Eugene V Debs, Part Two: A Prisoner Runs For President

As a known agitator, Eugene V. Debs soon caught the attention of the US power structure -- and his outspoken nature led to him to court. In part two of this two-part series, Ben, Noel and Max explore how the Espionage Act resulted in Eugene's incarceration... and how he ran for the office of President while literally imprisoned. 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome

(00:27):
back to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always
so much for tuning in. Let's hear it for our
own Eugene V. Debs, the one and only super producer.
Mr Max Williams. Let's have a dab for our own
Debs Max Williams. Everybody do a dad right now together.
I hope you're doing it too while you're listening folks.

(00:49):
Uh and if your friends ask you, tell them about
the show they called me, Ben would joined as always
with my ride or die. Uh. Mr Noel Down none
other Hello, sorry for the lack and responding to your
amazing big up of myself, Mr Noel Brown, the one

(01:11):
and only. I guess that's true. You know it's funny though,
Ben Um, I've I've grown up with a name like
Noel and you don't get a lot of knowles in America.
But the only ones that I know of are from
the UK, and they're relatively famous. There's no old Fielding
from the Mighty Bush and the Great British bakeoff fame.
You got your Noel Gallagher, you got your Nol Coward.

(01:34):
What are some other fame anybody know any other famous knowles.
There's the first Noel, of course, Jesus Christ himself. There's
also a good friend of good friend of mine, I think,
good friend of yours as well, uh Noel who is
uh Noel Flores, who is one of the marketing DEMI
gods an event quartering coordinators here at my Heart Media.

(01:59):
Of course, it's awesome, excellent taste in leather jackets. Oh
my god, are you kidding? Are you kidding? Max? This
is the person who will lead us to the correct
leather jackets. I've been so weirded out for for many years.
Are good friend Mr Matt Frederick of stuff they don't
want you to know. And numerous true crime podcast has
had this amazing leather jacket. I've asked them, you know, like,

(02:22):
how do I how do I commit to this? How
do I get a good leather jacket? And one time
Matt told me something like, well, you see it, you
try it on, and when you know, you know, I'm
just yeah. Some things run small, some things run large.
It's all about what fits you. And I really do
envy the big wigs, the types that Eugene Debs might

(02:45):
have been fighting against that get tailored suits, although in
this day and age most anybody can afford a tailored suit.
You can get well what does that uh that tailored
suit company that we used to do up the weather
suits supply and it's still ain't cheap. Yeah exactly, that's
the one. It still ain't cheap, but it really man,
the difference between like a suit off the act that fits.

(03:06):
That sounds like I'm chilling for suit makers, but the
difference is is night and day. Now. I got a
black window pane suit earliest year, Taylor, and it was
like throwing someone bucks for them about at all. And
if it's great, it looks great, it looks great, if
it's great, yeah, well this is uh, this is the
time where we want to thank everybody who didn't write

(03:26):
a review immediately saying, ah, these guys, these guys with
their banter. We hope, we hope that you enjoy it.
We love, of course your opinions, ridiculous historians on everything
addressed in the show, whether or not it is, you know,
officially part of the episode. But we have been and

(03:47):
we've been through a heck of a week. We've got
a we've got a book coming out or out now
called stuff they don't want you know? For another podcast, Nolan,
I do. And that book has been met with pretty
great reviews. So if you want to review something, uh,
please do go review that on Amazon. There's other big
news before we get to debts. Oh my god, can

(04:07):
I say one? I got the book? Um my aunts
or I guess my aunt in law. I don't know.
She's my uncle's ex wife. What does that make her?
No idea? It was a librarian as a retired librarian
and commented on a post that I made about the
book and had seen the reviews in Kirkus Review and
I think book there's another one there was a second one,

(04:29):
and said that like those are the go to review
sites for librarians choosing things to buy for libraries or
to include in libraries. So that's pretty great man, good job, Ben.
I mean, we did it together to a degree. But man,
it's in your voice. You knocked it out of the park.
It's just such a fun reading. I'm just so proud
of you. Man. Man, I'm proud. I'm proud of all

(04:51):
of us. You know. Also, it's so weird you mentioned this. No,
my I have an aunt, I have many teachers and
educators in my family, and one of my who lives
out in Austin, Texas, is a librarian and said something similar.
So at least we're at least we're going with the
crowd of the people. We really want to impress the literati,

(05:14):
the literati. Yes, just so. And this is the second
part of a two part episode on a guy that
may not be familiar to a lot of Americans today,
but a person who has certainly affected your life if
you live in the US and you're hearing this now.
His name Eugene V. Debs, Debs to his friends, his

(05:37):
street name Max's Daddy, because in addition to being our
super producer, Yeah, it's at the top, Max. Uh. Max
took points on this real on the research for this.
So Max, we're gonna defer to you along the way,
but I wanted to I think, just in the interest
of transparency, we need to hit that you describe Eugene

(05:59):
Debs in the title of our research here as Max's daddy,
as your spiritual father. What's going on. I really like
Eugene Redebs. I learned about him. I think I took
an ap U s history class in high school, and
that's like the first time I learn about him, he's
not really someone gets talked to you and like, you know,
your traditional public education classes. Yeah yeah, but like you

(06:23):
know that that, I mean, that's the class week you
really get to dive into it and it's like, wow,
this guy's kind of important. Uh So, Yeah, it was
you know, learning about like how this guy is really
influential on all of our lives, especially before his stuff
like social Security and the right to unionize and stuff
like that. I've always been a big fantast guy. And

(06:43):
can I just add to that, Max, you have been
part of the effort of iHeart producers employees in the
podcast network to do that very thing. And I can't
imagine that you would have been as interested in that
or you know, schooled if you hadn't discovered Eugene Debs
early in your you know career. Yeah. No, it's definitely
been a part. I mean, I've I will say, like

