Adversary in the House
by Irving Stone
Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Company, 1947
Who is the "Adversary in the House?" It is far from the central question of the book. Nevertheless, Irving Stone's portrayal of Eugene Deb's tempestuous relationship with a wife who rejects the very values he holds most dear adds intriguing insight into the character of the man who led the American Railway Union and ultimately the American Socialist Party at the zenith of their national influence.
Eugene Debs rose to prominence by becoming one of the nation's most important labor leaders at at time when labor unions fought for the very existence. It is the late nineteenth century, and the leaders of big business, especially railroads, were determined to quash any attempts by labor to exert real power or reduce their profits. Carnegie, Rockefeller, Vanderbilt and their company's major stockholders reaped their profits unfettered by any meaningful government control. When the nation's fledgling labor union's fought for a living wage, the elimination of child labor or decent working conditions, they were often ignored if not suppressed. When labor strife turned violent, the government often interceded, always on behalf of management.
Class tensions are a major theme of the late nineteenth century, as the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Horatio Alger's "rags to riches" stories are largely a myth. Irving Stone captures the frustration of a working class fighting for some semblance of human dignity, and in many cases their very survival.
From the depths of despair while Debs is imprisoned to his candidacy for the President of the United States, Stone does a brilliant job of capturing the nuances of both the man and the times in which he lived. Irving Stone was truly one of America's great biographical novelists, and Adversary in the House ranks with The Origin, The Agony and the Ecstasy, and Lust for Life as one of his great contributions to the genre.Comment
Adversary in the House provides an insightful, yet entertaining glimpse of life in late nineteenth century America. The novel directly supports several aspects of the US History II course of study as noted below.
Idaho readers will find the book's reference to the assassination of Idaho Governor Frank Steunenberg and the subsequent trial of Western Federation of Miners leaders Charles Moyer and William D. Haywood particularly interesting. Labor strife in Idaho's silver mines was particularly violent at the turn of the century, and Steunenberg earned the wrath of the W.F.M. when he instigated anti-union violence. President Teddy Roosevelt labeled Moyer, Haywood and Eugene Debs "undesirable citizens," and workingmen across the nation responded by wearing buttons that read, "I am an Undesirable Citizen."Reading Level: Not Available
Interest Level: Not listed, but in my opinion, ninth graders through adults will be interested in this novel.
432 pagesSupports the following Instructional Objectives:
Analyze the rise of the American labor movement
Investigate the struggle of American Labor Unions to win legal recognition
Excerpt
That night when he left the tent he saw a man trail him back to town. When he went into the restaurant for supper, the man waited outside. When he went up to his hotel the man kept a few steps behind him, his hand in his coat pocket. Gene closed the door of his room and locked it behind him, but he could feel the presence immediately outside. He flung the door open and cried:
"Why do you follow me? Surely I have never done you any harm."
The gunman released his hold of the revolver and stood staring at Gene with his mouth open.
"Oh, Mr. Debs, I am no thug. I heard the company's private police say they were going to shoot you, so I appointed myself your bodyguard. No one is going to shoot you while I'm around."
The climax to the years of civil war cam when former Governor Steunenberg of Idaho of Idaho, who had been charged with anti-labor violence during his administration, was murdered by the explosion of a bomb attached to the gate of his house. The man who had set the bomb, Harry Orchard, was a lifelong criminal; he was arrested, held incommunicado in jail, and then placed in the hands of the Pinkerton Agency, which provided strikebreakers and mine police. As a result of Orchard's deal with the Pinkertons, Charles Moyer, William Haywood and George Pettibone, officers of the Western Federation of Miners, were arrested in Denver, kidnapped by the police of Idaho without extradition papers, locked in murderers' row in the state penitentiary in Boise, and charged with conspiracy to murder ex-Governor Steunenberg.
The news reached Gene while he was in his office in Terre Haute. He had long been specially attached to the Western Federation of Miners because it had bolted from the conservative American Federation of Labor and formed the first industrial union since his own American Railway Union had been destoyed.Historical Fiction and Idaho U.S. History Curriculum
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