WI: Eugene Debs is involved in the Great Railroad Strike of 1877?

blindgoose

I've recently been reading "The Bending Cross" by Ray Ginger which is the best biography of Debs out there and it raised some questions for me. So, Debs moved briefly to St. Louis in 1873, which would become the most radical part of the Great Railroad Strike just four years later in 1877. He moved to St. Louis for work on the railroads, unable to find any in Terre Haute. The entire time he was in St. Louis his mother begged him to quit the railroads before he was injured or killed and come back home, and he was eventually persuaded when one of his friends slipped and fell under and engine and was killed. He quit, moved back to Terre Haute, becoming a grocery store clerk and starting his involvement in the railroad brotherhoods becaus ehe understood the need for cheap insurance (the main benefits of the brotherhoods). Say that his friend does not die and Debs stays on the railroads in St. Louis until the Great Railroad Strike. What does his experience with this event do? Does an earlier radicalization prevent him from becoming an important name in the railroad brotherhoods and thus becoming a national figure? Or does his experience forever burn him on radicalism and do we see a Debs who remains an important partner of Samuel Gompers, perhaps becoming a President of the AFL or Governor of Indiana if he continues his career in the Democratic Party?
 

rcduggan

Interesting. If I recall, in OTL Debs was a Democrat in the late 1870s - he served in the Indiana state legislature, after all. I think getting Debs involved in the strike would hinder his career as a politician and labor leader - or maybe I am just going off of that because so few of the leaders from the '77 Strike are remembered today.
 

Shawn Endresen

We're simply talking about him being present, yes? He's unlikely to assume a leadership position in the 1877 uprising, too young, too new to the area. I would expect it to radicalize him, derailing his participation in regular politics, and thus denying him the chance to learn a few useful leadership and organization skills.

I wonder if this isn't a backwards way to create a Reds!-lite sort of TL? Debs radicalizing early means he becomes a follower of DeLeon rather than a rival, and ultimately a successor to him - so the good news (from radical labor's perspective) is that DeLeon's all-too-personal-culty organization doesn't collapse with his death in 1811 (Debs holds it together), but also doesn't manage to expand with the speed and ferocity (at the expense of the AFL) we see in Jello's TL?
 
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