“His pulse, if you felt it, throbbed apart From the throbbing pulse of the people’s heart.”
On January 1, 1897, Debs issued a circular to the members of the A. R. U. entitled “Present Conditions and Future Duties,” in which he reviewed the political, industrial and economic conditions and came out boldly for Socialism. Among other things he said:
“The issue is Socialism vs. Capitalism. I am for Socialism because I am for humanity. We have been cursed with the reign of gold long enough. Money constitutes no proper basis of civilization. The time has come to regenerate society—we are on the eve of a universal change.”
When the A. R. U. held its convention at Chicago in June, 1897, he and its members favored political action, and the Social Democratic party was organized June 21, 1897, and this was the beginning of what is now known as the Socialist party of America.
The year 1894 marks a great historical change in the attitude of laborers towards government, for it was during that memorable strike that the now famous injunction was used to cripple the efforts of the workers to improve their condition by the lawful methods of the general strike. The late and now great (?) Cleveland, in spite of the traditional fealty of the Democratic party to state sovereignty, over the protests of Governor Altgeld of Illinois, who declared that the state was amply able to protect life and property in its territory, sent Federal troops into Chicago and disorder followed, and the strike was lost and, as stated, its leader thrown into prison.
Government by injunction is today the “slogan” of both old parties, and their hypocritical utterances as to this issue are convincing the American working people that with the army as a police force government by corporations has taken the place of government by the people and the farmers exploited by the packers’ and elevator and railroad interests, the miner snubbed everywhere by the coal barons and the vast and increasing army of the unemployed, young and outcast old men are now thinking in terms of political strike, rather than in terms of boycott and idle protest.
The hours of work are now short enough to the workers, and far too short to provide food, shelter and clothing for themselves and families in the midst of industrial stagnation, caused by exhausting the purchasing power of the producers of wealth through the blind greed of those who claim the right to take unto themselves the earth and its exhaustless resources for abundantly supplying the needs of all.