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Article: Debs, Eugene
- Article from:
- West's Encyclopedia of American Law
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DEBS, EUGENE
Labor leader, presidential candidate, author, and radical, social, and political agitator, Eugene Debs employed a combination of self-determination, grit, defiance, and risk-taking to play a sometimes pivotal role in American law from the late 1890s through the early twentieth century.
The son of Alsatian immigrants, Eugene Victor Debs was born in Terre Haute, Indiana, on November 5, 1855. As a young teenager growing up in Terre Haute, Debs took a job as a railway fireman, where he became active in the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen (BLF). Although Debs left his job as a railway fireman four years later, he remained active in the BLF, undertaking increased leadership ...