Theodore Roosevelt: an Autobiography — Ch 13-Social and Industrial Justice, pt 3

With the Western Federation of Miners I more than once had serious trouble.

The leaders of this organization had preached anarchy, and certain of them were indicted for having practiced murder in the case of Governor Steunenberg, of Idaho.

On one occasion in a letter or speech I coupled condemnation of these labor leaders and condemnation of certain big capitalists, describing them all alike as "undesirable citizens."

This gave great offense to both sides.

The open attack upon me was made for the most part either by the New York newspapers which were frankly representatives of Wall Street, or else by those so-called--and miscalled--Socialists who had anarchistic leanings.

Many of the latter sent me open letters of denunciation, and to one of them I responded as follows: THE WHITE HOUSE, WASHINGTON, April 22, 1907. Dear Sir: I have received your letter of the 19th instant, in which you enclose the draft of the formal letter which is to follow.

I have been notified that several delegations, bearing similar requests, are on the way hither.

In the letter you, on behalf of the Cook County, Moyer-Haywood conference, protest against certain language I used in a recent letter which you assert to be designed to influence the course of justice in the case of the trial for murder of Messrs. Moyer and Haywood.

I

entirely agree with you that it is improper to endeavor to influence the course of justice, whether by threats or in any similar manner.

For this reason I have regretted most deeply the actions of such organizations as your own in undertaking to accomplish this very result in the very case of which you speak.

For instance, your letter is headed "Cook County Moyer-Haywood-Pettibone Conference," with the headlines: "_Death_--cannot--will not--and shall not claim our brothers!"

This shows that you and your associates are not demanding a fair trial, or working for a fair trial, but are announcing in advance that the verdict shall only be one way and that you will not tolerate any other verdict.

Such action is flagrant in its impropriety, and I join heartily in condemning it.

But it is a simple absurdity to suppose that because any man is on trial for a given offense he is therefore to be freed from all criticism upon his general conduct and manner of life.

In my letter to which you object I referred to a certain prominent financier, Mr. Harriman, on the one hand, and to Messrs. Moyer, Haywood and Debs on the other, as being equally undesirable citizens.

It is as foolish to assert that this was designed to influence the trial of Moyer and Haywood as to assert that it was designed to influence the suits that have been brought against Mr. Harriman.

I neither expressed nor indicated any opinion as to whether Messrs. Moyer and Haywood were guilty of the murder of Governor Steunenberg.

If they are guilty, they certainly ought to be punished.

If they are not guilty, they certainly ought not to be punished.

But no possible outcome either of the trial or the suits can affect my judgment as to the undesirability of the type of citizenship of those whom I mentioned.

Messrs. Moyer, Haywood, and Debs stand as representatives of those men who have done as much to discredit the labor movement as the worst speculative financiers or most unscrupulous employers of labor and debauchers of legislatures have done to discredit honest capitalists and fair-dealing business men.

They stand as the representatives of those men who by their public utterances and manifestoes, by the utterances of the papers they control or inspire, and by the words and deeds of those associated with or subordinated to them, habitually appear as guilty of incitement to or apology for bloodshed and violence.

If this does not constitute undesirable citizenship, then there can never be any undesirable citizens.

The men whom I denounce represent the men who have abandoned that legitimate movement for the uplifting of labor, with which I have the most hearty sympathy; they have adopted practices which cut them off from those who lead this legitimate movement.

In every way I shall support the law-abiding and upright representatives of labor, and in no way can I better support them than by drawing the sharpest possible line between them on the one hand, and, on the other hand, those preachers of violence who are themselves the worst foes of the honest laboring man.

Let me repeat my deep regret that any body of men should so far forget their duty to the country as to endeavor by the formation of societies and in other ways to influence the course of justice in this matter.

I have received many such letters as yours.

Accompanying them were newspaper clippings announcing demonstrations, parades, and mass-meetings designed to show that the representatives of labor, without regard to the facts, demand the acquittal of Messrs. Haywood and Moyer.

Such meetings can, of course, be designed only to coerce court or jury in rendering a verdict, and they therefore deserve all the condemnation which you in your letters say should be awarded to those who endeavor improperly to influence the course of justice.

