Leftward

EUGENE V. DEBS--Me Alister Coleman --Grcenbcrg ($3.50). From the sultry summer of 1894 when he led the great Pullman strike in Chicago to the bitter Christmas Eve in 1921 when he walked free from the U. S. penitentiary at Atlanta, Eugene Victor Debs was a name to anger conservative businessmen throughout the land, to hearten the consciously downtrodden. Behind the name was a tall lanky blue-eyed man, rapidly going bald, with a genius for friendship, a heart emotionally soft, a darting forefinger, a tongue afire with vituperation. Five times was he a candidate for President of the U. S. His whole life was a steady passionate movement to the left along the sliding scale of Radicalism, from conservative unionism, through Bryan Democracy, Populism, Social Democracy to revolutionary Socialism. It was a consistent swing of half a century.

The Man. Of Alsatian stock, Debs was born Nov. 5, 1855 into a respectable bourgeois family at crude, democratic Terre Haute, Ind. His father kept a grocery store, read Victor Hugo. Gene left school at 14, spent a year scraping paint in a Vandalia railroad shop, became a locomotive fireman on the old Terre Haute & Indianapolis R. R. At 19 he gave up the only hard work he ever did because of his mother's fears for his safety.

Words stirred Gene mystically. The "Labor Movement" caught him up. He helped organize the Terre Haute lodge of the new Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen ("Benevolence, Sobriety, Industry"), rose to leadership in this moribund organization, revived it, resigned abruptly because of its opposition to strikes. In 1893 he developed his "one big union" idea in the form of the American Railway Union, led it successfully through the Great Northern strike, saw it disintegrate after the Pullman strike a year later. For contempt of a labor injunction he was jailed for six months, was impregnated with Socialism by a Milwaukee visitor, Victor Berger.

Followed years of labor agitation and national politics, with Debs in and out of new revolutionary groups. As a Democrat he had been elected city clerk of Terre Haute at 25, and to the Indiana Legislature at 29. In 1896 as a Populist he supported William Jennings Bryan, turned definitely away from Democracy to Socialism. As the Socialist candidate for President he got 95,000 votes in 1900, 402,000 votes in 1904, 420,000 in 1908 (the "Red Special" year), 897,000 votes in 1912. As Convict No. 9653 in Atlanta, he received 919.000 presidential votes in 1920.

The War nearly broke Debs's heart. Cried he: "I abhor war!" To him it was purely a Capitalist fight. At Canton. Ohio, in June 1918 he shrilled loudest against the military policies of the U. S.. was indicted and convicted of violating the Espionage Law, of obstructing the Draft and giving aid and comfort to the enemy. His sentence: ten years in jail which the Supreme Court sustained unanimously in March 1919. First he was comfortably imprisoned at Moundsville. W. Va.. then transferred to Atlanta where he nearly died in confinement. President Harding freed him in December 1921. an old and broken man. He saw his party support Robert Marion La Follette for the Presidency in 1924. On Oct. 20. 1926. he died peacefully in a Chicago sanitarium, his hand in the hand of his faithful brother. Theodore, who followed him like a helpful shadow through all his days.

The Cause. No doctrinaire Socialist, Debs participated in the rise of the "cooperative commonwealth" theory in the U. S., saw Socialism split and divide again and again. With each group he would lose patience and move leftward. The Knights of Labor were too idealistic for him, too nonmilitant. The A. F. of L. (''Unionism pure and simple") was too non-political under Samuel Gompers. The railway brotherhoods, opposed to strikes, sought too hard to become "respectable." The Industrial Workers of the World gave promise of a big rival union until it be came an organization of bums addicted to sabotage. Debs believed in political revolution by votes, not in physical revolution by torch and bomb. Significance. Debs was a character who stirred violent emotions. A judi cial appraisal of him by a biographer is well nigh impossible. Biographer Coleman presents him in a favorable light, popular izes him, tries to preserve a fair balance of fact. But his personal admiration for Debs too often gets control and sweeps him into passages of sloppy panegyrics. The story is the story of Debs, human, flashing, courageous, a great personality, right or wrong, and not the story of So cialism in the U. S. Skillfully has Biog rapher Coleman dramatized the Haymarket riots, the Pullman strike, the ''Red Special" campaign, the dark days at Atlanta. He can almost be excused for skimping over Debs' whiskey drinking and the "free love" scandals of Socialism. The Author. Me Alister Coleman, 42, New York City Socialist, was a newsman for four years on the New York Sun. Pub licity work for American Telephone & Telegraph Co. made him a radical. He now publicizes for the United Mine Workers (Springfield faction [TiME. March 24]). He reported the Scopes trial, the Herron trial, the Sacco-Vanzetti trial for labor papers. Politically minded, he ran for Alderman fn 1927, for U. S. Senator in 1928.

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