Eugene Victor Debs

Debs, Eugene Victor (1855–1926), U.S. labor organizer and socialist political leader. A national leader of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen, he founded the American Railway Union in 1893. Debs was jailed in 1895 for defying a federal court injunction during the Pullman railroad strike. Five times the Socialist party's candidate for the presidency, he waged his last and most successful campaign in 1920, while still imprisoned under the Espionage Act (1917) for his political opposition to World War I. He was released in 1921.