Audubon Republican. [volume] (Audubon, Iowa) 1894-1925, 1903-11-19
The pebs Lecture.

Eugene v. Debs, the noted social
ist and labor leader, delivered his lee.
ture on industrial Evolution before
an Audubon audience In the M. f..
church Monday night, speaking under
/ the auspices of the Columbian Club.
| The coming of Mr.. Debs was really d
more important event than many OF
our people realized. The audience
was not very large partly owing to
the disagreeable weather prevailing
! and we presume partly owing to cer-
tain antipathy many of our people
have against the speaker because of
his public conduct some years since.
A little history of nine years ago
seems pertinent now. In June, 1894, u
bitter strike Of the employees of the
Pullman Car Co., was on. The COM
pany shut down their works. Debs
who was then president of the Ameri-
can Railway Union took hand in
the matter, instituting sympathetic
strike. He first tried to get the Pull
man company to submit the defer
ences to arbitration. Failing to get
arbitration Debs ordered railway EN-
ployes belonging to his union, which
included most conductors, engineers,
firemen, breakmen, switchmen, ETC.,
not to handle trains which contained
Pullman cars, or to operate roads that
used them. This soon tied up the
trains of twenty two roads entering
Chicago. 1t interfered with the hand
ling of the mails and with interstate
travel and commerce. An injunction
was obtained from Judge Grosscup of
the U. s. district court, restraining
Debs from interfering with mails and
Interstate traffic, but he paid no at
tention to this and some other labor
leaders threatened additional strikes In
retaliation. Debs was arrested for
violating the injunction. Property
was being destroyed. Anarchy was
sticking its head up and9Gov. Altgeld
was in sympathy with it, The United
States courts asked for National
troops to help them in enforcing their
orders. President Cleveland sent
some. Atgeld protested that the
rights of the state of Illinois were inn
posed upon by the invasion of nation
al troops. Cleveland answered by
sending more troops. When the pub
lie began to realize that u few mis-
guided labor leaders had gone too far
and had become practical traitors and
nearly rebels against the government,
its opinion and sympathy veered away
from the labor organizations and the
out Cry was almost universal that or
der be restored. The strike gave way.
Debs was tried and found guilty of
disobeying the injunction and served
q six months term of Imprisonment
for 1t. Since then the people have
known him as socialist leader and
lecturer and as u socialist candidate
for president in 1900.
The lecture Monday evening was en-
tertaining. The speaker makes few
gestures. His style of speaking Is
direct. 1t is striking in that feature
that it is stripped of all verbiage He
seems as one imbued with his thought.
He thinks he has mission and mes
sage. We cannot doubt his sincerity
although we do doubt the correctness
of some of his statements and many
of his conclusions. His main thought
is that competition has become so In
tense that 1t is like war, cruel, and
that it ought to be eliminated He
charges it as being the cause of most
of our ills such as insanity, crime and
poverty. Much of his lecture was a
portrayal of the bad conditions exist
ing among the poor. Yet he said he
was not pessimist. Yet he gave
none of the brighter side. AS to rem
edies he was brief. This is mostly
the case of those who would destroy
present conditions, they seldom have
better plans to offer in their stead.
His only remedy was government own
ership of public utilities. He did not
elaborate, but the inference was nat
ural that public ownership of all prop
erty was desired. In this arrange
ment the thriftless man and the lag
gard and lazy would have the same
benefits as the Industrious. II would
surely take the handspring out of
much of human endeavor. Human
nature would have to be fixed over
and made different. 1t sounds inn
practical, dreamy, Utopian. II is no
new theory, but has been tried over
and over in colonies and commun-
tiles and it always fails. There are
wrongs existing in modern Industrial
society, but socialism offers tenfold
worse conditions.
But Debs' coming gave US all some
thing to think about. The Audubon
audience gave him respectful hear
ing, but gave him no cheers.