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: