*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 74184 ***
The
Negro Workers
by EUGENE VICTOR DEBS
_Address delivered Tuesday, October 30, 1923, at Commonwealth Casino,
135th Street and Madison Avenue, N. Y. C._
Price 10 cents
Published by THE EMANCIPATION PUBLISHING COMPANY, New York City
ADDRESS
delivered by
EUGENE VICTOR DEBS
On TUESDAY, OCTOBER 30, 1923
At COMMONWEALTH CASINO
135th Street and Madison Ave., New York City
Under the Auspices of the 21st A. D. Socialist Party of New York
_Chairman_ _Chairman, Committee of
Arrangements_
FRANK R. CROSSWAITH G. OLLENDORFF
_Preliminary Speakers_
JAMES ONEAL
_Author “The Next Emancipationâ€_
A. PHILLIP RANDOLPH
_Editor “The Messengerâ€_
LUCILLE RANDOLPH
_Aldermanic Candidate 21st A. D._
HON. JUDGE JACOB PANKEN
INTRODUCTION
After the preliminary speeches by Comrades James Oneal, author of “The
Next Emancipationâ€; A. Phillip Randolph, editor of “The Messenger,†and
Mrs. Lucille Randolph, the chairman of the meeting, Frank R. Crosswaith,
presented Mr. Debs with the following glowing remarks:
“And now, comrades and friends, the moment that we have all so anxiously
awaited is here. I know with what eagerness you yearn for the eloquent
voice, the sweet and inspiring personality of this great man, and his
great message. Here is a personality full of that precious tenderness so
rare in the average individual, but so much in evidence with Eugene V.
Debs. (Applause.)
“Seven years ago I joined the Socialist Party, little did I dream then
that I would be the recipient of such an enviable honor as this: the
honor of presenting this great character to an audience even though it
be in this segregated section of New York City. I stand before you,
friends, and say, in all boldness, that I am indeed proud of this honor,
and equally proud to be a Socialist hailing this modern crusader as my
comrade.
“I have read some history. I have read of such stalwart figures as John
Brown, Frederik Douglass, Wendell Phillips, Elijah Lovejoy, Denmark
Vessey, Sojourner Truth and others; I have followed with pride the
record of their contributions to human progress, as told in the eloquent
though mute pages of history. But in reading of these great benefactors,
one thing impresses me most of all, and that is, that during their
lifetime these brave men and women were despised by society—society
ridiculed them, persecuted them, even lynched some of them; then, after
they were dead, after their eyes had been closed by the remorseless hand
of death, after Mother Earth had opened wide her unprejudiced arms and
pressed their lifeless limbs close to her maternal bosom, it was then
only that the world recognized their greatness and built monuments to
them. In other words, these historic characters came into their own only
after they were dead and then garlands were woven for their graves.
This, my friends, has been the conduct of the blind majority in every
age toward the far-sighted few.
“But here is one whose greatness the world is now beginning audibly to
acknowledge, before death shall have silenced his song-seeped soul. Here
is a man that is loved, honored and revered in every section of the
civilized world where the brutal hands of capitalism and tyranny rule
and where the common people hunger for liberty and life. Yes, wherever
men thirst for the cooling waters of knowledge and freedom, the name of
Eugene V. Debs is known. (Prolonged applause.)
“Tempted as I am on this historic occasion to make a speech, I will,
nevertheless, resist the temptation by presenting to you Freedom’s most
fearless fighter, oppression’s most valiant foe, Labor’s most eloquent
and loyal champion, the Negro’s true friend—Comrade Eugene V. Debs.â€
(Thunderous and prolonged applause.)
Appeal to Negro Workers
By EUGENE V. DEBS
At Commonwealth Casino
135th Street and Madison Avenue
New York City
_Tuesday Evening, October 30, 1923_
Mr. Debs: Friends and Comrades and Fellow-workers—I feel especially
complimented by the invitation which has made it possible for me to
stand in this inspiring presence to-night. I must first of all thank you
and each of you in all sincerity for this very cordial greeting—this
hearty manifestation of your sympathy and goodwill for the cause for
which I am to speak to you to-night, and for the all too generous
introduction of my young Comrade, the Chairman of the occasion, which
touches me too deeply for words. I return my thanks to the dear little
children whose floral offerings so enrich and reward me for the little
that I have been able to do in the service of this great cause. The one
regret of my life is that I have so little to give in return for all
that is given me.
This great movement which I have been trying to serve; this movement in
the interest of a higher social order, a nobler humanity, a diviner
civilization that has given me my principles and my ideals and the right
to live and to serve—I am only sorry that it is in my power to give so
little in return.
I am more than glad to see the colored people represented here to-night.
From the beginning of my life my heart has been with them. I never could
understand why they were denied any right or any privilege or liberty
that the white man had a right to enjoy. I never knew of any distinction
on account of the color of the flesh of a human being. Indeed, when I
think of what the colored people have been made to suffer at the hands
of their supposedly superior race, every time I look a colored brother
in the face I blush for the crimes that my race has committed against
his race. (Great applause.)
I do not speak to my colored friends to-night in any patronising sense;
I meet them upon a common basis of equality; they are my brothers and my
sisters, and I want nothing that is denied them, and if there is one of
them who will shine my shoes and I am not willing to shine his, he is my
moral superior. (Applause.) One reason why I became a Socialist was
because I was opposed to this cruel discrimination against human beings
on account of the color of their skin. I never could understand it. When
I travelled over the Southern States thirty-five years ago organizing
the workers, oh, what a desolate, unpromising situation it was! I made
my appeal to them wherever I went, to open their doors to the colored
workers upon equal terms with the white workers, but they refused. Poor
as most of them were, they still felt themselves superior to the colored
people.
