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.