The previous article, the fifth in the series, told about the immediate aftermath of the failed Pullman strike. In that, you can find a summary of the first four articles, and the story of the Governor of Illinois, John P. Altgeld, pleading with George Pullman to show some humanity and help his starving ex-employees (Pullman stiffed him). You also see the U.S. commission that investigated the strike, and how Pullman and his lieutenant Wickes were grilled and didn’t give an inch. Eugene Debs, the strike leader, goes to jail the first time, and then faces two more trials, with Clarence Darrow as his attorney.
Spoiler: Debs won. Pullman, even though he got everything he wanted, was broken by the strike and died three years later. Debs ran for President five times, and got a million votes while he was prison. Here’s the PBS documentary on him.
I thought that my previous article was going to be the last in the series, but damn, there’s just so much history there. Let’s see the fireworks in the first trial for contempt of court for the injunction. Here’s the Chicago Tribune from Sept. 27 with a clickbait headline (remember, they called him “Dictator Debs” right from the start):
DARROW HURTS DEBS
COUNSEL FOR THE EX-DICTATOR FLIES INTO A RAGE.
He Scores the Attorneys for the Other Side and Quotes Scripture in His "Roast" of Them—He Has a Hot Passage with Mr. Milchrist, and the Idea Is Prevalent That the Case of the Ex-Dictator and His Associates Is Not Improved by Darrow's Action.
As soon as the Debs trial opened yesterday morning. Judge Woods announced to counsel the arguments would end Friday afternoon. if not sooner. This announcement set counsel to making a new division of time, which assigned yesterday to Mr. Bancroft for the Santa Fe. Mr. Darrow for the defense, and Mr. Rosenthal for the government; today to Mr. Gregory for the defense and Mr. Miller for the Santa Fe; and tomorrow to Mr. Erwin for the defense and Mr. Walker for the government. Although Mr. Bancroft occupied the first hour in the morning. and Mr. Rosenthal the last hour in the afternoon, the four and a half intermediate hours were taken up by Mr. Darrow, who was credited with having made an exceedingly able argument. Judge Woods honored him not only with close attention, but with several colloquies, in which he put supposititious cases to Mr. Darrow in order to test the soundness of his statement of principles of law. Most of these supposed cases seemed to embarrass the speaker a good deal. Mr. Darrow's argument was both important and exciting. It was important because it disclosed fur the first time the line of defense. Although the defendants' answers denied they had any connection with or knowledge of the telegrams sent out after the injunction was served on them Mr. Darrow opened his speech with a frank and careless admission on this point. He said he did not deny the defendants had after being served directed a strike and sent out telegrams. His position was they had a perfect right to do so. and Judge Woods hastened to say he thought so too. This opinion was expressed repeatedly by the Judge and Mr. Darrow during the day.
Darrow's Row with Milchrist.
The exciting feature of the speech was the passage in which Mr. Darrow resented Mr. Milchrist's characterization of the defendants themselves as "craven cowards." Mr. Darrow referred to Mr. Milchrist contemptuously as "an accident," and one who stood where he did “by chance," and aspersed men better than he was himself. As for Mr. Bancroft and Mr. Miller, he said they defended the railroads because they were employed to do it, and they reminded him of the scripture—"the ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master's crib." Their railroad, he said. was in a receiver's hands, because of its contempt for the law, and it ill became its attorneys to prosecute the defendants for contempt of court. The sensation which this vituperation created was entirely against Mr. Darrow and his cause, but some expressed surprise at Judge Wood's permitting him to go on with it.
… [I love this part]
Mr. Milchrist. said Mr. Darrow, had said he had never in his career as a prosecutor seen guiltier or more dastardly offenders brought into court than the defendants.
“But," said Mr. Darrow, "I never knew a man who had more abused an office in which chance had placed him than Mr. Milchrist. His language was not brave, if not cowardly." At this the color came and went fast in Mr. Milchrist's face, and he said: "I am responsible for my words. I will not take lessons from you in professional ethics."
"You ought to take lessons from some one," retorted Mr. Darrow. He then attacked the attorneys for the Santa Fe, Mr. Bancroft and Mr. Miller, concluding with the scripture quotation, "The ox knoweth his owner and the ass his master's crib."
Trials are usually mind-numbingly boring. I wish I’d been there for this one.
Darrow’s argument was that the injunction was illegal, and he took it all the way to the Supreme Court, but lost. Debs was convicted of contempt of court, and sentenced to six months in jail. Since Cook County Jail was overcrowded, he served his time in Woodstock, a town northwest of Chicago and the county seat of McHenry County.
