ABSTRACT
Eugene Victor Debs (1855–1926) was born in Terre Haute, Indiana. In the 1890s, through his work in the railroad industry, Debs became increasingly disenchanted with the way workers were treated under industrial capitalism. He became active in unionization efforts, including the famous “Pullman Strike,” which was violently broken by the U.S. Army, resulting in the deaths of 30 workers. Debs would go on to help found one of the most important unions in American history, the International Workers of the World (or “Wobblies”) in 1905. He would also run for president five times as the Socialist Party candidate, campaigning for the last time from a prison cell in 1920 while serving time for opposing American entry into World War I and urging resistance to the draft. In this speech, one of the last before his death, Debs argues for the creation of a new worker-based socialist political party that would counter the shared capitalist interests of those elites he believed were controlling the Republican and Democratic parties alike.
