What must rank among Eugene Debs’ most moving speeches. A magnificent talk given to supporters in Cleveland, Ohio just days before the 64-year-old began to serve his ten-year sentence for sedition at Atlanta’s Federal Penitentiary on April 13, 1919. One gets a hint from these words the kind of connection Debs could make with an audience, why he was referred to as ‘Our Gene,’ and so deeply loved and respected by class conscious workers.

‘With Gates Ajar’ (1919) by Eugene V. Debs from Debs Freedom Monthly. Vol. 1 No. 2. September, 1921.

How true it is that there is a divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will! It may seem strange to you, but in my plans, in my dreams, I did not think of going to the penitentiary–and I–I had a thousand times rather go there and spend my remaining days there than to betray this great cause.

So far as I am concerned it does not matter much. The margin is narrow, the years between now and the sunset are few, and the only care that I have personally is that I may preserve to the last the integrity of my own soul and my loyalty to the only cause worth living for, fighting for and dying for.

It is so perfectly fine to me to look into your faces once more, to draw upon you for the only word I have ever had, the only word that has ever come to me, the only word that I can ever speak for myself. I love mankind, humanity. Can you understand? I am sure you can.

We are close of kith and kin, we are human and when we get into close touch with each other, we come to understand that our good depends upon the good of all humanity.

Opposed to System

I am opposed to the system under which we live. I am opposed to the government that compels you, the great body of the American people, to pay your tribute to an insignificant few who enjoy life while the great body of the people suffer, struggle, and agonize without ever having lived. Can you understand? I am sure you can.

Let me get in touch with you for a while. I am going to speak to you as a Socialist.

And what is the thing that the whole world is talking about? What is it that the ruling class powers of the world are denouncing, upon which they are pouring a flood of all their malicious lies–what is it? It is the rise of the workers, the peasants, the soldiers, the common man, who for the first time in history said, ‘I have made what there is, I produced the wealth; I want to be heard.’

Now, for the first time in history, his bowed head lifted, he stands erect and is beginning in his grim strength to shake off the manacles, straighten himself in the sunlight, in his gigantic attitude, opening his eyes, beginning to see for the first time, beginning to ask why it is that he must press his rags closer to his body, that he may not touch the rich man’s costly silks, that he himself produced–why it is that he must walk in alleys, while he is forbidden to enter the great palaces he has erected–why it is that he must provide all the banquets of the world that he may not taste.

He is beginning to think. That is the revolution in Russia! That is the beginning of the end of capitalism and the end of the beginning of Socialism!

Earth Beginning to Shake

And because we say this they are going to put us in jail. With every drop in my veins I despise their law and I defy them. If the Scriptures are true, Paul was sent to prison, and shortly afterward the prison doors were opened by an earthquake.

The earth is beginning to shake beneath the feet of the profiteers.

I am appealing to you tonight–the crowd, the mass, the common people–I do not care anything about the Supreme court, begowned, befettered, bewhiskered old fossils, corporation lawyers every one of them–they have not decided anything. They never have; they never will.

Sixty years ago the predecessors of the same body confirmed the validity of the fugitive slave law. They declared that a black man had no rights which his master was bound to respect. They imagined that chattel slavery was secure for all time. And within five years that infamous institution was swept from the land in a torrent of blood.

Did Not Meet Issue

They did not dare to meet the issue. They did not decide that the espionage law was constitutional. They dared not put that decision upon record. Have you read that law? The amendment to that law that makes it a crime for you to criticize crime in the United States? That makes this country take the place of old Russia under the Czar.

Have you ever read it? Know anything about it? Know that it is a gag upon your lips, fetters all your constitutional rights? That law–do I respect it? No.

How perfectly fine it is to stand straight up and do what Wendell Phillips said: ‘When they pass that kind of a law, put it under your feet.’

Do not say a word against war–not one. That is treason–to the ruling classes. They make war; you do not. You never did. You paid all the bills, shed your blood, made all the sacrifices. You did not say a word. Have your limbs shot off, your eyes gouged out, gassed, come back and then hunt for a job.

The finest thing I know is to carry yourself as a man–face humanity, look up into the sun and not feel ashamed of yourself; walk straight before the world, and live with it on terms of peace; look at yourself without a blush. Have you ever tried it?

