Rock Island Argus. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1893-1920, 1911-12-16
ROOSEVELT HITS
AT DEBS AND Xix
Organized Labor To Rid Itself
of Leaders Who Incite
Criminal Acts.
ARE POSING AS SOCIALISTS
Former President Pens His Opinion
of the Mcnamara Dyna- :.
hitting Cases.

Roosevelt has an editorial article in
the current issue of the Outlook re-
lating to the Mcnamara case, en-
titled Murder is Murder" The ar
ticle says:
mot only laboring men, but bust
ness men, capitalists, have at times
shown the worst form of class con-
sciousness-that Of sinister and
brutal class selfishness in standing
by criminals simply because they
been done by capitalists in the case
of capitalists who have been guilty
of brazen corruption. and by labor
ers in the case Of labor leaders who
have been guilty of murderous vio-
lence. The two offenses stand on
a par from the standpoint of damage
to the community In San Francisco /
in one municipal contest the capital /
lists 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 Francisco, to the
cause of honest business, and to the
cause of honest labor.
NOT SERVING LABOR CAUSE.
"Since the startling outcome of
the Mcnamara trial certain apolog-
lists of these men have made them
selves conspicuous 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 be-
cause they were acting in what they
regarded as war on behalf Of this
class! The plea is monstrous in its
folly and it's wickedness. 1t is pre-
cisely the kind of plea sometimes
advanced on behalf Of a crooked
man of great wealth caught bribing
a legislature-that he has to do 1t
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 modern industrial conditions into
which capitalists 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 formu-
lated. The murders committed by
men like the McNamaras, although
nominally in the interest of organ
lied labor, differ not one whit in moral
culpability from those committed by
the Black Hand. or by any hand, or
by any band of mere cut-throats; and
are fraught with an infinitely heavier
menace to society.
MENACE TO UNIONIsM.
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 i'm
peratively laid on the leaders of labor
than the duty of affirmatively freeing
themselves and their followers from
the faint of responsibility for such
criminals and such crimes. The labor
leaders who by their loud champion
ship 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 extremists of his
type among the so-called political So
cialists-I say so-called because Debs
and his followers of the Emma Gold
man kind are not socialists at all in
any true sense of the word, but mere
meters to murder and preachers oil
applied anarchy-and labor leaders af
filiated with them, have always boast
ed Of the part they played in the trial
} of Meyer and Haywood and in thii
} case they repeated their familiar tao
tics and held mass meetings, anC
scattered broadcast papers and ad
J dresses in which they furiously de
, nounced the effort to bring wrong
} doors to justice, and sought to arouse
, every evil class instinct against al
who upheld the cause Of law or cough