All these men reported to the conductors, who had the top job, and, on trains owned by George Mortimer Pullman, one of the richest men in the United States, all of them-the engineers, the firemen, the brakemen, the switchmen, and even the scrapers-outranked the porters. If they were lucky, and lived long enough, firemen usually became engineers, which was safer than being a switchman or a brakeman, jobs that involved working on the tracks next to a moving train, or racing across its top, in any weather, at the risk of toppling off and getting run over. Firemen, caked in coal dust, blinded by wind and smoke, had to make sure that the engine didn’t explode, an eventuality they weren’t always able to forestall. He got a raise when he was promoted to fireman, which meant working in the locomotive next to the engineer, shovelling coal into a firebox-as much as two tons an hour, sixteen hours a day, six days a week. Listen to a reading of excerpts by Mark Ruffalo from this classic speech by Eugene Debs via Voices of a People’s History of the United States.Eugene Victor Debs left school at the age of fourteen, to scrape paint and grease off the cars of the Vandalia Railroad, in Indiana, for fifty cents a day. Read more in Free Speech on Trial: Eugene Debs at Canton, Ohio by Glenn V.
If war is right, let it be declared by the people – you, who have your lives to lose.įor this speech he was arrested and convicted in federal court in Cleveland, Ohio under the war-time espionage law. The working class have never yet had a voice in declaring war. Debs in Canton, Ohio on June 16, 1918.Įugene Debs made his famous anti-war speech protesting World War I which was raging in Europe. But they themselves did not go to war any more than the modern feudal lords, the barons of Wall Street, go to war. concluded to enlarge their domains, to increase their power, their prestige and their wealth they declared war upon one another. In the Middle Ages when the feudal lords.
Eugene Debs speaking to a crowd in Canton, Ohio.
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