Who Owns America?William Jennings Bryan &

Eugene V. Debs“This order of things cannot always

endure.”(Political Science 565)

Long-term outcomes of the Civil War

• Federal government decisively rendered superior to state governments

• Blacks being citizens, racial equality becomes civil rights issue

• Necessities of war lead to dramatic expansion, bureaucratization of federal gov’t

• Push to homogenize law across states• Expanded power of corporations, closer ties

to government

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William Jennings Bryan• Lawyer• Populist orator, the Great

Commoner– Spoke for the rural people of

the midwest & west, massively popular

• Democratic presidential nominee 1896, 1900 and 1908

• Peace activist & anti-imperialist

• Wilson’s Secretary of State• Scopes Trial

– Bryan vs. Clarence Darrow

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Bryan• The money question: should the dollar be backed by gold or by

silver?– Major issue in late-19th C. American politics

• Gold: stable, “Sound Money”– Backed by the banks, industry, landlords

• Silver: inflationary, “Free Silver”– Backed by debtors, farmers, workers

• Themes of the ‘Cross of Gold’ speech– Equality– The people = farmers, laborers– The State should serve & protect the people– America belongs to the common people, not to elites– Major business interests are capturing the government

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“The armor of a righteous cause”

• I would be presumptuous, indeed, to present myself against the distinguished gentlemen to whom you have listened if this were a mere measuring of abilities; but this is not a contest between persons. The humblest citizen in all the land, when clad in the armor of a righteous cause, is stronger than all the hosts of error. I come to speak to you in defence of a cause as holy as the cause of liberty—the cause of humanity.– The cause of the masses is the cause of all human beings– Moral righteousness above all

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• “With a zeal approaching the zeal which inspired the crusaders who followed Peter the Hermit, our silver Democrats went forth from victory unto victory until they are now assembled, not to discuss, not to debate, but to enter up the judgment already rendered by the plain people of this country. In this contest brother has been arrayed against brother, father against son. – “Thus has the contest been waged, and we have

assembled here under as binding and solemn instructions as were ever imposed upon representatives of the people.”

• Crusade, believers vs. unbelievers

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Bryan• “We object to bringing this question down to the level of

persons. The individual is but an atom; he is born, he acts, he dies; but principles are eternal; and this has been a contest over a principle.”– A matter of ideals, which are more important than even life

• Equality– To the charge that silver will disrupt business, “We say to you

that you have made the definition of a business man too limited in its application. The man who is employed for wages is as much a business man as his employer; the attorney in a country town is as much a business man as the corporation counsel in a great metropolis”

• Power in language

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Bryan• To whom does America belong? To "the idle holders of idle capital”

or to "the struggling masses, who produce the wealth and pay the taxes of the country”?– What is here the appropriate role of government intervention? On

whose behalf should it act? To whom does it belong?• “There are two ideas of government. There are those who believe

that, if you will only legislate to make the well-to-do prosperous, their prosperity will leak through on those below. The Democratic idea, however, has been that if you legislate to make the masses prosperous, their prosperity will find its way up through every class which rests upon them.”– for Bryan that the state should act to preserve and protect those who

are the most numerous and at the same time most vulnerable.

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Bryan• “You come to us and tell us that the great cities are in

favor of the gold standard; we reply that the great cities rest upon our broad and fertile prairies. Burn down your cities and leave our farms, and your cities will spring up again as if by magic; but destroy our farms and the grass will grow in the streets of every city in the country.”

• The rural people are the base of the American way of life– Morally– Economically

• The producer of wealth seen as prior to the aggregator of wealth• A matter of justice

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Bryan• “Our ancestors, when but three millions in number,

had the courage to declare their political independence of every other nation; shall we, their descendants, when we have grown to seventy millions, declare that we are less independent than our forefathers? [...]– Having behind us the producing masses of this nation and

the world, supported by the commercial interests, the laboring interests, and the toilers everywhere, we will answer their demand for a gold standard by saying to them: You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns, you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.”

• What is called to mind by this imagery?