It is one of the surest indications of their own ignorance and their own
inferiority (applause); but, of course, they are not conscious of it.
There is what they call a race prejudice, that is simply another name
for ignorance (applause), and you can trace it to that and that alone.
It is comparatively easy to forgive a man who has wronged you, but it is
a very difficult thing to forgive the man that you have wronged. And
this is the attitude in which we find our colored brother who has been
the victim of this so-called civilization during the last two centuries;
and if there is any man who has read the history of the institution of
chattel slavery on American soil, from its beginning—from its inception
through all of its frightful stages, and who does not blush for himself
and for his Anglo-Saxon race, it is because he is something less than a
real human being. (Applause.)
Stolen from their native land, torn from their families ruthlessly by
the brutal hand of conquest, and then thrown aboard vessels and herded
like animals, half of them perishing on the way over from starvation or
disease or ill-treatment, and the rest put upon auction blocks and sold
to the highest or lowest bidders, and then through the years that
followed designedly kept in ignorance and then despised, persecuted and
punished because of their alleged inferiority!
The colored man has just as much in him that is potential and capable of
development as the white man (great applause); and all he needs is a
chance, that is all; he has never had that chance. (Renewed applause.)
I am sometimes surprised to think of the claims that are made in the
name of religion and the much-vaunted Christian civilization that has
everything in it but Christianity. (Applause.) Even in the great
Christian Church the colored people have got to sit aloft—(A Voice:
“Next to Heaven.†Laughter.)—and I have had many a heated argument down
in the Southern States and sometimes narrowly avoided trouble, making
the contention that the colored man was a human being and had some
rights that the white man ought to respect. (Applause.)
I remember on one occasion down in Atlanta, we had a Labor meeting and
they had a loft to which the colored people were admitted. It was so far
aloft that I could hardly see them (laughter) and I wondered if they
could hear me; but they did, because their ears were attuned to a voice
that had some promise for them. (Applause.) And I noted in the course of
my address that I received no applause from below; it all came from the
loft. (Laughter.) I paused long enough to say “the intelligence of this
audience is in the gallery†(laughter and applause); and if they had had
intelligence enough to understand what I said, I might have been lynched
that night. (Laughter.)
On another occasion down at Montgomery, Alabama, where I was to speak at
the Opera House, they had the line sharply drawn and said no colored
people should be admitted. It so happened that the colored people had
worked most faithfully and energetically for the success of that
meeting, and when they appointed a committee which came to my hotel and
notified me that they were to be excluded, I said, “We will go there
together, and if you are excluded, so will I be excluded; if you cannot
be admitted, I will not speak.†(Great applause.) Well, there is one
thing that the “superior†white man loves better than he hates the
Negro, and that is the coin. (Laughter.) The manager had $50 coming for
the use of the Opera House, and he wanted the money, and when I said I
wouldn’t speak unless he opened the doors to the colored people, he
changed his mind very reluctantly to receive his $50. (Applause.)
When we were organizing the American Railway Union in 1893, I stood on
the floor of that Convention all through its deliberations appealing to
the delegates to open the door to admit the colored as well as the white
man upon equal terms. They refused, and then came a strike and they
expected the colored porters and waiters to stand by them. If they had
only admitted these porters and waiters to membership in the American
Railway Union there would have been a different story of that strike,
for it would certainly have had a different result.
I remember one occasion down in Louisville, Kentucky, where we were
organizing and they refused to admit colored workers to the union. A
strike followed—a strike ordered exclusively by the white workers. After
having ignored the colored workers and refused them admission, the
strike came and the colored workers walked out with the white ones.
Notwithstanding they had been excluded and insulted, they went out, and
the strike had not lasted long until the white men went back to work and
broke the strike, leaving the colored men out in the cold in spite of
their loyalty to the white workers.
I have a word to you workers—you colored workers—about your duty in this
campaign—your duty to yourselves, your families, your class and to
humanity. I am not here asking for anything for myself. If I were
seeking office, you know, I would not be in the Socialist Party.
(Applause and laughter.) I want to speak to you very plainly to-night,
especially you colored people, and have you understand that it is not in
my power to do anything for you but to take my place side by side with
you. That is all I can do. (Applause.) But while I can do nothing for
you there is nothing that you cannot do for yourselves. (Applause.)
There is one thing that I want to impress upon your minds to-night; it
is self-respect. You can compel the respect of others only when you
respect yourselves. (Applause.) As long as you are willing to be the
menials and servants and slaves of the white people, that is what you
will be. (Applause.) You have to realize that there are 12,000,000 of
you in this nation, and that if you will unite and stand together and be
true to each other, you will develop a power that will command respect.
(Applause.) As long as you are unorganized—as long as you are
indifferent, as long as you are satisfied to remain in ignorance you
will invite contempt and receive it, but when you rise in the majesty of
your manhood and womanhood, close up the ranks and stand together, you
will command respect and consideration and you will receive it.
(Thunderous applause.) It is the only way you ever will receive it.
Everything depends upon your education. You have a brain; you can
develop your capacity for clear-thinking. That is a duty owing to
yourselves and your class, to your race and to humanity. (Applause.)
That is the appeal I am making to you to-night.
Haven’t you been long enough in the service of the capitalist parties to
realize that they have no earthly use for you save only as they can
perpetuate their system and keep you in servitude? The Republican party
has trafficked in you, lo, these many years; the party that is
unspeakably corrupt but still claims a monopoly of Abraham Lincoln and
brazenly calls itself the party of Lincoln—what use have they for you?