Now came his conspiracy trial, which, being a criminal matter, required a jury. He was let out of jail temporarily to attend it.
Darrow sought from the start to put the General Managers Association on trial instead of Debs.
This is an historic case which will count much for liberty or against liberty.… Conspiracy, from the days of tyranny in England down to the day the General Managers' Association used it as a club, has been the favorite weapon of every tyrant. It is an effort to punish the crime of thought.
The prosecution made the strategic error of asking for the minutes of the ARU’s meetings during the strike. They were already public, but this gave Darrow a golden opportunity to ask for the GMA’s minutes as well, and to subpoena George Pullman himself. Being no dummy, that’s what he did.
[I don’t know the Rules of Evidence well enough to know if this was a “counselor has opened the door” moment at trial. I know sometimes a subject is considered off-limits unless one side makes the mistake of raising it. In other words, if they hadn’t asked for the ARU’s minutes, would Darrow have been able to do that? Don’t know.]
In any case, this was the key moment. Pullman had been so upset at the grilling he’d endured by the Strike Commission that he evaded the process server and skipped town. According to The Edge of Anarchy:
George Pullman, whom Darrow described as "that man whose name is odious wherever men have a drop of blood," played a bit part in the trial. Remembering his unpleasant grilling before the Strike Commission, he panicked when a process server appeared at his office with a subpoena to appear as a witness in the conspiracy trial. Pullman ducked out the back door, hurried to the train station, and left Chicago. He never did testify, nor was he held in contempt of court.
The government’s case was falling apart. Fortuitously for them (insert “irony” emoji), a juror fell ill, and the judge used the excuse to delay the trial instead of bringing in a substitute juror. The charges were eventually dropped. However, Debs was still in jail for the contempt charge.
Debs’ Time in Jail
The Hollywood image of a gray, concrete hellhole filled with yelling inmates and stone-faced guards does not quite fit this jail. This article tells of a reporter’s visit with him there.
It was in this corridor that I found Mr. Debs and his associates. Debs and one or two of his followers were sitting at a table busily engaged in writing, while the others were comfortably seated in big wooden chairs, reading newspapers and books. Debs jumped from his seat and bounded down the corridor to give me a hearty welcome at the door.
“Now you must take a seat and make yourself at home,” he spoke, smiling over his application of that old Hoosier greeting to these iron-barred surroundings.
But under the influence of Debs’ manner I had soon become oblivious to my surroundings and felt as if I were “covering an assignment” at a conference in labor headquarters. This lack of feeling of restraint for the time being was also largely due to the liberal rules of Sheriff Eckert, who allows his distinguished prisoners all the liberty possible under the circumstances. They were allowed to walk into the yard and take exercise. No handcuffs and no balls and chains and no guards have been considered necessary.
…
On the second days of their confinement here Debs and his six associates organized themselves into a Cooperative Colony, and they named their present abode “Liberty Jail.” They have taken up the study of political economy, their dream of cooperation, mutualism, Socialism. All of them hold virtually to the same opinions, for all are infidels in religion, populists in politics, and labor agitators in general. Their one redeeming feature is that all believe in free silver.
Debs is president of this little cooperative colony. Each man has been assigned a duty. Martin J. Elliott has been made inspector, in charge of bunks and quarters. When the little alarm clock strikes at 6 o’clock every morning Inspector Elliott goes to the door of each cell and yells, “Six o’clock!” If a man is not up and dressed within 15 minutes he is subject to a fine. William E. Burns, who has been made “turnkey,” unlocks the door leading into the corridor of the jail. All march out in line, under command of James Hogan, who has been given the title of Colonel. Sheriff Eckert has loaned them an old army musket, which he carried through the Civil War. Colonel Hogan gives the orders and each man in turn takes this old musket and goes through the manual of military tactics. The prisoners have provided themselves with a punching bag, dumb-bells, and an elastic exerciser. This military and gymnastic exercise lasts until 7:30 o’clock, when all go to breakfast. By the courtesy of Sheriff Eckert they are allowed to step out of the jail proper and take their meals in his private dining room, a privilege which is not accorded to the five other prisoners in the jail. Breakfast lasts 30 minutes, with or without grace.
From 8 o’clock to noon is the study hour, with Debs in charge. All study economics. Every man takes a book. Absolute silence prevails and one could hear a pin drop. The jail corridor is a veritable schoolroom.