(07:04):
you know, I was raised I think first generation and
white college is probably the best way to describe it.
Both my parents have white colored jobs that they were
raised in the very blue color like Detroit area. Uh
I would, I mean many many people from union jobs
and stuff like that, and that's how like towns like
not towns, cities like that, we're able to you know,
people have these livelihoods, to the kind of families and

(07:27):
not be like, you know, so tied of money all
the time because they were able to get you know,
fair and equal pay and wages and stuff. So it's there,
there's it's stuff that I very much believe in and
everything like that. It's no accident or maybe somewhat of
an accident that We also just recently did an episode
on the Luddites and the you know, fabric or textile workers.
Early in that industry, there were certain skilled workers who

(07:51):
could kind of name their name, their price and and
and could really command a lot of um, you know,
perks and things like that. And then as industrials nation
took hold, that became less of a thing. And I
think the reason unions are important is to kind of
re level the playing field and make sure that those
in power and those that kind of have their hands
on the purse strings and all of that aren't able

(08:13):
to just you know, completely diminish the idea of of
a fair wage and uh and treat people just like
human capital. And that's a struggle that continues. You know,
uh here in twenty two if you live in the
United States, fell ridiculous historians, you have to be aware.
This isn't a political point that most other nations. This

(08:36):
is true story. Most other nations have uh much better
maternity leave or paternity leave, things like that. The again,
the struggle continues. And wherever you find yourself on the
political platform, I'm gonna go ahead and take a wild guess.

(08:56):
Don't kill me in the reviews here, I would take
a while. Guests, you like things like weekends, uh, and
you like things like fair pay. So this is something
that happens that that happens with Debs. When we left
Debs in part one on Thursday of our show, we

(09:17):
had we had left him right around the time that
he was learning some would say being radicalized huh in
jail while incarcerated. At this time, still he said that
he was still thinking of himself, maybe more as an
Americanist rather than a socialist. But here's where we find

(09:39):
him now. It is eighteen nineties six, and he is
endorsing a US presidential candidate named William Jennings Bryant, and
Brian is doing something really interesting in his campaign. He's
running on multiple tickets. Yes, he he's running on the

(10:00):
Democratic ticket. He's also running on the ticket of something
called the People's Party. Spoiler alert for any non presidential campaign.
Buffs Brian doesn't win. He loses to a guy called
William McKinley. And William McKinley is funded by some of

(10:23):
the very same business entities that sought to break Deb's
union movements with railroad workers. That's right, and um, if
I'm not mistaken, Max, this whole thread in the story
is maybe what led this to being considered ridiculous because
of the some of the situations that the Debs found

(10:46):
himself in while also running a presidential campaign. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
there's some of the um, these guys you know who
are supporting with people like McKinley don't exactly like things
that Dev's is doing and saying, and some most actually
basically all of which are not bad in my opinion,

(11:08):
but it's kind of I would say the ridiculousness of
this story is the amount that Debs wants to help people,
no matter how much consequences he face this for it. Yeah, yeah,
I think that's well said. You know this there's a
thing that people started saying that was circulating the zeitgeist

(11:30):
of the time, and folks would say, well, President McKinley
was elected by money and Brian was the people's candidate.
William Jennings. Bryan, by the way, is worth an episode
all his own. I think we can agree. Here's what happens.
This is enough to really sour debs. Our boy Jean

(11:51):
sees what he um what from his perspective is systemic,
dangerous corruption. The system is raw eight from within, like
a like a wound that creates gang green. And so
he says, this two party system, this Democrat Republican thing,
it's kind of a con job, you know what I mean.

(12:12):
It's sort of a trap. It's a false dichotomy. And
to this end, he proclaims himself publicly as a socialist.
In one of several Railway magazines periodicals he writes for
it's January, first New Year's date. He comes out and
he says, the result of the November election has convinced

(12:35):
every intelligent wage worker that in politics per se, there
is no hope of emancipation from the degrading curse of
wage slavery. I am for socialism because I am for humanity.
And this is a quote we mentioned in part one.
He goes on, money constitutes no proper basis for civilization.

(12:56):
Arguably true. You don't have to agree, but he makes
some good points. Uh definitely does. In that June at
the yearly meeting of the American Railway Union, Debs made
a big splash by founding the Social Democracy of America Party.
And as parties sometimes do, whether it's political or just

(13:17):
you know, get together things, people break away, they go
their own way. They have their little clicks that form.
And so the Social Democracy of America Party splintered and
Victor berger Um and Debs joined what ultimately became the
Social Democratic Party. And then there's another evolution, right in

(13:40):
nineteen o one, this outfit become starts calling itself the
Socialist Party of America. And Debs has uh, Debs has
some rousing quotes. Again, he's a great orator, right, He's
a he's a political writer. He's a fantastic speaker. He's
one of those guys who start shouting and his forehead

(14:02):
and his temples get the veins popping out, and you know, he's,
as we would say in the American South, he takes
people to church when he speaks, and he really does. Uh,
and we've got this, We've got this other quote here
he he equates socialism. One of the prime things that
he sees as a tenet of socialism is public ownership

(14:26):
over what are called the means of production. Uh No,
I don't want to put you on the spot, but
I do want us to trade off really cool like
lamb basting, galvanizing quotes from our boy geen. So how
could you do uh we the people of favor and uh,

(14:49):
maybe give us give us an approach of this quotation
from his speech to minors in Illinois and Kansas, aroused
from your slavery, join the Social Democratic Party and vote
with us to take possession of the minds of the
country and operate them in the interests of the people.

(15:14):
That's me clapping, clapping too. Multiply that though by like
the voice of the people, you know, and then you
have a truly rousing round of applause, and envision a
lot of veins popping out while he's saying it. Many
so many also people are loving these sorts of speeches.

