Labor and Freedom - Softcover

Debs, Eugene V.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1544642547 ISBN 13: 9781544642543

Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2017

Synopsis

The face of the old umbrella mender lighted up with a kindly smile as he commented on the strange conduct of my umbrella in slipping a cog just as he happened to come along. I asked him by what evil magic he did the trick and he laughed in a half-hearted way just to be polite, but it was plain that he had long since forgotten how to laugh. As we stepped into the shelter of an adjoining store he sat down on the steps and drawing a threaded needle from beneath the lapel of his thin and faded coat, he began to sew the cover back into its proper place. His fingers were red and numb. A discolored nail partly hid a badly bruised thumb. He had difficulty in doing this bit of sewing, and it plainly distressed him. His eyesight was failing and his fingers were stiff in the joints.

About this title

About the Author

Eugene Victor Debs, born November 5, 1855 in Terre Haute, Indiana and died October 20, 1926 in Elmhurst, Illinois, is an American politician, trade unionist and socialist, a founder of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW, Industrial Workers of the World). He is a candidate of the Socialist Party of America for the presidential elections on five occasions. The beginnings of popularity Eugene Victor Debs was born in Terre Haute, Indiana, where he lived most of his life. His father, Jean-Daniel Debs, is a bourgeois son of Colmar in Alsace (France) who marries a worker with whom he emigrated to the United States after the failure of the workers' revolution of June 1848 in Paris. His first names are chosen in homage to the writers Eugène Sue and Victor Hugo, sensitive to the fate of the workers (see in particular Les Misérables). At the age of 14, he left the family home and worked in the railways, becoming a driver. He returned home in 1874 and worked as a salesman. The following year he became a founding member of the new Lodge of the Brotherhood of Drivers. He quickly progressed to fraternity, first becoming assistant editor-in-chief for their newspaper and then editor-in-chief and grand secretary in 1880. At the same time, he became an unavoidable protagonist in the community and was elected to the state legislature Of Indiana for the Democratic Party. Rail fraternities were relatively conservative unions, more focused on providing services to members than in collective bargaining. Debs is gradually convinced of the need for a more global approach and confrontation. After his appointment as a great secretary he organized, in 1893, one of the first industrial unions in the United States, the American Railway Union (ARU). The union struggles and gets satisfaction from most of its demands in April 1894 in a social dispute over the Great Northern Railway.

Edition details

• Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
• Publication date: 2017
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1544642547
• ISBN 13: 9781544642543
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 116