DEBS, EUGENE VICTOR

(1855), an American labor leader, and Socialist, b. in Terre Haute, Ind. He received only a common school education and then found employment as a locomotive fireman, also becoming prominent as an official of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen. He was one of the group which seceeded from the railroad trade organizations and formed the general Railway Union, with headquarters in Chicago, becoming its president in 1893. He was leader of the great railroad strike of 1894 and was in i prisoned for contempt of court during the period following the | strike. It was shortly after this that he came under the influence of Victor Berger, the Milwaukee Socialist, and adopted his doctrines. Since then he has been the recognized standard-bearer of the American Socialist Party and was {ts nominee for the Presidency in the campaigns of 1900, 1904, 1908, 1912 and » 1920. In 1918 he was sentenced for violating the Espionage Act to ten years in a Federal Prison, but was pardoned in 1922. Debs’ popularity among hig followers rests on his pl personality and his abilities as an orator, rather than on his intellectual qualities.