Statement to the Court_名人演说
september 18, 1918
first published: 1918
source: court stenogropher
online version: e.v. debs internet archive, 2001
transcribed/html markup: john metz for the
september 18, 1918
standing here this morning, i recall my boyhood. at fourteen i went to work in a railroad shop; at sixteen i was firing a freight engine on a railroad. i remember all the hardships and privations of that earlier day, and from that time until now my heart has been with the working class. i could have been in conss long ago. i have preferred to go to prison…
i am thinking this morning of the men in the mills and the factories; of the men in the mines and on the railroads. i am thinking of the women who for a paltry wage are compelled to work out their barren lives; of the little children who in this system are robbed of their childhood and in their tender years are seized in the remorseless grasp of mammon and forced into the industrial dungeons, there to feed the monster machines while they thelves are being starved and stunted, body and soul. i see them dwarfed and diseased and their little lives broken and blasted ause in this high noon of christian civilization money is still so much more important than the flesh and blood of childhood. in very truth gold is god today and rules with pitiless sway in the affairs of men.
this order of things cannot always endure. i have registered my protest against it. i recognize the feebleness of my effort, but, fortunately, i am not alone. there are multiplied thousands of others who, like myself, have come to realize that before we may truly enjoy the blessings of civilized life, we must reorganize society upon a mutual and cooperative basis; and to this end we have organized a at economic and political movement that spreads over the face of all the earth.
there are today upwards of sixty millions of socialists, loyal, devoted adherents to this cause, regardless of nationality, race, creed, color, or sex. they are all making common cause. they are spreading with tireless energy the propaganda of the new social order. they are waiting, watching, and working hopefully through all the hours of the day and the night. they are still in a minority. but they have learned how to be patient and to bide their time. the feel—they know, indeed—that the time is coming, in spite of all opposition, all persecution, when this emancipating gospel will spread among all the peoples, and when this minority will ome the triumphant majority and, sweeping into power, inaugurate the ates social and economic change in history.
your honor, i ask no mercy and i plead for no immunity. i realize that finally the right must prevail. i never so clearly comprehended as now the at struggle between the powers of ed and exploitation on the one hand and upon the other the rising hosts of industrial freedom and social justice.