The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1908-10-26
Declares Roosevelt Has Changed
Front on Labor Question.
EXHIBIT A, is LETTER
In Which President Endorses
Fiery Labor Article.
Liberty Loving Citizens Rous-
ed as Not Since '61.

I
the writ of injunction in labor disputes,
Samuel Gompers, president of the
American Federation of Labor, in a
statement issued today, severely ar
raigns the president for what he terms
"a change of position of at least appar-
ent friendship to bitter. indefensible
antagonism"
1T has been my pleasure" Mr..
Gompers says, "to have often had the
privilege of discussing with President
Roosevelt a number of the fundamental
questions of right, justice, and moral
and social uplift. Included in these dis
cussions were the invasions of personal
rights and human liberty by the courts
in the injunction abuse. 1t is true that
the president has not always fully
agreed with my contentious, but he has
never, until the publication of his latest
utterance, limited. much less charged,
that anything that we advocated was
lawless, unfeeling, despotic, brutal or
wicked, and yet the rights for which
the workers of our country contend
and which as best can, 1 defend and
advocate, have been as we'll known to
him during the past several years as
they are when he now so unjustified-
ly undertakes to misrepresent my work,
my motives and my lawabiding citi-
Zenship. Surely that opinion was not
Mr.. Gompers says that last February
he sent Mr.. Roosevelt an issue of the
American Federationist In which was
published the chapter, Some Equivocal
gers book, Moral Overstrain."
1.-THE chapter of the book, Mr.. Com
per's says, ''is as keen criticism of the
courts of the country in their decisions
affecting the rights. interests, and lib
erty of the workers as anything l have
ever said or written"
The president in acknowledging re-
ceipt of the article sent the following:
1.-The White House, Washington, Jan.
27. 1908.
my Dear Mr.. Compensation may be
amused to know that have sent cop
les of the Moral Overstrain' to Justices
Day and McKenna. am glad that you
were able to use 1t in the American
Federationist and thank you for send
ing me the copy of the magazine.
Sincerely yours.
THEODORE ROOSEVELT.
ITO Mr.. Sampel Gompers. President
of the American Federation of Labor,
Washington, D. c."
THE fact of the matter is" Mr.
Gompers declares, that President
Roosevelt having made Injunction
Judge Taft the candidate of the Repub-
Iican party for president and seeing
that the labor vote which so often mas
that the labor vote is now aroused and
that the toilers Will not be cajoled de-
ceived or browbeaten. has become des-
perate and angry, and in his anger, by
the worst exhibition of demagoguism,
tries to instill into the employers and
business men the fear that their pro-
perty and business are in danger OF a
square deaP implied by equality before
the law and human freedom are ac-
corded to the workers with all other cit
izens. 1t is an exhibition of impotent
rage and disappointment and an aw-
full descent from the dignity of the high
office of the president of the United
States. No one but himself will be de-
ceived as to the purpose of Mr.. Roose-
1.-THE workers and liberty loving
citizens are accursed as never before
since 81. The battle cry for freedom
is again taken up. Then it was for
the union and the abolition of black
slavery; today it is for the union
equal rights, and freedom for all.
Mr.. Gompers insists that the presi-
dent "makes a direct and specific at
tack upon labor in his letter to
Senator Knox.
'The pretense that the attack is
upon me is too thinly veiled to de-
ceive anyone" he adds. ''He strikes
over my shoulder at the hearts of the
great rank and file of the workers
our country. So far as 1 am concern
ed. 1 have neither the inclination nor
the desire to bask in the sunlight of
President Roosevelt's benevolent as
similation, by which he placates some
by the big stick, brow beats others by
his sophistry hopes to fool the masses
into supporting Injunction Judge Taft.
president Roosevelt says that Sem
ator Knox has peculiar right to dis
cuss the principles involved in in
functions because he. as attorney gen.
eral prosecuted a civil suit for dam
ages to an injured workman. That
Senator Knox was the special counsel
of the Pennsylvania railroad and of
the United States steel corporation
would indeed qualify him to discuss
the injunction abuse, but certainly
only from the viewpoint of the friends
of corporations who profit by the
abuse of the injunction writ as 1t
brings advantage and profit to cor
poration greed and power.
"It the courts have no. invaded
human liberty, If they have not un-
dertaken to protect corporate inter-
ests to the detriment of the people
why did President Roosevelt charac-
terize Judge Grosscups' reversal of
Judge Landis' $29,000,000 fine upon
the Standard Oil trust as a gross mis-
carriage of Justice"
Declaring that the veriest tyro of
layman in his widest dreams never
suggested the abolition of the in
| junction process, Mr.. Gompers insists
that labor desires to have the injunc
| ton restored to the use from which
it has been ruthlessly diverted. from
the protection of property rights to
the invasion of personal freedom"
He quotes from the presidents mes
sages to congress and declares that
they "show an utter confusion of the
entire matter of injunction in Mr..
Roosevelt's mind" He claims that
the decisions of the lower courts in
Great Britain, which were reversed
by the higher courts there. have been
accepted as the basis for the issuance