If Moyer and Haywood die!
If Moyer and Haywood die!
Twenty million working men
Will know the reason why!
-Protest Chant
Hellraisers Journal, Sunday May 19, 1907
From the Appeal to Reason: Debs Questions President Roosevelt
Roosevelt’s Labor Letters
—–Eugene V. Debs
—–The letter of President Roosevelt to the Moyer and Haywood conference of New York is in strange contrast with the one previously addressed by him to the Chicago conference on the same subject. The two letters are so entirely dissimilar in spirit and temper that they seem to have been written by different persons. In the first the President bristles with defiance, in the last he is the pink of politeness. The first letter utterly failed of its purpose. Organized labor did not lie down and be still at the command of the President. On the contrary, it growled more fiercely than before in fact, showed its teeth to the President, who has become so used to exhibiting his own. And lo-what a change! The President receives a labor committee, talks over matters for an hour and then addresses a letter to the conference through the chairman, beginning “My Dear Mr. Henry,” explaining that he is ready to perform his duty if only the conference will point it out to him, and putting the whole blame on “Debs and the Socialists,” whom he charges with using “treasonable and murderous language,” but not a word of explanation does he vouchsafe in regard to his denunciation of Moyer and Haywood, the real, and in fact the only, point at issue.
Again has the President vindicated his reputation as one of the smoothest of politicians and one of the most artful and designing of demagogues.