Debs, Eugene Victor (1855-1926), was a colorful and eloquent spokesman for the American labor movement and for socialism. He formed the American Railway Union (ARU) in 1893 as an industrial union for all railroad workers. The ARU ordered its members not to move Pullman cars in 1894, in support of a strike by the workers making Pullman cars. President Grover Cleveland used federal troops to break the strike, charging that it interfered with the mails. Debs went to prison for six months in 1895 because he had refused to comply with a federal court order to call off the strike. In 1897, Debs announced that he was a socialist.
During World War I (1914-1918), Debs publicly condemned both war and the U.S. government’s prosecution of individuals for sedition (inciting rebellion). As a result, he was convicted under the Espionage Law in 1918. He went to prison in 1919, on a 10-year sentence. President Warren G. Harding commuted his sentence in 1921.
Debs ran for the presidency as a Socialist candidate five times. He was the nominee of the Social Democratic Party in 1900, and of the Socialist Party in 1904, 1908, 1912, and 1920. Debs ran his 1920 campaign while in prison, but still received nearly 1 million votes.
Debs was born in Terre Haute, Indiana, on Nov. 5, 1855. He became a locomotive fireman and from 1880 to 1893 was national secretary and treasurer of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen. In this period, he organized workers in many occupations. Debs served in the Indiana legislature in 1885. He died in Elmhurst, Illinois, on Oct. 20, 1926.
