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Eugene Debs 'Labor Day Message'

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Eugene Debs 'Labor Day Message'
Eugene Debs, a union leader, wrote the Labor Day Message in 1897. He ran for president five times as a Socialist Party candidate, one in which he ran from prison. This essay focused on the working class and how they do not have a living wage. Debs believes that laborers are not receiving all the fruit of their labor and aims to shrink the disparity between the rich and the poor. “It is no utopian dream, not an ignis fatuus, not the product of imagination, not a mirage of the desert to allure and vanish, but a theory of life and labor in which the humblest individual owns himself and by his labor secures life, liberty, and happiness.”
Q: Do you think we will ever shrink the disparity between the rich and the poor?

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