(15:35):
He is so supported in these crowds that you could
imagine people weren't just clapping, but while they were clapping,
they were probably just yelling the word clap. They were like, clap, clap, clap, clap, clup, clap, clap, clap, clappy, clap, clap.
Just pop some coconuts. Yeah, there we go. So his um,

(15:56):
his socialism. Remember, now he's gone from what he described
as Americaism, making a very good point about America the
United States itself, rather being a consequence of going on strike.
Right when you think about it, he went from Americanism
to now socialism. But his critics said this was too idealistic.

(16:18):
They said, you know what you should. They call it
it is impossibleism, which is a funny word, and he said, uh.
They were saying, look that what you were doing will
What you're proposing is never gonna work. It doesn't have
much to do with actual Marxism or communism. It's more
like this weird, utopian, Walt Whitman esque religious approach, to

(16:44):
which he responded, watching socialism merely Christianity and action. It's
recognizes the equality in men, which is pretty dope. That's
pretty cool rapost pretty cool response. Um. But again, of course,
not everyone agreed with him, especially if they had a
lot of money and we're sort of vibing with the

(17:06):
status quo. Well, we're in a political cycle right now.
We were just talking about this, the three of us off,
Mike and Uh. I think we've all been subject to
a lot of very alarmist um political advertisements on like
Hulu and various streaming services. And I bet you that
at the time there might have been some who might
have called Deb's radical liberal Eugene Debs wants to take

(17:30):
away your jobs because he's asking for these unreasonable request
these unreasonable terms, you know, And it's sort of like
like shifting the narrative saying, you know, okay, I am
the you know, big wig that owns the means of production,
and it's just not realistic for the working people to
have this kind of protection. And it's almost saying demonizing

(17:54):
someone like Deb's for even asking for such So it's
a way of like flipping the narrative and saying, like,
we're the ones giving you jobs. Do you really want
to piss us off? Like I mean without saying that
exactly right. Yeah, Yeah, it's like, hey, be a shame
if something happened to the existence who currently have uh,

(18:15):
so so he starts running for president himself. He's gone
beyond polling for other people and hyping them up. Right,
It's like he has started his own political solo album.
And spoiler, he doesn't do super well, but he does
get some He does garner some attention. In nine hundred,

(18:42):
he runs for president. And when he runs for president,
Gene gets about nineties six thousand votes. Just for um
a sense of perspective. According to the census conducted the
same year in nineteen hundred, the population of the US
was seventy six point three million. So he's not you know,

(19:05):
he's not exactly busting down the door. Uh. Then, okay,
so he loses that election. Fast forward four years he
runs again. You know, he's kind of getting one of
those uh I can do this all day sort of
tropes attached to him. This time he gets four hundred
thousand votes, So that's a heck of a jump, but

(19:26):
it's still not enough to swing the needle. I love
the idea of swinging the needle um and moving the pendulum.
I think it's great. And that's right, no, you got
me fair play. Yeah. So he also joined in with
other union folks who might have been considered radical or
militant at the time to create something and organize something

(19:48):
called the Industrial Workers of the World or the i
w W again um a f l C I oh
is an excellent resource for this information in addition to
being an excellent organization. Him uh that that protects a
lot of these very things that we're talking about. Um,
I love this. The Wobblies a term used to refer

(20:09):
to the Industrial Workers of the World because they called
on all workers to join a massive, single union like
that would kind of be this like overarching umbrella and
sees control of those means of production. And if anyone
follows any communist or socialist kind of meme pages, the

(20:31):
idea of seizing the means of production is sort of
a three point and a lot of those it can't
actually be used sort of hilariously, and a lot of
these memes Oh yeah yeah man uh. This is also
first off, there's a lot to be said about nomenclature
and branding. Even even back then it was it was
very much the same. For some reason, it seems weird,

(20:53):
right when they to hear this group that wants to
be a very much power to the people movement say
you know what's depending well, you know what will make
people associate us with steadfastness and doggedness and being on
the course. Let's just establish that we're wobbly. Let's let
people know that we're sort of on a on a

(21:14):
teetering thing. Uh, that's just my you know, that's just
my branding marketing note there. But this was huge and
as you can imagine, it terrified the people in power, right,
the international set, uh, the banking interest, of course, mining interest,
resource extractors. They couldn't let this happen. And Debs. Debs

(21:39):
was a guy who was, you know, a real barn
stormer of a speaker, but maybe not always the most
diplomatic or collaborative person. He could be quite argumentative. He
resigned from the Wobblies in nine eight and ran for president.
Ran for US president a third time, but he plateaus

(22:01):
a little, not in a bad way. He's just nineteen
o four, he gets four hunder thousand votes. Nineteen o eight,
he's still again not swinging the needle or moving the pendulum.
H and later elections are occurring. He still hasn't given up.
Nineteen ten, nineteen twelve, Right, there are congressional elections, and

(22:27):
a lot of Socialist Party members are actually victorious in
their state and local elections, and this inspires depths. You know,
he's always thinking it's bigger than me. He's saying, this
is our year in nineteen twelve, and in nineteen twelve,
he's not just blowing smoke. Almost a million Americans voted

(22:50):
for him for president. And just for a reference there,
in nineteen twelve, the US population had grown pretty significantly
to nine five million people, so still not a huge percentage. Yeah,
and jump in there to kind of put this in
framing it to like how he wasn't that far out

(23:11):
on this one. Obviously he only got he got six
percent of the vote, which is significant. Obviously, No, we're
close to winning. This is also a really weird election
where there was basically three major party candidates. There was
William Howard Taff, Theodore Roosevelt who decided to come out
of retirement and run against Taff, and then our all
time favorite president on this podcast, Mr Woodrow Wilson, our

(23:35):
boy who at home is in my hometown. I think
I may be mentioned that last episode. But not a
great guy, right, what's the deal? He seems so innocuous
and little and slight and bald. But can you explain,
Max and or Ben why this guy kind of sucked?
We can absolutely explain why he sucks. I would suggest
reading articles like Talking Points, Memo dot com Woodrew Wilson

(23:59):
was even worse than you think, or National Interest dot org.
Why Woodrow Wilson is America's worst president ever. Now that's
a hot take, because there's a contest that's been going
on for many, many years to figure out who was,
in fact the worst president ever. Uh Noel, will do
you one better than this one? Uh Man. At the
very end of today's show, uh Max has prepared a

(24:24):
special segment, a hit list of bad things about Woodrow Wilson.
So if you if you feel like we're talking too
much about the nuts and bolts of Eugene V. Debs,
hold on. There is quite a spiteful dessert at the end.
And it is spiteful dessert. Is it best served cold?
Of course it is? Yes, yeah, and maybe it was?

