º ºs
JOHN SWINTON:
RADICAL EDITOR & LEADER
BY EUGENE V. D.E.B.S


John Sw1NTon: Radical Editor & Leader.
- cºv" -
NA e-k Nºet-kees
sº, tº cº-ºeſ
***** *
|-- º
2-
v-4. Tºto.


JOHN SWINTON:
RADICAL EDITOR &Y LEADER
BY EUGENE V. DEBS
PUBLISHED PRIVATELY BY THE ORIOLE PRESS
BERKELEY HEIGHTS, NEW JERSEY
MCMXXXIX


JOHN SWINTON:
RADICAL EDITOR
AND LEADER
HEN the history of labor's struggle
for emancipation is written, the name
of John Swinton will illumine some
of its darkest as well as some of its
brightest pages. He stood forth in the defense of
the poor and pleaded their cause at a time when
he was not half understood and not appreciated
at all.
The grand figure of John Swinton looms be-
fore me as I write. Twenty-two years have
passed since I first met him. He had been one
of my heroes long before.
During the darkest days of the Pullman strike
John Swinton was one of its staunchest cham-
pions. He stood face to face with Wall Street
and charged it with its infamous crimes, and
when John Swinton spoke the people listened.

He had been the friend of Greeley, Raymond
Thurlow Weed, the elder Bennett, Charles A.
Dana and other eminent journalists of that time
and had served as editorial writer and editor-in-
chief of New York’s principal daily Papers. af.
ter Greeley he was the only radical in that group
of journalistic celebrities; the only one among
them to denounce the crimes of the ruling class
and to espouse the cause of the common people.
He was profoundly respected by his associates,
notwithstanding he told them the truth about
themselves and their servility to the powers that
corrupted the government and plundered the
people. His response to the toast “The Inde-
pendent Press,” in which he declared that the
vaunted “independent” press was a myth and
that he and his associates were far better quali-
fied to celebrate the prostitution of the press,
has become a classic. He did not mince words
and his eminent associates took no exception to
his scathing indictment.
But it was as a distinctive champion of the
working people that John Swinton found his chief
inspiration and delight, although it cost him
dearly in a material sense. He had it in his
power to command the post of editor-in-chief
6

of any of the great NewYork dailies and might
easily have become one of their owners had he
been so inclined, for Wall Street, though he
hated it and fought it bitterly, appreciated fully
his great force of character and commanding a-
bility, which the working people he loved and
passionately served appreciated not at all.
John Swinton, who might have had unlimited
wealth and power and “fame,” died in poverty
and almost in obscurity, because he was truly
great and uncompromisingly honest, scorning to
barter his principles and convictions for a gilded
cage and a life-lease of pampered self-indulgence
to soften his brain, eat out his heart, and petrify
his soul.
He knew that the masses for whom he did
everything, denied himself everything, and gave
up everything, could never – at least in his life-
time – understand or appreciate him, and this
thought harrowed his sensitive soul and gave
him unutterable pain, not on his account but on
theirs. I can still hear him say as he held my
hand in his humble flat in NewYork, as he put
rrne through a course of questioning as to how
much I could stand for the sake of labor:
“They'll break your heart.” When I answered,
7

“I’ll not let 'em,” he said, “Bravo!” And when
I went on to say that in the labor struggle my
heart could be broken only by myself and that
only if I was less than true to myself; that I
could stand anything for labor, and that I desired
neither office, nor honors, nor rewards, and that
I was not serving to win the applause or grati-
tude of others but from a sense of duty to myself,
he fairly beamed with joyous approbation and
gave me his loving benediction.
It was during the Pullman strike that John
Swinton wrote his great book, “STRIKING FOR
LIFE; OR LABOR's SIDE OF THE LABOR QUES-
TION.” This book of 500 pages, in Swinton's
boldest and most brilliant style, is especially in-
teresting in the light of today's turbulent and
chaotic situation. Many of its Pages bear evi-
dence of clear insight and prophetic vision. The
preface of this volume could have been written
but yesterday :
“The times are revolutionary. The energies
of mankind in our day are immense. There is
an extraordinary activity of the powers of life in
our new age. The world seems to be whirling
rrnore rapidly than ever before. Vast changes
have been brought about in our generation;
8

