Eugene V. Debs delivered the speech that landed him in jail 99 years ago.

[Snarkoleptic]

Reprinted here in it's entirety at the link-
https://jacobinmag.com/2017/06/eugene-debs-world-war-i-jail-canton

The speech Eugene V. Debs delivered on June 16, 1918 in Canton, Ohio was, for him, fairly unremarkable.

Speaking from a gazebo in a city park, the Socialist Party leader denounced the “Junkers of Wall Street” for enslaving workers in industrial despotism; confidently heralded the coming of the cooperative commonwealth (“it is as vain to resist it as it would be to arrest the sunrise on the morrow”); and exhorted listeners to join the Socialist Party, “the builders of the beautiful world that is to be.”

As one historian notes, Debs “said nothing he had not said many times before and had referred to the war but once.”

But federal authorities, gripped by World War I hysteria, had heard enough. They arrested him for intending to “cause and incite insubordination, disloyalty, mutiny and refusal of duty in the military,” as well as for trying “to obstruct the recruiting and enlistment service of the United States.” Debs was stripped of his citizenship and incarcerated until December 1921, when he received a presidential commutation.

However pedestrian for Debs, the offending speech is a study in socialist oration, with memorable lines like “The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.” In honor of its ninety-ninth anniversary, we reprint it here in full.

[Snarkoleptic]

1. Found a partial reading of this speech by Mark Ruffalo here-

[Docreed2003]

2. Excellent! Thank you!

[hedda_foil]

3. Wonderful speech, beautifully performed but historically incorrect.

I doubt if his laboring listeners knew the difference, but he insists that the media lords declared war upon each other and the serfs then became their soldiers. That's totally wrong. The serfs were left to farm the Lord's lands while the Lord and his knights, all of whom were fairly wealthy, went to war, generally at the command of the local king, who also fought. War was left to the upper classes... men trained from childhood to fight.

[Docreed2003]

4. While I get that and appreciate the historical clarification ...

His point regarding his current times and even our own era remains....the ones making the decisions for war are not sending their own children out to those fights.

[hedda_foil]

5. Absolutely. That's what made the speech so powerful and why it resonates still.