There was a time in my life, before I became a Socialist—when I was
still young and had the vanity of youth and the ambition and enthusiasm
of a boy—when I permitted myself as a member of the Democratic party to
be elected to a State Legislature. I have been trying to live it down.
(Laughter.) I am as much ashamed of that as I am proud of having gone to
jail. (Applause and laughter.)
There is a peculiar fatality that seems to hang over me. Every time I am
nominated as a candidate for President by the Socialists, the
capitalists send me to jail or to the penitentiary. (Laughter.) Some
paper said: “Debs started for the White House and got as far as
Atlanta.†(Laughter.)
I was, as I have said, a member of a Legislature. I used to meet with
the politicians—Republicans as well as the Democrats; I became familiar
with their political methods; I heard them over and over say in
campaigning: “Now, we have got to figure on how to handle the “Niggerâ€
vote; how much does it amount to and what will it take?†Well, a
thousand colored voters are worth about one job on the police force or a
mail carrier; if there are only about 500, why, a spittoon-cleaning job
at the courthouse. That is about all they have ever given you and all
they ever will give you. They do not associate with you; they have
nothing in common with you. They want you segregated. When a race riot
of any description comes, they are always armed against you. You know
what they have done for you in the last thirty years in the way of
recognizing you decently as human beings and giving you an equal chance
with other human beings to work out your destiny.
Now, if you still persist—you colored people—in remaining in either the
Republican or the Democratic party, you are stultifying yourselves; you
are insulting your race; you are barring the door in your own faces—the
door that leads to emancipation. The time has come for you to realize
what your position is in these capitalist parties. They are both alike.
I challenge anybody anywhere to show me the slightest difference between
them from the working man’s point of view.
I am speaking for the workers to-night. It does not make any difference
to me where they were born or what the color of their skin may be, or
what their religion is, or their creed, or anything of that kind. I ask
no question as to that; they are all of the working class, the lower
class, the class that does all of society’s useful work, that produces
all its wealth, and makes all the sacrifices of health and limb and life
through all the hours of the day and night; the class without which the
whole social fabric would collapse in an instant. It is this class
regardless of color that creates and supports all civilization; this
class that in all the ages of the past, throughout history, in every
nation on earth has been the lower class; for the badge of Labor has
always been the symbol of servitude and upon the brow of Labor there has
always been the brand of social inferiority.
In the ancient world your ancestors were slaves, owned by their masters,
whipped by their masters, put to death by their masters the same as
other domestic animals. In the Middle Ages for a thousand years the
serfs were not allowed to own an inch of soil; they could work only on
condition that they produced for the benefit of the idle, aristocratic
lord and baron who owned the land and who rioted in the luxury wrung
from their sweat and misery. They also fought for him to enlarge his
domain believing in their ignorance it was their patriotic duty to fight
and die for the sovereign baron who looked down upon them with contempt.
You are no longer the slave or the serf, but you are the wage earner in
the present capitalist system. Your interests are all identical; you do
all the useful, productive work but you do not work for yourselves; you
have no legal right to work; you can work only if you are permitted to
work by the owners of the tools with which you work. You made the tools
and use the tools; but they own them and they might almost as well own
you; for as long as you work with their tools, what you produce belongs
to them; they become fabulously rich producing nothing while you remain
poor producing everything. And this applies to white and black alike.
The race question as we come to understand it, resolves itself into a
class question. At bottom it is a class question. The capitalist cares
no more about the white worker than about the black worker. What he
wants is labor power—cheap labor power; he does not care whether it is
wrapped up in a white skin or a black skin.
Has he one bit more consideration for the white slave than he has for
the black slave? No, not at all; they are all the same to him regardless
of color; they are all in the working class; they are his legitimate
prey. He owns the natural resources; he owns the tools; they have got to
produce for him.
Under chattel slavery, the colored man seized with the aspiration to be
free, ran away from his master. You do not run away from yours; when you
run it is not away from but toward the factory whistle; you are afraid
you won’t get there soon enough. You work for your master and he becomes
rich, and he does not know you; and why should he? He belongs to the
upper class; you are in the lower class. He is useless and that is why
he is in the upper class. (Laughter and applause.) Parasites all go to
the top; they all float on the surface.
But now comes an election! That is the season of the year when their
politicians come before you white and black workers. They do not
discriminate against you colored people then. On the contrary they are
glad to look into your intelligent faces and tell you that the beads of
honest sweat that glisten on your manly brow are more precious than the
jewels that blaze and flash in the coronet of a queen. (Laughter.) That
is the one kind of jewelry—the one monopoly you absolutely control. They
tell you that they are so greatly impressed by your intelligence and so
proud to stand in your presence. But after the election is over they
fold up their tents and like the Arab, they silently fade away. They do
not associate with you; you do not belong to the same clubs they do. You
do not play golf with them on their links; you don’t wear the same kind
of clothes they do nor live in the same houses, nor eat the same kind of
food. No; they are in a class of their own, notwithstanding you are all
supposed to be absolutely equal before the law.
This is capitalism under which an insignificant minority of our people
own and control the Nation’s industries—all the sources and means of our
common life. They would if they could own the sunlight and have a meter
on every sunbeam. They have taken possession of about everything else.
You are at their mercy. When you work it is by their consent; when you
work it is for them; when you work it is primarily to produce profit for
them; not to enable you to support your wife and children; that is
purely incidental.