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Scopes• Let me, in the first place, congratulate our cause that circumstances

have committed the trial to a community like this and entrusted the decision to a jury made up largely of the yeomanry of the state.– Virtue of the agrarian masses

• “This is not an interference with freedom of conscience. A teacher can think as he pleases and worship God as he likes, or refuse to worship God at all.”– Issue is not with the individual, but with his function as public servant

• The “state can direct what shall be taught and also forbid the teaching of anything ‘manifestly inimical to the public welfare.’” (1)– What is the public welfare? Who decides?– How much influence should the community have over the education

of its children?

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• Science has brought many useful & beneficial things to modern life, and “Christianity welcomes truth from whatever source it comes, and is not afraid that any real truth from any source can interfere with the divine truth that comes by inspiration from God Himself.”– But: “Evolution is not truth; it is merely an hypothesis—it is

millions of guesses strung together.” (3)• Bryan’s claim here rests on a misunderstanding of the

scientific term “theory”– A scientific theory is a hypothesis that has been tested many

times and has a large amount of evidence to support it• Functionally factual• Newton

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Separation of Church & State• The “evolutionary hypothesis, carried to its logical

conclusion, disputes every vital truth of the Bible. Its tendency, natural, if not inevitable, is to lead those who really accept it, first to agnosticism and then to atheism.– Darwin “drags man down to the brute level, and then, judging

man by brute standards, he questions whether man’s mind can be trusted to deal with God and immortality? How can any teacher tell his students that evolution does not tend to destroy his religious faith?” (5-6)

• “Christians must, in every state of the Union, build their own colleges in which to teach Christianity; it is only simple justice that atheists, agnostics and unbelievers should build their own colleges if they want to teach their own religious views or attack the religious views of others.” (2)

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• “Do bad doctrines corrupt the morals of students? We have a case in point. Mr. Darrow, [and lead attorney for the defense] one of the most distinguished criminal lawyers in our land, was engaged about a year ago in defending two rich men’s sons who were on trial for as dastardly a murder as was ever committed.”

• Leopold & Loeb, 1924• Nathan Leopold had been an enthusiastic reader of Nietzsche, Beyond

Good and Evil– Darrow’s defense: “Is there any blame attached because somebody took

Nietzsche’s philosophy seriously and fashioned his life upon it?[..] Then who is to blame? The university would be more to blame than he is; the scholars of the world would be more to blame than he is. The publishers of the world are more to blame than he is. Your Honor, it is hardly fair to hang a 19-year-old boy for the philosophy that was taught him at the university.”

• For Bryan, this exactly supports his argument that a belief in the atheistic dominance of the strongest leads to violence and depravity (8-9)

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• Darrow defense Richard Loeb: “I do not know what remote ancestor may have sent down the seed that corrupted him, and I do not know through how many ancestors it may have passed until it reached Dickey Loeb. All I know is, it is true, and there is not a biologist in the world who will not say I am right.”– Bryan: “That doctrine is as deadly as leprosy; it may

aid a lawyer in a criminal case, but it would, if generally adopted, destroy all sense of responsibiity [sic] and menace the morals of the world.” (10)

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• Evolution teaches that change can occur only over millions of years, stifling hopes for change today– “Its only program for man is scientific breeding, a

system under which a few supposedly superior intellects, self-appointed, would direct the mating and the movements of the mass of mankind—an impossible system!” (11)

• Eugenics

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• Darwin: “The weak members of civilized society propagate their kind [via vaccinations, asylums, poor laws]. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man.”– “The aid which we feel impelled to give to the helpless is mainly

an incidental result of the instinct of sympathy, which was originally acquired as part of the social instincts”

• Bryan: “All of the sympathetic activities of civilized society are condemned because they enable “the weak members to propagate their kind.” Then he drags mankind down to the level of the brute and compares the freedom given to man unfavorably with the restraint that we put on barnyard beasts.” (12)– Evolution erodes Christian pity & solidarity

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• Evolution, “if taken seriously and made the basis of a philosophy of life, it would eliminate love and carry man back to a struggle of tooth and claw.” (12)

• “What else can the spirit of evolution can account for the popularity of the selfish doctrine, ‘Each one for himself, and the devil take the hindmost,’ that threatens the very existence of the doctrine of brotherhood.” (14)– Embracing evolution will not only enable capitalist

competition & exploitation, but legitimate it as morally good.

