Eugene Debs Brings the Railroad War to Seattle—and Dares His Enemy to Debate

Eugene V. Debs, president of the American Railway Union, addressed a splendid concourse of people yesterday at the Armory. The body of the building was crowded almost to suffocation, while the gallery was also filled with people, many of whom had to stand up. In the audience was also a fair sprinkling of ladies, and, altogether, the meeting was one of the largest ever held in this city. Mr. Debs spoke for an hour and a half and considerable of his time was devoted to Mr. John Egan, of St. Paul, president of the General Managers' Association, who happened to be in the city yesterday and in an interview did not hesitate to tell what he thought of the labor leader.

Mr. Debs reminded the audience that when he was asked for an opinion of the president of the General Managers' Association he was gentlemanly enough not to take advantage of the opportunity to abuse the man through the newspapers, while in contrast to this Mr. Egan could not say things too mean concerning him. Then the speaker proceeded to 'touch up' the General Managers' Association in general and Mr. Egan in particular. He said: 'Mr. Egan is a dishonest man and a ruffian; he is a thief and he knows that he is, and he knows that I know that he is. ... He is a corrupt, low and dishonest man and cannot conceive of any man having sufficient manhood to push aside bribes and remain true to his convictions. ... I will agree to give a thousand dollars to any charitable organization in the land if he will meet me on the public platform and discuss the history and cause of the late strike, both to speak from the record.'

Mr. Debs then spoke at considerable length of the details of the strike and made a strong argument for the laboring men to stand together, for he said the spirit of unrest that is afloat in the land is the sure sign of a change, and he declared he was hopeful. He said that the statement of Mr. Egan that the American Railway Union had never won a strike and never would is untrue, and pointed out that just previous to the great strike the Great Northern was compelled to come to time and was forced to pay its employes living wages. He said that the success of that strike frightened the other railway managers and the General Managers' Association, containing as members the twenty-six roads centering in Chicago, was organized for the purpose of standing together as a unit, thus taking the initiative in the policy they condemned among the employes as a 'sympathy strike,' and the organization was in existence to crush and blot out the American Railway Union. Mr. Debs said the general managers first tried to buy him and call him off and, failing in this, they then decided that the only way out of the difficulty was to crush him, and this they set about, with all the influential machinery at their command, to do. He declared that the courts in many instances, even the federal courts, were mere puppets in the hands of the money power and that the money power, as the immortal Abraham Lincoln prophetically and sadly predicted during the war, ruled the nation. He said that the injunction power, giving one man the power of a czar, was not made a law for the benefit of the poor men, but for the benefit of the corporation against the poor.

During the speech great enthusiasm prevailed and many times the speaker's voice was drowned in the tumult of applause. When Mr. Debs ceased talking men and women crowded around him and shook him by the hand and wished him numerous godspeeds. At 2 o'clock the labor leader was escorted to the steamer Flyer by his friends in the labor movement and he left for Tacoma, where he speaks this evening on 'Who Are the Conspirators?'