The Barre daily times. (Barre, Vt.) 1897-1959, 1911-12-15
McNAMARAS' ACTS
MENACE TO SOCIETY
Declared Theodore Roosevelt in Articles
on Murder Is Murder in Cur
rent Number of The Out
look To-day.

look To-day.
New York, Dec. Theodore Roose'
welt has an editorial article in the cur
rent 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 selfish
ness in standing by criminals simply be-
cause they were of their own class. This
has been done by capitalists in the case
OF capitalists who have been guilty on
brazen corruption, and by laborers IN
the case of labor leaders who have been
guilty of murderous violence. The two
oifenses stand on par from the stand
point of damage to the community. In
| San Francisco in one municipal contest
the capitalists 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 a lasting mis-
| fortune TO San Francisco, to the cause
of honest business, and to the cause OF
honest labor.
"Since the startling outcome of the
Mcnamara trial certain apologists OF
these men have made themselves con-
spicuous by asserting that these de-
prayed criminals, who have on their
scared souls the murder OF so many IN
nocent persons-all of them laboring
people. by the way--are victims, or at
worst fanatics, who should receive sym
pathy because they were acting IN what
they regarded as a war on behalf OF
their elassll The plea is monstrous IN
its folly and its wickedness. II IS pre-
cisely the kind of plea sometimes ad-
vanced on behalf OF a crooked man OF
great wealth caught bribing a legisla-
ture-that he has to do it to protect his
business.
eve are not here dealing with any OF
the kinds of oiIenses incidental to the
sudden and sweeping changes brought
about BY modern industrial conditions
into which capitalists or labor men are
sometimes drawn without any very great
moral turpitude on their part. We are
dealing with crimes as old as the law
giving 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
interests OF organized labor, differ not
one whit in moral culpability from those
committed by the Black Hand, or by
any band of mere cut threats, and are
fraught with an infinitely heavier men
ace to society.
"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 afiirmatively freeing themselves ana
their followers from the faint Of re-
sponsibility for such criminals and such
crimes. The labor leaders who by their
loud championship of the McNamaras-
as previously Of Meyer and Haywood
have succeeded IN identifying them with
the cause of labor in the eyes of the
public, have rendered an evil service TO
that cause. Mr.. Debs and the extrem-
lists of his tyne among the so-cailed po
litical 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 APP
piled anarchy-and the labor leaders af
tiliated with them, have always boosted
of the part they played in the trial Of
Meyer and Haywood; and in this case
they repeated their familiar tactics, and
held mass meetings, and scattered broad
cast papers and addresses in which they
furiously denounced the effort to bring
wrongloers to justice, and sought to
arouse every evil class instinct against
all who upheld the cause of law or
sought to put a stop to, assassination
and murderous violence. 1t is worth
noting that since Mcnamara confessed
his guilt Mr.. Meyer, the head of what
purports TO be labor organization, is
reported in the press as commenting
upon it, not by denouneing Mcnamara |
for having committed the murder, but |
by denouncing him for having confessed
it! Such denunciation is significant.
Murder is murder, and the foolish |
sentimentalists OF sinister wrong-doers |
who try to apologize for it as an Incl
dent OF labor warfare are not only |
morally culpable but are enemies of the
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 a fair trial for the
McNamaras, whose purpose has only /
been to get justice, and who now sternly |
demand that murder shall be punished |
when committed in the nominal inter |
est of labor precisely as under any other
circumstances. / believe with all my
heart in the American workingman; /
believe with all my heart in organized
labor, for labor must be organized in
order to protect and secure its rights; |
and therefore with all my strength /
urge my fellow-citizens, the American
men and women who earn their liveli-
hood as wage-workers, to see that their
leaders stand for honesty, and obedience
to the law, and to set their faces like
flint against any effort to identify the
cause of organized labor, directly or indi-
rectly. with any movement which in
any shape or way benefits by the COM
mission of crimes of lawless and muir
derous violence"
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