Eugene Debs and entourage aboard the ‘Red Special’ steams up the Pacific Coast during the 1908 campaign with stops at San Bernadino, Santa Ana, San Diego, Los Angeles, San Louis Obispo, San Jose, San Francisco, Sacramento, Grant’s Pass, Portland, and Medford, Oregon into Washington through Everett to Portland in this report from the Appeal to Reason.

‘Coast Painted Red’ from Appeal to Reason (Girard). No. 669. September 26, 1908.

San Bernardino.

The first evening meeting after the crimson flyer left Salt Lake City was held at San Bernardino, California, September 8. For the purpose a large park pavilion had been secured and the largest attendance at any political gathering in the history of the city greeted the speakers from the train and the veteran Comrade N. A. Richardson, well known wherever the Appeal is read as the author of that mighty little pamphlet, “The Introduction to Socialism.”

Excursion trains were run in from neighboring points; and, after 4,000 people had crowded the great auditorium, hundreds were turned away because it was physically impossible to find room for one more. Although the train arrived a half hour ahead of time several hundred were at the station to meet it and listen to the concert by the band which pleased even those benighted brethren whose minds were yet befogged with capitalistic teaching.

There is a mystic aboard who insists that all the stars and spooks have agreed on good luck for the Socialist special, and when the sands of the desert crossed today were wet down with a soaking rain in advance of the train, thereby transforming a part of the journey into a delight that had been looked forward to as a terror, even the hard-headed and stiff-necked had to admit that possibly old Jupiter Pluvius had moved headquarters from Olympus over into the Coast Range to make the way smooth across the burning sands. Stops were made at Caliente and other points in the desert where a few pioneers had assembled.

Although the strain of continuous speaking had so worn up Debs as to confine him to his bed for the greater part of the day, and he was in but poor condition to do justice to his magnificent audience and his more magnificent subject, a local paper which has no use for Socialism or Socialists, admits that it was a splendid meeting in point of attendance, enthusiasm and sustained interest, and that the address was masterly.

Santa Ana.

In the morning the journey toward San Diego was resumed and day meetings were held at several points including Riverside and Santa Ana. The latter point was reached at noon, nearly an hour behind time, but five or six hundred eager and persistent workingmen had remained to hear the addresses made from a truck at the Santa Fe depot and to prove their interest by a liberal contribution to the fund for train expenses.

The Santa Ana Register gave nearly a column space to a report of the meeting and says of Debs’ address: “Hoarse with much speaking, he talked with effort, but spoke forcefully nevertheless, scoring both the old parties impartially and predicting a great increase in the Socialist ranks this year and its ultimate success in the nation.” As usual, literature was distributed and sold through the crowd while the speaking was in progress, and the old town was left in a decidedly agitated condition.

San Diego.

At San Diego a thousand men, women and children greeted the arrival of the campaign party, and, as the time for the evening meeting drew near, a procession was formed of excursionists from neighboring cities and local comrades. Drum corps and banners and the volunteer band aboard completed a procession half a mile in length which marched to the place of meeting.

It is sometimes said that Socialism is destructive of that rare quality called initiative and that Socialists are defective in “ability.” Yet, strange to say, it was left to the Socialists of San Diego to discover and first utilize a vast natural amphitheater between two hills. There the great meeting convened with two thousand reserved seats paid for while from ten to thirteen thousand other intent listeners stood or reclined on the adjacent hillsides.

As a result of Socialist initiative and Socialists’ logic the workingmen of San Diego are aroused as never before to their class interests, and the capitalists, with the accustomed eye to business, are figuring on how they can commercialize the great natural theater discovered by the Socialists where twenty thousand people can be seated within convenient hearing of a speaker.

As for the local politicians and the partisan press, they are paralyzed at the magnitude of the meeting and the immensity of the Socialist movement, and are assiduous in their efforts to make it appear that it was not such a great affair after all. Whatever may be said as to the attendance and other features of the San Diego meeting, the fact remains that it was an agreeable surprise to our friends and equally a shock to those somnolent old-party brethren who have had their first sad and serious glimpse of the “red spectre.”

There is no doubt that the success of the meeting was due first of all to an excellent local movement so well organized as to leaven every ward of the city with its carefully planned and thoroughly executed work. The wives and sisters do their part toward enlisting the aid and interest of their neighbors, and home meetings where politics is the subject of discussion have had a marked influence on the political thought of San Diego workers of both sexes.

Los Angeles.

On the tenth day meetings were sandwiched in at Oceanside, Orange, Pasadena and other places on the way to the great night meeting at Los Angeles. The City of Angels is the home and headquarters of the notorious General Otis and his rat sheet, the Times. Under his patronage the Citizens’ Alliance flourishes but has just met a serious reverse in the winning by the Socialists of their right to use the streets for propaganda meetings.

The comrades of Los Angeles are veteran fighters and filled the Shriners’ Auditorium with an audience of 7,000 that rivalled in enthusiasm the immense outpouring at San Diego. A procession to advertise the meeting paraded the streets in the early evening and seems to have thrown a full-sized scare into some of the big newspapers from the stuff printed by them the next morning. It is estimated that there were over 2,000 in line and that for each worker in the march the local politicians and members of the so-called Citizens’ Alliance had a fit within the next twenty-four hours.