others are in progress; still others are impending.
There is a new spirit abroad and its manifesta-
tions are everywhere. ---
“This Labor Question is in the front. It is
ofsupreme importance to all men, and to all
women. It is related directly to the life of the
whole people, to their natural and essential
rights, to the welfare of the community, to popu-
lar freedom, and to the public peace.
John Swinton, like his friend, Wendell Phil-
lips, understood the labor question in its deeper
significance and wider aspects; he had a clear
grasp of its fundamental principles and its in-
ternational scope and character, and he knew
that the labor movement was revolutionary and
that its mission of emancipating the working
class from wage-slavery could be accomplished
only by destroying the system and reorganizing
society upon a new economic foundation. This
he makes clear in the following paragraphs quot-
ed from the same preface :
“The ‘War for the Union' . . . grew out of
the Labor Question, and was waged over it. Shall
the working population of our country or any
part of it be held in slavery? Stupendous sacri-
fices were then made to secure the emancipation
9

of the black laborer, and the old chattel system
was ovorthrown at a price that has not yet been
paid. We had to abolish this system before we
could grapple with any of the other wrongs which
must be done away with.
“Since that time a question of even greater
magnitude, and yet more revolutionary, has been
brought to the front—one which is often summed
up in the phrase: ‘the rights of labor.” It has not
been brought up by any theorist or agitator, or
yet by any group of men or organization of
labor. It has grown out of the forces of nature
and the human mind, out of evils not to be
borne forever, out of industrial and social
wrongs, out of suffering indescribable and as-
piration irrepressible. It is the question of our
age and of our country. It is a question with
which the world is Pregnant. Not by all the en-
ergy of power can it Be suppressed — not by
combined capital, or by harsh laws, or by big
armies, or by newspaper invective, or by shop
logic — not by the thunders of the Church, or
the devices of the State — not certainly by the
order of that puerile part of the community which
is called ‘society’ – and not even by philan-
thropic tomfoolery. Futile, also, as a means for
1O

its settlement, are the crude schemes put out by
many pur-blind reformers, or favored, at times,
by some of the organizations of labor. I say the
question is one of stupendous proportions. It is
not to be postponed. In it are the issues of life
and death.”
To the mind of John Swinton there was noth-
ing in human affairs equal in importance to the
labor question. He knew that fundamentally it
was the struggle of the whole human race for
emancipation; that it embraced the principles of
democracy and self-government and that if the
brotherhood of the race was ever to be achieved
it must be through the triumph of the labor
movement. For more than a quarter of a cen-
tury he traveled over the country east and west
and from the Lakes to the Gulf, delivering hun-
dreds of lectures and speeches in the almost vain
hope at that time of arousing the working class
and opening the eyes of the people to the true
meaning of the labor question. For this he re-
signed his lucrative editorial employment, cut
off every dollar of his revenue, turned his back
squarely on his own class, severed his relations
with his professional associates, and grimly faced
the future and told the truth to a gainsaying world.
11

Grand old John Swinton' How much he gave,
how little he received, how well he understood!
None knew better how to sympathize with the
men and women who fight unflinchingly labor’s
battles and are equally indifferent to flattery or
abuse. At that time during the Pullman strike
when we were being so falsely accused and so
venomously maligned by the capitalist press of
the whole country, John Swinton came to the
front with one of the most loyal tributes and
glowing eulogies ever penned by one agitator
to another. It is too generous to quote. I had
never seen him. He had never seen me. He knew
nothing in my favor. All he had read was in
terms of violent personal denunciation. But he
was not deceived. He clearly grasped the situa-
tion and the animus of personal abuse and de-
traction. The very things that made others hate
me, commended me to his most generous consid-
eration. He at once became my friend and I never
had a better. His fine eulogy was inspired by
my imprisonment in a Chicago jail, the same in
which the Haymarket comrades of 1887 were
incarcerated, my cell being within a few feet of
where these labor heroes were finally hanged.
This he included in his book, to which he added:
12

“I am not afraid thus to praise Eugene Victor
Debs, though he is a new figure in the gallery of
my statuary. I praise him, though he be a victim
of Grosscup's ruthless law; though he has been
assailed by Cleveland and Olney, Pullman and
Egan, Schofield and Miles, by the rapacious cor-
porations, the dastardly plutocracy, the Sodomite
preachers, the Satanic press, and our bribe-tak-
ing Congressmen. I praise him, though he is in
prison.”
John Swinton had learned by his own bitter
experience what men and women had to contend
with who, in the service of the robbed and op-
pressed, were too honest to betray their trust, and
no arrested or persecuted labor leader had to so-
licit his sympathy and support.
“We must stand by our champions all the
more,” he wrote, “because of the enemies by
whom they are assailed; all the more because
every man who takes a bold stand for labor is
sure to be pursued with diabolical malice, to be
showered with lies, to be charged with base mo-
tives. and to be reviled as long as he lives; all the
more because labor is too often untrue to itself
or false to its defenders; all the more because
these defenders are weakened by the skulking
13

