports the cause of railroad workers
who want more rights. And because of all this, when
the Brotherhood of Locomotive Fireman start a chapter there in
(08:39):
Indiana in eight, he signs up and despite not you know,
working for the railroad, he is elected secretary, right, which
may seem like a menial task, but it really is
someone that's responsible for a lot of the organizational aspects
and probably knows the inner work kings of an organization
(09:01):
more than just about anybody, wouldn't you say, Ben, I
would say that's pretty accurate. And we can already tell
he's committed sharp learner. His learning curve must be crazy.
So while he is not currently working with the rails now,
not too much has changed unfortunately, right, so he is
(09:22):
still speaking from a relevant experience. Uh. The first real
national strike in U S history occurs with the railroads
in eight. By the way, if you're doing the math
at home here, folks, Gene is only twenty two when
(09:43):
this strike occurs, and he galvanizes the crowd that the
Brotherhood's annual convention with this electric speech and he says,
you know, the messages primarily that the union is not
doing anything wrong. The union is not the enemy that
the that the powers of the day want to paint
(10:04):
it as. They're not trying to encourage lawlessness. They don't
wake up every day excited to hold a strike. They're
just trying to get more rights for their workers. This
means that after the strike, Deb's remains popular. In fact,
he's the only officer in the Indiana Lodge who gets
re elected. He also becomes the associate editor of the
(10:28):
Locomotive Fireman's Magazine in eighteen seventy eight, and he continues
to rise through through the organization. He becomes the Grand
Secretary Treasurer and then also editor in chief of the
magazine in eighteen eighty. I love this idea. He was
already the secretary, now he's the Grand Secretary Treasurer. I
(10:50):
wonder if he was just so good at his job
they created a new position for him. He was absolutely
never heard of that before. Um. But also, obviously, you know,
with his input in the magazine, he's kind of starting
to help shape the public facing. I mean, you know, again,
this isn't exactly something that everyone's gonna grab. This is
more for industry folks, and you know, folks that are
associated with the with the union, but it is a
(11:12):
magazine is going to kind of be a way of
crafting policy and sort of like the more public facing,
communicative kind of like aspect of an organization. So he
obviously was seen as a really really powerful communicator and
and that sort of reflected and some of these jobs
that he was given at such an early age. Um,
he starts to enter into a broader kind of politics
(11:36):
during the eighties as he continued to give these speeches
just talking about, you know, how important it was for
industries to cooperate with one another and to discourage a
lot of this in fighting. Um that I think was
maybe the kind of thing that the bosses, you know,
(11:57):
the big bosses and the you know, corporate big wigs
wanted to see happen. It's like, let's pick these folks
against each other instead of having them see who the
real villains are, which is you know us. I was
jumping in real quick. I was just curious when you
guys were reading about the look of the mode of
Fireman's magazine, and I'm like, I wonder if you can
still get a copy of that, and yes you can. Finally, yeah,
(12:20):
I don't know. It seems like a real page turner,
and it seems probably very pernent to the day. Yes, yeah,
I love it. This episode is brought to you by
The Fireman's Magazine. We're kidding as far as we do.
Yeah yeah, peek behind our ridiculously expensive podcast curtain. We
don't always know what chads are gonna play. We know,
(12:47):
like you're saying. All that Deb's is seeing himself as
a champion of the common person, right, and he is
aware that he has the ability city to shape ideology,
and he tries to work within the system for a bit.
