DEBORAH 



1724 



DEBT 



DEBORAH, deb'ora, a prophetess of Israel 

 during the period of the Judges. Women, in all 

 the world's history, in pointing to others of 

 their sex who have accomplished notable things 

 and have shown themselves capable in public 

 affairs, never fail to mention Deborah. She 

 was known as a "mother in Israel." In a cam- 

 paign to deliver Israel from the Canaanites, 

 whose yoke had been endured for twenty years, 

 she joined Barak, the leader of the northern 

 tribes of Israel, and together they destroyed 

 the army of the Canaanites in the "plain of 

 Esdraelon on the brook Kishon." The Ca- 

 naanite leader, Sisera, fled and was murdered 

 in his sleep by Jael. wife of Heber the Kenite. 

 Then "the land had- rest for forty years." 

 Judges V gives the Song of Deborah, telling 

 of joy over the nation's deliverance, and is 

 considered one of the finest poems in the Old 

 Testament. 



DEBS, EUGENE VICTOR. (1855- ), a lead- 

 ing American Socialist, who has several times 

 been a candidate for President of the United 

 States on the Socialist ticket, and who is known 

 to hundreds of thousands of Americans as an 

 advocate of the 

 rights of laboring 

 men. He was 

 born in Terre 

 Haute, Ind., .was 

 educated in the 

 common schools 

 and began life as 

 a locomotive fire- 

 man on the Terre 

 Haute & Indian- 

 apolis Railroad. 

 He next sold gro- 

 ceries for a 

 wholesale house. EUGENE V. DEBS 



From 1879 to 1883 he held office as city clerk 

 of Terre Haute, and in 1885 entered the In- 

 diana legislature. Eight years later Debs 

 organized the American Railway Union, which 

 under his leadership won an important strike 

 on the Great Northern Railway in 1894. 



He was also the prime mover in the great 

 tie-up of Western railroads centering in Chi- 

 cago in 1894, which was broken by the interfer- 

 ence of the Federal courts and by the vigor- 

 ous measures of President Cleveland. In July 

 of that year he was arrested on a charge of 

 violating a Federal injunction in connection 

 with the strike, and was sentenced to six 

 months in jail. While he was serving his 

 term he was visited by a Socialist leader and 



from that period dates his activity as a member 

 of the Socialist party. He was its Presidential 

 candidate in 1904, 1908 and 1912. In 1919 he 

 was imprisoned on a ten-year sentence for anti- 

 war activities. 



DEBT, del, is that which is due; more 

 strictly, it is a sum of money due from one 

 person to another. Originally the law regarded 

 as a debt only those claims based on a definite, 

 expressed agreement. This narrow view has 

 long been abandoned, and a debt is now re- 

 garded as "all that is due a man under any 

 form of obligation or promise." A debt, there- 

 fore, may be created by a special contract or 

 by an ordinary business transaction. 



If the debtor the person who owes money 

 is unwilling or unable to pay the debt, the 

 creditor may bring suit to recover his money. 

 This is a civil suit (a suit of one citizen against 

 another), and ordinarily results in a judgment 

 in favor of the plaintiff, and the debtor usually 

 has to pay the costs of the suit. If the court 

 decides that the defendant does not really owe 

 the alleged debt, the costs must be paid by the 

 plaintiff. If the debtor fails to pay after judg- 

 ment has been rendered against him, the 

 creditor may appeal to the sheriff for an 

 execution of judgment, and may seize enough 

 of the debtor's property to pay the debt and 

 the costs of the process. In all states and prov- 

 inces some of the debtor's property is exempt 

 from seizure; this exemption ranges from a 

 house and lot owned by the debtor and used 

 as a homestead, to a small amount of per- 

 sonal property, if the debtor be married; the 

 exemption in such case usually is not more than 

 $400 in value. 



Statute of Limitations. Ordinarily the 

 courts assert that a debtor should pay his 

 debts even though the creditor does not de- 

 mand payment. The obligation rests on the 

 debtor. On the other hand, if the creditor 

 makes no effort to collect the money within 

 a certain number of years, the debt is said to 

 be outlawed by the statute of limitations. If a 

 creditor makes no effort to obtain payment 

 within a reasonable time, the law assumes that 

 there may have been a good reason for not 

 doing so and gives the debtor the benefit of 

 the doubt by relieving him of the debt. The 

 tables on page 1725 show the number of years 

 a debt may run in the United States and 

 Canada before it is outlawed. 



Imprisonment for Debt and Other Penalties. 

 The laws regarding debtors have changed 

 greatly with the progress of the ages. In 