(24:47):
And so uh with Debs? Uh he with Deb's we
see exactly what you described, Max. It's the presidential campaign
is kind of a bowl of spaghetti. Right, we're looking
at high human drama here, there's something else interesting that occurs.
The Democratic and Republican parties are starting to crib some

(25:09):
notes and policies from socialists. So we see them embracing
what we're considered progressive reforms at this time, giving women
the vote, busting up huge trust that's where you know,
like one company, one entity functionally owns all of an industry,

(25:30):
doing economic reforms, saying stuff like people can only work
up to a certain amount per week or per month,
people can only get paid to a certain low threshold
minimum wage we call it now. And and these were
novel ideas at the time, right, Like, I mean, because
a lot of these things were kind of new ish.

(25:51):
I mean, the trusts and the giants. Conglomo has really
began with things like the railroad, which Eugene Dev's had
been in on since the start least in terms of,
you know, arguing for fair treatment of workers. But this
was not something that had been just like, you know,
decades uh in the making, right Yeah, this is this

(26:12):
is a signal from the mainstream and their industrial puppet
masters that they need to give a little to get
what they want to maintain their economic power and status
quo and social hierarchies. So they also say no more
child labor, and hey, maybe you should be able to

(26:32):
directly vote for your senator instead of just trusting us. Uh,
there's a guy against that right now, the guy to
running to get rid of that one. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
I'm where you know what I mean. It's it's always
halloween in America, man, So the yeah, because people wear
masks year round. I guess that what you're getting that

(26:53):
that's sort of good. Yeah, and it's spooky, you know.
You could you could say there's a bit of a
haunted house. And that is an a political point. America
is always the United States rather has always been a
grand experiment, one long improv game. So Deb's is saying
Deb's is championing socialism. Nineteen twelve is what that New

(27:16):
Yorker article we we mentioned earlier by Jill Lapour nineteen
twelve is what you could call the high water mark
of socialism in the United States. And it had done
something very important that doesn't often get talked about. While
there was not a socialist president elected, it changed the

(27:40):
trajectory of the two major parties. The folks who already
held the power started to make some concessions to you know,
for what they saw is the greater good, which was
them retaining some measure of power. Deb's get sick. He's
not feeling great. He is actually too ill to run

(28:04):
a national campaign in nineteen sixteen, because you know, right
when we think about it, and all these these guys
who are running for any political office on a federal
or national level, they have to travel a lot. They
can't go on zoo. Sure, can I ask one more question? Um?
At this time, the idea of socialism didn't have as

(28:25):
much political kind of buzzy nous that it does today
because we weren't necessarily fighting with the Soviet Union like
we are. You know that that legacy was not as
asconced as established. So it wasn't like when someone established
the Socialist Party or said I believe in the teachings
of of Marx and Angles or whatever. They weren't immediately

(28:47):
demonized the way they might be today because of our
you know, uh beef with Russia in the Soviet Union.
So not yet. And what's crazy is we are literally
getting on the timeline to that point right right now,
because the Bolshevik Revolution is nineteen seventeen, so we're one
year away from really like you know, you see this

(29:10):
major world power get their entire government overthrown but behind
socialist and communist ideas and stuff like that. And that's
when you know, we start getting like the first like
red scare that is about to come up in this
time period. And then later of course this will we'll
see this reflected in McCarthy ism. Right, So history history

(29:33):
is a quickly, right, Like, I mean, this whole demonization
happened quickly. The Red Scare was something that escalated very
quickly and became this kind of witch hunt within our country. Yeah, yeah,
and this there are multiple Red scares throughout the history
of the United States as well as Europe, and uh,
to Max's student point, there may well be another one

(29:56):
on the way. Why why we're people scared of this? Well,
Debs thinks they're scared of it because, uh, there are
people who are totally fine morally and ethically with damning
the majority of a population into something very much like

(30:18):
servitude because it will make their individual lives a little
bit nicer. Since he can't traps around the country running
for president, he runs for Congress in his home district.
A lot less travel Uh. He comes in second. He
doesn't win. Um, he is not he doesn't become a

(30:38):
congress person, and he's also a very distant second. The
person who ends up beating him is a Republican and
they get way, way, way, way more votes. Other socialist
candidates are encountering something very similar in their neck of
the woods. And it looks like his big dream of

(31:00):
creating a union for all railroad workers and then expanding
to a union of the people of every worker, it
looks like it's not gonna happen. Okay, So now we're
back to Woodrow Wilson and why he sucks. Uh. In
nineteen seventeen, President Woodrow Wilson, who was really only president

(31:21):
because Teddy Roosevelt's um, decided to come out of retirement
and essentially, you know, wave around his big stick and
speak very loudly actually uh and essentially sabotage the nineteen
twelve election. Uh. Wilson asked Congress to declare war on
Imperial Germany and everything that went along with that, all

(31:45):
of its allies. Um. This was in response to what
the a f l c I O refers to as
vituperative opposition. I need a little help with that one, fellas. Yeah,
vituperative position means blame worthy. Basically that they like Congress

(32:07):
in this sense, is being being blamed or attacked for
their plan. And uh, they're being rightfully attacked because the
US is supposed to be a representative democracy, which means
that in theory, the US goes to war when the