(13:08):
For quite a long time, he has disavowed socialism, and
he's saying, Okay, let's focus on democracy, the franchise or
the vote. Let's see what we can do with the
two party system. He says, the conflict is not between
capital and labor. It is between the man who holds
(13:28):
the office and the man who holds the ballot. However,
is the eighties grind on. More and more railroad workers
are going on strike, or they're getting maimed, or they're
dying because it's a dangerous job. Something like two thousand
railroad employees a year are killed on the job, another
(13:49):
twenty thousand, twenty thousand are injured. And this starts to
make him wonder the exact point you brought up, like,
maybe these corporations that are backed up by corrupt politicians
and armed fighters, maybe they're the real enemy. That's right,
(14:10):
And this all kind of coalesced or came to a head,
uh during a strike that lasted an entire year beginning
in eighteen eighties six UM, that was pitted against the Chicago,
Burlington and Quincy Railroad Company. During this time, you know,
devs really started to look a little bit closer and
started to see that perhaps these corporations weren't truly committed
(14:36):
to industrial cooperation and the idea of democracy, um, the
idea of you know, the power resting with the people,
the employees. He also thought that up to this point,
unions is kind of an organized more specifically along trade lines,
like you know, you'd have a railroad fireman's union, as
(14:58):
we know, the locomotive fireman Union, etcetera, or perhaps the
conductors union, you know, whatever it might be. Um. He felt,
in order to truly get what we now refer to
as things like collective bargaining, you have to have strength
and numbers, So you have to organize along broader kind
of industrial lines, rather than breaking out all of these
(15:20):
best specific unions that maybe in and of themselves weren't
going to have enough bargaining power to get the job done.
If you have caught our earlier episode on the Luddites
or on the emergence of unions in stuff they don't
want you to know, then you will see that this
(15:41):
problem has existed before. Like it. It's the difference between
having one union for milliners, a separate union for lace makers,
and a different union for the people who die the
fabric Why not just have them all be the Union
of fabric workers, right, or the the Union of clothing.
(16:03):
So this he's onto something here. You know, a strike
requires numbers to work, and he understands that the strike
is the weapon of the oppressed. We know he understands
that because he wrote that. That's a quote from him
in and he still didn't talk about socialism at this point. Now,
(16:24):
for some of us in the audience, that may sound like, ah,
this guy is uh died in the wool socialist. But
to him, he prefers the term Americanism. And he says this,
He makes a good point that I don't think a
lot of people realize. He says essentially that the American
(16:47):
Revolution the United States is kind of founded on something
like a strike. It was the lawmakers, the residents of
the colonies who said, Okay, we're not gonna work for
anymore United Kingdom. H And he starts like adding up,
adding up the amounts of money the very wealthy people
(17:10):
have versus the amount of money that common people have,
and he sees, uh some startling discrepancies. Oh for sure,
I mean, you know, it's unfortunately it's not like this
has uh changed too much today. The sums have just
gotten bigger and more disparate. But um, this is almost
like this this is like the nerdiest joke you could imagine,
(17:31):
but also really tells a very stark story. He did
some math about how Cornelius Vanderbilt, the grandson rather of
Cornelius Vanderbilt, started out with two million bucks, a million
from his grandfather and another million from his father. And
he went on to say, if a locomotive fireman could
(17:52):
work four thousand, four hundred and forty four years, three
hundred days each year at a dollar fifty per day,
he would be in a position to bet Mr Vanderbilt
too fifty that all men are born equal. Boom. Also,
I want to point out so this doesn't slip by
anybody three hundred days each year. So even in this example,
(18:18):
he Debs is saying everybody needs at least two months off.
He also acts on this right. He's a man of action.
So he resigns from his posh position as Grand Secretary Treasurer,
which paid four thousand a year in and he is
organizing something else, the American Railway Union. Hey bad, I
(18:42):
got a question for you. Yeah, should we inflation calculate
that number? Let's do it, Max, Let's make it happen
and pope poop people. What a wonderful idea. It's true,
folks are running the inflation calculator four thousand dollars a year,
(19:04):
and eight three was one hundred thirty one thousand, six
hundred and thirty one dollars and fifty six cents, So
a pretty healthy sum of money right to live by.
I think a lot of people say, this guy's making
the equivalent of six figures. He's hopefully not sweating his
light bill. But there's something more important than money to him.
