The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1895-11-26
DEBS A SLAYER.
An Interview With the Great
Labor Leader.
Is Not Discouraged and Will
Keep Up the Fight.
FOR LABOR'S CAUSE.
Wants Laws That Confined Him
Revised.
May Go On a Lecture Tour in a
Few Months.

CHICAGO, NOV. 26.-1n an interview
Eugene V. Debs, president of the Ameri-
can Railway union, said regarding his
imprisonment and his future:
II have been deprived of my liberty,
and for a cause which still believe was
right and for which would cheerfully
stand imprisonment were the same issue
involved again. 1 never saw a grander
vindication than that given me by the
trades unions of Chicago, No man
could feel more fattered, and yet de-
sire TO say that l do not recognize It as q
personal demonstration but rather the
principle for which l stood at the time OF
the strike.
81 do not believe that there will ever
be strike of the proportions of that a
year ago. The conditions have entirely
changed since thep. do not mean that
he grievances have since ceased to ex-
ist, but rather that the general managers
who were so prominent in our prosecu-
ton would rather submit to arbitration
than have their employees go out on
strike.
NY confinement has given me quiet
and food for thought. l have thought
of many things. Prominent among these
are the laws under which myself and the
other officers of our Organization
were convicted, and which denied
us the right of trial by jury. That law
ought to be changed. Every man has
the right to be tried by a jury of his
peers. A second is the law by injunc-
lion. In my opinion we might as well
have no law at all as to have one which
permits judge who knows nothing of
the surrounding circumstances to be
called IN to regulate the existence of
things by Injunction. No one has over
heard of an organization of working
/ Ii ~
their employees from cutting their wages.
Why? The judge does not sit on the
bench who would grant such injunction,
and yet workingmen are compelled by
Injunction to refrain from interfering
with the employment of men who have
taken their places when they
have struck for better wages or
| more humane treatment. Could
anything be more inhumane? Courts,
however, we believe to have been con-
stituted 10 obey the behests of those high
in the councils of men, and | need not
tell you who compose this class
sin common with the rank and file of
the American Railway union, love and
| revere the stars and stripes of the United
States. Many of our members fought
for their preservation. We have not a
member who would not cheerfully to-
morrow give up his life in their defense,
out suspect some of those who have
been arrayed against US would have sub
| stitutes, as some of them had before,
and others would have to be drafted be.
fore they shouldered a gun in the de
Tense of the country in which they have
| lived and amassed fortunes, which few
| of them have earned.
81 shall spend several months looking
| over he business of my Office as presi-
| dent OF the American Railway uniOn
| That finished l shall be at liberty fol
some time, and the first invitation have
accepted to leave home is to address the
working men Of Milwaukee on matters
pertaining TO them. l do not know thai
l shall enter upon an extended lecture
| ;our. but l may do this if it shall seem
for the best interests of the American
Railway union. l have the strictest
| confidence in its future"