The Selected Works of Eugene V. Debs Volume II by Tim Davenport

Author:Tim Davenport
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Haymarket Books
Published: 2020-05-03T16:00:00+00:00

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‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡ Published in Report on the Chicago Strike of June–July, 1894, by the United States Strike Commission, Appointed by the President July 26, 1894, Under the Provisions of Section 6 of Chapters 1063 of the Laws of the United States Passed October 1, 1888, with Appendices Containing Testimony, Proceedings, and Recommendations. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1895; 129–180.

The Limit of Endurance§§§§§§§§§§§

September 1894

Everything has its limits except space and eternity, provided they can be called things. The mind and all of its wonderful faculties: thought, imagination, hope, fear, and aspirations, all operate within certain boundaries. It may be said that time should be included with space and eternity—perhaps so; it is not essential since we absolutely know nothing of either. True, for convenience we divide and subdivide time and space, but eternity is beyond our grasp, and we let it alone. And time and space, though we talk about seconds and centuries, of inches and miles, we find as we proceed that all limits vanish, and we turn our attention to things which have limits, and determine as best we may what their limits are. Life has its limits, our years are numbered—three score and ten is the limit;111 millions fall short of it, a few go beyond it. The luxuries of wealth have their limit; the privations of poverty have their limit. Human joys and human sorrows have their boundaries. Crime and cruelty, virtue and vice operate within certain restrictions fixed by human depravity, or human probity, regardless of any particular form of government. In a despotism the autocrat determines limits; in a democracy the people exercise that power; in either case it is human willpower, not divine power, and, it being human power that prescribes limits, it becomes possible for human power to change the limits, to broaden or contract them.

As to the limit of human endurance, history is full of examples, in reading which the mind either expands with rapturous delight or evinces unutterable scorn and detestation. Slavery is an old-time institution. What were the conditions before the flood we are not advised, but as human slavery includes the sum total of human depravity, we do not doubt that the giants—for there were giants, we are told, in those faraway times—subjugated those of less power and brought about that condition of wickedness which prompted the Creator to declare He would annihilate the race; the limit of sin had been reached as also the limit of Jehovah’s patience, but his wrath was modified to the extent of saving one man and his family, Noah, all others were drowned as if they had been so many rats.112 Again we find, according to the record that divine as certainly as human endurance has its limits, as, for instance, the cruelties inflicted upon the Israelites in Egypt.113 These cruelties became so continuous and flagitious that in the councils of the Almighty that vengeance took the place of patience. The grievance committees of the oppressed Israelites were repulsed by Pharaoh, à

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