You would, of course, be entirely within your rights if you merely announced that you thought Messrs. Moyer and Haywood were "desirable citizens"--though in such case I should take frank issue with you and should say that, wholly without regard to whether or not they are guilty of the crime for which they are now being tried, they represent as thoroughly undesirable a type of citizenship as can be found in this country; a type which, in the letter to which you so unreasonably take exception, I showed not to be confined to any one class, but to exist among some representatives of great capitalists as well as among some representatives of wage-workers.

In that letter I condemned both types.

Certain representatives of the great capitalists in turn condemned me for including Mr. Harriman in my condemnation of Messrs. Moyer and Haywood.

Certain of the representatives of labor in their turn condemned me because I included Messrs. Moyer and Haywood as undesirable citizens together with Mr. Harrison.

I am as profoundly indifferent to the condemnation in one case as in the other.

I challenge as a right the support of all good Americans, whether wage-workers or capitalists, whatever their occupation or creed, or in whatever portion of the country they live, when I condemn both the types of bad citizenship which I have held up to reprobation.

It seems to be a mark of utter insincerity to fail thus to condemn both; and to apologize for either robs the man thus apologizing of all right to condemn any wrongdoing in any man, rich or poor, in public or in private life.

You say you ask for a "square deal" for Messrs. Moyer and Haywood.

So do I. When I say "Square deal," I mean a square deal to every one; it is equally a violation of the policy of the square deal for a capitalist to protest against denunciation of a capitalist who is guilty of wrongdoing and for a labor leader to protest against the denunciation of a labor leader who has been guilty of wrongdoing.

I stand for equal justice to both; and so far as in my power lies I shall uphold justice, whether the man accused of guilt has behind him the wealthiest corporation, the greatest aggregations of riches in the country, or whether he has behind him the most influential labor organization in the country.

I treated anarchists and the bomb-throwing and dynamiting gentry precisely as I treated other criminals.

Murder is murder.

It is not rendered one whit better by the allegation that it is committed on behalf of "a cause."

It is true that law and order are not all sufficient; but they are essential; lawlessness and murderous violence must be quelled before any permanence of reform can be obtained.

Yet when they have been quelled, the beneficiaries of the enforcement of law must in their turn be taught that law is upheld as a means to the enforcement of justice, and that we will not tolerate its being turned into an engine of injustice and oppression.

The fundamental need in dealing with our people, whether laboring men or others, is not charity but justice; we must all work in common for the common end of helping each and all, in a spirit of the sanest, broadest and deepest brotherhood.

It was not always easy to avoid feeling very deep anger with the selfishness and short-sightedness shown both by the representatives of certain employers' organizations and by certain great labor federations or unions.

One such employers' association was called the National Association of Manufacturers.

Extreme though the attacks sometimes made upon me by the extreme labor organizations were, they were not quite as extreme as the attacks made upon me by the head of the National Association of Manufacturers, and as regards their attitude toward legislation I came to the conclusion toward the end of my term that the latter had actually gone further the wrong way than did the former--and the former went a good distance also.

The opposition of the National Association of Manufacturers to every rational and moderate measure for benefiting workingmen, such as measures abolishing child labor, or securing workmen's compensation, caused me real and grave concern; for I felt that it was ominous of evil for the whole country to have men who ought to stand high in wisdom and in guiding force take a course and use language of such reactionary type as directly to incite revolution--for this is what the extreme reactionary always does.

Often I was attacked by the two sides at once.

In the spring of 1906 I received in the same mail a letter from a very good friend of mine who thought that I had been unduly hard on some labor men, and a letter from another friend, the head of a great corporation, who complained about me for both favoring labor and speaking against large fortunes.

My answers ran as follows: April 26, 1906. "Personal.

_My dear Doctor_: "In one of my last letters to you I enclosed you a copy of a letter of mine, in which I quoted from [So and so's] advocacy of murder.

You may be interested to know that he and his brother Socialists--in reality anarchists--of the frankly murderous type have been violently attacking my speech because of my allusion to the sympathy expressed for murder.

In _The Socialist_, of Toledo, Ohio, of April 21st, for instance, the attack [on me] is based specifically on the following paragraph of my speech, to which he takes violent exception: "We can no more and no less afford to condone evil in the man of capital than evil in the man of no capital.

The wealthy man who exults because there is a failure of justice in the effort to bring some trust magnate to an account for his misdeeds is as bad as, and no worse than, the so-called labor leader who clamorously strives to excite a foul class feeling on behalf of some other labor leader who is implicated in murder.

One attitude is as bad as the other, and no worse; in each case the accused is entitled to exact justice; and in neither case is there need of action by others which can be construed into an expression of sympathy for crime.

"Remember that this crowd of labor leaders have done all in their power to overawe the executive and the courts of Idaho on behalf of men accused of murder, and beyond question inciters of murder in the past."

April 26, 1906. "_My dear Judge_: "I wish the papers had given more prominence to what I said as to the murder part of my speech.

But oh, my dear sir, I utterly and radically disagree with you in what you say about large fortunes.

I wish it were in my power to devise some scheme to make it increasingly difficult to heap them up beyond a certain amount.

As the difficulties in the way of such a scheme are very great, let us at least prevent their being bequeathed after death or given during life to any one man in excessive amount.

"You and other capitalist friends, on one side, shy off at what I say against them.

Have you seen the frantic articles against me by [the anarchists and] the Socialists of the bomb-throwing persuasion, on the other side, because of what I said in my speech in reference to those who, in effect, advocate murder?"

On another occasion I was vehemently denounced in certain capitalistic papers because I had a number of labor leaders, including miners from Butte, lunch with me at the White House; and this at the very time that the Western Federation of Miners was most ferocious in its denunciation of me because of what it alleged to be my unfriendly attitude toward labor.

To one of my critics I set forth my views in the following letter: November 26, 1903. "I have your letter of the 25th instant, with enclosure.

These men, not all of whom were miners, by the way, came here and were at lunch with me, in company with Mr. Carroll D. Wright, Mr. Wayne MacVeagh, and Secretary Cortelyou.

They are as decent a set of men as can be.

They all agreed entirely with me in my denunciation of what had been done in the Court d'Alene country; and it appeared that some of them were on the platform with me when I denounced this type of outrage three years ago in Butte.

There is not one man who was here, who, I believe, was in any way, shape or form responsible for such outrages.

I find that the ultra-Socialistic members of the unions in Butte denounced these men for coming here, in a manner as violent--and I may say as irrational--as the denunciation [by the capitalistic writer] in the article you sent me.

Doubtless the gentleman of whom you speak as your general manager is an admirable man.

I, of course, was not alluding to him; but I most emphatically _was_ alluding to men who write such articles as that you sent me.

These articles are to be paralleled by the similar articles in the Populist and Socialist papers when two years ago I had at dinner at one time Pierpont Morgan, and at another time J. J.

Hill, and at another, Harriman, and at another time Schiff.

Furthermore, they could be paralleled by the articles in the same type of paper which at the time of the Miller incident in the Printing Office were in a condition of nervous anxiety because I met the labor leaders to discuss it.

It would have been a great misfortune if I had not met them; and it would have been an even greater misfortune if after meeting them I had yielded to their protests in the matter.

"You say in your letter that you know that I am 'on record' as opposed to violence.

Pardon my saying that this seems to me not the right way to put the matter, if by 'record' you mean utterance and not action.

Aside from what happened when I was Governor in connection, for instance with the Croton dam strike riots, all you have to do is to turn back to what took place last June in Arizona--and you can find out about it from [Mr. X] of New York.

The miners struck, violence followed, and the Arizona Territorial authorities notified me they could not grapple with the situation.

Within twenty minutes of the receipt of the telegram, orders were issued to the nearest available troops, and twenty-four hours afterwards General Baldwin and his regulars were on the ground, and twenty-four hours later every vestige of disorder had disappeared.

The Miners' Federation in their meeting, I think at Denver, a short while afterwards, passed resolutions denouncing me.

I do not know whether the _Mining and Engineering Journal_ paid any heed to this incident or know of it.

If the _Journal_ did, I suppose it can hardly have failed to understand that to put an immediate stop to rioting by the use of the United States army is a fact of importance beside which the criticism of my having 'labor leaders' to lunch, shrinks into the same insignificance as the criticism in a different type of paper about my having 'trust magnates' to lunch.

While I am President I wish the labor man to feel that he has the same right of access to me that the capitalist has; that the doors swing open as easily to the wage-worker as to the head of a big corporation--_and no easier_.

Anything else seems to be not only un-American, but as symptomatic of an attitude which will cost grave trouble if persevered in.

To discriminate against labor men from Butte because there is reason to believe that rioting has been excited in other districts by certain labor unions, or individuals in labor unions in Butte, would be to adopt precisely the attitude of those who desire me to discriminate against all capitalists in Wall street because there are plenty of capitalists in Wall Street who have been guilty of bad financial practices and who have endeavored to override or evade the laws of the land.

In my judgment, the only safe attitude for a private citizen, and still more for a public servant, to assume, is that he will draw the line on conduct, discriminating against neither corporation nor union as such, nor in favor of either as such, but endeavoring to make the decent member of the union and the upright capitalists alike feel that they are bound, not only by self-interest, but by every consideration of principle and duty to stand together on the matters of most moment to the nation."

On another of the various occasions when I had labor leaders to dine at the White House, my critics were rather shocked because I had John Morley to meet them.

The labor leaders in question included the heads of the various railroad brotherhoods, men like Mr. Morrissey, in whose sound judgment and high standard of citizenship I had peculiar confidence; and I asked Mr. Morley to meet them because they represented the exact type of American citizen with whom I thought he ought to be brought in contact.

One of the devices sometimes used by big corporations to break down the law was to treat the passage of laws as an excuse for action on their part which they knew would be resented by the public, it being their purpose to turn this resentment against the law instead of against themselves.

The heads of the Louisville and Nashville road were bitter opponents of everything done by the Government toward securing good treatment for their employees.

In February, 1908, they and various other railways announced that they intended to reduce the wages of their employees.

A general strike, with all the attendant disorder and trouble, was threatened in consequence.

I accordingly sent the following open letter to the Inter-State Commerce Commission: February 16, 1908. "To the Inter-State Commerce Commission: "I am informed that a number of railroad companies have served notice of a proposed reduction of wages of their employees.

One of them, the Louisville and Nashville, in announcing the reduction, states that 'the drastic laws inimical to the interests of the railroads that have in the past year or two been enacted by Congress and the State Legislatures' are largely or chiefly responsible for the conditions requiring the reduction.

"Under such circumstances it is possible that the public may soon be confronted by serious industrial disputes, and the law provides that in such case either party may demand the services of your Chairman and of the Commissioner of Labor as a Board of Mediation and Conciliation.

These reductions in wages may be warranted, or they may not.

As to this the public, which is a vitally interested party, can form no judgment without a more complete knowledge of the essential facts and real merits of the case than it now has or than it can possibly obtain from the special pleadings, certain to be put forth by each side in case their dispute should bring about serious interruption to traffic.

If the reduction in wages is due to natural causes, the loss of business being such that the burden should be and is, equitably distributed between capitalist and wage-worker, the public should know it.

If it is caused by legislation, the public, and Congress, should know it; and if it is caused by misconduct in the past financial or other operations of any railroad, then everybody should know it, especially if the excuse of unfriendly legislation is advanced as a method of covering up past business misconduct by the railroad managers, or as a justification for failure to treat fairly the wage-earning employees of the company.

"Moreover, an industrial conflict between a railroad corporation and its employees offers peculiar opportunities to any small number of evil-disposed persons to destroy life and property and foment public disorder.

Of course, if life, property, and public order are endangered, prompt and drastic measures for their protection become the first plain duty.

All other issues then become subordinate to the preservation of the public peace, and the real merits of the original controversy are necessarily lost from view.

This vital consideration should be ever kept in mind by all law-abiding and far-sighted members of labor organizations.

"It is sincerely to be hoped, therefore, that any wage controversy that may arise between the railroads and their employees may find a peaceful solution through the methods of conciliation and arbitration already provided by Congress, which have proven so effective during the past year.

To this end the Commission should be in a position to have available for any Board of Conciliation or Arbitration relevant data pertaining to such carriers as may become involved in industrial disputes.

Should conciliation fail to effect a settlement and arbitration be rejected, accurate information should be available in order to develop a properly informed public opinion.

