Aberdeen herald. [volume] (Aberdeen, Chehalis County, W.T.) 1886-1917, 1911-12-18
Roosevelt on Mcnamara Case

theodore Roosevelt mas al eultoiidi
article in the current issue of the
Outlook relating to the Mcnamara
case, entitled Murder Is Murder
The article, in part, 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 were
of their own class. This has been
done by capitalists in the case of
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 par from
the standpoint of damage to the COM
munity.
'In San Francisco in one munich
pal contest the capitalists who de-
sired to be free from all check and
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 misior-
tune 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
CONSPICUOUS by asserting that these
deprayed criminals, who have on
their scared souls the murder of so
many innocent persons-all of them
laboring people, by the way--are vic
tins or at worst fanatics who should
receive sympathy because they acted
in what they regarded as war on
behalf of their class.
The plea is montrous in its folly
and it's wickedness. 1t is precisely
the kind of plea sometimes advanc-
ed on behalf of a crooked man OF
great wealth caught bribing legis-
lature-that he has to do it to pro-
tect 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
modern industrial conditions, into
which capitalists or laboring men are
sometimes drawn without any very
great consciousness of moral turpi-
tude 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 formu-
lated.
"The murders committed by men
like the McNamaras, although NOM
inally in the interest of organized
labor, differ not one whit in moral
culpability from those committed by
the Black Hand, or by any band of
mere cutthroats and are fraught with
an infinitely heavier menace to So
ciety.
"The labor leaders who by their
loud championship of the McNamaras
as previously of Meyer and Hay
wood-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. Debs and the extremists of
his type among the so-called politi-
cal ocialists-I 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 preach
ers of applied anarchy-and the Ia
Dor leaders affiliated with them have
always boasted of the part they play
ed in the trial of Meyer and Hay
wood, and in this case they repeated
their familiar tactics.
att Is worth noting that since Nc