(19:29):
It's the idea of making a more inclusive labor movement, right,
a more inclusive union. So if you want to join
the BLF, you have to be a locomotive fireman. So
what if you're not that, what if you have another job,
another skill, Well, now you can join the American Railway Union.
You just have to somehow be employed with the rails.
(19:52):
He also uh stepped down from his job as the
editor of Locomotive Fireman's magazine. I imagine this, you know,
just kind of he was the time thing, but I
think he also was more interested in the bigger picture
and UH was less concerned with the you know, specificity
of that magazine. You know, kind of like again, that
(20:13):
was a very kind of exclusionary, you know, specific area
of this whole conversation just around Locomotive Fireman. In eighteen
nine four, the Pullman Company, which was founded by George Pullman,
there's another railroad magnate um they specifically manufactured sleeping cars.
There was a strike at that company because the company
(20:37):
itself would not negotiate with the American Railway Union officials.
UH called for boycott of the specific cars across the
industry and asked that other railroad unions and solidarity backed
them up with this boycott and refused to work on
(20:58):
trains that contained in these sleeping cars. So that really
does show the power here, you know, in numbers, and
there was widespread support. But it also shows the equal
and opposite power, if not at times, you know, greater
power of the industry itself, of the magnates themselves. The
railroads convinced President Grover Cleveland to send in troops to
(21:23):
actually force in an injunction against interfering with the U
S mails they figured out like a weird kind of
work around. This is all being reported by the a
f l c i O website, which has fabulous information
on the history of labor movement. So this led to
a collapse of of the of the strike. Yeah, it
(21:46):
turns out that maybe one of the first unions was
the oligarchy, right the very well to do the plutocrats
of the world. So not only does the strike collapse,
but the leaders of the a r U, including Deb's,
(22:06):
get arrested on conspiracy charges and they get sent to
jail for around six months. Deb's time in jail. It's
gonna sound surprising to a lot of us in the audience. Today,
he's not doing bad. He's running the union office out
(22:27):
of his jail cell, and if he wants to go
out of his jail cell, he's allowed to do so.
He can leave the joint on like an honor system.
And he is talking to a reporter for The New
York World named Nellie Bligh, maybe familiar to some folks,
uh amazing journalists at the time. She went to interview
(22:48):
him and he said, quote, the other night, I had
to lock myself in. There was no end. She goes
on to write, there was no sign of the prisoner
about Mr Deb's clothes. He wore a well made suit
of grades we the coat being a cutaway and a
white start shirt with a standing collar, and a small
black and white scarf tied in a bow knot. This
(23:08):
guy essentially is being um is forced to live in
what feels like an apartment building. At this point, For
anyone not familiar with the US incarceration system, it is
kind of extraordinary that you're able to leave and then
come back. The closest thing there is to that in
the modern version is a work release program. But he's
(23:31):
not on that. He could just come and go if
he wants Debs starts kind of a book club thanks
to a socialist from Milwaukee named Victor Berger. He brings
up a copy of Das Capital by Karl Marx and
Debs and his organizers who are also in the joint
with him. They spend most of their time reading. If
(23:54):
you like books, this sounds like a actually kind of cool.
You know, it's interesting. Man. We talked about doing this
a book event for the stuff they Don't want you
to KNOWE book. And one of the questions that came
up in the audience was about books in prison, was
about the popularity specifically of a book called Pale Pale
(24:16):
Horse or here comes up, I see what's that book called?
Ben Beyond a Pale Horse? Behold a Pale Horse? Correct, Yeah,
and just now that that was a very popular book,
and just the topic of reading in prison came up.
And the idea of kind of being caught in a
system like that that is uh, part and parcel of
a greater conspiracy to you know, essentially incarcerate people and
(24:41):
and and force them into slavery. You know, I mean,
there's there's there's no two ways about it. Even to
this day. Um, you know, the US Justice ironically named
justice system, uh is a form of of enforced slave labor,
you know. I mean like license plates are made by
prison labor, and a lot of industries outsourced labor to prisons.