(32:27):
domestic population supports it. But because Congress is kind of
getting caught with their hands in the military industrial complex
cookie jar of the day, they passed something called the
Espionage Act. The Espionage Act says it is against the
law to have a problem with the US getting involved

(32:51):
in this conflict that we now know as World War One.
So for any fans of free speech, you can imagine,
this is a heck of a This is a tall milkshake.
Now it's illegal to have a problem, even even though
you live in a country that talks a big game

(33:11):
about freedom. And Debs was anti war because I mean,
why wouldn't you be, And I mean, you know, we
know that certain industries love war and then love politicians
who are hawkish or whatever. But Deb's as someone who
wanted to protect, you know, the working people, was anti war.
He says, quote I am opposed to every war, but

(33:31):
one I am for that war with heart and soul,
and that is the worldwide war of the Social Revolution.
In that war, I'm prepared to fight in any way
the ruling class may make necessary, even to the barricades.
At dawn, I added at dawn. But you know, I
mean seriously, like, this guy's got a revolutionary soul, but

(33:54):
he doesn't want to kill anybody. He doesn't want to
hurt anybody. He's all about a war of ideas and
and and this is really kind of the beginning of
regular people being able to kind of, you know, coalesce
around someone like him like Debs, and seemingly be heard
or the very least, you know, have some concessions made

(34:15):
in their favor. Yeah, and this is the era of
Joe Hill. Not the tremendously accomplished fiction writer is a
son son of Stephen King, great writer, big fan, but
Joe Hill, the activist and musician who is unite people
in a grassroots movement. I also want to point out

(34:36):
vituperative doesn't just indicate that Congress got caught. It also
indicates that people are talking so much trash about them.
This is verbal abuse, right, and it's way different than
the political discourse you might hear today, even how you
know how ugly it gets in the US and abroad today.
Back in the day, Oh gosh, we should just do

(34:58):
something on like the weirdest political smear campaigns, right, because yeah,
these people were fighting, and because old boy Deb's no
our boy, Jean just violated the Espionage Act. So he
gets sent up the river. He's arrested, but like in
a cool way, right, Well cool to us. I think

(35:27):
he was. He wasn't exactly, he wasn't. I mean, it's
hard to talk about a topic like this and kind
of not let your your stripes show a little bit.
I think, Um, you know, we we try to make
the show relatively a political but man, a guy like
this kind of just gets my gets my blood pumping
in a good way. Debs was in fact arrested, like
you said, been in Cleveland in nineteen eighteen, under the

(35:49):
terms as you said again, of the nineteen seventeen Espionage
Act for a speech. For a speech. I just want
to reiterate that he didn't like, he didn't do as spionage.
He wasn't spying, he wasn't like blowing up you know,
checkpoints or you know, stealing classified documents. He did a

(36:09):
speech that people didn't like. Uh, and that's when you
start really going micro. You have people in power going
micro in these acts like how can we take this
guy to the mattresses, you know, go to the mattresses
against this guy. I'm sorry, I'm I'm messing up my
my godfather um expressions here. It was a speech he
had made protesting the war, that he had given on

(36:30):
June sixteenth in Canton, Ohio. He apparently, as the Washington
Post put it, invited arrest. They were like, you shouldn't
have been talking that way. You knew what would happen. Yeah,
he freed him of speech, right, Well, as long as
it's some speech, right they I think the powers that

(36:52):
be were more into their freedom to arrest at this point,
so so he gets he Yeah, like you said, Washington
Post and other papers of the day are saying, this
guy is courting incarceration, and a lot of the newspapers,
who let's remember, are largely controlled by the same industrial interests.

(37:13):
They team up on him and they do some character assassination.
They say, they heavily imply this guy is abudding dictator perhaps,
or what if he is a traitor to the country,
and if if, and they would they did something very clever,
quite insidious, Markavellian. Almost they say, look, we're all good Americans,

(37:39):
dear readers, and what he has said is so traitorous.
What he said is so seditious that we cannot in
good conscience printed. And when they said that, the people
who were reading had no idea what he was actually saying.
He might have been like, you know what we should
really be doing. We shouldn't try to text innocent people

(38:01):
in Europe. We should all go out and collectively like
kick puppies and poop in the streets, you know what
I mean. Newborn babies our currency, you know, uh, and
punt them, you know, over the goal post. And that's
how we pay for bread and lick everything, all things.
You know what. No foot privacy. People should be running

(38:23):
up and touching stranger's feet. That's like, what is wrong? Wow, Wow,
that's a bridge too far, my fact. We need to
beat that out. That was I mean, I'm upset. No
foot privacy, yea for some people in this day and age,
they'd be stoked about that. I mean, foot picks are

(38:45):
a currency of our modern day, you know, saying, yeah, well,
shout out to the Tarantinos of the world. But but
our point is, like we just made up several I think,
hilarious ideas, but things that would be mess stuff and
terrifying if they happen in real life. And that's what
that is what is occurring when people read these newspaper articles.