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• “In war, science has proven itself an evil genius; it has made war more terrible than it ever was before.”– It has given us planes and submarines, “but science does not teach

brotherly love. Science has made war so hellish that civilization was about to commit suicide; and now we are told that newly discovered instruments of destruction will make the cruelties of the late war seem trivial in comparison with the cruelties of wars that may come in the future.

• If civilization is to be saved from the wreckage threatened by intelligence not consecrated by love, it must be saved by the moral code of the meek and lowly Nazarene.”

• “The world needs a savior more than it ever did before.” (14)– The eroding of Christianity will unleash powers of exploitation and

destruction• “Again force and love meet face to face, and the question, “What

shall I do with Jesus?” must be answered.” (15)

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Eugene V. Debs• 1855-1926• Labor Leader

– Founder American Railway Uniion (1st American industrial union), IWW

– Becomes a Socialist after Pullman Strike• Socialist Party candidate for Presidency

1900, 1904, 1908, 1912, 1920– Ran from prison in 1920, after conviction

under Sedition Act• Re: Debs: “That old man with the

burning eyes actually believes that there can be such a thing as the brotherhood of man. And that's not the funniest part of it. As long as he's around I believe it myself.”

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5 Minutes on Marxism

• Dialectical materialism– Laws of history

• Class & the Means of Production– Aristocracy Land– Bourgeoisie Capital– Proletariat Labor

• Internal contradictions of a social order bear seeds of replacement by new hegemonic class

• Capitalism the most revolutionary system• State as the “executive committee of the ruling class”

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“How I Became a Socialist”• “In 1894 the American Railway Union was organized and a braver

body of men never fought the battle of the working class.– Up to this time I had heard but little of Socialism, knew practically

nothing about the movement, and what little I did know was not calculated to impress me in its favor. I was bent on thorough and complete organization of the railroad men and ultimately the whole working class, and all my time and energy were given to that end.

• My supreme conviction was that if they were only organized in every branch of the service and all acted together in concert they could redress their wrongs and regulate the conditions of their employment. – The stockholders of the corporation acted as one, why not the men? It

was such a plain proposition—simply to follow the example set before their eyes by their masters—surely they could not fail to see it, act as one, and solve the problem.”

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• After a series of ARU victories, “Next followed the final shock—the Pullman strike—and the American Railway Union again won, clear and complete. The combined corporations were paralized and helpless. – At this juncture there were delivered, from wholly

unexpected quarters, a swift succession of blows that blinded me for an instant and then opened wide my eyes—and in the gleam of every bayonet and the flash of every rifle the class struggle was revealed. This was my first practical lesson in Socialism, though wholly unaware that it was called by that name.”

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The Pullman Strike• 1894, Chicago• Employees of Pullman Palace Car Co. go on wildcat

strike– Wages had been cut, but rents in company housing

remained as they were– Delegation sent to talk to management, gets fired

• Strike• Racial tensions• Mail cars also stopped, Pres. Cleveland 12,000 soldiers

3,000 US Marshals sent to break strike over objections of state & city officials– 5,000 “Deputies”

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Debs’ response to Cleveland• 1904– Cleveland had written a piece for McClure’s, Debs

response unpublished • “I aver that [Cleveland] received every particle of his

information from the capitalist side, that he was prompted to act by the capitalist side, that his official course was determined wholly, absolutely by and in the interest of the capitalist side, and that no more thought or consideration was given to the other side, the hundreds of thousands of working men, whose lives and whose wives and babes were at stake, than if they had been so many swine or sheep that had balked on their way to the shambles.” (2)

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• “From the federal judge who sat on the bench as the protegé of the late George M. Pullman, to whose influence he was indebted for his appointment — as he was to the railroad companies for the annual passes he had in his pocket — down to the last thug sworn in by the railroads and paid by the railroads (pg. 340, Report of Strike Commission) to serve the railroads as United States deputy marshals, the one object of the federal court and its officers was not the enforcement of law and the preservation of order, but the breaking up of the strike in the interest of the railroad corporations.”– Judge Woods imprisons strikers w/o trial– Who owns the state?