Under this system you workers white and black are scarcely above the
animal plane. You work and produce like the silkworm; like the coral
insect that builds islands and continents and perishes as it builds; and
when you die you leave no trace behind that you were ever upon earth.
You are not hired to think but to work. That is why they call you
“hands.†You will hear them say: “I work a hundred handsâ€; I work fifty
“Niggers.†Black “handsâ€; white “handsâ€; all “hands†(laughter); not
men, but “hands.†The capitalist calls you his “handsâ€; he himself is
not a hand; he is a head; he lives in a palace and you are his “handsâ€;
and the “hands†vote on election day to perpetuate the system under
which he is the head and they are the hands; in which he is at the top
and they at the bottom; and that is why the “hands†are told that this
is the greatest country on the face of the earth—the one country in
which all enjoy equal liberty.
The time has come for you to open your eyes and to stand erect and to
realize that you have a head as well as hands; that you can think as
well as work; and if you will but unite and think and act in accordance
with your intelligence, you need no longer to deform your hands in the
interest of the parasites that hold you in contempt. They are an
insignificant minority and yet they rule in every department of this
Government, and they rule through your ignorance, and the Socialist is
frank enough to tell you that you are ignorant that you may become
intelligent.
We do not flatter you and call you intelligent to keep you ignorant. We
would have you understand that your masters rule because of your
ignorance, because you still insist upon remaining in the Republican
party or the Democratic party—and they are equally corrupt, only more
so; both are financed from the same source, and our Comrade Chairman
quite aptly quoted Sinclair, the oil king, in confessing to the United
States Senate Committee investigating his deals that he contributes to
both Republican and Democratic campaign funds. And why should he not?
They are both his parties; both stand for his system; for the private
ownership of this nation’s industries; for the exploitation of the
working class; for wage-slavery, and if that is what you want, stay with
them; they will fulfill that program to your heart’s content.
But have you not within you the holy spark of freedom, the glowing
aspiration to be a man?—=not a slave but a MAN!= You must know what that
is—a being with a soul that throbs with a desire and aspiration to know
life. The working class do not know life. They are absorbed in
maintaining an existence and that is not life; and while they are
engaged in the endless struggle that taxes their energies, devitalizes
and ages them prematurely, wears them out and casts them on the
scrap-heap, they are not living. They are not permitted to know what
life is in its larger, nobler and diviner meaning. They are never
thrilled with those higher and holier emotions that put them in touch
with all that lifts up and elevates men and women until they can, from
the loftiest altitudes, sing to the stars. They do not know what music
is. And the capitalists themselves are not very much better off. How
wholly undeveloped they are in that higher intellectual, moral and
spiritual sense! I have met many of them. I have been amazed at their
ignorance. They are shrewd, to be sure; they are cunning; they can
instinctively see an opening for profit; oh, they have a marvellous
faculty for seeing a chance to skin somebody, and especially each other.
(Laughter.) They belong to the same church; they go to the same prayer
meeting but when they approach the edge of a “business†transaction, oh,
how keenly they eye each other; not because they do not know each other,
but because they do. Each is a good Christian and each is trying to
avoid just what he is trying to do to the other. (Applause.)
Take them just as you find them; put them on this stand to-night; ask
them a few questions about the history of their own country and you will
be appalled by their ignorance. Point out to them a magnificent painting
on canvas that breathes and throbs with genius; they have little or no
capacity for its appreciation. Point out to them a great plumed monarch
of the forest; the kind you can put your arms about it and hear its
mighty heart throb; the kind that dominates the forest by its majesty
and inspired Joyce Kilmer’s beautiful poetic homage. You remember Joyce
Kilmer—put to death, murdered in the late war; one of the fine poetic
souls slaughtered and sacrificed on the altar of Mammon. It was he who
wrote: “A tree that in the spring may wear, a nest of robins in its
hair. Poems are made by fools like me, but only God can make a tree!â€
And you point out that towering and venerable tree to the fully
developed capitalist and he regards it soberly for a moment and then
draws forth his lead pencil and figures out how many feet of commercial
lumber there are in that proposition. (Laughter.)
I wish I had time enough—but I have not—to trace American history from
the days of the Revolution when the “Fathers†made their monumental
mistake by compromising with chattel slavery. Had they but taken the
advice of Thomas Paine (applause) the Civil War would not have resulted;
that terrible sacrifice would have been averted. Thomas Paine protested
and wrote the first article ever written in this country against chattel
slavery just as he wrote the first article ever written in this country
in favor of woman’s rights—the same heroic Thomas Paine whose religious
beliefs in “The Age of Reason†that followed completely isolated him
from all intelligent understanding, from all human sympathy, and he is
not yet forgiven for having had the courage to be true to himself and to
the best he knew.
Thomas Paine inspired the Declaration of Independence that Thomas
Jefferson wrote. (Applause.)
You call Washington to-day the “father of his country.†And yet in his
day he was denounced as a “notorious outlaw.†(Applause.) The “father of
his country†was the owner of chattel slaves as were the rest of the
“fathers.†They thought that perfectly consistent with that period; it
does not detract from their historic achievement.
I can understand why the Tory press—the press of the then ruling
class—charged Washington with being a common thief for confiscating
their property. He was literally despised by them when he unsheathed his
sword to fight for independence.
Thomas Jefferson was denounced as a vicious incendiary, Sam Adams as a
disreputable agitator and Patrick Henry—you know what they said of him.