The great world is in travail today. A great upheaval is shaking the foundation of capitalist society. The master class are driven to extremities. They are going to establish a League of Nations to preserve the peace, to prevent war. What does it mean?

Master Class Staggered

Simply this: That the master class itself is staggered by the cost of modern war. Here are all these modern nations, great and powerful in economic and military ways, straining to harmonize their various conflicting interests. In theory it is perfectly fine; but how ridiculous it is to imagine for a moment that the interests of nations that are innately in conflict can be permanently harmonized.

What does it mean? It is the last desperate, temporary expedient of the master class, the commercial interests, the economic interests, to prolong their sovereignty. Have you any views on it?

Who is it that is making the terms of peace? Is it not strange that the great common people who shed their blood, fought the war, made the sacrifices, should have no voice in making the terms of peace? The working class–the working class, which for 1,000 years constituted the slaves in the tragedy of history–I recall it as I speak, I can see across all the centuries, the amphitheaters, while they poured their slaves into the Coliseum to destroy them for pastime–and through the middle ages, how the serfs were killed for their profit and glory–through all that, I can see the working class, that youth, the victims of the ages, the martyrs of the centuries, you who went to war when it was declared, you who were in the trenches, you who shed your blood like water, you who suffered the agony that human speech can never tell, you who had your limbs torn from your bodies–you have no voice in that peace conference, no representative there.

Just one second-hand one, Sam Gompers. The other day Sam, four-foot Sam, was banqueted by a seven-foot Russian duke, and the duke was in poor company.

The world is in turmoil. Where is your representative; where did you elect him? What did you have to say about these terms? Not one real representative, but politicians and diplomats and thieves and liars, the tools of your masters–that is who is there.

They are going to make the world perfectly safe for democracy, and that is why I am going to the penitentiary.

World Being Remade

You can think a bit, and I want to stir you into thought and action. We are on the eve of tremendous developments. The world before your eyes is being destroyed and recreated. Russia is making a beginning; the Soviet is just a sample. They have shed some blood, and they have made some mistakes, and I am glad they have. When you consider for a moment that the ruling-class press of the world has been vilifying Lenin and Trotzky, you can make up your mind that they are the greatest statesmen in the modern world. In that brief space of time they have done more than all the capitalist governments have ever dared to do in constructive work. They have refused to compromise. They said to the old reactionaries, ‘You will not have any voice in the government until you do useful work.’

Appeals for Solidarity

We need to unite. We need to get together. We need to feel the common touch. We need to recognize our kinship. The world is against us if we are not for ourselves. Through the history of the ages you have been oppressed, you have been downtrodden, you have been exploited, you have been degraded. When you go for a job to the master class you work under conditions they prescribe. You depend upon them for tools, you work for their benefit. Do you like this? This is capitalism.

The system in which you enrich your master and impoverish yourselves, the system under which five per cent of the people own the wealth of the country and the great body of the people struggle through all their years for an existence and pass away without ever having enjoyed one hour of real life. How pathetic and tragic it is that in our land, with its boundless resources and treasures, its machinery, its workers, everything for production for every man, we have in the midst of these benefits the great body of the people struggling for existence.

How foolish it is to vote for the perpetuation of such a system. Yet that is exactly what you do when you vote the Republican or the Democratic ticket, or any ticket, except the Socialist. While you are doing this the master class looks upon you with sovereign contempt.

You who produce everything, you who really create, you who are conserving capitalization–is it not humiliating to think that you are the bottom class, the lower order? That is the system that you support or help to destroy by your vote.

I appeal to you just once to stand perfectly erect in the majesty of your humanity. You owe it to yourself.

Debs Freedom Monthly was published in Chicago to highlight Debs imprisonment, the curtailment of civil rights and free speech, political prisoners, and demand his and others freedom after his jailing in 1919 for sedition. Beginning in August, 1921 and edited by Irwin St. John Tucker, the Monthly carried an eight-point program. After Debs’ early 1922 release the journal was renamed ‘Debs Magazine’ and continued as a vehicle for his writings until 1923, when illness and a contracting Socialist Party closed the magazine.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/debs-magazine/v01n02-sep-1921_Debs.pdf