Eugene Debs, The Debs Decision, Scott Nearing, 1919, Part 7-11

History’s Great Speeches

8. THE CLASS STRUGGLE AGAIN!
Classes have come and classes have gone down through the pages of history. Whenever the position of a ruling class has been threatened, the ruling class has crucified the truth-tellers.
Compared with the necessity of protecting ruling class privileges and prerogatives, the right of a man to express his mind goes for nothing. That is the lesson of history and that is what we are witnessing today. Men who have stirred up the people; men who have raised their voices in protest; men who thought straight; men who have loved their fellow men too much; men who have had conviction and courage and purpose; men who were willing to stick by their ideals—such men have suffered in every age.
Eugene V. Debs has stirred up the people all his life. Since he was a boy firing a locomotive engine, he has been an agitator. He has always stood for justice, for liberty and brotherhood. He has loved his fellow men; he has been gentle and sincere; he has been devoted to what he regards as the greatest cause in the world. On this war he has stood like granite, unwavering and unflinching, voicing the protest of the masses who had no voice with which to speak. He has uttered what they believed.
The preachers who deserted their flocks; the teachers who betrayed their trust; the editors who took their 30 pieces of silver in these last few years—they are free; they are honored; they are respected. But this man who thought straight; who loved his fellows, who spoke his convictions; who was true to his ideals—this man is permitted to go to jail by the Supreme Court of the United States.
I have seen the Supreme Court and I have seen Eugene V. Debs. From the Supreme Court I got neither love nor inspiration; from Debs I got both.
In his generation in the United States, there is not a greater man than Eugene V. Debs—not because of what he has done, but because of what he is, and when the history of this generation is written, that fact will be recorded.
The masters in all ages have put men like Debs in jail because it is the truth-teller that the masters fear most. They fear the Truth; they fear the Light; they fear Justice; and the man who turns on the Light and speaks the Truth and cries out for Justice—is their greatest enemy. So they have always tried this process of putting ideas into jail.

 
9. PUTTING IDEAS IN JAIL
Years ago, when the Mexican War was being fought, an American named Henry D. Thoreau refused to pay his war tax. He did not believe in the war and he refused to support the Government that prosecuted the war. So they put Thoreau in jail. Later he wrote about his experience:
"As I stood considering the walls of solid stone, two or three feet thick, and the door of wood and iron, a foot thick, and the iron grating which strained the light, I could not help being struck with the foolishness of that institution which treated me as if I were mere flesh and blood and bones, to be locked up. ...
"I felt as if I alone of all my townsmen had paid my tax. ...
"I could not but smile to see how industriously they locked the door on my meditations, which followed them out again without let or hindrance, and they were really all that was dangerous. As they could not reach me, they had resolved to punish my body; just as boys, if they cannot come at some person against whom they have a spite, will abuse his dog.
"I saw that the State was half-witted, that it was timid as a lone woman with her silver spoons, and that it did not know its friends from its foes, and I lost all my remaining respect for it, and pitied it. ...
"Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison. The proper place today, the only place which Massachusetts has provided for her freer and less desponding spirits, is in her prisons, to be put out and locked out of the State by her own act, as they have already put themselves out by their principles. It is there that the fugitive slave, and the Mexican prisoner on parole, and the Indian come to plead the wrongs of his race, should find them; on that separate but more free and honorable ground, where the State places those who are not with her but against her—the only house in a slave State on which a free man can abide with honor.
"If any think that their influence would be lost there, and their voices no longer afflict the ear of the State, that they would not be as an enemy within its walls, they do not know by how much truth is stronger than error, nor how much more eloquently and effectively he can combat injustice who has experienced a little in his own person.
"There will never be a really free and enlightened State until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly."
 