(Applause.) I stood not long ago upon the spot where he stood when he
hurled his immortal challenge in the face of the Government and
exclaimed: “Give me liberty or give me deathâ€; and I fancied I heard the
hisses of the aristocrats that thronged the gallery who despised and
denounced him as a traitor to his country. What was the state of his
country at that time? A great majority of the colonists in their
ignorance believed that God had anointed a king from on high to rule
over them, and to question the divine authority of that king was
treason, and he who was guilty must be punished without mercy. That was
the blind stupidity of the great majority. Here let it be observed that
the minorities have made the history of this world. The popular and
reactionary majorities have perished in oblivion in their own ignorance.
In every age there have been a few men and women with new ideas—ideas in
conflict with the established order of things. The class in power have
always insisted upon perpetuating that power; they want no change; they
combat every idea that suggests a change; they want to feel secure in
“the established order of things.â€
In every age there have been a few men and women with moral courage, who
stood erect and defied the storms of hatred and detraction. After a
time—after they had been persecuted, vilified and imprisoned—after they
had been burned at the stake and their ashes scattered to the winds by
the hands of hate—the slow-moving world finally caught up to where they
stood and fought for humanity and then it paused long enough to weave
garlands for their graves and erect monuments where they sleep.
There were only a few of the American revolutionary leaders; only a few;
and they stood face to face with a gainsaying populace who protested:
“We believe in the king and we must be loyal to the king.†They did not
believe that the people had capacity for self-government; they were too
weak, too helpless and dependent, and God had to provide them with a
king to rule over them. That is what they believed. There were only a
few who said: “We do not need a king; we can govern ourselvesâ€; and they
persisted in their odious agitation until they finally aroused the
colonists and then came the war and the king was overthrown; the divine
right to rule was trampled under foot with contempt; the foundations of
the Republic were laid; the immortal Declaration was issued, and for the
first time in history, politically speaking, men stood forth clothed to
a limited extent with sovereignty.
How many of you are aware of the fact that the first drop of blood shed
in that revolutionary struggle was that of a Negro? Crispus Attucks, to
whom Boston has now erected a monument, was the first to be shot down by
the British soldiers in the Boston massacre. (Applause.) And he was a
Negro—the man whose blood was first to be shed for American
independence; but you do not read that in the school histories.
(Applause.) The Negro gets no credit for that martyrdom.
If there is any institution in the history of the world, the
recollection of which should turn the cheek of humanity crimson with
shame, it is the infamous institution of chattel slavery in the United
States. (Applause.) There is no parallel to it in sheer, stark brutality
in all the history of the world. You have never been given the facts;
you never will be by the standard historians—they who represent the
interests of the ruling class who subsidize and support them. You will
never get that history until it is written by the working class itself.
And some day it will be written. Some time American history will be
reviewed. You never hear much about the people in history. You read
about the exploits of the murderous military chieftains. All history
glorifies them, but about the common people—the people who alone make
history, how little reference is made to them! McMaster made a departure
in his history and for the first time you now read about the lives of
the common people in American history. Hitherto their achievements have
not been deemed of sufficient importance to place upon record.
We come down to the final development of the institution of chattel
slavery which culminated in the terrible war. The great majority, of
course, upheld that brutal institution. And likewise the politicians and
statesmen (so-called), the editors and the preachers—oh, how many there
were who solemnly opened their Bibles and quoted passages to show that
slavery had been ordained of God himself and that it was wicked to
oppose it! Of the few heroic souls who declared it a crime Elijah
Lovejoy was one of the first, and appealed to me in my earliest boyhood.
I think I can almost hear him even now; “I have sworn eternal opposition
to slavery and by the help of God, I will not turn back.†And then they
murdered him! Garrison followed and then Wendell Phillips (applause);
and the great towering, commanding intellectual and moral figure in that
fierce struggle was Wendell Phillips. (Applause.) He saw it most clearly
of all, faced it most courageously of all, and never once faltered in
his devotion to the colored race. (Applause.) After chattel slavery had
been abolished Garrison believed that the struggle was over—but he was
mistaken—Wendell Phillips knew better, and some estrangement resulted on
that account.
Wendell Phillips, with discerning and prophetic vision, said: “This is
the prelude—just the prelude to the far greater struggle—the struggle
that will involve not only the black slaves but all the slaves of the
earth in the mighty movement for their common emancipation.†That is
what Wendell Phillips said and he wrote the first Socialist platform
ever written in the United States. Read the platform he wrote as far
back as 1871 and see how uncompromisingly he faced the situation. They
threatened him with the vengeance of the mob but he did not falter, he
never wavered.
Wendell Phillips was a most wonderful combination of head and heart,
soul and conscience (applause), and when the real truth is known about
his commanding part in that historic struggle, the colored people will
know that the real champion they had from first to last was Wendell
Philips. (Great applause.)
I am not unmindful of the heroic part that William Lloyd Garrison took,
or Theodore Parker, or Gerrit Smith who was driven insane by their
brutal persecution; or Susan B. Anthony or Elizabeth Cady Stanton or
Maria Childs, or any of those magnificent women who were in the
forefront espousing the cause of their sex and at the same time the
cause of the disfranchised Negro; who faced insult and persecution
through many years. I have them all in mind and from my heart I pay the
humble tribute of my gratitude and my admiration and love to them all.
But the greatest hero of them all was John Brown. (Thunderous applause.)
I have taken time enough to go to Charlestown and to Harper’s Ferry, and
I have walked in his footsteps all the way from the old engine house
where he made his heroic stand until he gave up his noble life on the
gallows—every step of the way. And I thought of his wondrous courage and
consecration and of the majesty, the spiritual loftiness of a human
being who could give up his life as freely as he did for a lowly and
despised race that could not understand him. There were members of that
race so subservient to the masters in their ignorance that they begged
for the privilege of braining him while he was in prison; but they only
excited his compassion because he knew it was due to the very
institution of chattel slavery that they had been sunk to that bestial
moral state.
