Through his own vast personal experience, Debs attests to the veracity of Mayor Daley’s Freudianism that the cops are “here to preserve disorder.”

‘Strikes and Officers of the Law’ by Eugene V. Debs from American Socialist. Vol. 3 No. 34. March 3, 1917.

I HAVE OFTEN made the statement that during labor strikes officers of the law who are supposed to preserve law and order are themselves the inciters to violence and the instigators of rioting, disorder, destruction of property, and even murder. This statement has often been challenged and indignantly denied by the capitalist press. This was particularly true with reference to rioting incited by United States deputy marshals at Chicago during the Pullman strike. I made the statement that when the strike was absolutely won, when the railroads were utterly defeated and the American Railway Union completely victorious, the railroads had an army of so-called “Deputy United States Marshals” sworn in, armed with badges of United States authority, with billies and guns, saturated with booze, and then turned loose in the railroad yards of Chicago; that the rioting began as well as the burning of old cars in the hospital tracks the very night these deputies were sworn in, that these very deputies were caught in the act of cutting the hose when the fire department was engaged in putting out the fires, that these deputies were thugs and criminals and ex-convicts, and that they were paid by the railroad companies while acting as United States peace officers for no other purpose than to create violence so that injunctions and jail sentences might promptly follow, together with the sacking of the office of the American Railway Union, and at the same time to rush in the federal troops by order of the president at the command of the railroads to save Chicago from being destroyed by a mob of drunken and criminal strikers. That is the way the Chicago papers had it under scare-heads and the way it went out over the country in the prostituted press dispatches.

I also made the statement that John Brennan, Chief of Police of Chicago, had charged in his report to the Council of Chicago that the United States Deputy Marshals, sworn in by order of the railroads, consisted of thieves, thugs and ex-convicts. This last statement has been repeatedly denounced as an unmitigated lie by capitalist papers in and about Chicago and other places where I made it. I was called upon a number of times to prove it but unfortunately I was unable to secure a copy of Chief Brennan’s report, and this of course confirmed the capitalist editors in their claim that I was making this lying statement to injure the railroads and to cover up my own crimes.

Now in going over some old newspaper files I have just come across a copy of the Chicago Times of January 14, 1895 which contains the complete report of John Brennan to the city council of Chicago in reference to the United States Deputy Marshals and the railroad strike. The Chicago Times was the only Chicago daily that was friendly to the strikers and therefore the only paper which published this report.

When the strike was over the railroads and other capitalistic powers, including the banks, combined to wreck the Chicago Times, kill it off, for having supported the strikers instead of the railroads.

The following is taken from the official report of Chief Brennan to the Chicago Council above referred to:

“Another source of annoyance to the department was the conduct of the Deputy United Marshals. These men were hastily gathered, largely from the scum and refuse of the lowest class of the city’s population. While there were some honest men among them, a large number of them were toughs, thieves and ex-convicts…several of these officials were arrested during the strike for stealing property from railroad cars. In one instance two of them were found under suspicious circumstances near a freight car which had just been set on fire. They were dangerous to the lives of the citizens on account of their careless use of pistols. They fired into the crowd of bystanders when there was no disturbance and no reason for shooting. Innocent men and women were killed by these shots. One of them shot and killed his companion by carelessly handling his gun, and another shot himself.”

These are the exact words copied from the report which John Brennan, Chief of Police, made to the Chicago Council and published in the Chicago Times of January 14, 1895. Here we have it upon the deliberate statement of the Chief of Police that United States peace officers incited rioting not only but set railway cars afire, and murdered innocent men and women in cold blood.

It is well to place this fact upon record at this particular time when New York, Pennsylvania and other states, at the behest of the robber corporations, are having legislation enacted creating constabularies and other special armed forces ostensibly to preserve peace and order and protect property but in fact to incite violence and destruction to bring down upon the strikers swift and summary vengeance by having them crushed by the governmental powers, including the press, the courts, the soldiers, state and national, while the bourgeoisie and their lickspittles applaud and glorify these powers for restoring order and saving the day for the peace-loving and law-abiding people.

Of course the destruction of capitalist property by its own hirelings has but one purpose and that to fasten the crime upon the strikers as the excuse for jailing their leaders, enjoining their unions, and crushing their strikes.

The ways of capitalism in dealing with organized labor are the most hypocritical, sneaking and cowardly imaginable. There is nothing too low, too vile, too infamous for them to resort to in defense of their piratical system and to keep their slaves in chains. The report of the Chief of Police of Chicago above quoted is but one of the proofs of the crimes of the capitalists for which the workers are punished, and when these proofs shall have become sufficiently established in the minds of their proletarian victims they will unite as never before and fight as never before to wipe criminal and corrupt capitalism from the earth and destroy the last vestige of exploitation, slavery and poverty which curse the race.

The American Socialist, edited by J. Louis Engdahl, was the official Party newspaper of the Socialist Party of America in the years before World War One. Published in Chicago starting in 1914, the Appeal continued the semi-internal Socialist Party Official Bulletin founded in 1904 which became Party Builder in1913. The American Socialist closely followed the SP’s electoral challenges, Engdahl was often an SP candidate in Chicago as he edited the paper, and took an early and prominent anti-war position. With a circulation of around 60,000 the paper was one of the leading anti-war voices in the run up to US entry into World War One. The paper was suppressed by Federal authorities, along with much of the anti-war left, in 1917.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/american-socialist/v3n34-mar-03-1917-TAS.pdf