Transcriber's Note:
Obvious typographic errors have been corrected.
The Table of Contents is here, at the end of the text.
Pagenumbers appear in the right margin.
Click on the page number to see an image of the original page.
[3]
Labor and Freedom
The Voice and Pen
of Eugene V. Debs
Published by
PHIL WAGNER
St. Louis
1916
115
[4]
[5]
Introduction
I think if I had been asked to name this work that comes to us from therare mind and tender heart of 'Gene Debs, I would have called it "TheOld Umbrella Mender." It was this tragic, touching tale that I firstread in the manuscript; and it is the memory of this that will alwaysreturn to me when I think of the book. It is the perfect painting fromthe artist's brush—the sculptured monument from the master'schisel—that makes one lowly, loyal soul to live forever in the heartsof humanity's lovers.
Not but that every line in the book is a treasure, and every sentimentbrought forth an appeal to all that makes for justice, and equality, andfreedom; nor will it detract from, but rather add to, the beauty andinestimable value of the entire collection if others, likewise, carrywith them the image and memory of the old umbrella mender, as theytravel with Debs the struggling, storm-tossed way of Labor and Freedom.
Henry M. Tichenor.
St. Louis, March 1, 1916.
[6]
[7]
MISCELLANY
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[9]
THE OLD UMBRELLA MENDER. Coming Nation, March 1, 1913.
It was on a cold morning late in November last, just after the nationalelection, and I was walking briskly toward my office. A stiff wind wasblowing and a drizzling rain was falling. The threads in one of the ribsof my umbrella snapped asunder and the cover flew upward, as it has away of doing, and I was about to lower my disabled shower-stick when Iran slapdash into an old itinerant umbrella mender with