Sheep magazine Archive 2: issues 10-17

He ran again in 1904 (gaining 3 percent
of the vote) and 1908 (3 percent again).
Then came a great upsurge in struggle as
major strikes swept the US from 1909 to
1913. The IWW led local general strikes
in Lawrence and Patterson.
Debs’ 1912 campaign was part of this
movement. He campaigned across the
country, drawing in huge crowds who
would gladly listen to him speak for two
hours. He won 6 percent of the vote, the
highest figure ever for a socialist.
His Socialist Party of America (SPA) had
real roots. US labour historian Melvyn
Dubofsky writes, “By 1914 the party had
elected two members of Congress, and
counted a membership of over 100,000.
At various times between 1910 and
1916 the SPA controlled municipal
governments in Schenectady, New York;
Reading, Pennsylvania; Milwaukee,
Wisconsin; Dayton and Toledo, Ohio;
Granite City, Illinois; Butte, Montana;
Berkeley, California, and numerous other
cities.”
As in every other part of the world, the
First World War divided socialists. Debs
was utterly against the slaughter and
agitated against it. In 1918 he made
a speech against the call-up for the
military and was arrested on ten counts of
sedition. He was sentenced to ten years in
jail.
After conviction he spoke from the
dock. “I am opposing a social order
in which it is possible for one man
who does absolutely nothing that is
useful to amass a fortune of hundreds
of millions of dollars, while millions
of men and women who work all the
days of their lives secure barely enough
for a wretched existence. Years ago I
recognised my kinship with all living
beings, and I made up my mind that I
was not one bit better than the meanest
on earth. I said then, and I say now, that
while there is a lower class, I am in it,
and while there is a criminal element,
I am of it, and while there is a soul in
prison, I am not free.”
From prison he secured nearly a
million votes in the 1920 election, an
extraordinary tribute to his popularity. But
prison broke his health and he died in
1926.
23
MAY DAY 2016