Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1911-12-15
APPEALS TO LABOR
Roosevelt Urges Wage-Earn-
erS to SCrutinize Leaders.
ELECT ONLY LAW-ABIDING
Takes Crime of McNamaras as a Text
for Articles.
SCORES CLASS SELFISHNESS
Corruption by Capital and Violence
by Labor BE Puts on
Same Plane

NEW YORK. December 1J.-Theodore
Roosevelt has an editorial article 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 consciousness-that
of sinister and brutal class se1fishness in
standing by criminals simply because
they We're of their own class. This has
been done by capitalists in the case of
capitalists who have been guilty of bra zen
corruption. 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 capt.
talists who desired to be free from all
check on corruption and the labor lead
erS 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
Francisco. TO the cause of honest bust
ness and to the cause of honest labor.
Apologists for McNamaras.
Since the startling outcome of the Nc
Namara trial certain apoogists of these
men have made themselves conspicuous
by asserting that these depraved crimi-
nails, who have on their scared souls
the murder of so many innocent persons
all of them laboring pepole. by the way
are victims. or at worst, fanatics who
should receive sympathy because they
We're acting in what they regarded as a
war on behalf of their class.
The plea is monstrous in it's folly and
its wickedness. It is precisely the kind
a crooked man of great wealth caught
bribing lesislature-that he has to do it
to protect his business. We are not
here dealing with any Of the kinds of Of
lenses incidental to the sudden and
sweeping changes brought about by mod
ern Industrial conditions into which CAPT.
talists or labor men are sometimes drawn
without any very great conscious moral
turpitude 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 nominally in the interest of or
moral culpability from those committed
by the Black Hand, or by any band of
mere t-throats. and are fraught with
an infinitely heavier menace to society.
Menace to Honest Labor
yet, great though the menace Is TO
the community, the menace to the cause
of honest organized labor is still greater
and no duty is more imperatively laid on
the leaders of labor than the duty OF
! aff1rmatively freeing themselves and their
followers from the faint of responsibility
for such criminals and such crimes. The
labor leaders who by their loud cham
pionship of the McNamaras-as previous
ly of Meyer and HaywOOd-have succeed
ed in identifying them with the cause of
labor in the eyes of the public, have
rendered an evil service to that cause,
MIR. Debs and the extremists OF his type
among the so-called political socialists
say so-called because Debs and his fol-
lowers of the Emma Goldman kind are
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
stinct against all who upheld the cause of
law or sought to put a stop to assassina-
ton and murderous violence: 1t is worth
noting that since Mcnamara confessed his
guilt Mr.. Mover. the head of what pur-
ports to be a labor organization. is re-
ported in the press as commenting upon
it, not by denouncing Mcnamara for hav
ing committed the murder, but by de-
nouncing him for having confessed it!
Such denunciation is significant.
Enemies of Wage Farmers.