Omaha daily bee., 1911-12-16
MURDER is STILL MURDER
Theodore Roosevelt Writes Further
Of Mcnamara Cases.
SINISTER CLASS sELFIsHNEss
Labor Leaders Who Have Succeeded
in Identifying Criminals with
Their Cause Have Done Their
Fellows a Great Wrong.

NEW YORK, Dec. 15.--Theodore Roose-
Welt has an editorial in the current Issue
Of the outlook relating to the Mcnamara
case, entitled Murder is Murder" The
article says:
Not only laboring men, but business
men. capitalists, have at times shown the
worst form Of class consclousness-that
OF sinister and brutal class selfishness in
standing by criminals simply because they
were of their own class. This has been
done by capitalists in the case of capital
lists who have been guilty OF brazen cor
ruption, and by laborers in the case OF
labor leaders who have been guilty Of
murderous violence. The two offenses
stand on a par from the standpoint Of
damage to the community. In San Fran
cisco In one municipal contest the capi-
talsts who desired to be free from all
check on corruption and the labor leaders
who desired to be free from all check on
lawless violence struck hands and elected
their ticket; and this proved in the end
TO be lasting misfortune to San Fran
cisco, to the cause of honest business and
to the cost of honest labor.
Plea of MOnstrOus Folly.
Mcnamara trial certain apologists Of
these men have made themselves con
spicuous by asserting that these depraved
criminals, who have on their scared souls
the murder Of so many innocent persons
all Of them laboring people, by the way
ARE victims or at worst fanatics,
who should receive sympathy because
they were acting in what they regarded
as a war on behalf of this class. The
plea is monstrous in It's folly and its
wickedness. 1t is precisely the kind of
plea sometimes advanced or behalf of
crooked man of great wealth caught
bribng a legislature-that he has to do it
TO protect his business. We are not here
dealing with any of the kinds of offenses
incidental to the sudden and sweeping
changes brought about by mcdern IL
dustrial conditions into which capitalists
or labor men are sOmtimes drawn with
out any very great conscious moral tur-
pitude on their part. We are dealing with
crimes as old as the lawgiving from
Sinai, with crimes-murder and theft
that have been prohibited ever since the
decalogue was formulated. The murders
committed by men like the McNamaras,
although nominaly in the interest OF or
ganized labor, differ not one whit in
moral culpabillty from those committed
by the Black Hand or by any band OF
mere cutthroats, and are fraught with an
infinitely heavier menace to society. Yet,
great though the menace is to the COM
munity, the menace to the cause of hon
est organized labor Is still greater, and
nc. duty is more imperatively laid on the
leaders of labor than the duty of af-
firmatively freeing themselves and their
followers from the faint of responsibility
for such criminals and such crimes.
Evil service to Labor.
The leaders who by their loud cham
nlonship of the McNamaras-as previously
OF Meyer and Haywood-have succeeded
n identifying them with the cause of
labor in the eyes of the public, have rem
-dered an evil service to that cause. Mr..
Debs and the extremists of his type
among the so-called political socialists
] say so-called because Debs and his
followers OF the Emma Goldman kind are
not socialists at all in any true sense of
the word, but mere meters to murder
and preachers OF applied anarchy-and
the labor leaders affiliated with them.
have always boosted of the part they
played in the trial of Meyer and Hay
wood; and in this case they repeated their
familiar tactics, and held mass meetings
and scattered broadcast papers and ad-
dresses in which they furiously denounced
the effort to bring wrongdoers to justice
and sought to arouse every evil class in
stinct against all who upheld the cause of
law or sought to put stop to assassina-
ton and murderous violence. 1t is worth
noting that since Mcnamara confessed
his guilt Mr.. Meyer, the head of what
purports to be a labor organization, is
reported i'm the press as commenting upon
it, not by denouncing Mcnamara for hav-
ing committed the murder, but by de-
nounclng him for having confessed it..
Such denunciation is significant
Menaces OF American People.
Murder is murder, and the foolish SEN
timentalists of sinister wrongdoers who
try to apologize for 1t as an Incident to
labor warfare are not only morally cul-
pahle, but are enemies OF tht American
people, and, above all. are enemies OF
American wage workers. In honorable
contrast to these men stand the various
labor leaders who have never asked for
more than e fair trial for ths Mona
naEas. whose purpose has only been tn
ret Justice. and who @@w SasrmAY de-