DEBS, EUGENE V.

born Nov. 5, 1855, Terre Haute, Ind., U.S. died Oct. 20, 1926, Elmhurst, Ill. in full Eugene Victor Debs labour organizer and Socialist Party candidate for U.S. president five times between 1900 and 1920. Leaving home at age 14 to work in the railroad shops, Debs later became a locomotive fireman. In 1875 he helped organize a local lodge of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen, of which he was elected national secretary and treasurer in 1880. He also served as city clerk of Terre Haute (187983) and as a member of the Indiana legislature (1885). From his earliest days, Debs was a confirmed advocate of labour organization by industry rather than by craft. After trying unsuccessfully to federate the various existing railroad brotherhoods, he became president (1893) of the newly established American Railway Union. Debs's union won national prominence when it conducted a successful strike against the Great Northern Railroad (April 1894) for higher wages. He was further projected into the limelight when sentenced to six months in jail (MayNovember 1895) after a federal injunction halted the Chicago Pullman Palace Car Company strike, which he was helping to direct. (See Pullman Strike.) During his prison term at Woodstock, Ill., Debs was deeply influenced by his broad readingincluding the works of Karl Marxand subsequently became increasingly critical of traditional political and economic concepts, especially capitalism. Sympathetic toward Populist doctrines, he campaigned for the Democratic-Populist presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan in 1896. The following year he announced his conversion to socialism and in 1898 led in establishing the Socialist Party of America, though the name was not adopted until 1901. Debs was the party's presidential candidate in 1900 but polled only 96,000 votes, a total he raised to 400,000 in 1904. In 1905 he helped found the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), but he soon withdrew because of its radicalism. Debs was again the Socialist candidate for president in 1908 and 1912 but refused the nomination in 1916. His highest popular vote (about 915,000) was cast in 1920even though he was then in prison for criticizing the government's prosecution of persons charged with sedition in violation of the 1917 Espionage Act. He was released from prison by presidential order in 1921. His citizenship, which he lost when he was convicted of sedition in 1918, was not restored until 1976. Neither an intellectual nor a hardheaded politician, Debs won support through his personal warmth, integrity, and sincerity. He was extremely effective as a public speaker and made his living primarily as a lecturer and contributor-editor to various periodicals. Among his best-known writings are a pamphlet, Unionism and Socialism (1904), and a book, Walls and Bars (1927).