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• “During the strike the late George M. Pullman was summoned to appear before the federal court to give testimony. He at once had his private car attached to an eastbound train and left the city, treating the court with sovereign contempt. – On his return, accompanied by Robert Todd Lincoln, his

attorney, he had a tête-à-tête with the court “in chambers,” and that ended the matter. He was not required to testify nor to appear in open court.

• The striker upon whom there fell even the suspicion of a shadow of contempt was sentenced and jailed with alacrity. Not one was spared, not one invited to a “heart-to-heart” with his honor “in chambers."” (2-3)– Whose law? Whose justice?

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• Offices, records, communications searched & subpoenaed from ARU, but not from Pullman Co.

• At the time President Cleveland and his Attorney General, Richard Olney, designated Edwin Walker, upon recommendation of the railroads, as special counsel to the government, for which alleged service he was paid a fee that amounted to a fortune, the said Edwin Walker was already the regular counsel of the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railway.– “Does it not indicate clearly that the railroads controlled

the government, that Pres. Cleveland did the bidding of the General Managers Association”? (4)

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• “Suppose that President Cleveland had appointed Clarence S. Darrow, attorney for the American Railway Union, instead of Edwin Walker, attorney of the General Managers’ Association, as special counsel to the government!”– Suppose he’d had the offices of the General Manager’s

Association sacked, papers confiscated, offices put under guard– Suppose he “had sworn in an army of “thugs, thieves, and ex-

convicts” (see official report of Michael Brennan, superintendent of Chicago police to the Council of Chicago) to serve the American Railway Union as deputy United States marshals and “conservators of peace and order”!

• “Would anyone in possession of his senses believe that these things had been done to protect life and property and preserve law and order?” (5)

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• “Michael Brennan, superintendent of the Chicago police, knew it and denounced the deputy marshals, Edwin Walker’s hirelings, the General Managers’ Association’s incendiaries and sluggers, as “thugs, thieves, and ex-convicts.”– “The only trouble there was when the “deputies” were sworn in,

followed by the soldiers, was that there was no trouble. That is the secret of subsequent proceedings. The railroads were paralyzed. Profound peace reigned.” (6-7)

• “Peace and order were fatal to the railroad corporations. Violence was necessary to them as peace was to the employees. They realized that victory could only be snatched from labor by an appeal to violence in the name of peace.” (7)– Deputies incite violence, start fires (no Pullman cars burned), riots (no

strikers implicated), capitalist media spread word of chaos public demands order, vilifies strikers

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• “To whose interest was it to have riots and fires, lawlessness and crime?

• To whose advantage was it to have disreputable “deputies” do these things?

• Why were only freight cars, largely hospital wrecks, set on fire?• Why have the railroads not yet recovered damages from Cook

County, Illinois, for failing to protect their property? Why are they so modest and patient with their suits?

• The riots and incendiarism turned defeat into victory for the railroads. They could have won in no other way. They had everything to gain and the strikers everything to lose.” (10)– Perjury & manipulations of court– Mysterious illness of a juror, trial suspended (10-12)

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• The Supreme Court of the United States, consisting wholly of trained and successful corporation lawyers, affirmed the proceedings and President Cleveland says that they have “written the concluding words of this history.”

• Did the Supreme Court of the United States write the “concluding words” in the history of chattel slavery when it handed down Chief Justice Taney’s decision that black man had “no rights that the white man was bound to respect”? (7)

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John Brown: History’s Greatest Hero

• “Few people dared on that fateful day to breathe a sympathetic word for the grizzled old agitator.”– Old John Brown set an example of moral courage and of single-

hearted devotion to an ideal for all men and for all ages.• With every drop of his honest blood he hated slavery, and in his

early manhood he resolved to lay his life on Freedom’s alter in wiping out that insufferable affliction. He never faltered. So God-like was his unconquerable soul that he dared to face the world alone.– How perfectly sublime!

