On this day in Labor History the year was 1926.
That was the day that one of the great labor leaders in U.S. history, Eugene V. Debs, died in Elmhurst, Illinois.
In 1894, Debs gained national attention when his American Railway Union launched a boycott in support of the striking workers of Pullman Palace Car Company.
The strike and the boycott were crushed by federal troops and a federal court.
Debs served six months in jail for his role in the boycott.
Later Debs again would go to jail for standing up for his beliefs.
He was convicted for speaking out against U.S. involvement in World War I.
He was among the founders of the Industrial Workers of the World in 1905.
He ran as a Socialist for President of the United States five times, receiving nearly a million votes running his campaign from a prison cell in 1920.
In 1891 Debs wrote an article for the Locomotive Firemen’s Magazine titled “The Unity of Labor”.
His words stand as an eloquent case for worker solidarity.
Debs wrote, “If workingmen were united in sympathetic bonds…if a bricklayer could comprehend the fact that he is dependent on the hod carrier;
if the locomotive engineer could grasp the fact that he is dependent on the locomotive fireman…
the interdependence of labor would at once constitute a bond of union, a chain whose links, forged and fashioned to hold workingmen in harmonious alliance, would girt them with a defense in every time of trouble and resist invasion, though assailed by all the plutocrats that ever cursed the earth.”
Debs spent his life trying to bring about this “harmonious alliance” of working people, and standing up for the causes of peace and justice.
November 10 - Suicide or Murder?
November 9 - Remembering Philip Murray
November 8 - Dorothy Day is Born
November 7 - Eisenhower Wields Taft-Hartley
November 6 - The Fight for Equality
November 5 - The Everett Massacre
November 4 - Will Rogers is Born
November 3 - The Greensboro Massacre
November 2 - Sixteen Tons
November 1 - The Deadly Consequences of Scabbing
October 31 - Happy Union Made Halloween
October 30 - Wall St. Lays an Egg
October 29 - Alice Doesn’t Day
October 28 - The Pony Express
October 27 - The 1948 Donora Smog
October 26 - America’s Florence Nightingale
October 25 - NY Daily News On Strike!
October 24 - Eight Hours for Work, Eight Hours for Rest, Eight Hours for What We Will!
October 23 - John Sweeney is Elected
October 22 - Pretty Boy Floyd Is Gunned Down
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