(39:08):
It's like the old Hitchcock idea that the monster who
is out of the frame, off the screen is more
terrifying than anything you could depict. So without knowing what
this guy was saying, people were conjuring all sorts of sinister,
horrific thoughts in their head, and they were associating them

(39:28):
with our boy Gene. In fact, it was really just
kind of stuff we'd already heard him say basically, maybe
just a little more apt up in his rhetoric. Correct, Yeah, yeah,
he was. I mean he was getting a little hyperbolic.
You know, he was storming some barns for sure, when
he said stuff like we are going to destroy all
enslaving and degrading capitalist institutions and to recreate them as

(39:52):
free and humanizing institutions. Uh. And then he said, you
say things like destroy institutions. It's it's not too far
off a walk to think he means like blow them
up physically, But I think he's speaking more figuratively, right,
the idea of destroying and not institutions like physical buildings,
but institutions like concepts. Right. Yeah, in a way, he's

(40:15):
like a drain the swamp, dude, and of of his age, right.
And the swamp to him is corporate power and the
high level nepotism of the aristocratic class in the US.
And you know, despite what people say about a class
system in the United States, there's always been an aristocracy here.
So he wants to he wants to pump up class warfare, well,

(40:40):
not class warfare especially, but class rights. And he talks
about the working class, you know, the people who are
sent to fight, the people who have to actually die
on the front lines. He says they don't have a
voice in deciding whether or not to go to war.
And I am super not loving it. We're paraphrasing, but

(41:02):
that's that's where he's going. So he goes to jail.
He's not the only one. Thousands of anti war activists
and socialists get jammed up during the First World War,
and then like you mentioned old the Red Scare, and
what we see is strange because at this point Uncle
Sam is essentially trying to outlaw an ideology. They're trying

(41:23):
to outlaw socialism as a it's like thought crime. Well,
so the thing that I was talking about earlier where
it's like we hadn't quite gotten there yet, now we're
really getting there because they're like, oh, they sort of
slept on it right where it was like they didn't
quite realize how antithetical to the institutions that Uncle Sam
relies on, you know. And uh, Uncle Sam always was

(41:45):
kind of like a symbol of like equality and like
you know, American stick tuitiveness and all of that. But
what Uncle Sam ultimately became was just kind of this
this representation of the powered class, you know, whether those
be politicians or you know, the moneyed hierarchy of industry.
And this is okay, so we're we're maybe lionizing or

(42:10):
uh deified debs a little bit, but he's he's still him,
you know what I mean, He's still his very version
of Jenny from the Block. Uh, he goes to court
and this is like a kind of moment. Yeah, they're
sexy sexy justice and justice and sorry, okay, I got it. Yeah,

(42:33):
Dick Wolf. So this is uh, this is a moment
where he goes to court. He's got an attorney, and
his attorney is getting kind of hyperbolic. His attorney basically, uh,
compares Eugene Debs to Jesus Christ. And there's no one call.
I know, that's the entry point. They're breaking the ice.
No one gets called to the stand, but Gene and

(42:57):
Jeans testimony is a two hour speech with like no interruptions,
which I cannot imagine that happening in a like that
does feel like a fake law and order courtroom situation.
Two hours, two hours. Understand, what do you do? A
little This is a little unrelated, but it just does
kind of point to the power of speaking up in

(43:19):
court like that because it becomes part of record and
people react, you know, the jury reacts, the litigator's react,
the judge reacts. And I saw a thing where remember
murder was the case. You know Tupac he actually went
to court for for a murder and he didn't say
a thing throughout the entire case until the very end
when he stood up and said something to the effect

(43:41):
of this hasn't been justice. He essentially said, this is
the kangaroo court. But he said, my my faith is
not in your hands. My faith is in God's hands.
And it was just the most baller kind of like,
you know, I know that I'm you know, righteous here,
and again I don't know even what came of that case.
I meaning obviously didn't go to prison centered or get
the death penalty. I think he was acquitted, if I'm

(44:02):
not mistaken. But this is that level of like, you know,
he's going to have his moments and people have to
pay attention because it's part of public record. You're out
of order. This whole court is out of order. This
whole country is out of order. Uh Also, what's next
airplane food? When those get invented, this is gonna be nuts.

(44:22):
Uh So, yeah, he says, I believe in free speech.
I believe in war as well as peace, and if
this espionage law stands, then our constitution is dead. It
was used as a workaround to to to jam this
guy up. It was not the letter and spirit of

(44:45):
the Act. It was a way of like literally shutting
down free speech. So what he's saying, whether you agree
with him or not, you know holds true. How can
you do espionage isn't something you do in public? Espionage
is something you do in the shadows. So to call
make a speech saying something unpopular, it's called that espionage
is absurd. I agree with you, because they're trying to

(45:09):
sabotage an idea. A war on an idea is a
very difficult war to win. Uh. There's one line that
I think, I know this really speaks um to you, Max.
I think it speaks to Nolan I as well. And
it's something it's something I've always remembered since I first
learned about this guy from his from his address. It

(45:34):
comes to us via another socialist named Max Eastman. It's this,
while there is a lower class, I am in it,
while there is a criminal element, I am of it,
while there is a soul in prison, I am not
free again. Take him to church, yeah, man. And it's

(45:55):
funny too, because if you look up images of Eugene Dabs,
I mean he's a wiry, slight kind of fellow where
he might as well have elbow patches, you know, he
really does look like a you know, a professor um.
So he doesn't have the the idea of casting him
as like a would be dictator, which is ironic that
kind of rhetoric, because he's couldn't be more anti dictator,

(46:19):
you know, because I mean, we have these de facto
dictators in the history of our country, in these captains
of industry. You know, they are these folks that that
there there are no checks and balances um and and
we have this illusion of checks and balances kind of
in the government, but within industry there really aren't. Um.
We were even in the earliest days of things like

(46:40):
regulatory um boards and things that are kind of calling
uh industrial you know, giants to task in terms of
what they're doing to the plan and what they're doing
to the working people. So you have this kind of
shadow government within industry that that essentially they are these dictators.
So it's hilarious to try to cast the slight little

(47:01):
preface sorial dude as like a would be dictator. Yeah,
and then let's also consider that, um importantly, a lot
of a lot of countries that would go on to
practice what you would see as communism or some blend
of socialism, a lot of them later failed, Right, So

(47:23):
it was easy to point to those experiments and say, hey,
watch out be scared, because if you if you want
these things like better labor laws than the next thing,
you know, uh, you're essentially going to be forced into
serfdom like over in the U. S. SR. So there

(47:44):
was there was a lot. This is ideological warfare. His speech,
though it is dope and rousing for many people in
the crowd, it doesn't persuade the judge. So the Espionage Act,
whether or not you agree that it is morally just,
is legal. It is letter is the lawful land. So

(48:05):
he gets sent back up the river for ten years.
He's taken from Cleveland to a prison out West Virginia,
and then later they send him down here to Atlanta
to the infamous Atlanta Federal Penitentiary, a very messed up
place to live. He's stuck in a shoebox size cell

(48:26):
with five other dudes. Isn't that the one that's still standing.
It's like it's very like Gothic. It's like over by
the good Taco place, Yeah, the prison Taco place. Yeah,
everybody loves it. It's so good that place is is
uh is um what's the word I'm looking for him striking.
It's about it's gotta be a better word. But it's just, yes, foreboding.

