Debs Tells Spokane the Strike Is Dead — Organize at the Ballot Box
Eight months after the Pullman boycott was broken by injunctions and federal troops, the Railway Union's president arrives in Washington to say the walkout can never beat the government, and that labor's only road left is politics and public ownership of the railroads.
Spokane, March 15. — Eugene V. Debs, president of the Railway Union, lectured tonight before a big audience at the Auditorium. He declared his conviction that strikes could only result in failure, and that henceforth the union will work along political lines.
"There can be no permanent or satisfactory solution of this railroad question," he said, "until the government takes possession of the railroads and runs them in the interest of the people. Our recent experiences have demonstrated that defeat is inevitable. Just as soon as a strike is begun disturbances will occur; the courts will be applied to, injunctions and mandamuses will be issued, and the leaders will be arrested and thrown into jail. Then the strike will be easily broken. I tell you a strike cannot succeed when it is against the United States government."
"What is your private income?" was asked.
"I have not got a dollar. I own my home; that is all."
Mr. Debs will leave for Seattle over the Great Northern at 7 o'clock in the morning. He will visit Tacoma and Portland and will go on through to California.
“I tell you a strike cannot succeed when it is against the United States government.”
Debs was speaking in the wreckage of the Pullman boycott, which had been crushed months earlier by federal injunction and troops — precisely the sequence he describes from the stage here. Within weeks he would be in a Woodstock, Illinois jail for contempt, and the turn toward politics he announced in Spokane would eventually carry him to five Socialist Party presidential runs. The argument over whether to strike or to organize electorally is still the oldest fight in American labor.
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