The Selected Works of Eugene V. Debs Volume II

The Rise and Fall of the American Railway Union, 1892–1896

Tim Davenport, David Walters

• Publisher: Haymarket Books
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781642594171
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Labour & Industrial Relations
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Tim Davenport and David Walters have extracted the essential core of Debs's life work, illustrating his intellectual journey from conservative editor of the magazine of a racially segregated railway brotherhood to his role as the public face and outstanding voice of social revolution in early twentieth-century America. Well over 1,000 Debs documents will be republished as part of this monumental project, the vast majority seeing print again for the first time since the date of their original publication.

Eugene V. Debs (1855–1926) was a trade unionist, magazine editor, and public orator widely regarded as one of the most important figures in the history of American socialism.

1894

Value of the Ballot†

January 1894

The Alliance Independent, speaking of the ballot, says:

A man’s ballot is the scepter of his individual sovereignty. By using it wisely, intelligently, he maintains his manhood and guards at all points against the insidious encroachments of tyranny. The ballot is the proud, invincible weapon of American citizenship, the invaluable possession of the common people—and is itself a recognition of man as man, that one man, no matter who his parents were, has as much right to a place and natural means to live as all other men, and that he should be equally benefited by the laws of society, each having one vote and one only. The ballot placed in every hand has cost millions and millions of lives, and comes down to us, out of the struggle of the ages, as our chief inheritance. It is the gift of earth’s countless heroes, and bears to us their free, undying spirit.

The ballot has with us displaced the sword we hope forever, and in the light of advancing truth shall peacefully settle the great questions which still divide men, questions of equity and individual rights. War, all the aggressive wars of history, have been engaged in for conquest, for wealth and power over labor. Today business is war, having the same object and compassing the same end.

Getting as much as one can, while giving the least that one must is the barbarous rule of business, and it does not bring into battle with each other those having equal wisdom and power. The far-sighted, the cunning, the law favored and entrenched demand net-profit tribute and unequal exchanges from the others, from the masses whom they have made dependent by first robbing them of their birthrights to land, which is the necessary basis of liberty. The monster monopolies are veritable kingdoms grown up in the republic, aggressive despotisms, far advanced in their encroachments on liberty’s basis, and reaching out after the whole earth. We are all for the time being in subjection to monopoly power, and must unite at the ballot box to cut its absorbing tentacles and get loose from its grasp.

The foregoing is a happy and forceful presentation of the value of the ballot, but in further considering the subject, a number of questions are forced upon the attention of the American people. (1) While the ballot is the symbol of citizenship and sovereignty, is it not being used to destroy both? (2) Is there not a purpose rapidly developing to restrict the ballot within narrower limits?

In replying to such interrogatories, however severely condensed, considerable space must be taken, for however easy it may be to formulate questions, it is not always, nor generally, an easy task to answer them, and questions which relate to citizenship, sovereignty, liberty, and independence should not be lightly dealt with.

The true American idea is manhood suffrage, that is to say, a native-born American, 21 years of age, who is not an idiot, nor insane, and who has not committed crime, is entitled to the ballot, and in most of the states of the union, under the laws, has this suffrage right conferred upon him. But there are states that have enacted laws which do not recognize manhood as alone sufficient to entitle a man to suffrage. There are a number of states that disfranchise paupers, men no longer able to provide for themselves, and who, therefore, become a public charge. There are many grades of the misfortune called poverty, and the pauper is supposed to have reached the lowest—and is therefore disfranchised, and takes his place with the insane, the idiotic, and convicted criminals, who are also disfranchised. Now, if the pauper could get a chance to earn so much as 50 cents a day, he could, with the aid of Edward Atkinson’s Aladdin oven,1 live on 9 cents a day, and put 41 cents in bank; and if then, like Jay Gould, he could get a patent mousetrap, or like old Commodore Vanderbilt, get a scow and a long pole, or like old John Jacob Astor,2 get possession of a mink skin, he might rise, in course of time, to the serene and lovely altitude of a millionaire, but in the absence of such opportunities, he must be a pauper, and in several states pay the penalty of disfranchisement. The law, as a penalty for extreme poverty, disrobes its victims of citizenship, of sovereignty, and reduces him to the level of the insane, idiots, and criminals.

