Eugene V. Debs: “How I Became a Socialist”

Glossary

• Chicago’s white throat was in the clutch of a red mob sarcastic comparison of the city to a woman (white, at that) in danger from “reds,” or Socialists
• the class struggle fundamental conflict between the workers (proletariat) and business owners (capitalists)
• Fountain Proletaire an expression, apparently of Debs’s own coinage, that used the French adjectival format (noun followed by adjective) and presented the struggle of industrial workers as an opportunity to gain wisdom and grow
• grand master a master craftsman, a leading figure in many local union bodies
• Great Northern the Great Northern Railway
• homely down home
• watches shifts at work
• where the anarchists were hanged a few years before a reference to the place of execution of four men out of eight charged for their alleged roles in the Haymarket riot in Chicago on May 4, 1886