LIFE OF EUGENE DEBS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19502, 4 December 1926, Page 11

LIFE OF EUGENE DEBS.

STRANGE, EVENTFUL HISTORY ECHO OF A GREAT STRIKE. [FROM CI.UR OWN COIUtESPONDENT.] SAN FRANCISCO. Nov. 3. Eugene Debs, . inter gat to ually• know n Socialist,' who has died u,t Chicago at th« ago of 71, had' a strange and m eteoric career, the most striking incident oJ which was tho fact he received u -millton votes tor the oilicc of President while he was in gaol. Born in Indiana, Mr. Debs was lor live years a, locomotive fireman and spent five • years in a grocery warehouse. His activities during tho next few years were divided between railroading and politics.He was ciity clerk of his native town for 1 four years,, and was then elected to the Indiana Legislature. He opened his Labour activities m 1880, when he ~was chosen secretary and, treasurer of - tlyj Brotlmrhood of Locomotive Firemen. Then he became president oi the American Railway Union, which refused to haul Pullman cars in the big railway strike in the later nineties, hit Chicago and the central western States very hard. Rioting and destruction followed. President Cleveland opposed tho strike, and restored order with Federal troops. Mr. Dobs was sent to gaol for contempt of Court. Mr. VV. H. Taft, later President and now Chief Justice of the tJnited States, was a Judge at the time, and issued the writ. It was the greatest totilway strike in Amersc&o history. -After six months m prison Mr. Debs becamo n Socialist lecturer, writer and organiser. His sistei is quoted as saying, just after his death, that be paid from his lecture earnings the sum of £IO,OOO which tho union owed after .the strike, Mr. Debs made his first bid for ttie Presidency m 1800, when he got 87,814 votes, lie ran again m 1904, 1908 and 4 securing nearly a million votes at the fourth time, after a coufltry-widc tour in a special train About, a million ...V-Oles were also cast for tiim in 1820, when ho was a prisoner in the Federal penitentiary at Atlanta,. Georgia. He had feeeio-.sent there for a speech he made tn Chariton, Ohio, in 1918, ia which he assailed the United States part in tho wur_ • He reiterated the speech when he faced the Judge and jury He was sentenced to 10 years' imp risonment on a- charge of attempting- <U».< obstruct the draft, - President Wilson tnrnsd n deaf ear to appeals on Mr. Dobs' behalf, and iit was not until Christmas, 1921, that he was released, at the ordei of President Harding, When he left prison, Ms 1 frionck' predicted' that he would no', live long. He suffered a nervous breakdown, recovered and retired! from politics. With the late Mr. Samuel Compere. Preside.nl: of tbe' Af.nericah Federation of Labour..,-Mr. Debs, had ..some bitter controversies.. Mr. Gottfjsers leined toward the Pe mom tie Party, bat bacfco« B<v publican congressmen and others when they were friendly to Labour,