(25:04):
So to be part of that, especially, you know, you're
you're a person like Debs, who is is um righteous
person who is supporting a cause, who is not a criminal,
you know, who is not out there causing chaos in
the streets or or are causing any kind of harm,
has been incarcetrated clearly because he is espousing a view
(25:27):
that the powers that be do not. Like, what better
way to empower someone like that than to have them
kind of smack dab in the middle of this system
that they're fighting against, seeing all of the injustices, and
then arm them with literature. Yeah, I'm glad you bring
that up, because when we're asked the question that our
book release, I spent a lot of time in the
answer I had volunteered in the past. I mean, phrases great.
(25:51):
I agree with everything you're saying. It's a lot of
what we were saying last night when I volunteered in
the past with prison literacy programs or jail literally you
programs depending on where you're at, it's very it can
be very difficult to get books in if they're not
religious works. There are a lot of rules about this
because people know that words have power, right, thoughts can
(26:14):
be weaponized. There's an alchemy that takes you from the
page two actions. It's amazing stuff and there are there
are a lot of good things that come from literacy,
but sometimes they're not good things for the powers that be,
the status quo. Uh So it is uh, it is
a little surprising that they were able to get a
(26:36):
copy of Thus Capital in in this in this prison.
But this, uh, I don't know. Now. It depends on
your political perspective. Some people who object to socialism might
say that this radicalizes our boy Gene, because he says,
I had heard but little of socialism before the Pullman strike,
(27:00):
and he says the reading he did in jail is
what converted him to become one of the most famous
socialists in US history. But yeah, but it's not clear really,
um how that how that change of heart happened. Because
(27:21):
he was speaking to a commission about the strike earlier
that year and he said, I don't call myself a socialist. Also,
I want to point out the president and these powerful
rail companies. They put them away. They conspired to put
Deb's in his crew away on conspiracy charges. I don't know.
Feels like a cover up to me. So uh he uh.
(27:44):
He also has socialists who are trying to court him,
get him further on board with the cause, and he
turns them away. I gotta say them, I gotta say
well before he gets out in and in Max, I
know this is this is like your boy. You actually
call him Max's daddy in the outline. Do you do
(28:05):
you do? Sir? Uh? Do we think do we think
that Deb's is being sincere when he's issuing socialism or
do we think he's kind of like trying to be
the good kid so he can get out of jail.
You know what I mean? I mean, I think that
his view of socialism is not the same. It's not
(28:26):
the same as like he look would look like marks
and stuff like that. He's like, I like some of
these concepts, but I don't agree with at all. Because
you know, at this point of his career and his organizing,
he was had been pretty pro capitalistic for most most
of the time. I mean, he was against strikes for
a long period of time. I think he saw this
communist movement. He's like, I like some of these ideas,
(28:48):
especially the protection for the workers, but I don't like
this all the way. I think he was like very
much like I like kind of being in the middle.
I don't like being all the way to one side
of all the way to the other. Like I think
we should use some of these things, and spoiler, I
think a lot of a lot of stuff did end
up becoming part of this country, like social security. Yeah,
And I think that's kind of where he was. I
(29:09):
don't think he was. I think it's easy excial people
who are against his ideas to paint him as like, oh,
you're all the way over there. You're just the same
as Lenin and Marx and all those guys, which I
but I just I don't think he was that. I
think he believed in these concepts and he was much
more middle of the road than people want to pay
him as. Yes, yes, agree can I I want to
(29:30):
pull out one of my favorite quotations from Gene It's
one that I agree with wholeheartedly. He has this quote
where he says, I am for socialism because I am
for humanity. Money constitutes no proper basis of civilization. That's true.
That it's true. It's like it's like you always say
been money is a cult or religion in and of itself.