John Brown, when the crisis came, stood forth almost alone and struck
the blow—the immortal blow that put an end to that most infamous of
human institutions. Victor Hugo from across the Atlantic protested:
“Think of a republic murdering a liberator,†when they were about to put
him to death; and after they had executed him for his heroism and his
humanitarianism, Victor Hugo said: “The time will come when you
Americans will realize that your John Brown was a greater liberator than
your George Washington.†(Applause.)
I appreciate all these heroes and martyrs, including Lincoln, who was
vilified as no other American statesman ever was by that cruel and
relentless power that organized the Ku Klux Klan after the war, and
which is now seeking to revive that fanatical institution for the
persecution of the Negro.
I am on the colored man’s side as against all those that are attempting
to keep him in servitude. (Applause.) And I am glad that the colored
people are exercising self-restraint and facing this persecution with
intelligence, which is commanding more and more respect. Let the Ku Klux
spend its force. It consists of the self-appointed custodians of
American liberty; but just let them alone; give them time and they will
soon enough complete their round and close up their record. (Applause.)
I honor and appreciate all those who stood forth through the
revolutionary conflict—through the struggle against chattel slavery—all
who served and sacrificed to make it possible for me to stand on this
platform to-night and to enjoy some degree of liberty and progress. I
thank them all, and the only way I can repay them is by doing, as they
did for me, what I can for those who are to come after us. And that is
why I am here to-night.
I want to make my modest contribution to this campaign of education and
organization that gives you the opportunity to register your protest
against capitalist corruption and misrule as well as the degree of your
class consciousness and intelligence. (Applause.)
A matter of local interest to you in this campaign is the housing
proposition. The law expires in February coming. It will not be
re-enacted by the old parties. All the combined landlords have launched
a campaign of opposition to it. This is an issue in which the workers
are especially concerned. The rich are not worried about housing
conditions. It is the workers who will be the prey of the greedy
landlords of New York. That is an important issue in this campaign and
the Socialist Party stands squarely for the re-enactment of the housing
law and for the curbing of capitalistic greed in the interest of better
housing conditions for the benefit of the working class and the
exploited and suffering poor. (Applause.)
There is another matter of local interest. I was waited on to-day at my
hotel by a delegation of policemen and City firemen. When officers of
the law call on me they usually have a warrant (laughter); but on this
occasion they were on a perfectly friendly mission.
When we had our meeting at Brooklyn the other night they had half the
police force of that section there, just as they had at Toledo, the
police surrounding the Opera House. But Socialist meetings are uniformly
orderly. (Applause.) You never hear of a disorderly Socialist meeting.
We appeal to the intelligence of the people (applause); we seek to
educate them. A Socialist meeting has something of a religious spirit in
it.
But they sent the police force there because they said “he is a very
dangerous man; there is no telling what may happen when he comes to
town.†(Laughter.) You see they are afraid of a man who tells the truth
(Applause); that is the one thing they cannot stand. (Applause.) And if
you cannot be bribed or brow-beaten—if you cannot be intimidated, if you
insist upon being true to your own soul’s integrity, and speak what is
in your heart, then of course, you must expect to pay the penalty, and I
have been and am now ready to pay to the limit. I went down to Atlanta
for three years almost; that was my fifth term in one of the peculiar
educational institutions of capitalism and it has all had its good
results. (Laughter.) But I have no bitterness; I have no resentment. I
felt sorry for the man who had to lock me up. He did not want to do it.
Soon after I was in prison I came in touch with a colored man who had a
most tragic history. He had been there for thirty years and ten years of
that he had been placed in solitary confinement because they couldn’t
break his spirit. When they insulted him he resented it and defended
himself. When I got down there I heard about him. His name was Sam
Moore. He was one of the many, many colored men who never had a chance
in life. In his childhood—in his very infancy he was tossed out into the
world; he knew only poverty and neglect; his mother was dead seven years
before he knew it. He was never in school; no one had ever given him a
kind word; buffeted about he tried to help himself and fight his way
along; he got arrested, as they all do, was put in jail, got into a
quarrel and in a fight that followed he chanced to kill another prisoner
when they sent him to the penitentiary, more than thirty years ago, and
he has been there ever since. When I came in touch with him they said
“he is a bad man.†I soon found him to be a brother. The Chaplain was
asked: “What has Debs done to Sam Moore, he is an entirely different
man?†The Chaplain answered: “Just loves him; that’s all.†(Applause.)
Oh, the magic and the power of human love, were it but understood! Sam
Moore had never been touched by the hands of kindness; everything that
was combative in his nature was developed by the cruel, inhuman
treatment he had been subjected to all his life. And when I came down
there and we met face to face on the same level, I said to myself, if I
had been born as Sam Moore was and under the same condition, I would be
Sam Moore; I would be where he is now. I am not one bit better than he.
On the contrary I was reminded of the divine Easterner who prayed to his
Allah: “Be Thou merciful to the vicious and forgive them; Thou hast
already blessed the virtuous by making them so.â€
As I thought of Sam Moore and of the environment and conditions under
which he had been reared and had to suffer and struggle, I made
allowance accordingly, and he was the last inmate I saw when I left that
prison.
There were almost three thousand human beings there. The prison is the
poor man’s institution; the rich don’t go there, no matter what crime
they may commit. About one-third of the prisoners were colored people,
and they used to come to me when they had petitions to make or there was
some little service I could render them. I used to write their letters
and I could not but sympathize with them. They tried to segregate them
in the prison. We were occasionally permitted to see moving pictures.
