U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [11]
that was in the early days
-25-LOVER OF MANKIND
Debs was a railroad man, born in a weather-boarded shack at Terre Haute. He was one of ten children.
His father had come to America in a sailingship
in '49,
an Alsatian from Colmar; not much of a money-maker, fond of music and reading, he gave his children a chance to finish public
school and that was about al he could do.
At fifteen Gene Debs was already working as a
machinist on the Indianapolis and Terre Haute Rail-way. He worked as locomotive fireman,
clerked in a store
joined the local of the Brotherhood of Locomo-tive Firemen, was elected secretary, traveled al over the' country as organizer.
He was a tal shamblefooted man, had a sort of
gusty rhetoric that set on fire the railroad workers in their pineboarded hal s made them want the world he wanted,
a world brothers might own
where everybody would split even:
I am not a labor leader. I don't want you to fol- low me or anyone else. If you are looking for a Moses to lead you out of the capitalist wilderness you will stay right where you are. I would not lead you into this promised land if I could, because if I could lead you in, someone else would lead you out.
That was how he talked to freighthandlers and
gandywalkers, to firemen and switchmen and engi-neers, tel ing them it wasn't enough to organize the railroadmen, that al workers must be organized, that
-26-al workers must be organized in the workers' coopera-tive commonwealth. Locomotive fireman on many a long night's run,
under the smoke a fire burned him up, burned in
gusty words that beat in pineboarded hal s; he wanted his brothers to be free men. That was what he saw in the crowd that met him
at the Old Wel s Street Depot when he came out of
jail after the Pul man strike,
those were the men that chalked up nine hundred
thousand votes for him in nineteen twelve and scared the frockcoats and the tophats and diamonded hostesses at Saratoga Springs, Bar Harbor, Lake Geneva with the bogy of a socialist president.
But where were Gene Debs' brothers in nineteen
eighteen when Woodrow Wilson had him locked up
in Atlanta for speaking against war,
where were the big men fond of whisky and fond
of each other, gentle rambling tel ers of stories over bars in smal towns in the Middle of each other, gentle rambling tel ers of stories over bars in smal towns in the Middle West,
quiet men who wanted a house with a porch to
putter around and a fat wife to cook for them, a few drinks and cigars, a garden to dig in, cronies to chew the rag with
and wanted to work for it
and others to work for it;
where were the locomotive firemen and engineers
when they hustled him off to Atlanta Penitentiary?
And they brought him back to die in Terre Haute
to sit on his porch in a rocker with a cigar in his mouth,
-27-beside him American Beauty roses his wife fixed in a bowl;
and thepeople of Terre Haute and the people in
Indiana and the people of the Middle West were fond of him and afraid of him and thought of him as an old kindly uncle who loved them, and wanted to be with him and to have him give them candy,
but they were afraid of him as if he had contracted a social disease, syphilis or leprosy, and thought it was too bad,
but on account of the flag
and prosperity
and making the world safe for democracy,
they were afraid to be with him,
or to think much about him for fear they might
believe him;
for he said:
While there is a lower class I am of it, while there is a criminal class I am of it, while there is a soul in prison I am not free.
THE CAMERA EYE (4.)
riding backwards through the rain in the rumbly cab looking at their two faces in the jiggly light of the four-wheeled cab and Her big trunks thumping on the roof and He reciting Othello in his lawyer's voice Her father loved me, oft invited me Still questioned me the story of my life
From year to year, the battles, sieges, fortunes
-28- That I have past.
I ran it through, even from my boyish days,
To th' very moment that he bade me tell it
Wherein I spoke of the most disastrous chances