At 15 minutes after 12 o’clock the men take exercise by walking in the jail yard. At 1 o’clock dinner is announced.
On November 22, 1895 he was released, and took the train back to Chicago. The Chicago Tribune details his reception at the train station.
[I love this dramatic recreation of the event. No one would write like this anymore.]
GO WILD OVER DEBS
Thousands of Men Greet Him on His Arrival Here.
CHEER AND SING SONGS.
Labor Organizations Parade the Streets with Him.
BRING HIM FROM HIS CELL.
Celebration Over His Release Held at Battery D.
HOPKINS NOT A STRIKEBREAKER.
When Eugene V. Debs stepped from the train last night that brought him from Woodstock to Chicago he faced one of the most remarkable throngs of men ever brought together. There were 10,000 workingmen crowded into and around the big Northwestern Depot. They cheered, roared, sang, laughed, cried, and groaned. They stamped up and down the platform, surged against the coaches, swayed to and fro, brushed aside the policemen there to hold them in check, and, in fact, went wild with the enthusiasm they were worked up to at the sight of the man they call their hero released from jail, whither he was sent by the Government of the United States.
Debs has been placed in many strange positions, but he can never forget his reception in Chicago on his return from the Woodstock Jail. For fifteen minutes after the big train reached the depot there was no sign or semblance of order in the mass of struggling men. And then, when the 300 others who came with Debs on the train joined their forces to the roaring multitude already there the depot seemed fairly in the possession of a wild mob which overran into the street and reached clear out on the Wells street bridge.
Crowd Is Uncontrollable.
Marshals and other men in authority tried to aid the police in forming the mob into something like an order of parade, but it was useless. Nothing could be done with it on the order or suggestion of any man. All that could be accomplished was acted upon finally, and that was for the pushing, shouting enthusiasts to take matters in their own control and march when they felt like it.
Finally, with much swearing and pushing and pulling, a path was cleared for the band which came with Debs, and it squeezed its way outside the depot and started to move south across the bridge. Then the marshals shouted again, and the parade was fairly well under way. There was no sort of order in it, however. Men linked arm with the men next to them and stepped out. The few women in the throng, apparently oblivious to the fact that it was raining hard, tramped sloppily along, and in a short time the howling crowd was out of the depot and strung along and across Wells Street bridge into Fifth avenue.
Debs Appears
Then came Debs. He had been kept somewhere near the rear until the parade was formed, but it was a hard job for his bodyguard to protect him from the wild men who insisted in crowding where he was and shaking his hand and pulling him this way and that. It had been arranged for Debs to ride to Battery D in a carriage, but Eugene knew a trick worth two of that. He would walk. If walking was good enough for the men who had come to welcome him it was good enough for him. And he did walk the entire distance, with the exception of a half a block when he was carried along on the wobbly, uncertain shoulders of from three to a dozen of the more excited ones near him.
Debs didn't like this at all. He saw a good chance for a roll in the muddy street, as his perch was as dangerous as it was uncomfortable. So when the middle of the bridge was reached Debs prevailed upon his too kind friends to set him on his feet. They did so under protest, and then the leader of the great strike fell in line and walked to the Battery.
Debs in Brief
Here he is (lower left) at age 14, already working on the railroad (I love this picture):
We covered his role in the Pullman strike extensively. After getting out of prison, he ran for President five times on the Socialist ticket
The Criminal Charge That Stuck
Debs did go to a regular penitentiary in Atlanta for speaking out against US involvement in World War I. While in prison, he ran again for President and received nearly a million votes. It’s worth getting into this in some depth.
What the Statutes Said
In 1915, two years before the US declaration of war, President Woodrow Wilson pushed for the original Espionage Act:
There are citizens of the United States, I blush to admit, born under other flags but welcomed under our generous naturalization laws to the full freedom and opportunity of America, who have poured the poison of disloyalty into the very arteries of our national life; who have sought to bring the authority and good name of our Government into contempt, to destroy our industries wherever they thought it effective for their vindictive purposes to strike at them, and to debase our politics to the uses of foreign intrigue ... I urge you to enact such laws at the earliest possible moment and feel that in doing so I am urging you to do nothing less than save the honor and self-respect of the nation. Such creatures of passion, disloyalty, and anarchy must be crushed out. They are not many, but they are infinitely malignant, and the hand of our power should close over them at once. They have formed plots to destroy property, they have entered into conspiracies against the neutrality of the Government, they have sought to pry into every confidential transaction of the Government in order to serve interests alien to our own. It is possible to deal with these things very effectually. I need not suggest the terms in which they may be dealt with.