They admitted the white men to one side of the auditorium and the
colored men to the other side. Some of the white “superior†element
said: “Let the Niggers sit in the rearâ€; and so on the next occasion
they allowed the white men to occupy all the front seats and put the
colored men in the rear where they could hardly see the stage. They
appointed a committee to call on me to see what they could do about it.
I said “I am with you; we will protest against the injustice.†We did
and we put an end to it. After that the colored men were given the same
consideration as the white prisoners.
I loved all of those almost three thousand prisoners, charged with every
conceivable offense against society. I treated them all as if they had
been members of my own family, and there was not one of them I would not
have invited to my table or to my home. They were poor, most of them
ignorant; they never had a fair chance. They had, for the most part,
committed some petty offense and were pushed into the penitentiary and
branded as “convicts.â€
The lowest thing about a prison is often the prison guard—the only
fellow I was ashamed to associate with. (Laughter.) The last inmate I
saw when I left prison was Sam Moore. There was a fine woman in that
neighborhood whose sympathy had been enlisted, and on the day I left she
brought a beautiful cake she had baked. She said: “This is for Sam,†and
the warden said: “I will send it to himâ€; I said: “No; please send for
Sam, I wish to place it in his hands and bid him good-bye.†Sam came.
There was something of the majesty of the man about him, notwithstanding
his thirty years of cruel usage and persecution. He was like some
monarch of the forest that the tempest had riven and denuded. But he
still stood erect, unbroken in spirit. I presented him with the cake and
the tears rolled down his face. At parting we put our arms around each
other and wept together. That was my farewell scene in the Atlanta
prison. I can still hear, in broken words, the sobbing entreaty: “I want
to get out of here and to be where I can do for you and your family
anything in my power all the rest of my life.†That was Sam Moore, the
man they had said was a desperado, an incorrigible and dangerous
criminal. He was as tender and responsive as a child; the divine within
him had not been extinguished; all he needed was the touch of human
kindness; and that is what has been denied him and his race through all
the centuries.
Give a colored man the same chance, the same opportunity that you give a
white man, and he will register as high upon the mental and moral
thermometer of civilization. (Great applause.) Give him a chance! and
that is what the Socialist Party is going to do. (Applause.) We admit
colored members to our Party upon equal terms with the rest. We sit side
by side with them in our Party councils. They are welcomed gladly to all
our conferences and conventions. We treat them in no patronizing sense.
We are not doing them any favor. They are our comrades and our equals,
and we want them to have every right and privilege we enjoy.
I wish to speak a final word for the policemen and firemen. When they
came to see me to-day and stated their mission, I declared myself in
favor of their referendum. It is with this referendum they propose to
establish a wage minimum of $2,500. The policemen and firemen are in the
working class—all of them; and we are with them in their efforts to
secure a living wage. (Applause.) You sometimes think these policemen,
when they seek to “protect society against the Socialists,†are hostile
to us. When we were at Brooklyn, as I passed through their serried ranks
they whispered to me: “We are with you.†(Applause.) One of them said:
“It will not do for the Ku Klux to try to do anything to you here
to-night.†(Laughter.) They are trying to get $2,500 a year and they are
entitled to it; considering the cost of living $2,500 with a family to
support is a small enough income. We are with them and we hope you will
all join in their effort to secure a living wage for themselves and
their families. (Applause.)
I want to say a word for the “Messenger†and to commend the high ability
of its editorial management. I read it with especial pride and
satisfaction. It is a high grade publication. It is a true champion of
the colored workers and every one of you ought to give it your
encouragement and support.
I appeal directly to you colored workers. You have got to build up your
own press; you have got to develop your own power; you will never count
until you do. Unite with all other workers in the unions; unite with
them in the Socialist Party; develop your industrial power and your
political power. Most of you are inclined to buy the capitalist
newspapers and support the capitalist press and every time there is a
strike you know what side they are on. You will never hear the truth
until you hear it through your own press.
Then there is the daily “Leader,†a Labor paper published in New York.
The “Leader†ought to have the support of the workers. We have got to
build up a press of our own. It is vitally important because everything
depends upon education.
It is a tremendous struggle. It is going to take time and what most
people call sacrifice. There is no sacrifice, however, so far as I am
concerned, because what I can give the cause I give with joy and it
comes back to me in riches untold. I have made no sacrifice for
Socialism. I would sacrifice only if I refused the privilege of serving
it. I would sacrifice only if I violated my conscience and failed to
give myself to this struggle with every atom of my energy and every drop
of my blood. And with what joy! It keeps me young and vigorous and alive
in action. It is a privilege and not a sacrifice to go to jail for the
cause. (Applause.) How gladly I would spend the rest of my days there if
need be, or go to the gallows, or anywhere in the service of Socialism!
(Great applause.)
You and I and all of us are alike interested in the present campaign.
You hear the same “argument†on the part of the old politicians you have
heard here in New York for over forty years. I am not personally
interested in their vilification of each other—their mutual charges and
accusations. Take their word for it and they are all grafters and
thieves. They say so and they certainly know each other for they have
been in close affiliation for a long time. If you are going to cast your
vote for either of these corrupt capitalist parties and if you are going
to give your support to those candidates who are committed to keep you
in servitude how can you look yourselves in the face on the day
following election without a blush of shame?
Sever your relations with these capitalist parties that are of the past.
