ABSTRACT
Eugene Victor Debs (1855-1926) was born in Terre Haute, Indiana, of Alsatian immigrant parents steeped in the culture of French and German romanticism; Debs was named after the French novelists Eugène Sue and Victor Hugo. His father and mother provided a living for themselves and their six children through a small grocery store. The second-oldest child (and first of two sons), Eugene left school and got a job in a local railroad shop at the age of fourteen. In 1872, he became a locomotive fireman, and in 1875 he helped found and lead the Terre Haute local of the Brotherhood of Loco motive Firemen, also serving as associate editor of the Firemen’s Magazine in 1878. By 1880, he was editor-in-chief of the union’s magazine, as well as grand secretary and treasurer of the national Brotherhood. The personable Debs was also drawn into Democratic Party politics-elected as Terre Haute city clerk in 1879, then to the Indiana state legislature in 1885 (the same year he married Kate Metzel).
