Eugene Debs, The Debs Decision, Scott Nearing, 1919, Part 1-3

The first part of an extensive analysis of the decision by the Supreme Court to send Eugene Debs to prison for a decade for sedition. This section summarises the parts of the speech that were pertinent to the court case, and the composition of the court. It also includes a personal refection from meeting Debs the day before the trial.

 

Scott Nearing, The Debs Decision, 1919 

1. THE SUPREME COURT
The Supreme Court of the United States on March 10, 1919, handed down a decision on the Debs case. That decision is far-reaching in its immediate significance and still more far-reaching in its ultimate implications.
What is the Supreme Court of the United States?
Article III, Section I of the Constitution provides as follows:
"The judicial power of the United States shall be vested in one Supreme Court. ... The judges shall hold their offices during good behavior."
The judges are appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate (Article XII, Section II). That is all the constitution provides with regard to the Supreme Court.
At the present time, there are nine judges on the Supreme bench. It might interest you to know some facts about the nine. All of the judges are men. The chief justice is Edward D. White, who was born in 1845 and admitted to the bar in 1868. He is seventy-three years of age. His birth-place was Louisiana. He served in the Confederate Army, in the State Senate, in the State Supreme Court and in the United States Senate. He has been a member of the Supreme Court for twenty-five years. Joseph McKenna, is the second member in point of seniority. He was born in 1843. He was admitted to the bar in 1865. His birth-place is Philadelphia. He was a county District Attorney, a member of the State Legislature, a member of the national House of Representatives, attorney-general of the United States and a United States Circuit Judge. He has been a member of the Supreme Court for twenty-two years. Oliver W. Holmes, the Justice who read the Debs decision, was born in Boston in 1841. He is seventy-seven years of age. He was admitted to the bar in 1866. Justice Holmes served in the Union Army; he was a member of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts and a member of the Harvard Law School Faculty. He has been a member of the Supreme Court for seventeen years. Those are the three oldest men on the Supreme bench. They are the three men who have been on the bench longest, but their political background is typical of the political background of the other members of the Supreme Court, with the single exception of Justice Louis D. Brandeis, who as far as I know, held no public office at all before he was appointed a justice of the Supreme Court three years ago.
The nine members of the Supreme Court are all old men. Four of them were born before 1850; eight of them were born before 1860; one of them was born since 1861, that is, James C. McReynolds, who was born in 1862. There is not a single member of the Supreme Court bench born since the Civil War. The oldest man on the bench is Justice Holmes, seventy-seven; the youngest man on the bench is Justice McReynolds, fifty-seven; the average ages of the justices of the Supreme Court is sixty-six years. These men all began practicing law while we were children, or before we were born. Three of them began the practice of law before 1870; six of them began to practice law before 1880; nine of them before 1884. The last member of the Supreme bench to be admitted to the practice of law, Justice McReynolds, was admitted in 1884.
The Supreme Court Justices were educated in the generation preceding the modern epoch of financial imperialism. They were mature when the industrial order as we know it today, was established. They are the men whose word is the word of final authority in all the affairs concerning the government of the United States.
The Supreme Court, not because the Constitution grants it the power, but because successive decisions of the Court have established that precedent, has the right to veto any piece of legislation passed by Congress and signed by the President. The Supreme Court is the voice of final authority in the affairs of the government of the United States. After it has spoken, there is no further authority under the machinery of this government.
The Debs Case came before the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court has given its decision. Eugene V. Debs goes to jail for ten years. Under the existing order of government, there is no appeal from this decision, except an appeal to arbitrary executive clemency.
 
2. THE CANTON SPEECH
The Debs Case arose over a speech made by Debs in Canton, Ohio, June 16th, 1918. The speech was made before the State Socialist Convention, where Debs was talking to his comrades in the Socialist movement. The main parts of this speech, as printed in the indictment under which Debs was convicted, are as follows:
"I have just returned from a visit from yonder, (pointing to workhouse) where three of our most loyal comrades are paying the penalty for their devotion to the cause of the working class. They have come to realize, as many of us have, that it is extremely dangerous to exercise the constitutional right of free speech in a country fighting to make democracy safe for the world. I realize in speaking to you this afternoon that there are certain limitations placed upon the right of free speech. I must be extremely careful, prudent, as to what I say, and even more careful and prudent as to how I say it. I may not be able to say all I think, but I am not going to say anything I do not think. And I would rather a thousand times be a free soul in jail than a sycophant or coward on the streets. They may put those boys in jail and some of the rest of us in jail, but they cannot put the Socialist movement in jail. Those prison bars separate their bodies from ours, but their souls are here this afternoon. They are simply paying the penalty that all men have paid in all of the ages of history for standing erect and seeking to pave the way for better conditions for mankind.
