The Fireman--APUSH Eugene V. Debs

What did Debs do after losing his job at Vandalia in the Panic of 1873?

he went to East St. Louis looking for work but got homesick and went back to Terre Haute where he took a job as a labor organizer and later as a magazine editor for the Brother of Locomotive Firemen

industrial union

-Debs argued for it in 1889 -a federation of all the brotherhoods of railroad workers, from brakemen to conductors, as equals

sand man

-Debs said they were the best kind of man -meant grit, power to hold on

Victor Berger

-Milwaukee socialist -brought Debs a copy of Marx's "Das Kapital"

results of the Pullman strike of 1894

-Pullman, aided by President Grover Cleveland, defeated the strikers -Debs and other ARU leaders were indicated and convicted of violating a federal injunction -Debs sentenced to six months and served at Woodstock Illinois prison

William Jennings Byran

-democratic presidential candidate that was endorsed by Debs -lost to McKinley who was funded by businessmen -Debs abandoned his devotion to the two-party system -wrote in the Railway Times and proclaimed himself a socialist

Eugene V. Debs

-founded the American Railway Union -turned it into the Social Democratic Party -ran for the President of the United States (including once from jail) -supported women's and African Americans' admissions into the ARU (although it was voted to be for only whites)

the porters

-lowest job on the trains -almost always black men and ex-slaves -were paid almost nothing except the tips they could earn by "bowing before fancy customers"

Pullman strike of 1894

-one of the single biggest labor actions in American history -stalled trains in 27 states -all but halted transportation by rail west of Detroit for more than a month by either refusing to touch Pullman cars or by actively unhitching them from the trains -Pullman, aided by President Grover Cleveland, defeated the strikers

George Mortimer Pullman

-owned many trains -one of the richest men in the United States -hated by Debs -had cut his worker's wages by as much as fifty percent and didn't cut rents or the price of food after the Panic of 1893

socialism endurance

-successor Norman Thomas -Progressive-era reforms -the New Deal -Lyndon Johnson's Great Society

the conductors

-top job -all men reported to the conductors

Woodstock prison

-very comfortable jail in an old Victorian house -ran the union office out of his cell and was allowed to leave jail on his honor

Jennie Curtis

-worked in the Pullman sewing department -addressed the ARU and said that working for Pullman was little better than slavery -after hearing from her, the ARU voted for a boycott refusing to handle Pullman's cars and equipment

What age did Debs leave school?

14

What was Debs' political affiliation at the beginning of his career?

Democrat

What was Debs' political affiliation later on?

Socialist

Where and when was Debs born?

born in Terre Haute, Indiana in 1855

What was Debs first elected as?

elected city clerk of Terre Haute as a Democrat

What did Debs do after leaving school

first he scraped paint and grease off cars of the Vandalia Railroad in Indiana and then he was promoted to fireman and shoveled coal into a firebox

Anti-Strikers Railroad Union

formed by the black men who were closed out of the A.R.U. to fill positions opened by striking white

What made Debs withdraw his faith from democracy?

in the 1880s when railroad workers struck time and time again and as many as 2 thousand railroad men a year were killed on the job, while another 20,000 were injured

What were 2 of Debs' beliefs?

individual striving and the power of machines

A. Philip Randolph

organized the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters which achieved recognition from the Pullman company only in 1937

Debs' prison sentence

sentenced to 10 years of hard time at the age of 63 after making a speech in Cleveland protesting the war

the firemen

shoveled coal into a firebox and make sure the engine wouldn't explode

What did Debs' parents do?

they were Alsatian immigrants who ran a small grocery store

Samuel Gompers

wanted railroad workers to join his far less radical trade union, the American Federation of Labor, but in 1893 Debs pulled them into the American Railway Union