Congress dithered on this bill until war was declared in April 1917. The original bill, strongly backed by Wilson, included press censorship with prior restraint, and Wilson insisted, “Authority to exercise censorship over the press....is absolutely necessary to the public safety." But Congress passed the bill without press censorship. It made it a crime (from Wikipedia):
To convey information with the intent to interfere with the operation or success of the armed forces of the United States or to promote its enemies' success. This was punishable by death or imprisonment for not more than 30 years or both.
To convey false reports or false statements with intent to interfere with the operation or success of the military or naval forces of the United States or to promote the success of its enemies when the United States is at war, to cause or attempt to cause insubordination, disloyalty, mutiny, refusal of duty, in the military or naval forces of the United States, or to willfully obstruct the recruiting or enlistment service of the United States. This was punishable by a maximum fine of $10,000 or by imprisonment for not more than 20 years or both.
The act commonly called the Sedition Act was also used to prosecute Debs. It was later repealed.
It forbade the use of "disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language" about the United States government, its flag, or its armed forces or that caused others to view the American government or its institutions with contempt.
What Debs Said
In Canton, Ohio Debs made a speech not dissimilar to what he’d been saying for years:
The entire speech is way too long to reprint in its entirety (link). Here are some excerpts (here’s a definition of Junker a term which he applies to American capitalists):
A little more history along the same line. I have a distinct recollection of it. It occurred fifteen years ago when Prince Henry came here. All of our plutocracy, all of the wealthy representatives living along Fifth Avenue — all, all of them — threw their palace doors wide open and received Prince Henry with open arms. But they were not satisfied with this; they got down and groveled in the dust at his feet.
Our plutocracy — women and men alike — vied with each other to lick the boots of Prince Henry, the brother and representative of the Beast of Berlin. And still our plutocracy, our Junkers, would have us believe that all the Junkers are confined to Germany. It is precisely because we refuse to believe this that they brand us as disloyalists. They want our eyes focused on the Junkers in Berlin so that we will not see those within our own borders.
I hate, I loathe, I despise Junkers and junkerdom. I have no earthly use for the Junkers of Germany, and not one particle more use for the Junkers in the United States.
….
The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and all to lose — especially their lives.
They have always taught and trained you to believe it to be your patriotic duty to go to war and to have yourselves slaughtered at their command. But in all the history of the world you, the people, have never had a voice in declaring war, and strange as it certainly appears, no war by any nation in any age has ever been declared by the people.
And here let me emphasize the fact — and it cannot be repeated too often — that the working class who fight all the battles, the working class who make the supreme sacrifices, the working class who freely shed their blood and furnish the corpses, have never yet had a voice in either declaring war or making peace. It is the ruling class that invariably does both. They alone declare war and they alone make peace.
The Trial
The government sent a stenographer to the Canton speech, and the US Attorney announced that he would indict Debs. The Canton Repository gives this account:
In the Supreme Court case "Schenck v. United States," socialists were accused of urging resistance to the draft among those eligible to serve. In a unanimous opinion upholding the case, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes argued "the most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic."
Debs' trial for sedition was a mess. In testimony, it became clear that Wertz's stenographer — a car salesman — had failed to transcribe most of the speech. Wertz called several draft-age men in a vain attempt to prove the speech discouraged registration. However, each one had registered, and one was even in uniform.
The defense called only one witness to the stand: Debs, who promptly admitted his guilt. Ignoring objections from prosecutors, the judge then allowed him to address the court for nearly two hours.
"What you may choose to do to me will be of small consequence after all," Debs said, concluding his remarks. "I am not on trial here. There is an infinitely greater issue that is being tried in this court today. American institutions are on trial before a court of American citizens. Time will tell."
The jury found him guilty. On Nov. 18, 1918 — a week after Armistice Day — he was sentenced to three concurrent 10-year sentences and lost his right to vote. Though he appealed his conviction to the Supreme Court, Chief Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. found a clear intention to obstruct the draft.
[It does seem to me that Clarence Darrow, with whom Debs had had a falling-out over Darrow’s support for the war, could have gotten him off. Admitting his guilt doesn’t seem like a smart move.]
He went to prison in 1919.
Election of 1920
He was nominated by the Socialist Party for President again, while he was in prison
He received 919,799 votes, which was 3.4% of the total. In 1921, President Harding commuted his sentence to time served. He died in 1926.
Thanks for the hard work on this series! Great stuff.
Thanks 🙏 again!