"If it had not been for the men and women who, in the past, have had the moral courage to go to jail, we would still be in the jungles.
"Why should a Socialist be discouraged on the eve of the greatest triumph of all the history of the Socialist movement? It is true that these are anxious, trying days for us all, testing those who are upholding the banner of the working class in the greatest struggle the world has ever known against the exploiters of the world; a time in which the weak, the cowardly, will falter and fail and desert. They lack the fibre to endure the revolutionary test. They fall away. They disappear as if they had never been.
"On the other hand, they who are animated with the unconquerable spirit of the Social revolution, they who have the moral courage to stand erect, to assert their convictions, to stand by them, to go to jail or to hell for them—they are writing their names in this crucial hour, they are writing their names in fadeless letters in the history of mankind. Those boys over yonder, those comrades of ours—and how I love them—aye, they are our younger brothers, their names are seared in our souls.
"I am proud of them. They are there for us and we are here for them. Their lips, though temporarily mute, are more eloquent than ever before, and their voices, though silent, are heard around the world.
"Are we opposed to Prussian militarism? Why, we have been fighting it since the day the Socialistic movement was born and we are going to continue to fight it today and until it is wiped from the face of the earth.
"The other day they sent a woman to Wichita Penitentiary for ten years. Just think of sentencing a woman to the penitentiary for talking. The United States under the rule of the plutocrats is the only country which would send a woman to the penitentiary for ten years for exercising the right to free speech. If this be treason, let them make the most of it. Let me review another bit of history. I have known this woman for ten years. Personally I know her as if she were my own younger sister. She is a woman of absolute integrity. She is a woman of courage. She is a woman of unimpeachable loyalty to the Socialist movement. She went out into Dakota and made her speech, followed by plain-clothes men in the service of the government, intent upon encompassing her arrest, prosecuted and convicted. She made a certain speech and that speech was deliberately misrepresented for the purpose of securing her conviction. The only testimony was that of a hired witness. And thirty farmers who went to Bismark to testify in her favor, the judge refused to allow to testify. This would seem incredible to me if I had not some experience of my own with a Federal Court. Who appoints the Federal Courts? The people? Every solitary one of them holds his position through influence and power of corporation capital. And when they go to the bench, they go there not to serve the people, but to serve the interests who sent them. The other day, by a vote of five to four, they declared the Child Labor Law unconstitutional; a law secured after twenty years of education and agitation by all kinds of people, and yet by a majority of one, the Supreme Court, a body of corporation lawyers, with just one solitary exception, wiped it from the Statute books, so that we may still continue to grind the blood of little children into profit for the Junkers of Wall Street, and this in a country that is now fighting to make democracy safe for the world. These are not palatable truths to them. And they do not want you to hear them and that is why they brand us as traitors and disloyalists. If we were not traitors to the people, we would be eminently respectable citizens and ride in limousines. It is precisely because we are disloyal to the traitors that we are not disloyal to the people of this country.
"How short-sighted the ruling class is. The exploiter cannot see beyond the end of his nose. He has just been cunning enough to know what graft is and where it is, but he has no vision. You know this is a great throbbing world that speaks out in all directions. Look at Rockefeller. Every move he makes hastens the coming of his doom. Every time the capitalist class tries to hinder the cause of Socialism they hurt themselves. Every time they strangle a Socialist newspaper they add a thousand voices to those which are aiding Socialism. The Socialist has a great idea. An expanding philosophy. It is spreading over the face of the earth. It is as useless to resist it as it is to resist the rising sun. Can you see it? If you cannot you are lacking in vision, in understanding. What a privilege it is to serve it. I have regretted a thousand times I can do so little for the movement that has done so much for me. The little that I am, the little that I am hoping to be, is due wholly to the Socialist movement. It gave me my ideas and my ideals, and I would not exchange one of them for all the Rockefeller blood-stained dollars. It taught me how to serve; a lesson to me of priceless value. It taught the ecstacy of the handclasp of the comrade. It made it possible for me to get in touch with you, to multiply myself over and over again; to open the avenue; to spread out the glorious vistas; to know that I am kin with all that throbs; with all who become class conscious. Every man who toils, everyone of them, is my comrade. To serve them is the highest duty of my life. And in their service I can feel myself expanding. I rise to the stature of a man. Yes, my heart is attuned to yours. All of our hearts are melted into one great heart which throbs to the response of the people.