10. THE SUPREME COURT COULD NOT SAVE SLAVERY
Once before the Supreme Court of the United States tried to save a decaying social institution—the institution of Slavery. There was a slave named Dred Scott. He was owned by a resident of Missouri. He was taken into Minnesota and into Illinois. Illinois was a free State by its own laws. Minnesota was free by the Missouri Compromise of 1820. Then his master took Dred Scott back to Missouri, and there Dred Scott tried to gain his freedom. The case was finally decided by the Supreme Court of the United States in 1857.
The Supreme Court held (two justices dissenting) that Scott could not sue in the lower courts because he was not a citizen and, therefore, was not entitled to any standing in the courts; that at the time of the formation of the Constitution, negroes descended from negro slaves were not and could not be citizens in any of the States; and that there was no power in the existing form of Government to make citizens of such persons. In the course of his decision, Judge Taney used the following language:
"It is difficult, at this day, to realize the state of public opinion which prevailed in the civilized and enlightened portions of the world at the time of the Declaration of Independence, and when the Constitution was framed and adopted in relation to that unfortunate race. But the public history of every European nation displays it in a manner too plain to be mistaken. They had for more than a century before been regarded as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations; and so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect, and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit. He has been bought and sold and treated as an ordinary article of merchandise and traffic, whenever a profit could be made by it. The opinion was at that time fixed and universal in the civilized portion of the white race."
The Chief Justice went farther than the point at issue warranted, and stated that the power of Congress to govern territory was subordinate to its obligation to protect private rights in property and that slaves were property and as such were protected by the constitutional guarantees; that Congress had no power to prohibit the citizens of any State to carry into any territory slaves or any other property; and that Congress had no power to impair the constitutional protection of such property while thus held in a territory.
The Dred Scott decision fastened Slavery forever upon the United States. Slavery lasted just six years.
 
11. MORE PATCH WORK!
At the present time, Capitalism is tottering to its downfall. The world is in chaos and revolution. The Supreme Court has handed down a decision which ostensibly will assist in preserving established order, but the United States is a Capitalist nation and, as Mr. Wilson himself has so admirably put it:
"The masters of the Government of the United States are the combined capitalists and manufacturers of the United States." ("New Freedom," page 57.)
Capitalism is disappearing from Europe—Russia, Germany, Austria, Bohemia, Hungary—the list is growing from week to week. When the President came back on his little visit to America there was one new thing that he said, and only one new thing:
"The men who are in conference in Paris realize as keenly as any Americans can realize that they are not the masters of their people." (Boston, February 24th, 1919.)
"When I speak of the nations of the world, I do not speak of the governments of the world. I speak of the peoples who constitute the nations of the world. They are in the saddle, and they are going to see to it that if present governments do not do their will, some other government shall, and the secret is out and the present governments know it." (Boston, February 24th.)
"I want to utter this solemn warning, not in the way of a threat; the forces of the world do not threaten, they operate. The great tides of the world do not give notice that they are going to rise and run; they rise in their majesticity and overwhelming might and they who stand in the way are overwhelmed. Now the heart of the world is awake and the heart of the world must be satisfied. Do not let yourselves suppose for a moment that the uneasiness in the populations of Europe is due entirely to economic causes and economic motives; something very much deeper underlies it all than that. They see that their governments have never been able to defend them against intrigue or aggression, and that there is no force of foresight or of prudence in any modern cabinet to stop war." (New York, March 4th, 1919.)
Then comes Mr. Wm. Allen White on the 11th of March with a similar statement. On the next day comes Mr. Lansing with the statement that unless something is done and done quickly, the capitalist system in Europe will be overthrown. The world is in chaos. The fabric of civilization is threatened. The health and happiness—the very life of the world—is threatened.
And those who speak particularly of those things; those who are seeking to warn, to prepare the people; those who attempt to preach law and order; who oppose war; who believe in peace—those who are attempting to serve the interests of humanity—go to jail for ten years.
The highest authority in the United States has served notice on the American people that from it they can hope for nothing in the way of preservation of their liberties. Their liberties are dead. Well may those Americans who still have in their souls a spark of the old fire, turn back 143 years and read these words from the Declaration of Independence:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its foundations on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness."