Throughline - The origins of the Socialist Party of America

Episode Date: May 5, 2026

Rapid industrialization reshaped American life in the mid-19th century. But as corporations grew larger and more powerful, working conditions for many everyday Americans worsened while wages stalled. Enter Eugene Debs, the labor organizer and founder of the American Socialist Party, who rallied workers nationwide to fight for their rights. To access bonus episodes and listen to Throughline sponsor-free, subscribe to Throughline+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org/throughline.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

This is America in Pursuit, a limited-run series from ThruLine and NPR. I'm RANDADAPR. 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. One day in 1874, while Eugene Debs was working on the railroad tracks, he saw something terrible happen. Debts watched him 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 Allison 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 state house 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 a, 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 believe that labor and capitalism could coexist, that it was just a matter of fixing. the system, not overhauling it. These, at this point, you know, not radical in any sense. Really thinks that working within these existing systems might stand a chance at improving

workers' lives. And he was very, very traditional. He was not a socialist. He was a small D. Democrat. This is Nick Salvatore. And I wrote a book entitled Eugene V. Debs, citizen and socialist. While Deb started out with pretty traditional democratic views, as he got more involved in labor organizing, he started to become disillusioned. There were half a dozen different organizations

which often competed rather than collaborated with one another. The largest, the American Federation of Labor, was run by famed union leader Samuel Gompers, and he was picky about who he led in. Workers were admitted based on specific skills, and women and people of color were most excluded. Debs thought this was a losing strategy, that there was more strength in unity and inclusivity. So that's when he moved toward getting involved in founding the American Railway Union, which was an attempt to organize workers across, you know, lots of different positions, working together and cooperating together. Suddenly you have a tool that it's much harder for the railroad owners to ignore. This is Ernest Freeberg. He's a history professor at the

University of Tennessee in Knoxville. And I'm the author of Democracy's prisoner, Eugene Debs, the Great War, and the Right to Dissent. Debs also tried to get the Railworkers Union to include people of color. He brought it to a vote at one of their first conventions, and their proposal nearly passed, losing by just two votes. So effectively, one, two votes, I don't want to exaggerate here, but could have changed the course of history. Despite the setback, Eugene Debs stayed committed to the fight. And in 1894, when he was 38 years old, he got his chance to do something big.

He went toe to toe with the Pullman Palace Car Company. The Pullman Palace Car Company transformed rail travel in the late 19th century. They were responsible for building the luxury rail cars that everyone, who could afford it, wanted to travel in. And the thing is, a lot of workers dreamed of making those cars and getting to work at Pullman. because Pullman workers got to live in the company town, and the living standards there were better than average. Basically, factory workers who built the cars had to rent their homes from the company,

buy their groceries from company stores, send their kids to company schools, or even the company church, and George Pullman, the guy, had justified the community as an experiment in benevolent capitalism. But it wasn't all great. Workers had no room to speak out if something was wrong, for fear of getting fired.

And when the country faced a big economic downturn in the 1890s, this turned into a big problem. Pullman slashed wages but didn't lower the rent or the costs of groceries or utilities. Pullman workers couldn't make ends meet. Workers had been fainting on the job. There's a famous political cartoon of George Pullman, pushing the crank that is squeezing a worker

between these two massive stones. and it's his low wages and his high housing costs. As the Pullman workers grew more and more frustrated, many decided to join the American Railway Union, the ARU, the powerful industrial union founded and run by Eugene Debs. And that set in motion. The most important labor conflict of the 19th century in the United States. In May 1894, 3,000 Pullman workers.

After months of being fed up, lay down their tools, walk out of the shops and say, Pullman, we can't go back to our jobs until you reinsider wages and cut our rents so we can afford to live and feed our children. Pullman wouldn't budge insisting that there was nothing to arbitrate. That's the quote. After this refusal to negotiate, the workers with depth support called for a massive strike. Every railroad employee of the country should take his stand against the corporations in this fight. For if it should be lost, corporations will have despotic sway, and all employees will be reduced to a condition scarcely removed above chattel slavery.

This is the event that transformed Debs into a symbol of national discontent. The New York Times reported, quote, The labor powers have spoken, and the most tremendous strike known to history will be inaugurated tomorrow when the evening whistles blow and 10,000 men abandon their work not to return, it is said, until the Pullman boycott is settled. This is huge. This is huge. Debs is in practically every major paper at this point, embasting him as dictator Debs, but also as the anarchists,

and it's like, pick one, you can't be an anarchist and a dictator. The next day, the strike began. And that effectively is a shutdown of the railroads. from Chicago, West for some days and really paralyzed the American economy. If this happened today, or if something like it happened today, it would look like unions shutting down half the airports and interstates in this country, because that's the level of activity happening on the rails by then. So it's just wild.