"Here I hear your heart beats responsive to the Bolsheviki of Russia. (Applause) Yes, those heroic men and women, those unconquerable comrades, who have by their sacrifice added fresh lustre to the international movement. Those Russian comrades who have made greater sacrifices, who have suffered more, who have shed more heroic blood than any like number of men and women anywhere else on earth. They have led the first real convention of any democracy that ever drew breath. The first act of that memorable revolution was to proclaim a state of peace with an appeal not to the kings, not to the rulers, but an appeal to the people of all nations. They are the very breath of democracy; the quintessence of freedom. They made their appeal to the people of all nations, the Allies as well as the Central Powers, to send representatives to lay down terms of a peace that should be lasting. Here was a fine opportunity to strike a blow to make democracy safe to the world. Was there any response to that noble appeal? And here let me say that appeal will be written in letters of gold in the history of the world. While it has been charged that the leader made a traitorous peace with Germany, let us consider this proposition briefly. At the time of the revolution, Russia had lost 4,000,000 of her soldiers. She was absolutely bankrupt. Her soldiers were without arms. This was what was bequeathed to the revolution by the Czar. For this condition, Leon Trotsky was not responsible nor was the Bolshevik movement, but the Czar was.
"When Leon Trotsky came into power, he found the secret treaties made between the French government and the British government and the Italian government which was to divide the territory of the Central Powers if the Allies were victorious, and these secret treaties have not been repudiated up to this time. Very little has been said about them in the American newspapers. This shows that the purpose of the Allies is exactly the purpose of the Central Powers.
"Wars have been waged for conquests, for plunder, and since the feudal ages, the feudal lords along the Rhine made war upon each other. They wanted to enlarge their domains, to increase their power and their wealth and so they declared war upon each other. But they did not go to war any more than the Wall Street Junkers go to war. Their predecessors declared the wars, but their miserable serfs fought the wars. The serfs believed that it was their patriotic duty to fall upon one another, to wage war upon one another. And that is war in a nut shell. The master class has always brought a war and the subject class has fought the battle. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, and the subject class has had all to lose and nothing to gain. They have always taught you that it is your patriotic duty to go to war and slaughter yourselves at their command. You have never had a voice in the war. The working class who make the sacrifices, who shed the blood, have never yet had a voice in declaring war. The ruling class has always made the war and made the peace.
"Yours not to question why,
Yours but to do and die.
"Another bit of history I want to review is that of Rose Pastor Stokes, another inspiring comrade. She had her millions of dollars. Her devotion to the cause is without all consideration of a financial or economic view. She went out to render service to the cause and they sent her to the penitentiary for ten years. What has she said? Nothing more than I have said here this afternoon. I want to say that if Rose Pastor Stokes is guilty, so am I. If she should be sent to the penitentiary for ten years, so ought I. What did she say? She said that a government could not serve both the profiteers and the employees of the profiteers. Roosevelt has said a thousand times more in his paper, the Kansas City Star. He would do everything possible to discredit Wilson's administration in order to give his party credit. The Republican and Democratic parties are all patriots this fall and they are going to combine to prevent the election of any disloyal Socialists. Do you know of any difference between them? One is in, the other is out. That is all the difference.
"Rose Pastor Stokes never said a word she did not have a right to utter, but her message opened the eyes of the people. That must be suppressed. That voice must be silenced. Her trial in a capitalist court was very farcical. What chance had she in a corporation court with a put-up jury and a corporation tool on the bench?
"Every Socialist on the face of the earth is animated by the same principles. Everywhere they have the same noble idea, everywhere they are calling one another 'comrade,' the noblest word that springs from the heart and soul of unity. The word 'comrade' is getting us into closer touch all along the battle line. They are waging the war of the working class against the ruling class of the world. They conquer difficulties; they grow stronger through them all.
