The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-05-05
ROOSEVELT WARNS |. LABOR ID GO SLOW "Murder Is Murder" and Should Be Punished PRAISE FOR BURNS Says Labor Has No Right To Claim That Capital Is Fighting La
 bor in Prosecution of
 Dynamiters

l New York May 4-Theodore Roosevelt | will have a signed article entitled "Mur- der Is Murder in "The Outlook" this week, dealing with the dynamiting of the Los Angeles Times and the arrests re- gently made by Detective Burns. MT. Roosevelt says in part:
 "rhe men responsible for dynamiting the Los Angeles Times building are re- sponsible not only for the wreck of the newspaper offices, but for the loss of | many lives.
 "The arrest was made in consequence of testimony secured by MT. Burns, who has been MT. Heney's right-hand man in bringing to justice grafters who violated the law of the United States in Oregon and grafters who violated the laws of | California in San Francisco.
 | He has proceeded with impartial severi- ty against the most influential politicians and the richest bushes men. It happens | that the men whom he has now arrested are members of labor organization, | just as men whom he formerly arraigned | were members of the republican or dem ocrtaic parties or of the great and wealthy corporations.
 It would have been a wicked thing in | the former cases with which MT. Burns had to do for leading republicans or dem ocrats to combine to break him down and support the accused merely because the accused belonged to their political par ties. and it would have been a wicked thing for capitalists and big business men to make common cause with the capital ists against whom he proceeded merely because they were capitalists.
 "Wherever any politician and any capi- talist did actually take his position, whether in the case of the men prose- cuted by MT. Burns, or in any other case, the Outlook unhesitatingly denounced them In exactly the same spirit, I state the convictions of the Outlook in express ing it's heartiest reproductions for the con duct of those labor leaders who without waiting to know anything of the facts or the case, have at once gone publicly to the defense of the alleged dynamiters whom MT. Burns has now arrested and who talk about the arrest as being part of a conspiracy against labor unions
 "It Is grossly improper to try to create a public opinion in favor of the arrested men, simply because of the crime of which they are accused Is committed | against a capitalist or a corporation, and | because the men who are charged of com hitting 1t, members of a labor union 1 This is an iniquity as gross as it would have been as if when three years ago | the sugar trust was indicted for swind- ling operations in the New York custom, house. the forces of organized capital had been put behind the indicted men on the ground that the attack on capitalists eu,ltv of crime meant an attack on all capital.
 ..The question of organized labor or organized capital or of the relations of either with the community at large, has nothing whatever to do with this issue. 1 All we are now concerned with is the grave and vital question of facts, whether t,e accused men have been guilty or mur- der. "The stern repression of murderous
 violence must of necessity be prime need of any civilization calling itself
 such Whether the man attacked is a capitalist or socialist wage earner or a professional man, has nothing whatever | to do with the question, and whether the man attacking him does or does not be- long to any organization whether labor
 or capital whether social or religious has nothing to do with the question.
 "The one and only question is to the guilt or innocence of the men accused"