I am perfectly confident of success. We cannot fail. Debs urged the strikers to remain calm and united. I, Grover Cleveland, president of the United States. Grover Cleveland announced that he was not going to let this happen. Do hereby command all persons engaged in or in any way connected with such unlawful obstructions, combinations, and assemblages to disperse and retire peaceably to their respective abodes on or before three o'clock in the afternoon of the 10th day of July instant.

But the workers didn't back down. So then the federal courts issued. an injunction. Saying that the ARU is not allowed to strike like that. Order Debs to essentially stop the strike, which he refused to do. The next day, Grover Cleveland, for whom Debs campaigned as a pro-Labor Democratic president. He sent in troops. To get the strikers away from the trains so that scab workers can operate the engines and get the trains moving again.

It was chaos. Approximately 30 workers were killed. A majority of them were killed in Chicago, and hundreds were arrested in skirmishes throughout the nation. The strike had failed. It's estimated that nearly 250,000 workers took part in the strike. And afterwards, many of them were left jobless. Essentially, thousands of these workers were blacklisted. The Pullman Company continued on, business as usual. And some say the strike pushed Grover Cleveland to create a holiday in honor of workers.

called Labor Day. As for Debs's union? This was the gutting defeat for the American Railway Union. It never recovered. The whole leadership of the ARU was jailed on contempt of court. Debs went to prison for six months, and as he sat in his cell, he came to the conclusion that the American political system was broken.

The Republicans are the big capitalists, and the Democrats are the small capitalists. But at the end of the day, They are both the pro-capitalist parties. And what was really needed was a party that represented the workers. On the day he was released from prison, he was greeted by 100,000 people. Looking onto the crowd, he gave a rousing speech. The fires of liberty and noble aspirations are not yet extinguished.

I greet you tonight as lovers of liberty and as despisers of despotism. What is more American to Debs than standing up against oppression and standing up against injustice? This is the American tradition. That's what we're doing. The people are aroused in view of impending perils, and that agitation, organization, and unification are to be the future battle cries of men who will not part with their birthrights. And like Patrick Henry, will have the courage to exclaim, give me liberty or give me liberty. Give me death. Eugene Deb's role in the Pullman Strike and the Liberty Speech in Chicago made many see him as the champion of the working person in America.

He was a fiery populist who was unafraid to challenge big business, and this fame gave him a path into national politics, a path he initially didn't want to take. He joked around a lot about how, like, if we ever stood a chance of electing a president, don't run me, I would make a bad president. more critical for Debs was raising class consciousness. But he couldn't stop thinking about his realization that neither the Republicans nor the Democrats really represented workers. And so in 1901, he founded a political party,

the Socialist Party of America, uniting all the socialist groups that already existed under one banner. He wants workers to see themselves as workers, not middle class, not as temporarily embarrassing. millioners, but as workers, with more in common than we have different. Over the next 20 years, Eugene Debs and the Socialist Party ran multiple campaigns for presidency. In 1912, Eugene Debs got the closest he would ever get to the presidency, winning 6% of the popular vote, which was a staggering number at that time.

The Democratic candidate Woodrow Wilson won the election. But over time, many of the ideas Debs and the American socialists fought for were adopted. opted by mainstream politicians. Things like more support for early childhood education. The 40-hour work week. Old-age pensions. Welfare programs for the poor. For worker safety protections.

These are things that were radical third-party innovations when they were first proposed by the socialists. He understood that he could use his celebrity to be a presidential nominee that would raise a profile of all of these ideas. Socialism, you know, as a third party, succeeded in accomplishing many of the things that we now take for granted as just part of the liberal state. You know, the social safety network, the government oversight of health and welfare,

some controls over the financial system. Those were all part of the socialist program that were adopted first by the progressives in the early 20th century and then many of them by the New Deal and some of them ultimately by the great society programs in the 60s. So there is this long legacy of socialist ideas at a very important moment when America was facing the beginnings of this ongoing industrial revolution. That's it for this week's episode of America in Pursuit. If you want to hear the full-length episode, check out American Socialist. And be sure to join us next week as we learn about one of the worst economic disasters in history

from people who experienced it firsthand. During the Depression, I was, so broke. Quite often I was with no money in my pocket. The most I ever had is maybe one or $2. Stories from the Great Depression. That's next week.

Don't miss it. This episode was produced by Kiana Mogadam and edited by Christina Kim with help from the throughline production team. Music by Ramtin Ada Blui and his band Drop Electric. Special thanks to Julie Kane, Irene Noguchi, Beth Donovan, Casey Minor, and Lindsay McKenna. I'm your host, Rund Abd al-Fattah.

Thanks for listening.