The Debs Decision Part 3

"The main theme of the speech was Socialism, its growth and a prophecy of its ultimate success. With that we have nothing to do, but if a part or the manifest intent of the more general utterances was to encourage those present to obstruct recruiting service, and if in pa.s.sages such encouragement was directly given, the immunity of the general theme may not be enough to protect the speech."

Justice Holmes concludes, after a review of the case, that the immunity, under the First Amendment, did not protect the speech. In that argument, he referred to a decision which had been handed down on the 3rd of March known as the Schenck Case--another Espionage Act case--in which this point concerning the immunity under the First Amendment was stated at length by Justice Holmes in this language:

"We admit that in many places and in ordinary times, the defendants would have been within their const.i.tutional rights. But the character of every act depends upon the circ.u.mstances in which it is done.... The question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circ.u.mstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent."

That is the Debs decision. That is the method in which the Supreme Court handled the popular liberties guaranteed under the First Amendment. The Court might have thrown the Espionage Act out under the First Amendment as it threw out the Child Labor Law. The Court might have ruled this act unconst.i.tutional. The Court did not decide that Congress had no right to pa.s.s the Espionage Act. The Court did decide that since Congress had pa.s.sed the Espionage Act, Debs had no right to make his speech. What are the implications of this position of the Supreme Court? "Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech," says the Const.i.tution.

Congress pa.s.sed a law abridging the freedom of speech, and the Supreme Court holds that the Courts, in interpreting the Const.i.tution, must bear in mind the law that Congress has pa.s.sed. We had thought that the Const.i.tutional guarantee was superior to any law that Congress might pa.s.s, but the Court specifically holds in the Schenck Case that if "the words are used in such circ.u.mstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent," then the First Amendment affords no protection.

Congress is made the arbiter. Congress now decides what may be said and what may not be said.

This means that the Const.i.tution does not guarantee personal liberty.

Speech is free, if you keep within the laws pa.s.sed by Congress, not otherwise. "Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech,"

declares the Const.i.tution. Speech is free, says the Court, if you obey the laws pa.s.sed by Congress. What is the result? If the United States enters the League of Nations as a const.i.tuent part of it, and if the League of Nations carries on a series of minor wars, this country will be at war perhaps for fifty years, and during that time free speech will be banned under this decision of the Supreme Court; during that time the Espionage Act will operate; there will be no free speech in the United States.

Congress--under this decision--might pa.s.s a law making it a crime to advocate the establishment of industrial democracy in the United States, and from the time that law was pa.s.sed, any man who advocated industrial democracy in the United States would have no immunity under the First Amendment.

Congress might pa.s.s a law making it a crime to demand that the Courts of the United States be abolished, and from that time no person could advocate the abolition of the United States Courts without violating the law.

Congress might make it a criminal offense to criticize the President and from that day forward no person could criticize the President without violating the law.

This decision makes Congress, not the Const.i.tution, the arbiter of the limits of freedom of expression; therefore, we must conclude that neither the Courts of the United States, nor the Const.i.tution of the United States can be relied upon to guarantee the American people the right of free speech. Thus freedom of discussion is ended. Democracy in the United States is dead. The Supreme Court on the 10th of March, in the Debs' case, wrote its epitaph.

A little thought will reveal the seriousness of the situation. A little reflection will show the position in which the American people find themselves, with regard to personal liberties, since the tenth of March, 1919.

8. THE CLa.s.s STRUGGLE AGAIN!

Cla.s.ses have come and cla.s.ses have gone down through the pages of history. Whenever the position of a ruling cla.s.s has been threatened, the ruling cla.s.s has crucified the truth-tellers.

Compared with the necessity of protecting ruling cla.s.s privileges and prerogatives, the right of a man to express his mind goes for nothing.

That is the lesson of history and that is what we are witnessing today.

Men who have stirred up the people; men who have raised their voices in protest; men who thought straight; men who have loved their fellow men too much; men who have had conviction and courage and purpose; men who were willing to stick by their ideals--such men have suffered in every age.

Eugene V. Debs has stirred up the people all his life. Since he was a boy firing a locomotive engine, he has been an agitator. He has always stood for justice, for liberty and brotherhood. He has loved his fellow men; he has been gentle and sincere; he has been devoted to what he regards as the greatest cause in the world. On this war he has stood like granite, unwavering and unflinching, voicing the protest of the ma.s.ses who had no voice with which to speak. He has uttered what they believed.

The preachers who deserted their flocks; the teachers who betrayed their trust; the editors who took their 30 pieces of silver in these last few years--they are free; they are honored; they are respected. But this man who thought straight; who loved his fellows, who spoke his convictions; who was true to his ideals--this man is permitted to go to jail by the Supreme Court of the United States.

I have seen the Supreme Court and I have seen Eugene V. Debs. From the Supreme Court I got neither love nor inspiration; from Debs I got both.

In his generation in the United States, there is not a greater man than Eugene V. Debs--not because of what he has done, but because of what he is, and when the history of this generation is written, that fact will be recorded.

The masters in all ages have put men like Debs in jail because it is the truth-teller that the masters fear most. They fear the Truth; they fear the Light; they fear Justice; and the man who turns on the Light and speaks the Truth and cries out for Justice--is their greatest enemy. So they have always tried this process of putting ideas into jail.

9. PUTTING IDEAS IN JAIL

Years ago, when the Mexican War was being fought, an American named Henry D. Th.o.r.eau refused to pay his war tax. He did not believe in the war and he refused to support the Government that prosecuted the war. So they put Th.o.r.eau in jail. Later he wrote about his experience:

"As I stood considering the walls of solid stone, two or three feet thick, and the door of wood and iron, a foot thick, and the iron grating which strained the light, I could not help being struck with the foolishness of that inst.i.tution which treated me as if I were mere flesh and blood and bones, to be locked up....

