Ottumwa tri-weekly courier., 1911-12-16

great conscious moral turpitude or
their part. We are dealing with crimes
as old as the lawgiving from Sinai
with crjmes-murder and theft--that
have been prohibited ever since the
decalogue was formulated. ~
Debs and Moyer Singled Out.
1.-THE murders committed by men like
the McNamaras, although nominally
in the interest of organized labor, diff
fer not one whit in moral culpability
from those committed by the black
hand, OF by any band of mere cut.
throats, and are fraught with an in.
finitely heavier menace 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 afirmatively freeing themselves and
their followers from the taint of re-
sponsibility for such criminals ana
such crimes. The labor leaders who
by their loud championship of the Nc
Namaras-as previously of Meyer and
succeeded in identify
ing them with the cause of labor In
the eyes of the public, have rendered
an evil service to that cause. Mr..
Debs and the extremists of his type
among the: so-called political socialists
Il 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 inciters
to murder and preachers of applied
anarchy-and the labor leaders at.
nliated with them, have always boas+ed
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 Of
fort to bring wrongdoers to Justice,
and sought to arouse every evil class
instinct against all who upheld the
cause of law or sought to put stop
to assassination and murderous vio-
lence. 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 denouncing McNamara for having
committed the murder but by denounc-
ing him for having confessed it! Such
denunciation is significant. 1s -
j. "Murder 10 Murder"
Murder is murder, and the foolish
sentimentalists or 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 fair
trial for the McNamaras, whose pur-
pose has only been to get justice, and
who now sternly demand that murder
shall be punished when committed in
the nominal interest of labor precisely
an under any other circumstances. l
believe with all my heart in the Ameri-
can workingman; I 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-citi.
zens, the American men and women
who earn their: livelihood 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
indirectly, with any movement which
In any shape or way benefits by the
commission Of crimes of lawless and
murderous violence"