Just after 2pm on the afternoon of September 1st, Eugene Debs’s special train pulled into Grinnell’s Union Station. Debs was running for president on the Socialist party ticket that Fall (1908), and had organized a cross-country campaign in which he and a party of about a hundred supporters, campaign workers, officials, and a musical band, would stop at various cities as their privately rented train made its way from New York to California. Dubbed, the “red special,” Debs’s train (see above and below) stopped at Grinnell for about two hours, giving the band time to play in central park; giving his associates time to distribute campaign flyers, sell party tracts, and solicit donations; and giving Debs time to deliver a speech to students and townspeople who had gathered around the gazebo in the park.

The Grinnell Herald, which was no fan of Debs, noted sarcastically that “Grinnell’s ‘down-trodden’ laboring class was so busy working at from $2 to $5 a day, that they didn’t have time to stop to hear from Mr. Debs how miserable was their condition.” In fact, the paper was less interested in reporting Debs’ political message than in discussing his controversial remarks about ex-Grinnellian, George D. Herron, who had been forced out of his endowed chair in Applied Christianity at the college when he eloped with Carrie Rand, the Dean of Women at the college (and daughter of Elizabeth Rand who had endowed the chair and larger program).  Herron was one of the most prominent spokesmen for the Social Gospel and Christian Socialism, and Debs took this opportunity to chastise Grinnell over its treatment of Herron, saying:

Grinnell had crucified its saviour; that because George D. Herron had been a high-minded, pure-souled man, Grinnell had driven him out and that when all the rest of us are forgotten Mr. Herron will be remembered…

In fact, Herron received top-billing in the headline framing the story of Debs’ visit in the Herald:

One person who would have agreed with Debs, however, was Laetitia Moon Conard, who was a personal friend and follower of George Herron; who taught sociology at Grinnell College; and who would eventually run for governor of Iowa on the Socialist party ticket, a few decades later. Sadly, Laetitia never got her own “red special” when she campaigned for the governorship in 1932.