of men who ought to be in the ranks, and are
liable to be stabbed in the back by traitors who
lurk in the rear.” When John Swinton crossed
the Atlantic he found that his fame had preceded
him to the old world. Victor Hugo greeted him
as “The Great American Journalist.” He was
an ardent admirer of Hugo's and on being in-
terviewed on his return to America as to the in-
cident of his journey which had given him the
most satisfaction, his answer was, “Shaking the
hand of the author of LEs MIs ERABLEs.”
He visited Karl Marx and it may be readily
imagined that these two great revolutionary souls
found genial companionship in each other.When
Swinton asked Marx what he saw in the future,
the latter buried his face in his hands for a mo-
ment, then raising his head he answered lacon-
ically, “Struggle !”
Swinton and Marx alike saw "struggle” a-
head. The years which have followed have amply
vindicated their prescience. Struggle there has
been over all the face of the earth, increasing
steadily in violence and intensity until today the
whole of humanity seems seized with a madness
for bloodshed and destruction that threatens an
14

upheaval wide as the world and unparalleled in
the world's history.
The lives of both the great American and the
great German had been a fierce, unceasing strug-
gle, a continuous conflict amidst shifting scenes
and changing conditions, and as their suns be:
gan to decline and their powers to wane the years
of struggle still stretched out wearily before them.
They had both toiled tirelessly for little recom-
pense and through stress and storm, through
poverty and hate had fought unflinchingly the
good fight and striven to the last to achieve their
aims and realize their ideals.
Both Marx and Swinton are gone but their
work remains and the heroic, unselfish example
they set will be a perpetual inspiration to the
world. As long as such men are born the upward
struggle of humanity, even at its bitterest and
gloomiest, is infinitely worth the waging.
The letters of John Swinton in my files, filled
with kindness, with loyalty and greetings of good
cheer, are all characteristic of the noble nature
of the man. Long before he had ever seen me
he had given substantial proof of his sympathy
and support. Under date of July 2nd, 1894, he
wrote :
15

“You can’t have time these days to read much
of anything, even about yourself; But I must
send you a piece from today's New York Tribune
and another from today's New York World, which
you can lay aside now in order to look at and
smile at when the racket is over. You can't
imagine the uproar you've raised in the Papers
here. Honor and success to you !”
Three days later he wrote: “You are waging
a Napoleonic battle amidst the admiration of
millions. God give you the victory for the sake
of all mankind. . . . I wrote to President Cleve-
land three days ago. Be strong, Brother Debs..”
In a letter dated July 17, 1895, he says: “You
do not seem to have been aware that I was in
the prison with you by day and by night, dur-
ing the past month. Never a word have you
spoken to me, though you were in my company.
“Not a mutineer walks handcuffed into jail but
I am handcuffed to him and walk by his side.”
I have not at any time thought you cared for my
praises, so I shall not praise you now. But I
belive you are stout of heart, and I must hope
you are not depressed in spirit. Be strong ' I
know you will be faithful into death. I send you
my best love. P.S. Sunday of this week was
16

the Anniversary of the Fall of the Bastile.”
In a later letter, under date of June 30, 1897,
he wrote me after learning that the railroad
managers had sworn that the American Railway
Union should not be reorganized and that their
detectives were dogging my footsteps by day and
by night:
“The strength of your faith, the liveliness of
your hopes, the persistency of your valor, the
Breadth ofyour thought, and the energy ofyour
genius fill me with admiration. These things be-
long to that kind of Americanism which is ever
regenerative.
Life and luck to you !
Greetings from my wife and from
Faithfully yours,
John Swinto N.”
When I visited New York after coming into
personal touch with John Swinton, the little visits
we had together were occasions ofspecial enjoy-
ment and delight to me. He had the reputation
of being somewhat brusque in manner, but I
never found him so. On the contrary, he was
always genial as sunshine to me and at his home
17

he was the very soul of hospitality. He lived
modestly with his wife, whom he addressed as
“Angel” and in whom had a most sympathetic
and helpful companion in all his arduous labors
and disappointing experiences.
In personal appearance Swinton was tall, well
proportioned and courtly in manner, and one re-
cognized in him at a glance a distingutshed per-
sonage. He certainly looked the man he was.
His features were strikingly clear-cut, his eyes
keen and piercing, though kindly, his hair snow-
white, as were also his mustache and eye-brows,
which set off his fine, smooth brow and pallid
complexion to perfection.
Swinton's powerful personality was marked in
every line and curve of his finely chiselled ſea-
tures, in the poise of his handsome head, and
in every movement of his virile body. He had
no need to be introduced. He was John Swinton
even to the stranger who passed him on the
crowded city street and turned about hastily to get
another look before he disappeared in the crowd.
The speeches of John Swinton are scholarly
in thought, classical in composition, and contain
some of the most thrilling and elegant passages
to be found in American oratory. Lack of space
18

