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.