The Days of Long Ago: Letter to the Editor
of Locomotive Firemen’s Magazine§
January 1912
On my last eastern trip I was surprised and delighted at Corning, New York, to meet Horace W. Plummer,4 the first elected vice grand master of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen. I had not met him since the Indianapolis convention of 1875, which he attended as a grand officer and I as a visitor. We were boys then, and to me now it seems to have been only the other day.
How the years have gone by! And how many of the boys of that day have vanished with the years!
There is melancholy as well as joy in that kind of a meeting. As we sat there and talked about the boyhood days that had vanished we sought to rejuvenate ourselves by reviewing the scenes of those early days.
It was at the first annual convention held at Hornellsville, New York, in December 1874, that Horace Plummer was elected vice grand master and also vice president of the “Firemen’s Life Insurance Association,” as the insurance department was then called. Joshua Leach presided over the convention and there William N. Sayre was elected first grand secretary and treasurer.
On the same eastern trip it was also my pleasure to meet I. H. Crossman, the old pioneer of Buffalo Lodge 12, who has been staunch and true in storm and shine through all these years. I met him also at the Indianapolis convention in 1875.
Plummer and Crossman were both charter members of Erie Lodge 2 of Hornellsville, organized, I believe, by Josh Leach in December 1873.
Few, very few, of the pioneers of that day still survive to share in its interesting reminiscences. Most of them have passed over the range and are remembered only by the few who still remain to recall their loyal devotion when it required courage indeed to share in the work of laying the foundations of the brotherhood.
Allow me to send my warmest greeting to all the surviving members of the olden day. A new generation has now appeared and there have been many changes, but the memories of the old pioneers will never be wholly forgotten.
In my travels I meet many of the members of the brotherhood, but only a few of those with whom I sat in convention a third of a century ago.
On February 27, coming, it will be 37 years since I first joined the brotherhood. The vivid recollection of that day and the vent of my life associated with that day inspire some of my most happy reminiscences.
Many years have passed since I have been connected with the brotherhood, but I have not lost my interest in its members. We have not traveled the same road, nor had the same experiences, but my heart has ever been with them and always will be while it continues to beat. I have always felt a peculiar attachment for firemen and enginemen and this attachment seems to grow stronger with the passing years.
My glad greeting and the warmest wishes of my heart go out to all the members of the brotherhood in which I spent all the years of my young manhood.
Eugene V. Debs
§ Published in Locomotive Firemen’s Monthly Magazine, vol. 52, no. 1 (January 1912), 117.