Democratic Sentinel, Volume 19, Number 47, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 November 1895 — DEBS IS AGAIN FREE. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

DEBS IS AGAIN FREE.

MANY FRIENDS MEET HIM AT THE JAIL. Given • Great Ovation at ChicagoBorne to the Central Mualc Hall on the Shoulders of Four Men—Hl« Speech Received with Applause. Labor Leader Talks. Eugene V. Debs spoke in Central Music Hall, Chicago, the night following his release from jail to au audience that taxed the seating and standing capacity of the hall. Most of the leading labor organizations were represented and the reception accorded to the leader of the American Railway Union was enthusiastic in the extreme. Eight carloads of Debs' friends went to Woodstock to greet him on his release front jail, and several thousand men were at the station of tho

Northwestern Road when the train, bearing 'Debs and his friends, arrived at 7:30 o’clock. The reception given Debs as he stepped from the train bordered on the frantic. Hundreds of men pushed and struggled to get a grasp of hiH hand, many of them hugged him, and some went to the length of kissing hint. Finally he was tossed tip to the shoulders of four men and followed by a dense throng that never for one instant stopped its shouts and cheers, he was escorted to the hull, about n mile distant. Tho warmth of the reception given him at the depot wsh repented when ho entered the hull, with the exception that the men were unable to get close to him and contented themselves with cheering and waving their lints. The speech delivered by Debs was received with great applause by the audience. He commenced by saying that in the light of recent judicial proceedings he

'Stood stripped of his constitutional rights as a free man, and shorn of the most aacred prerogative of American citizenship: and what was true of himself was true of every other citizen who had the temerity to protest against corporation rule or the question of the absolute sway of the money power. It was not the law nor the administration of law of which he complained. It wns the flngrunt violation of the constitution, the total abrogation of law, and usurpation of judicial and despotic power by virtuo of which ho and his colleagues were committed to jail against which he entered his protest, and any honest analysis of the proceedings must sustain the haggard truth of the indictment. He lind been denied trial. He was ohnrged now with conspiracy, and If guilty should go to the penitentiary. He wanted to be tried by a jury of his peers, and all he asked was a fair trial and no favor.—(Tho conspiracy caso is still undisposed of In the United States Court. —Ed.) He then spoke nt great length of "personal liberty,” and in defense of the American Railway Union, saying it would have triumphed but for the Interference of Federal authorities, which he characterized ns “an exhildtion of the debauching power of money.” This demonstration, he said, meant that American lovers of liberty were setting In operation forces to rescue their constitutional liberties from the grasp of monopoly and its mercenary hirelings; that the people were arounsed in view of Impending perils, and that agitation, organization and unification were to bo the future battles cries of men who would not part with their birthright and who, like Patrick Henry, had the courage to exclaim, “Give me liberty or give me death.” Were he a criminal, guilty of crime meriting a prison cell, had he ever lifted his hand against life or the liberty of his fellowmen, had he ever sought to filch their good nnme, he would not be on this platform. He would have fled from the haunts of civilization and lived in a cave where the voice of his kindred would never be heard. But he, standing before his hearers without a selfaccusation of crime or criminal intent festering in his conscience, in the sunlight once more, contributing ns best he could to make this “liberation day” a memorial day, realizing that, as Lowell sang: “He's true to God who's true to man: Wherever wrong is done. In the humblest and the weakest. 'Neath the all-beholding sun. That wrong is also done to us, And they are slaves most base, Whose love of right is for themselves And not for all their race.”

EUGENE v. DEBS.

DEBS’ RELEASE FROM THE WOODSTOCK JAIL.