The tone of Debs' "Statement" goes from A to Z to P (for pathos). And yet it works.

He begins very dramatically, but keeps to broad and simple statements about the stakes of his case. He uses phrases like "my kinship with all living beings" (1), calls the Espionage Act "despotic" (4), and asserts that he is "opposed to the social system in which we live" (5).

In the second section, the tone shifts into something much more flowery and embellished as he seeks to paint vivid pictures of the suffering workers and the cruel system that beats them down. Here he uses colorful phrases like "the remorseless grasp of Mammon," "industrial dungeons," and "monster machines" (11). He asserts that "gold is god…more important than the flesh and blood of childhood" (12).

As he moves into his discussion of Socialism in the third section, his tone changes again. Debs becomes the teacher in this section, schooling the judge on the Socialist ideology. His tone becomes more rational, the language drier as he makes the Socialist case. "There are today upwards of sixty millions of Socialists," he argues, "making common cause…[that] the private property of a few…ought to be common property of all" (22-23).

As he wraps up the "Statement," the tone changes yet again, into something that's almost rapturous. Debs offers Christian imagery for the bright new world he foresees. Here he mentions "the Almighty," "the cross bending," and "the passage of time upon the dial of the universe" (37).

Debs seems to have had sort of an epiphany here. And so have we: we see the light about how awesome speeches should be structured.