(48:48):
It's very Gotham city. You know, it's like it looks
like a weird Dracula castle. Yeah, that's a good description.
And uh so he's there, and this is way before
where the taco places built. But try it when you
come into town, folks, let us know. We'll meet you
up there. He says, don't give me any special treatment.

(49:09):
I wasn't just uh, I wasn't just styling on it
when I was talking in court. You know, if there's
a criminal element, let me be of it. Let me
be part of what you call the lowest. And they say, yeah,
right on, man. So you're gonna be in this cell
for fourteen hours a day, uh, and we'll let you
walk out in the prison yard twenty minutes every twenty

(49:30):
four hours. The nutritional value of what they're feeding prisoners
there is very, very bad. So he is gradually growing
malnourished and weak. And like you pointed out, no, he
doesn't have the best constitution to begin with. So he
starts to think, Holy smokes, the people I've met in

(49:51):
this prison, they're not necessarily bad people. They have, in fact,
a lot in common with the guys I worked with
in my real road days. He says, you it's a
cross section of society. You can see every version of
humanity here. And he says, you know what, also, I
kind of like, how, uh, this prison I'm in is

(50:13):
a model of equality because we're all in the same
terrible situation. Right, Yeah, that's true. It really does kind
of even the playing field. I mean, you know, there
are obviously, we know there are certain folks in prison
that get more privileges because of connections and skill sets
or you know, the aid frames of the world and
all of that. But in general, you really do have

(50:35):
to bootstrap yourself and like, you know, become valuable in
a very specific way in prison. Yeah. And of course
this is not too in any way diminish the horrors
of incarceration, which are you know many right, the risk
of physical violence, Uh, the dangers of infection and disease.

(50:57):
These are very real problems back then as well as today.
He becomes this he has something really interesting. Um, he
he becomes an ultimate champion of equality, right, and this
is what he's talking about in his later writings. So

(51:18):
this makes him a martyr, this makes him a folk hero.
He's a champion of free speech. He runs for president again,
that's right. Don't call it a comeback. This dude is
in jail and he runs for president. He gets nearly
a million votes as convict number nine six five three.

(51:41):
We did a slight mention of it in part one,
and we paid it off. And as the New Yorker
puts it in this article that we uh that we
referenced um by Jill Lapore, a vote for Deb's at
that point was not a vote for the Socialist Party.
It was a vote for free speech. Because again, whether

(52:03):
you you know, buy into the various intricacies of socialism,
which which there are many, what he was truly fighting
for here was having his free speech shut down. Yeah yeah,
And he probably at this point, given the national support
he garnered, he conceivably could ask for a pardon and

(52:26):
it probably would have been granted, right if he had
made some sort of public maya culpa, right and sort
of diffused the bomb of this activist movement. But he said, nag,
that's past for me, or that's a know for me, dog,
And he grew sicker, grew weaker. Day in day out.
People began holding these free gene rallies, what they called

(52:50):
them free debt rallies. But yeah, President Woodrow Wilson again,
thank you, famously a dick. Uh. He refused to answer
any of these national calls for just amnesty. Right, you
can say that he's still guilty, but let this guy
out of jail before he dies. For prison war, it

(53:11):
would take a different administration. Warren Harding's administration releases him
on Christmas Day one, but the damage to his frail
condition was done. He never recovered. He lived in a
sanatorium for the rest of his life. In he said
the Socialist Party was pretty much dead in the US,

(53:34):
and the next year he passed away. But you know,
to this day, I think we have in Bernie Sanders
sort of a Eugene Debs analog and that he really,
you know, made a splash in the kind of mainstream
political stage. And he obviously didn't win, but just by
virtue of like him being out there kind of spreading

(53:57):
these kinds of ideas, I think he made a big impact.
And I think Eugene V. Debs would have been proud,
And I couldn't I don't know this for a fact,
but I can't imagine that that Sanders isn't a student
of Debs. Oh? Absolutely, yeah, Because while this might sound
like a story that is ultimately a story of failure,
it's not really, because the legacy continued on, you know

(54:21):
what I mean. The It's like the idea of seeing
an apple fall to the ground and thinking, ah, dang,
what a waste of an apple. But every apple has seats,
as did the beliefs of Debs, and those seeds took root. God,
that's a painful analogy, but I hope, I hope we're
painting the picture, and they grew into things like new

(54:43):
generations of social reformers who spearheaded stuff like the New
Deal which saved the United States in the nineteen thirties.
And uh, this becomes part of the great, at times contradictory,
historical anatomy of the United States, of the country in

(55:06):
which we live. And at this point, you know, because
I don't want to sound sanctimonious, your ted talkie, at
this point, I think we tip our hats to you,
gene V Debs. Whether or not you agree with him,
you have to respect that he kept it real the
whole way through. And we can end on a lighter note. Gentleman, Noel,

(55:28):
max is it is it time for our spiteful dessert
said okay, alright, So, um Woodrow Wilson fans, if you
are somehow still listening to this episode, uh we we
would like to share with you some excellent research the
Max did. Uh Nolan, I did a little on our

(55:49):
own as well. We wanted to end this episode, which
is a quick list of reasons we think Woodrow Wilson
just sucks. Just sucks as a purse it not even
a president. Oh my gosh, Max, I think you should lead.
I mean, this is your this is your your baby.
Yeah yeah yeah, Wildrow Wilson really sucks. So the article

(56:12):
I'm gonna be referencing for most of this is a
vast article titled Woodrow Wilson was extremely racist, even by
the standards of his time. It was compared to two
people around him at the time. Because you know, that's
one of the hard things about going through history of
people and be like it's like, well, they were not
as racist as everyone else, But Woodrow Wilson was so

(56:33):
racist that everyone around him like, wow, this guy is
so ridiculously racist. So um, one thing he did I
did not know about this, but you know, reconstruction. Uh,
all that era stuff. There's a lot of the stuff
was still in place, and unfortunately a lot of it
would be carved away without these uh about these decades.
And one of the main people to do that, Woodrow Wilson.