In closing his speech Debs paid a strong tribute to the Mexican liberals imprisoned at this place by collusion of American officials with the tyrannical Diaz government. He reminded his audience of the fact that the sole offence of these prisoners is their desire to emancipate their fellow countrymen from slavery. Said he:

“These men are our comrades and it is our duty to defend them and see that they are not sent back to Mexico to be shot.”

Tremendous applause followed, the vast audience vigorously expressing its perfect agreement with the speaker. As one comrade remarked when the thousands were pouring from the hall at the close, when the workingmen of the land shall have fought this case to a finish and saved these men from the death to which they have been doomed by capitalist interests there is no doubt that Mr. Bryan and other alleged friends of labor will say, as he said of Haywood and his companions, “I never believed that they were guilty.”

San Louis Obispo.

Early the next morning the city of San Louis Obispo was reached and a stop made from 8 to 8:45 a. m. Speeches were made from an express truck at the Southern Pacific depot to a crowd of from four to five hundred people as estimated by the local republican paper. All the dailies contained extended reports of the meeting in their editions following but not a word of editorial comment. Neither the republican, democrat or prohibition organ undertook the task of demolishing the teachings of the Red Special speakers, though Debs assured their reporters that Socialism would soon sweep through their town on a “red regular.”

San Jose.

When San Jose was reached about four o’clock in the afternoon there were over 1,000 people assembled at the Market-street depot. Again the baggage truck was pressed into service and Debs gave his audience the first speech they had ever heard from a presidential candidate in his shirt sleeves.

While waiting for the delayed train an impromptu meeting was addressed by Maurice E. Eldridge, editor of The World, and others. Miss Josephine Cole, organizer for Santa Clara county, with the assistance of the local propaganda committee, had made preparation for the meeting which was necessarily brief but nevertheless significant both in size and results.

About 50 of the local comrades accompanied the train to San Francisco to attend the meeting there in the evening.

San Francisco.

Dreamland Rink, the largest auditorium in San Francisco, was not large enough to hold the people who were willing and ready to pay an admission fee to hear a Socialist speech. Fully five thousand were present, and it is estimated that three thousand more were turned away because the house wouldn’t hold them.

But overflow meetings were arranged for on the outside, and the enthusiasm of the vast numbers was shown by the way they contributed to the Red Special fund that the propaganda train might do for the east what it is doing in the west. On the trip from Los Angeles to San Francisco the train carried 200 extra passengers. If that could be done every day it would go far toward paying its cost.

Oregon.

The trip up the coast from southern California to Washington has been a triumph and an awakening. The theater at Grant’s Pass, Oregon, was crowded to the limit. At Ashland 4,000 waited two hours for the train delayed by the wreck of a freight train. Their enthusiasm was not diminished in the least by the delay and not one left until the last coach had swung out of sight on its way. At Medford, Oregon, Dan White, national organizer, held a crowd of 3,000 until the delayed train appeared . On the previous Saturday night the Old Pavilion at Sacramento, California, would not hold those who sought admission.

Even the enormous skating rink at Portland, Oregon, with its capacity of ten thousand, would not accommodate the throng that surged about the entrance, and hundreds were disappointed. The train was crowded with reporters anxious to get news for a people who now regard Socialism as the one vital issue. All the papers in that section, with few exceptions, are printing columns about the Red Special that are even more remarkable for their fairness than for their fullness.

Washington.

The train was again late getting into Everett, Washington, but a lively crowd sat up until midnight and thousands were present at the meeting which lasted until 2 o’clock a. m. At Seattle 3,000 people paid their quarters to get into Dreamland Rink, and more would have done so had there been room for them. In addition to overflow meetings hundreds crowded the space about the windows or climbed neighboring telephone poles to get a glimpse of the main show. At Tacoma 5,000 met the train in the afternoon, and several stops, not on the schedule, were made to accommodate unexpected crowds.

At Everett a thousand dollars of collections and fares were forwarded to the national office to use, so far as it will go, in defraying expenses. At Berkeley, California, Debs addressed 4,000 people in the famous Greek theater at the California State University including students and faculty, among whom was President Wheeler. Unfortunately the date at Stanford University was lost because the train was behind time.

It is a safe bet that the Pacific coast will be heard from when the Socialist ballots are counted next November.

The Appeal to Reason was among the most important and widely read left papers in the United States. With a weekly run of over 550,000 copies by 1910, it remains the largest socialist paper in US history. Founded by utopian socialist and Ruskin Colony leader Julius Wayland it was published privately in Girard, Kansas from 1895 until 1922. The paper came from the Midwestern populist tradition to become the leading national voice in support of the Socialist Party of America in 1901. A ‘popular’ paper, the Appeal was Eugene Debs main literary outlet and saw writings by Upton Sinclair, Jack London, Mary “Mother” Jones, Helen Keller and many others.

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