prevents adequate quotation, but I cannot resist
incorporating a few characteristic utterances of
this eloquent and fearless apostle of the toiling
and enslaved millions:
“Back through the ages every new dispensa-
tion, including that of the gibbeted Galilean, has
perplexed and dismayed the men of the old or-
der, who associated it with impending calamities
and deplorable results. But still we know, as we
look báck through time, that the recurring trans-
formations have but shown the development of
the human race under the operation of invisible
law. Does any simpleton suppose that they have
come to an end, or that he can put a stop to
them, or that there is no further necessity for
them.”
“Our Government is in the hands of pirates.
All the power of politics, and of Congress, and
of Administration is under the control of the
moneyed interests. The ‘self-evident truths' of
the Declaration of Independence are trampled
underfoot. . . . Is Liberty compatible with the
existence of these famished millions and these
overgorged millionaires 2 ”
19

“Danger ahead? Of course, there is. Danger
is always ahead when wrong is at hand, and ex-
plosions always take place, from time to time,
when suffering becomes intolerable.
“Crack goes the earthquake, and the Hebrew
slaves stride out of Egypt as Pharaoh sinks in
the Red Sea.
“Crack it goes again, and the agrarians of
Rome seize their short swords.
“Crack again, and the serfs of Germany and
Hungary carry terror before them through the
peasant wars.
“Crack once more, and the fires of the French
Revolution gives dread to monarchs.
“Crack goes the earthquake, here or there,
now and then, again and again, the wide world
over. Heedless are men, after the terror of each
crack, till they are stirred again by the alarm of
the next.”
+:
A copy of the last issue of "john Swinton's
‘Paper” is before me as I write. It is dated Aug.
21st and contains his “Farewell,” which reads
as follows: “To my many faithful friends and
sturdy fellow-workers all over this broad land,
20

who have stood by me in this paper, aiding the
work it was founded to promote, or cherishing
the principles which it has steadily proclaimed
– I now bid farewell —John Swinton.”
How many of the readers of “Pearson's” re-
member "john Swinton's Paper,”published weekly
in New York from 1883 to 1887 and circulated
over all the states of the Union? It was a paper
of remarkable ability and force and by far the
best radical paper then in existence, but it had to
succumb at last. It was a menace to Wall Street
and the moneyed interests, and they finally suic-
ceeded in forcing it to the wall.
The motto of "John Swinton's Paper” was:
“We are Preparing the Way for the Establish-
ment of the Natural Rights of Men:
1, His Right to a Footing on the Earth;
2, His Right to Labor;
3, His Right to the Fruits of His Work.”
The last issue of this pioneer publication Was
an especially brilliant one and well worthy of
preservation as a souvenir of radical journalism
in the United States a third of a century ago. In
this issue innumerable personal tributes to John
Swinton appear, tributes from friends and readers
21

to his pluck and persistency and to his fidelity
and devotion to the cause of the people in sink-
ing his last dollar before succumbing to the en-
emy. One of the tributes is from the pen of
Gideon J. Tucker, New York City, and is here
reproduced as follows:
“2, 300tt (Jent forth to 300.”
— Gospel of St. Matthew.
To Jo HN SWINTon
He sowed the seed on sterile soil
Through days and months and years of toil;
Slow was its growth midst rock and weed;
It mattered not — he sowed the seed.
His steady zeal could not be quenched,
Others might quail, he never blenched;
Patient he taught his earnest creed;
Let others reap – he sowed the seed.
Today it may ignore or spurn –
Some day the world from him shall learn
How wise in thought, how just in deed,
It may become ! — he sowed the seed.
Yes, he sowed the seed, but alas, how few of
the present generation know that they are reap-
22

ing, perhaps in opulence, where he sowed in pain
and self-denial
The world owes more, far more to John Swin-
ton than it knows or perhaps ever can know. He
was one of the real heroes of American history.
He lived and labored wholly for his fellow-men.
He struggled bravely with all the adverse fates
and forces that others might Be spared the pains
and privations that fell to his lot and have life
richer and more abundant. Aye, he fought as
heroically and unselfishly for humanity as any
man that ever won the crown of martyrdom.
S;
23
John Sw1NTon: Radical Editor and Leader
by Eugene V. Debs / Published in “Pearson's
Magazine”, February 1918, under the editorship
of Frank Harris / Hand-set with the ten point
Cromwell / Published in a limited number of
copies for private distribution with the compli-
ments of the publisher.
P
R
H
º
º
s wn º, º - º/
º wº | | 2. –
s's Nº.
*S S = -
- s
W
--* .-
*
*
Sº
º
-
º
º
º
º
2.
E
º
ºw. - º -
=Jos. EPH sºil. L. TypocººpFBB =