The origins of the Socialist Party of America
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How did rapid industrialization affect American workers in the mid-19th century?
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This is America in Pursuit, a limited-run series from ThruLine and NPR. I'm Randa Abdel-Fattah. Each week, we bring you stories about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in the U.S. that began 250 years ago. In the U.S. in the mid-1800s, rapid industrialization was transforming cities across the U.S. and as businesses were getting bigger and bigger.
Your relationship with your employer is getting a lot smaller.
People were being tied to their jobs. They were denied a democratic voice in the way they made a living.
Working like 14, 16-hour days, six, seven days a week.
People were struggling all across the United States. In Indiana, a teenager watched his father get caught up in this system, unable to keep up with a demanding job.
The work broke his health, as it would for so many workers.
So he jumped into action to help his father. At 14, he started working, first in the grocery business and then in the growing world of railroads, where abuses were rampant.
This is a time when there are no safety standards to speak of. Employers are skimping on cheap equipment to save money, even as railroads are expanding so rapidly. causing boiler explosions and derailments and collisions. Making hazards like this not uncommon at all.
What he saw on the railroads transformed him and what he believed the people actually building the U.S. deserved.
He wants workers to see themselves as workers, not middle class, not as temporarily embarrassed millionaires, but as workers with more in common than we have different.
His name was Eugene Debs, and he didn't know it then, but he was about to alter the course of labor rights in the U.S. Today on the show, the life and times of Eugene Debs and the birth of American socialism. That's coming up after a quick break.
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One day in 1874, while Eugene Debs was working on the railroad tracks, he saw something terrible happen.
Debs watched in horror as a backing locomotive crushed a friend to death.
This wasn't a freak accident. On-the-job injuries happened a lot. Just consider part of the occupation. This is Alison Dirk, director of the Eugene V. Debs Museum in Terre Haute, Indiana.
And according to Debs, this death, plus his mother's continuing concern for his safety, prompted him to quit the railroad.
Debs became determined to improve working conditions for rail workers and decided the way to do that was to get involved in government.
So he runs for city clerk of Terre Haute and wins pretty handily. And while he was working as city clerk, kind of got a reputation for refusing to assess fines against sex workers because he didn't think it was fair that they would be punished while the people who bought their services were not. So he serves actually two terms as city clerk and then gets elected as a state rep in the Indiana General Assembly.
And the story here goes, Debs went to the statehouse and introduced legislation.
To hold railroads liable for deaths and injuries of their employees. The house passes the one particular bill. The state senate takes the teeth out through amendments so the bill could not be enforced even if it was passed. And Eugene was absolutely humiliated. lost his faith in the political process because he thought the whole state house was effectively bought up by the railroads. And this is where he decided to step back from politics to focus on labor organizing.
It's important to keep in mind that Debs still believed that labor and capitalism could coexist, that it was just a matter of fixing the system, not overhauling it.
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