It is not required by the law that the pauper should be declared guilty of any crime, or that he should be crazy or a fool. If he holds out his trembling hands and asks for bread, for clothes and shelter, that answers the demand, and then the law reduces him to an outcast; the penalty, insofar as voting is concerned, is the same as is visited upon the most depraved wretch in a penitentiary.

It does not matter in what bank wreck, engineered by bunko desperadoes, his savings may have been wrested from him; it does not matter in what corporation mill, between the upper and the nether stones, he was reduced to pauper pulp; it does not matter that he may have been remanded to idleness because he belonged to a labor organization, and sought to live as becomes an American citizen; it does not matter that he may have worked and obeyed the laws of his country until, bending beneath the weight of accumulating years, he asks for bread; it does not matter that when the bugle called to arms, he said “farewell” to home and kindred, and sprang to the front and followed “Old Glory” into the storms of battle; the moment he asks the great public for help, something to keep his protesting soul within his famished body, he is disfranchised. The pauper may be possessed of every virtue, he may have been animated by noble aspirations, may have been charitable and magnanimous, but misfortune overtook him and great states, because he has no money, rob him of the ballot and decree him an outcast.

In the states where this rape of manhood has been perpetrated, the idea prevails that money, not manhood, is entitled to the ballot, and it is eminently pertinent to inquire if the crime could have been committed had workingmen—men, regarded as poor, as compared with the rich, had by their ballots protested against the iniquity?

Again, there are states which disfranchise men because it is assumed they are non-taxpayers—that is to say, their names do not appear on the list of taxpayers. They are not paupers—they support themselves by their work, as also those dependent upon them for support. And these men, like idiots, the insane, and convicted criminals, are disfranchised. Here, again, the plutocratic class magnify money and seek to degrade the poor, upon the vicious assumption that a man can live in a rented house, buy food and clothing, and yet pay no taxes, when it is known and admitted that every rent payer is a taxpayer, that every consumer is a taxpayer. In short, every person, no matter how poor, who is not a pauper is a taxpayer. Notwithstanding such uncontradicted facts, men are disfranchised because their names do not appear on tax lists as taxpayers, and here, again, the question arises, have workingmen, in the states where these poor men have been struck down by the plutocratic class and the ballot, to prevent the degrading crime, protested? Have they not stood idly by and seen the ballot, the “scepter of individual sovereignty,” taken from the hands of their fellow toilers without an effort to prevent the crime?

In response to the question “Is not the ballot being used to destroy the citizenship and the sovereignty of the individual?” what we have said is a direct reply. There is no citizenship without the ballot, and only the citizen is sovereign, hence when a man is disfranchised, citizenship and sovereignty go down together—hence, also, the ballot is used to enact laws disfranchising the poor, thereby placing all power in the hands of the rich. Such is the trend of affairs, and if workingmen do not see it they are blind.

Is there not a purpose to restrict the ballot within narrower limits? Every time a man is disfranchised, except for idiocy, insanity, and crime, a flagrant departure from the true American idea is committed. On all occasions and on every hand is heard the cry that illiteracy is the one great danger that menaces the government, but of late comes another alarm; it is that wealth, consolidated wealth, is destined to overthrow our institutions. The rich are not illiterate. They can read and write and cipher, and it is the rich who are eternally repeating the folly that the illiterate, those who can neither read nor write, are to bring about the ruin of the government—and by their clamor, they are able, here and there, to disfranchise not only the illiterate, but men whose names are not on the tax list. In all of this is seen a purpose to do away with manhood suffrage, to deny poor men their rights, to create a governing class made up of rich men, as if the hope of the country was based upon money rather than labor.

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† Published in Locomotive Firemen’s Magazine, vol. 18, no. 1 (January 1894), 47–49.

A Grand Beginning:
Speech at the Formation of the ARU Lodge
at Terre Haute‡

January 10, 1894

There is no desire or intention on my part to say anything of the old organizations to belittle or injure them.3 All have been organized for a purpose, which ha...

Table of contents

• Introduction
• 1892
• 1893
• 1894
• 1895
• 1896
• Appendix
• About the Editors