• He did not reckon the overwhelming numbers against him, nor the paltry few that were on his side. This grosser aspect of the issue found no lodgment in his mind or heart. He was right and Jehovah was with him. His was not to reckon consequences, but to strike the immortal blow and step from the gallows to the throne of God.”

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• “Not for earthly glory did John Brown wage his holy warfare; not for any recognition or reward the people had it in their power to bestow. His great heart was set upon a higher goal, animated by a loftier ambition. His grand soul was illuminated by a sublimer ideal. A race of human beings, lowly and despised, were in chains, and this festering crime was eating out the heart of civilization.– In the presence of this awful plague logic was silent, reason dumb,

pity dead.• The wrath of retibutive justice, long asleep, awakened at last and

hurled its lurid bolt. Old John Brown struck the blow and the storm broke. That hour chattel slavery was dead.– In the first frightful convulsion the slave power seized the grand old

liberator by the throat, put him in irons and threw him into a dungeon to await execution.”

• “Who shall be the John Brown of Wage-Slavery?”

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Race & Class• “But of all the senseless agitation in capitalist society,

that in respect to “social equality” takes the palm. The very instant it is mentioned the old aristocratic plantation owner’s shrill cry about the “buck nigger” marrying the “fair young daughter” of his master is heard from the tomb and echoed and re-echoed across the spaces and repeated by the “white trash” in proud vindication of their social superiority.”– “This phase of the Negro question is pure fraud and serves

to mask the real issue, which is not social equality , BUT ECONOMIC FREEDOM.”

• There never was any social inferiority that was not the shrivelled fruit of economic inequality.”

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Race & Class• “I have said and say again that, properly speaking, there is no Negro

question outside of the labor question—the working class struggle.”

• “When Marx said: “Workingmen of all countries unite,” he gave concrete expression to the socialist philosophy of the class struggle; unlike the framers of the Declaration of Independence who announced that “all men are created equal” and then basely repudiated their own doctrine, Marx issued the call to all the workers of the globe, regardless of race, sex, creed or any other condition whatsoever.– As a social party we receive the Negro and all other races upon

absolutely equal terms. We are the party of the working class, the whole working class, and we will not suffer ourselves to be divided by any specious appeal to race prejudice; and if we should be coaxed or driven from the straight road we will be lost in the wilderness and ought to perish there, for we shall no longer be a Socialist party.”

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Sedition Conviction

• June 16, 1918, Debs gives speech urging resistance to WWI draft

• Wilson calls him “a traitor to his country”• Sentenced to 10 years• President Harding commutes sentence to time

served in 1923• On return to Terre Haute, IN, greeted by

crowd of 50,000 and marching bands

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• Your Honor, years ago I recognized my kinship with all living beings, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on earth. I said then, and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it, and while there is a criminal element I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.– Your Honor, I have stated in this court that I am opposed to the social

system in which we live; that I believe in a fundamental change—but if possible by peaceable and orderly means,

• 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 Congress long ago. I have preferred to go to prison…”

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• “if there are still vast numbers of our people who are the victims of poverty and whose lives are an unceasing struggle all the way from youth to old age, until at last death comes to their rescue and lulls these hapless victims to dreamless sleep, it is not the fault of the Almighty: it cannot be charged to nature, but it is due entirely to the outgrown social system in which we live that ought to be abolished not only in the interest of the toiling masses but in the higher interest of all humanity…– I believe, Your Honor, in common with all Socialists, that this nation

ought to own and control its own industries. I believe, as all Socialists do, that all things that are jointly needed and used ought to be jointly owned—that industry, the basis of our social life, instead of being the private property of a few and operated for their enrichment, ought to be the common property of all, democratically administered in the interest of all…”

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• “I am opposing a social order in which it is possible for one man who does absolutely nothing that is useful to amass a fortune of hundreds of millions of dollars, while millions of men and women who work all the days of their lives secure barely enough for a wretched existence.”

• “This order of things cannot always endure.– 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 great struggle between the powers of greed and exploitation on the one hand and upon the other the rising hosts of industrial freedom and social justice.”

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