(56:54):
He resegregated the federal government. He fired, or at least
put in an action, the firing of fifteen of the
seventeen black supervisors in all the federal service. There's only
seventeen black supervisors, so there's not many that many of them,
and by the time he was done, fifteen of them
were gone. He was like, too far. He also yeah,
he was like, um, like how Lovecraft was really racist

(57:18):
for a large part of his life. Lovecraft was so
racist that he made other racists uncomfortable. And that's kind
of the Woodrow Wilson vibe. This is astonishing because uh,
he also tried to high road people right when um,
when he got confronted by black Americans who saw the

(57:40):
threat of his his weird, his weird crush on segregation,
he told them, what what do you say, Max? You
should do the quote, Oh no, I have to read
this one. He said, I'm not going to try an
accent segregation. It's not humiliating, but a benefit and ought
to be so regarded by you gentlemen. Wolf and you guys,

(58:03):
I actually have another one. I have a secret one
from this article that I did not list in here.
It's so bad that I left out the side. But
supposedly there was this there was this black gentleman whose
job was deemed so essential they couldn't fire him. But
they're like, well, we have or they couldn't fire him,
and they couldn't move him into another department. He he
worked so interconnected with everyone else in the department who

(58:23):
was also who was by the way, white. They're like, okay,
so we have to leave him here, but we still
have to secre gae him. So they put this man
in a cage in a federal office building. It is
listed in this article. This, this man doing his job
working for the federal government, was put in a cage
while he worked in human Not to mention, he was

(58:46):
a vocal defender of the Ku Klux Klan. Oh right, yeah,
that part. Yeah. Woulard Wilson really loved the clan. He
really loved Confederacy, and he was kind of just like
obsessed with this whole lost cause thing where you know,
this idea that, like the Confederacy losing the Civil War,
there was this noble cause that they were fighting for
blah blah blah, all this bs that does not stand

(59:07):
up to any scrutiny whatsoever. And he really wanted to
install these ideas and everything. M Yeah. He also he
thought that the Confederacy was a pretty good idea. He said, look,
these are bucolic, like, uh, philosopher kings of an agrarian society,

(59:34):
and these northern industrialists just don't get it. Uh. He
was his most You know, Wilson's an academic, but being
an academic doesn't necessarily being intelligent does not necessarily make
you a good person. He was really into what is
called lost cause mythology, which is like the South was

(59:58):
right kind of stuff. Yeah, and it occurs to me. Uh,
Eugene V. Debs and you and Woodrow Wilson weirdly resembled
one another. Yeah, it looked like kind of it's like
a Marvel film where the hero and the yes like
in metaverse kind of or not mass good in alternate

(01:00:20):
kind of universe scenarios multi multiverse, thank you, not in metaverse.
But man, what a ride. Um. I can't believe we
I can't believe that we pulled two episodes out of this,
and I think each one has, you know, something very
special because this guy's early life was its own thing,
and then his history. I gotta say to that one

(01:00:42):
of the things I did to research for this, I
found a dude on this history YouTube channel who's like
a Eugene V. Deb's impersonator um and and it's sort
of like in the office where there was that that
eight that a blencoln um uh, Benjamin Franklin, Benjamin Franklin
impersonator exactly. This guy as these talks in character, and
then afterwards he was interviewed not in character, and he

(01:01:04):
pointed out that he did the version of Debs that
was sort of more long in the tooth because he
didn't feel like he could possibly ever match the rhetoric,
the rhetorical fire that's kind of more young Eugene Debs brought. Yeah,
and this and um, this is worth watching, by the way,
to get a sense of Debs. What Noel's talking about here.

(01:01:27):
We talked earlier. I love the h I love the
um what do you call it? I love the re
enactments I love those towns, I love the historical figures.
I'm a sucker for that, but even I would probably
skip a Woodrow Wilson re enactment. Uh. And with that,
I think we're gonna We're gonna call it a date.
This has been a crazy week for us, but it's

(01:01:50):
it's thoroughly enjoyable. Um. We cannot wait to get to
some of our future episodes. Couple of a couple of
spoilers for your ridiculous historians. We're getting into hot tubs
figuratively and maybe literally. We're also, uh, we're also going
deep into the story of condiments. I am so gas man,

(01:02:13):
oh man, and literally. Just by hearing you say that, now,
I think we need to also do an episode on
the story of condoms, because we know that could in
and of itself be an interesting tale. You know what
about condoms filled with condiments? No, I must stop you
right there. As a family show, family show. Huge thanks

(01:02:34):
to super producer Max Williams stopping him short of of
of of just totally ruining my mind. Um, Alex Williams
who composed this theme, doctor Zach Williams no relation, as
well as Jeff Bartlett. Big thanks to our research associate team.
Thanks to our long suffering friend and self appointed nemeses

(01:02:57):
Jonathan Strickland ak the Quister, Thanks to Deb's. Thanks to
our ridiculous historians for tuning in Noel. Thanks to you,
Matt Hey ed you as well. We'll see you next time, folks.
For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the I

(01:03:19):
Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows,