ther 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
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