They disgrace the memory of Jefferson and Lincoln. Sever your relations
with them and join this new party, this party of the future, especially
you young people. It is vain to appeal to some of the older ones; they
are petrified; they have long since ceased to think; they are led; they
belong to the Republican party because their father did, or to the
Democratic party because their grandfather did. Everything since their
grandfather lived has changed except their grandsons. (Laughter.) If you
have the spirit of the future; if you have the aspirations to be men and
women; if you are capable of thinking for yourselves, stand up for just
once and see how long a shadow you can cast in the sunlight; take an
inventory of your mental and moral resources and ask yourselves in sober
earnest: “What can we do for ourselves, and for our class, and for
humanity� Think!! You have never done that in the past. You have the
capacity to see, to think, to understand, and to take your place in this
great modern crusade, the greatest in all history.
Everywhere the awakening workers are lifting their bowed bodies from the
earth—these toiling and producing masses who have been the mudsills of
society through all the ages past. They are learning at last how to
stand erect and hold up their heads and press forward toward the dawn,
keeping step to the inspiring heart throbs of the impending Social
revolution. They are of all races; they are of all colors, all creeds,
all nationalities. They have made a great beginning in Russia.
(Applause.) The Soviet Republic has stood for five years against the
combined capitalisms of the world; vilified and misrepresented
shamefully, but they still hold the fort. The reason we do not recognize
their Republic is because for the first time in history they have set up
a Government of the working class; and if that experiment succeeds,
good-bye to capitalism throughout the world! (Applause.) That is why our
capitalist Government does not recognize Soviet Russia. We were not too
proud to recognize the Czar nor to have intercourse with Russia whilst
Siberia was in existence and human beings were treated like wild beasts;
when women were put under the lash and sent to Siberia and brutalized
and dehumanized. We could calmly contemplate all this and our President
could send congratulations on his birthday to the imperial Czar of
Russia. We could then have perfect intercourse with that Government, but
we are now so sensitive under our present high standard of moral ethics
that we cannot recognize Soviet Russia. But the time will come when the
United States will recognize the Soviet Republic of the Russian people.
Meanwhile we will wait, watch and work. We will improve our minds and
develop our capacity to think and act together. We shall get closer and
closer in touch day by day, increasing the store of our knowledge,
dispelling the darkness of ignorance, and moving steadily toward the
light.
You and I and all of us are comrades; we are brothers and sisters. Let
us get into perfect unity with each other and stand upon one common
basis of equality with the high aspiration to emancipate ourselves from
the degrading thraldoms of past ages. Let us as workers organize
industrially so that we may be fitted to take control of all industry.
We will then relieve the Rockefellers, the Garys and the Sinclairs of
their sinecure jobs; we will give them an opportunity to make an honest
living for the first time in their lives. (Applause.) We will take full
possession of industry. Every man and woman will have the inalienable
right to work with the most improved machinery. The machine will be the
only slave—no body to starve, no back to scar, no heart to break, no
soul to crush. The machine will work for us and we shall then have
leisure time enough to cultivate the graces of life; to know and love
and serve each other, and to begin the march to the first real
civilization the world has ever known. The liberating hour is soon to
strike—and if you are true to yourselves you can speed the day of its
coming. Triumphant International Socialism will then proclaim the
emancipation of the working class and the brotherhood of all mankind. At
last that inspiring vision of Ingersoll will have been realized:
“I can see a world where thrones have crumbled and where kings are dust.
The aristocracy of idleness has perished from the earth. I can see a
world without a slave; man at last is free. Nature’s forces have by
science been enslaved. Lightning and light, wind and wave, frost and
flame and all the secret, subtle forces of earth and air are the
tireless toilers for the human race. I can see a world at peace, adorned
with every form of art, with music’s myriad voices thrilled while lips
are rich with words of love and truth. A world in which no exile sighs,
no prisoner mourns—upon which the shadow of the cruel gallows no longer
falls. I can see a world where Labor reaps its full reward and work and
worth go hand in hand. I can see a race without disease of flesh or
brain, shapely and fair, the married harmony of form and function, and
as I look, life lengthens, joy deepens, love canopies the earth, while
over all in the great dome there shines the eternal star of hope.â€
And in that crowning hour men and women can walk the highlands side by
side and enjoy the enrapturing vision of a land without a master, a land
without a slave; a land radiant and resplendent in the perfect triumph
of the brotherhood of all mankind.
And now from my heart I thank you for the patience and the kindly
interest with which you have listened to me. I thank you for having been
here to-night and for giving me the privilege of appearing upon the
platform with these comrades that I know you are going to stand by on
Tuesday next—Comrade Lucille Randolph, your candidate, whom I would be
so proud to vote for it if I could, and Comrade Ollendorff, who
incarnate the true spirit, the high principles and the lofty ideals of
the Socialist movement. They are your candidates and my candidates, and
if you are true to them as they have been to you, they will be
triumphantly elected next week. And now good-night and a thousand thanks
and good wishes! (Great and prolonged applause.)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Read The Messenger—the only radical Negro publication in America.
* * * * *
Follow its fearless, scientific, class-struggle interpretation of the
Negro Problem, together with other modern economic, political and social
questions.
* * * * *
The report of the U. S. Department of Justice to the U. S. Senate says:
“The Messenger, the monthly magazine published in New York, is BY LONG
ODDS, the most able and most dangerous of all the Negro publications.â€
* * * * *
Edited by A. Philip Randolph and Chandler
Owen. Price, per copy, 15c; per year, $1.50.
Office: 2311 7th Avenue, New York City.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
â— Typos fixed; non-standard spelling and dialect retained.
â— Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.
â— Enclosed bold font in =equals=.
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