Eugene Debs Calls for Revolution

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D.C. · Mar 8, 1906

Eugene Debs Calls for Revolution

THE following language, which is attributed to Eugene Debs, the socialist leader, amounts to nothing less than a call for another civil war and a revolution in this country. In reply to a telegram from the editor of the Toledo Socialist, asking for an expression from Mr. Debs regarding the recent arrest of the president and secretary of the Western Federation of Miners, charged with complicity in a number of murders in Idaho and Colorado, Mr. Debs is quoted as saying:—

What I have to say about the latest and boldest stroke of plutocracy will require but little space. It is not talk that is wanted, but action. The issue is clear. The labor leaders that can not be bought or bullied must be ambushed or murdered. How shall we meet that situation?—We must fight. Another Haymarket will precipitate a revolution. If murder must be committed, it will not be the working class alone that will furnish the victims this time. A million of men will meet the issue with guns.

All working men and others who have red blood in their veins will rise up against this murderous plot of the plutocracy against two innocent men. They have stolen our country, debauched our politics, defiled our judiciary, and now they propose to murder those who will not abjectly surrender to their brutal dominion. We have no courts to appeal to; they belong to the plutocracy, and I am opposed to spending our means going up against a brace game judiciary.

Let mass-meetings be held all over the country, and the workers aroused. If they put our leaders in the penitentiaries without trial, we will pull them down, as they did the Bastile in France. The issue is the workers versus the plutocracy. If they strike the first violent blow, we will strike the last.