The times dispatch. [volume] (Richmond, Va.) 1903-1914, 1911-12-16
''MURDER is MURDER.
NO JUSTIFICATION
Roosevelt Denounces All Who Commit or Con
done Grimes In Name of Lab-r or for
Any Cause Whatsoever

New York, Dec ,mbor 15.-Theodore
Roosevelt has an editorial article in
tho current issue of the Outlook re-
lating TO the Mcnamara case, entitled
Murder is Murder" The article says:
Not only laboring men, but busi-
ness men and capitalists, have at times
shown the worst form OF class con-
sciousness--that of sinister and brutal
class sclfshness in standing by GRIM
inals simply because they were OF their
own class. This has been done by
capitalists who have been guilty of
brazen 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 COM
munity. In San Francisco In one
municipal contest the capitalists who
desired to be free from all check on
lawless violence struck hands and
elected their ticket: and this proved
to San francisco. to the cause Of
honest business and to the cause of
honest labor.
Since the startling outcome of tho
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
innocent persons-all of them labor
ing people,. by the way-are victims,
or at worst, fanatics who should re-
ceive sympathy because they were act
ing In what they regarded as war
on behalf OF their class The plea Is
monstrous. In It's folly and it's wick ed
ness. 1t ia precisely the kind of plea
sometimes advanced on behalf OF a
crooked man OF great wealth caught
bribing 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 modern Industrial conditions into
which capitalists or labor men are
sometimes drawn without any very
great conscious moral turpitude on
their part.
I'VE are Dealing with crimes as old
as the lawgiving from Sinai, with
crimes-murder and theft-that have
been prohibited ever since the deca-
loguo was formulated. The murders
committed by men like the McNamaras.
although nominally In the interest of
organized labor, dIffcr not one whit in
moral culpability from those commit
ted by the Black Hand or by any band
of mere cut-throats. and are fraught
with an Infinitely heavier menace to
society. Act. great though the menace
is to tho community, the menace to the
cause OF honest organized labor Is
still greater. and no duty Is more i'm
pcratively laid on the leaders of labor
than the, duty of affirmativeiy freeing
themselves and their followers from
the faint of responsibility for such
criminals and such crimes.
1.-THE labor leaders who by their
loud championship OF the AIcNa-
inaFas-as previously Of Meyer and
Haywood-have succeeded In Identity
Ing them with the cause OF labor In
the eyes OF the public have rendered
an evil service to that cause. Mr..
pebs and the extremists of his type
among the so-called political Social
.ists--I say so-called because Dcbs and
his followers Of the Emma Goldman