_:

"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 a