"I therefore ask you to make such investigation, both of your records and by any other means at your command, as will enable you to furnish data concerning such conditions obtaining on the Louisville and Nashville and any other roads, as may relate, directly or indirectly, to the real merits of the possibly impending controversy.

"THEODORE ROOSEVELT."

This letter achieved its purpose, and the threatened reduction of wages was not made.

It was an instance of what could be accomplished by governmental action.

Let me add, however, with all the emphasis I possess, that this does not mean any failure on my part to recognize the fact that if governmental action places too heavy burdens on railways, it will be impossible for them to operate without doing injustice to somebody.

Railways cannot pay proper wages and render proper service unless they make money.

The investors must get a reasonable profit or they will not invest, and the public cannot be well served unless the investors are making reasonable profits.

There is every reason why rates should not be too high, but they must be sufficiently high to allow the railways to pay good wages.

Moreover, when laws like workmen's compensation laws, and the like are passed, it must always be kept in mind by the Legislature that the purpose is to distribute over the whole community a burden that should not be borne only by those least able to bear it--that is, by the injured man or the widow and orphans of the dead man.

If the railway is already receiving a disproportionate return from the public, then the burden may, with propriety, bear purely on the railway; but if it is not earning a disproportionate return, then the public must bear its share of the burden of the increased service the railway is rendering.

Dividends and wages should go up together; and the relation of rates to them should never be forgotten.

This of course does not apply to dividends based on water; nor does it mean that if foolish people have built a road that renders no service, the public must nevertheless in some way guarantee a return on the investment; but it does mean that the interests of the honest investor are entitled to the same protection as the interests of the honest manager, the honest shipper and the honest wage-earner.

All these conflicting considerations should be carefully considered by Legislatures before passing laws.

One of the great objects in creating commissions should be the provision of disinterested, fair-minded experts who will really and wisely consider all these matters, and will shape their actions accordingly.

This is one reason why such matters as the regulation of rates, the provision for full crews on roads and the like should be left for treatment by railway commissions, and not be settled off hand by direct legislative action.

APPENDIX

SOCIALISM

As regards what I have said in this chapter concerning Socialism, I wish to call especial attention to the admirable book on "Marxism versus Socialism," which has just been published by Vladimir D. Simkhovitch.

What I have, here and elsewhere, merely pointed out in rough and ready fashion from actual observation of the facts of life around me, Professor Simkhovitch in his book has discussed with keen practical insight, with profundity of learning, and with a wealth of applied philosophy.

Crude thinkers in the United States, and moreover honest and intelligent men who are not crude thinkers, but who are oppressed by the sight of the misery around them and have not deeply studied what has been done elsewhere, are very apt to adopt as their own the theories of European Marxian Socialists of half a century ago, ignorant that the course of events has so completely falsified the prophecies contained in these theories that they have been abandoned even by the authors themselves.

With quiet humor Professor Simkhovitch now and then makes an allusion which shows that he appreciates to perfection this rather curious quality of some of our fellow countrymen; as for example when he says that "A Socialist State with the farmer outside of it is a conception that can rest comfortably only in the head of an American Socialist," or as when he speaks of Marx and Engels as men "to whom thinking was not an irrelevant foreign tradition."

Too many thoroughly well-meaning men and women in the America of to-day glibly repeat and accept--much as medieval schoolmen repeated and accepted authorized dogma in their day--various assumptions and speculations by Marx and others which by the lapse of time and by actual experiment have been shown to possess not one shred of value.

Professor Simkhovitch possesses the gift of condensation as well as the gift of clear and logical statement, and it is not possible to give in brief any idea of his admirable work.

Every social reformer who desires to face facts should study it--just as social reformers should study John Graham Brooks's "American Syndicalism."

From Professor Simkhovitch's book we Americans should learn: First, to discard crude thinking; second, to realize that the orthodox or so-called scientific or purely economic or materialistic socialism of the type preached by Marx is an exploded theory; and, third, that many of the men who call themselves Socialists to-day are in reality merely radical social reformers, with whom on many points good citizens can and ought to work in hearty general agreement, and whom in many practical matters of government good citizens well afford to follow.

CHAPTER XIV