Hellraisers Journal, Friday April 5, 1907
From the Montana News: Haywood Trial to Begin May 9th

UNDESIRABLE CITIZENS

A letter, recently released by the President of the United States, was published in the Washington Evening Star April 2nd, wherein the President declares that Eugene Debs, Charles Moyer, and Bill Haywood are “undesirable citizens.” This follows by only one day the news that Fellow Worker William D. Haywood will go on trial for his life in Boise, Idaho, on May 9th.

The following is the relevant part of the letter written by President Roosevelt to Congressman J. S. Sherman on October 8, 1906 regarding the President’s feud with E. H. Harriman. The last paragraph of the President’s letter reads:

So much for what Mr. Harriman said about me personally. Far more important are the additional remarks he made to you as you inform me, when you asked him if he thought it was well to see Hearstism and the like triumphant over the republican party. You inform me that he told you that he did not care in the least, because those people were crooks and he could buy them; that whenever he wants legislation from a state legislature he could buy it; that he “could buy Congress,” and that if necessary he “could buy the judiciary.” This was doubtless said partly in boastful cynicism and partly in a mere burst of bad temper because of his objection to the interstate commerce law and to my actions as President. But it shows a cynicism and deep-seated corruption which make the man uttering such sentiments, and boasting, no matter how falsely, of this power to perform such crimes, at least as undesirable a citizen as Debs, or Moyer, or Haywood. It is because we have capitalists capable of uttering such sentiments and capable of acting on them that there is strength behind sinister agitators of the Hearst type. The wealthy corruptionist and the demagog who excites, in the press or on the stump, in office or out of office, class against class and appeals to the basest passions of the human soul are fundamentally alike and the are equally enemies of the republic. I was horrified, as was [Elihu] Root, when you told us today what Harriman had said to you. As I say,if you meet him you are entirely welcome to show him this letter, although, of course it must not be made public unless required by some reason of public policy, and then only after my consent has first been obtained.

[Emphasis added]

Although kept from the public until this time, the President did see fit to read his letter to the Justices of the United States Supreme Court on the same day that it was written (October 8, 1906), and, presumably, even before it was received by Congressman Sherman. The Washington Post of April 4th (page 2, column 1) reported:

It was ascertained at the White House yesterday that when the President wrote to Chairman Sherman the letter which was made public yesterday, denouncing Harriman, he expected it would be made public at the time. He authorized Sherman to show it to Harriman, and the Republican Chairman did so. It was immediately afterward that a friend of Harriman came to Washington and assured the President that the railway magnate had not made some the statements attributed to him by Sherman.

For this reason, it is said, the President did not make public the letter then. He did, however, show it to members of the United States Supreme Court [the very same Supreme Court which, at that time, was set to hear arguments in Pettibone v Nichols!], who made their annual call upon him that day [October 8, 1906] with the comment that he believed some people thought he denounced too frequently wealthy evildoers and did not condemn often enough men of the Haywood and Moyer type. He, therefore, took considerable pleasure in dealing collectively with Harriman and Haywood and Moyer, all of whom were mentioned in the same category in the Sherman letter.

[Emphasis added.]

SOURCES

Montana News
Organ of State’s Socialist Party
(Helena, Montana)
-Apr 4, 1907
(Also source for image of text.)
https://www.newspapers.com/image/77950235

The Evening Star
(Washington, District of Columbia)
-Apr 2, 1907
“President Replies to E. H. Harriman”
“Roosevelt Begged Says Harriman”
http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045462/1907-04-02/ed-1/seq-1/
“President Replies” (continued)
See end of President’s letter to Sherman for “undesirable citizen.”
http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045462/1907-04-02/ed-1/seq-8/
“Roosevelt Begged” (continued)
http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045462/1907-04-02/ed-1/seq-12/

The Washington Post
(Washington, District of Columbia)
-Apr 4, 1907
https://www.newspapers.com/image/28934674/

See also:

Big Trouble:
A Murder in a Small Western Town…
-by J. Anthony Lukas
Simon and Schuster, Jul 17, 2012
(Roosevelt-Harriman Feud well covered, begins on page 389.)
https://books.google.com/books?id=d07IME-ezzQC

Tag: Pettibone v Nichols
https://weneverforget.org/tag/pettibone-v-nichols/

Union Man – Blue Highway