"The heart of the international Socialist never beats a retreat. They are pressing forward here, there, everywhere, in all the zones that girdle this globe. These workers, these class-conscious workers, these children of honest toil are wiping out the boundary lines everywhere. They are proclaiming the glad tidings of the coming emancipation. Everywhere they are having their hearts attuned to the sacred cause; everywhere they are moving toward democracy, moving toward the sunrise, their faces aglow with the light of coming day. These are the men who must guide us in the greatest crisis the world has ever known. They are making history. They are bound upon the emancipating of the human race.
"Few men have the courage to say a decent word in favor of the I. W. W. I have. (Here several in the crowd yelled, 'So have I.')
After long investigation by five men who are not Socialists: John Graham Brooks, Harvard University, Mr. Bruere, Government investigator (other names not noted). A pamphlet has been issued called "The Truth About the I. W. W."
"These men investigated the I. W. W. They have examined its doings, beginning at Bisbee, Arizona, where the officers deported five hundred. It is only necessary to label a man, 'I. W. W.' to lynch him. Just think of the state of mind for which the capitalist press is responsible.
"When Wall Street yells war, you may rest assured every pulpit in the land will yell war. The press and the pulpit have in every age and every nation been on the side of the exploiting class and the ruling class. That's why the I. W. W. is infamous.
"The I. W. W. in its career has never committed as much violence against the ruling class as the ruling class has committed against the people. The trial at Chicago is now on and they have not proven violence in a single solitary case, and yet, one hundred and twelve have been on trial for months and months without a shade of evidence. And this is all in its favor. And for this and many other reasons, the I. W. W. is fighting the fight of the bottom dog. For the very reason that Gompers is glorified by Wall Street, Bill Haywood is despised by Wall Street. What you need is greater organization.
"In the shop is where the industrial union has its beginning. Organize. Define your capacity. Act together. And when you organize industrially you will soon learn that you can manage industry as well as operate industry. You will find that you do not have to take work from them; you give them work to do. You can dispense with them. You ought to own your own tools. Organize industrially. Make the organization complete. Unite in the Socialist party. Vote as you organize. Stand with your party. See that that party improves the working class, especially this year when the forces will clash as they have never clashed before. Take your place in the ranks. Help to inspire the weak and strengthen the faltering. Then, when we vote together we will develop the supreme power of the one class that can bring peace to the world. We will transfer the title deeds of the railroads, of the telegraphs, the mines and the mills. We will transfer them to the people. We will take possession in the name of the people. We will have industrial, social and political democracy. This change will be universal.
"And now for all of us to do our duty. The call is ringing in your ears. Do not worry over the charge of treason to your masters, but be concerned about the reason that involves yourself. This year we are going to sweep into power and in this nation we are going to destroy capitalistic institutions and recreate them. ... The world of capital is collapsing. We need industrial builders. We Socialists are the builders of the world that is to be. We are inviting you this afternoon. Join and it will help you.
"In due course of time we will proclaim the emancipation of the brotherhood of all mankind."
 
3. THE DAY BEFORE THE TRIAL
These were the essential parts of the speech which Debs made at Canton. He was indicted. On Monday, September 9th, the case went to trial in Cleveland.
I happened to be out West at the time, and on Sunday, September 8th, I had the opportunity of spending the afternoon with Debs and his attorney and of hearing him review the case. The case was discussed, the attorneys presenting the various possibilities. Debs made it quite clear that there was only one thing he could do and that was to repeat his Canton speech. He said, "I have nothing to take back. All I said I believe to be true. I have no reason to change my mind. I have no reason to change my position." His lawyers knew and he knew on Sunday that the following week would see him sentenced to the penitentiary.
He spoke of it in his quiet way as his simple opportunity to serve the cause. He said that he had always felt like a member of the rank and file, and now he had his chance to travel along the road the ordinary man had to follow, under ordinary circumstances—to go right on along the road and ignore the difficulties that were ahead. He was an old man, broken in health, facing, without flinching, without budging an eyelid, a possibility of twenty years in jail.
I remember leaving the Hotel that afternoon and walking down to the station and saying to myself: "If that man can behave as he does, there is surely no excuse for us younger chaps" and I felt then as I have felt ever since that I never in my life came in contact with so radiant a spirit as I did that afternoon when Debs was getting ready to take his place in the Federal Court and receive a penitentiary sentence.