(29:53):
And again, so to keep bringing up the stuff that
I wants you to know. But we have an episode
coming out about the Saluritian a to the idea of
like a lost epoch, you know, of interdimensional perhaps or
just like at least extra galactic civilizations that may have
achieved industrialization before we did. And the idea of economy
(30:15):
comes up, and the idea of like what industrialization means
comes up, and um, I think we all were kind
of on the same page in terms of like the
economy is in some ways kind of the nasty byproduct
of humanity of civilization, and it causes all of these
toxic problems that then beget more problems. You know, Um,
(30:37):
there could very well be a civilization that just is
adapted to sustain itself and isn't about all this kind
of competition and all of this like other ing and
things that require forming unions and making sure people aren't exploited. Yeah,
and this, uh it just hit me, guys. No, Max
(31:00):
Gene would totally have a podcast. He would have been
podcasting from jail. It would be such like a low
tech podcast to like he might record it on a
computer microphone and stuff, and it have a like a
million millions of listens. But he would just like scream
into a computer microphone for hours on end, unaddited to
(31:20):
just these straight to tape. He's one of those guys
who gets the veins when he's really in his forehead
when he's talking about stuff. Here's actually little Key famous
for that. But but he is not spouting gobbledegook. And
despite not having a podcast, he decides that he is
(31:41):
going to get involved with politics. And as you might
be able to tell by a subtle turn in the
sound design, this is a two parter. We are only
uh we've only gone about halfway, not even halfway through
our journey with you, ge V Debs. We're getting to
(32:02):
some really startling, exciting stuff and uh no, I gotta say,
I know, sometimes we don't want to have a two
parter that publishes on Thursday and comes out on Tuesday,
but I think this one is gonna be worth the way.
Yeah it is, and honestly it's it's it's pretty modular.
The guy's gut like a storied career, and a lot
(32:22):
of the moments in his life that we're talking about
are really just kind of representative of moments in the
history of the labor movement. And I think it is
appropriate to kind of make it a little more bite size.
And you know, you and I have been kind of
slamming away over the last few weeks between promoting this
book that we talked about in these podcasts out the Door,
(32:42):
so I think we owe it to ourselves to make
this one too, partter and and let it hit the weekend.
But we'll be back on Tuesday with part two of
Eugene debs Uh, where also I will I will reference
a huge Deb's impersonator on the internet that I learned
quite a bit about Deb's is Late or life front.
Oh yes, yeah, we'll do the reference in part two.
(33:04):
I'll reference the reference in part one and do the
actual reference in part two. Correct, there we go. Okay,
as long as we have our order of operations reference wise,
before we turn into a reference work podcast, we are
going to call it a day. Thank you so much
to our super producer, the one and only Mr Max Williams.
Thank you as well to our research associate Mr Max Williams,
(33:26):
and to while we're doing the Williams kick, Alex Williams
who could pose this banging track and Zach Williams are
one half of our research associate team. Christopher Hastiot is
here at Spirit thanks to you. He's Jeff Coates as
always out in the world doing amazing things. That Jonathan
Strickland the quiz to you, dashing monster. We love and
(33:47):
miss you and we'll see you very very soon. Hopefully
you're shadow will dock in our doorstep before long or
also please never never come again. Uh. He also he
got stranded on a cruise ship. He was lost at
sea for a little while. That's a true story. He's
back now, so if you're hearing this, quister, uh, stay safe.
(34:08):
Also big thanks to Jeff Bartlett's recently appeared on the
show to tell us about the michelin Man. It's a
research associate and friend of ours. Let's see. Thanks to
gene V Debs. Why are we saying thank you? There
was a little bit of a spoiler in part one,
but but you'll see why why in part two. You
don't have to agree with him, but there are some
(34:30):
things you should thank him for. If you live in
the United States, we'll see you next time, folks. For
more podcasts for my Heart Radio, visit the I heart
Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
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