1908 portrait of Debs. Eugene Victor "Gene" Debs (November 5, 1855 - October 20, 1926) was an American union leader, one of the founding members of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW or the Wobblies). He was instrumental in the founding of the American Railway Union (ARU), one of the nation's first industrial unions. After workers at the Pullman Palace Car Company organized a wildcat strike over pay cuts in the summer of 1894, Debs signed many into the ARU. He called a boycott of the ARU against handling trains with Pullman cars, in what became the nationwide Pullman Strike. As a leader of the ARU, he was convicted of federal charges for defying a court injunction against the strike and served six months in prison. He read the works of Karl Marx and learned about socialism in prison, emerging to launch his career as the nation's most prominent Socialist. He ran as the Socialist Party's candidate for the presidency in 1900, 1904, 1908, 1912, and 1920, the last time from a prison cell. He was noted for his oratory, and his speech denouncing American participation in World War I led to his second arrest in 1918. He was convicted under the Espionage Act of 1917 and sentenced to a term of 10 years. President Harding commuted his sentence in December 1921. He died in 1926, at the age of a 70, not long after being admitted to a sanatorium.