Debs’ appreciation of pioneering socialist and author of ‘The Co-operative Commonwealth,’ Laurence Gronlund.

‘Laurence Gronlund’ by Eugene V. Debs from The Comrade. Vol. 4 No. 2. February, 1905.

IN spirit I stand at the grave of Laurence Gronlund. the Socialist and martyr. In fancy I see his magnanimous face, hear his earnest voice and feel the grasp of his friendly hand-and my heart is in my mouth as I write this feeble tribute of my love and veneration for one whose life was a ceaseless sacrifice to a cause to which he gave his ripest thought and unrelaxing energy, and which, with the inspired vision of a prophet, he saw would eventually baptize the world with effulgent and perennial glory.

Was our comrade a visionary? So was the old Hebrew prophet, who saw the full-orbed millennial era when nations should “beat their swords into pruning-hooks and their spears into plow-shares” and “learn war no more,” a condition for which Laurence Gronlund labored and suffered in shine and storm, sounded all the depths of poverty and walked with unbowed head in the valley and shadow of death. His great soul soared infinitely above all discouragements. He lived and wrought on the highlands of hope. He worked for a perverse generation, and whether sleeping in a garret or when his couch was a bench with heaven’s starry mantle over him, or crouching under some sheltering stairway, his heart throbbed, until death stilled it, only to the battle march of human progress.

Though dead, he lives in his works. His books are his eternal monuments. He lived gloriously in advance of his time.

Laurence Gronlund was the Abou Ben Adhem of his generation- he loved his fellowmen. He sought to lift the working class out of ignorance and degradation; to make the deaf hear, the dumb speak, the lame walk and prepare them for the new dispensation of liberty when the world’s workers, redeemed from the enthrallments of wage slavery, shall rejoice in the full fruition of life, freedom and joy, secured to them by the genius of Socialism.

Our beloved comrade sleeps well. His humble grave is hallowed soil. The invisible monument that rises above his pulseless form is grander than any marble mausoleum built for a king.

In the midst of his great sufferings he was serene. He yielded only to the inevitable and death never translated to the realms of immortality a more intrepid soul.

The grave of Laurence Gronlund is a shrine where Socialist pilgrims may renew their allegiance to the great cause he loved and labored for with all his strength of mind and heart, and here I lay the humble tribute of my remembrance and respect.

The Comrade began in 1901 with the launch of the Socialist Party, and was published monthly until 1905 in New York City and edited by John Spargo, Otto Wegener, and Algernon Lee amongst others. Along with Socialist politics, it featured radical art and literature. The Comrade was known for publishing Utopian Socialist literature and included a serialization of ‘News from Nowhere’ by William Morris along work from with Heinrich Heine, Thomas Nast, Ella Wheeler Wilcox, Edward Markham, Jack London, Maxim Gorky, Clarence Darrow, Upton Sinclair, Eugene Debs, and Mother Jones. It would be absorbed into the International Socialist Review in 1905.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/comrade/pht/v4n02-feb-1905-The-Comrade-pdf.