"I felt as if I alone of all my townsmen had paid my tax....

"I could not but smile to see how industriously they locked the door on my meditations, which followed them out again without let or hindrance, and they were really all that was dangerous. As they could not reach me, they had resolved to punish my body; just as boys, if they cannot come at some person against whom they have a spite, will abuse his dog.

"I saw that the State was half-witted, that it was timid as a lone woman with her silver spoons, and that it did not know its friends from its foes, and I lost all my remaining respect for it, and pitied it.

"Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison. The proper place today, the only place which Ma.s.sachusetts has provided for her freer and less desponding spirits, is in her prisons, to be put out and locked out of the State by her own act, as they have already put themselves out by their principles. It is there that the fugitive slave, and the Mexican prisoner on parole, and the Indian come to plead the wrongs of his race, should find them; on that separate but more free and honorable ground, where the State places those who are not with her but against her--the only house in a slave State on which a free man can abide with honor.

"If any think that their influence would be lost there, and their voices no longer afflict the ear of the State, that they would not be as an enemy within its walls, they do not know by how much truth is stronger than error, nor how much more eloquently and effectively he can combat injustice who has experienced a little in his own person.

"There will never be a really free and enlightened State until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly."

10. THE SUPREME COURT COULD NOT SAVE SLAVERY

Once before the Supreme Court of the United States tried to save a decaying social inst.i.tution--the inst.i.tution of Slavery. There was a slave named Dred Scott. He was owned by a resident of Missouri. He was taken into Minnesota and into Illinois. Illinois was a free State by its own laws. Minnesota was free by the Missouri Compromise of 1820. Then his master took Dred Scott back to Missouri, and there Dred Scott tried to gain his freedom. The case was finally decided by the Supreme Court of the United States in 1857.

The Supreme Court held (two justices dissenting) that Scott could not sue in the lower courts because he was not a citizen and, therefore, was not ent.i.tled to any standing in the courts; that at the time of the formation of the Const.i.tution, negroes descended from negro slaves were not and could not be citizens in any of the States; and that there was no power in the existing form of Government to make citizens of such persons. In the course of his decision, Judge Taney used the following language:

"It is difficult, at this day, to realize the state of public opinion which prevailed in the civilized and enlightened portions of the world at the time of the Declaration of Independence, and when the Const.i.tution was framed and adopted in relation to that unfortunate race. But the public history of every European nation displays it in a manner too plain to be mistaken. They had for more than a century before been regarded as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to a.s.sociate with the white race, either in social or political relations; and so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect, and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit. He has been bought and sold and treated as an ordinary article of merchandise and traffic, whenever a profit could be made by it. The opinion was at that time fixed and universal in the civilized portion of the white race."

The Chief Justice went farther than the point at issue warranted, and stated that the power of Congress to govern territory was subordinate to its obligation to protect private rights in property and that slaves were property and as such were protected by the const.i.tutional guarantees; that Congress had no power to prohibit the citizens of any State to carry into any territory slaves or any other property, and that Congress had no power to impair the const.i.tutional protection of such property while thus held in a territory.

The Dred Scott decision fastened Slavery forever upon the United States.

Slavery lasted just six years.

11. MORE PATCH WORK!

At the present time, Capitalism is tottering to its downfall. The world is in chaos and revolution. The Supreme Court has handed down a decision which ostensibly will a.s.sist in preserving established order, but the United States is a Capitalist nation and, as Mr. Wilson himself has so admirably put it:

"The masters of the Government of the United States are the combined capitalists and manufacturers of the United States." ("New Freedom,"

page 57.)

Capitalism is disappearing from Europe--Russia, Germany, Austria, Bohemia, Hungary--the list is growing from week to week. When the President came back on his little visit to America there was one new thing that he said, and only one new thing:

"The men who are in conference in Paris realize as keenly as any Americans can realize that they are not the masters of their people."

(Boston, February 24th, 1919.)

"When I speak of the nations of the world, I do not speak of the governments of the world. I speak of the peoples who const.i.tute the nations of the world. They are in the saddle, and they are going to see to it that if present governments do not do their will, some other government shall, and the secret is out and the present governments know it." (Boston, February 24th.)

"I want to utter this solemn warning, not in the way of a threat; the forces of the world do not threaten, they operate. The great tides of the world do not give notice that they are going to rise and run; they rise in their majesticity and overwhelming might and they who stand in the way are overwhelmed. Now the heart of the world is awake and the heart of the world must be satisfied. Do not let yourselves suppose for a moment that the uneasiness in the populations of Europe is due entirely to economic causes and economic motives; something very much deeper underlies it all than that. They see that their governments have never been able to defend them against intrigue or aggression, and that there is no force of foresight or of prudence in any modern cabinet to stop war." (New York, March 4th, 1919.)

Then comes Mr. Wm. Allen White on the 11th of March with a similar statement. On the next day comes Mr. Lansing with the statement that unless something is done and done quickly, the capitalist system in Europe will be overthrown. The world is in chaos. The fabric of civilization is threatened. The health and happiness--the very life of the world--is threatened.

And those who speak particularly of those things; those who are seeking to warn, to prepare the people; those who attempt to preach law and order; who oppose war; who believe in peace--those who are attempting to serve the interests of humanity--go to jail for ten years.

The highest authority in the United States has served notice on the American people that from it they can hope for nothing in the way of preservation of their liberties. Their liberties are dead. Well may those Americans who still have in their souls a spark of the old fire, turn back 143 years and read these words from the Declaration of Independence: