Eugene V. Debs — Early Portrait Postcard
Copyright 1897, Paley’s N.Y.
Approx. 5½ x 3½ inches
 
An early portrait postcard of Eugene V. Debs, the influential American labor leader and socialist organizer whose political career made him one of the most prominent figures of the late nineteenth and early twentieth-century labor movement. The dignified studio portrait presents Debs in formal attire, issued during the formative period of his national prominence.
 
Debs first rose to public attention as a leader of the American Railway Union and as a central figure in the Pullman Strike of 1894, one of the most consequential labor conflicts of the Gilded Age. In the years that followed he became the most recognizable spokesman for American socialism, eventually running for President of the United States five timesas the candidate of the Socialist Party.
 
The photograph bears the printed credit “Copyright 1897 by Paley’s N.Y.”, placing the image at an early moment in Debs’s public career, shortly after his emergence as a national labor figure.
 
Condition: Very fine, with light toning consistent with age.