&Martyrs or Criminals?
Theodore Schroeder |
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CRIMINALS
An unmoral analysis of
a celebrated case
BY
THEODORE SCHROEDER
PRINTED AT HILL ACRE
RIVERSIDE, connectICUT
MCMXV

Reprinted from the Forum
September, 1915
MARTYRS or CRIMINALSP
It is now six years since the Mc-
Namara brothers dynamited the
Los Angeles Times building and
the Lewéllyn Iron Works. Already
they have been about four years in
San Quentin penitentiary. In dis-
cussions of labor problems, their
offences cause more irritation and
debate than most of the current
crimes, even among newspaper de-
VOtees.
No theory can explain this ex-
traordinary vitality without taking
into account the relation of their
acts to the great industrial struggle,
between the blind sympathizers of
even the more thoughtless or heart-
less exploiters, and the more intel-
ligent or desperate ones among the
exploited.
It is, of course, infantile to think
that this or any other dispute can
be finally settled by violence, either
legalized or lawless. The great vio-
3
lent dramatizations of industrial is—
sues are but the cry of extreme
pain, which may guide the social
physicians to a more efficient effort
toward understanding the remote
causes of our social ills.
At the late hearings of the
United States Commission on In-
dustrial Relations, there appeared
from California a witness named
Anton Johannsen, who is himself
under indictment for some dyna-
miting plot of the workers on the
Pacific coast. This witness under-
took to furnish what he called the
“social background” of the deeds
of the McNamaras. This was partly
published in The Masses, for July,
1915. The moralists might call it
an attempted justification, though
Mr. Johannsen seems not to have
thought of his facts in terms of
moral judgment. He only sought
to induce us to see the “crimes” of
the McNamaras in more correct
perspective and in relation to the
“crimes” against humanity charge-
able to exploiters like the Steel
Trust. Strange to say, this witness
did not appear to have any adverse
moral judgment even against the
4.
Steel Trust or the Erectors’ As-
sociation.
One of the Commissioners asked
him, and several other witnesses,
whether the McNamaras were re-
garded by them as martyrs or crim-
inals. Johannsen promptly said
they had never committed any
crime against the laboring class. Al-
though he seemed not to regard
them as ſhartyrs, yet manifestly he
had no bitterness in his heart either
for them, their dynamiting conspir-
acies, or even against the Steel
Trust or the Erectors’ Association.
He seemed to have the attitude of
the professional soldier who ac-
cepts war and its penalties with
stoical fortitude. Numerous other
witnesses, of course, condemned
the McNamaras as extremely mal-
ignant types of criminals.
It is this issue as between mar-
tyrdom and criminality that I wish
to discuss. It appears to me that
when put to witnesses of radical
sympathies, this question was not
asked from any sincere purpose to
promote a larger understanding of
the behavior of the social forces in-
volved in our industrial conflict,
5
but was prompted by a desire to
embarrass and discredit the wit-
nesses, and the cause of those
whom they were endeavoring to
help.
It also appears to me that it was
an unfair method of intensifying
the public prejudice. If the labor
witness called the McNamaras
“criminals,” he seemed by the same
token to be condemning also all that
part of the labor movement which
is attempting to intensify and ra–
tionalize the laborers’ discontent
with the condition of their exploit-
ation, because every such intensi-
fication and formulation of griev-
ances tends to promote a violent
resistance to the forcible imposi-
tion of the condemned conditions.
If a radical witness called the
McNamaras “martyrs,” that an-
swer categorically or dogmatically
put before the public without any
explanation or justification, would
stimulate the hatred of all the sen-
timental worshippers of legal forms
and judgment. Again this would in-
tensify existing prejudices against
the open-minded consideration of
the charges of economic injustice
6
and tend to preclude all agitators
from securing a fair hearing for
the understanding of their com-
plaints or remedies.
I believe these questions were al-
ways asked with a conscious desire
that this unfair result should fol-
low, though the commissioner re-
sponsible for this conduct, and
most of the public, probably lack
that particular kind of intelligence
which is necessary for seeing in
what the unfairness consists.
In my view the unfairness of the
question consists in the assumption
of an alternative not involved in
the facts viewed as a whole. In
other words, the question is as un-
intelligent asthough the witness had
been handed a pig's ear and then
had been asked whether he regard-
ed this as a Government bond or a
Government mule. Of course, sen-
sible persons would say it is nei-
ther. I will indicate why intelligent
persons do also refrain from apply-
ing to the McNamaras such ques-
tion-begging, moralistic epithets as
“criminal” or “martyr.”
When you characterize the Mc-
Namaras as “martyrs” or “crimin-
7
als,” you are not describing either
their conduct or the behavior of the
forces which under their particular
circumstances created the psychol-
ogic imperative of which dynamit-
ing was the inevitable manifesta-
tion. In other words, these epi-
thets furnish no enlightenment up-
on the subject which is being in-
vestigated.
Again, it must be admitted, I
think, that by these epithets we are
only characterizing the feeling
which their conduct has stimulated
in us. In so far as these epithets
intensify a like feeling in others, so
far do they preclude a calm con-
sideration, or clearer understand-
ing, of the many social factors and
forces which contributed toward
the final, unfortunate, indictable
result. In other words, all the feel-
ings which these epithets tend to
arouse are but means for prevent-
ing you and me from inquiring in-
to our share in producing or main-
taining the conditions of which
these dynamiting affairs are the in-
evitable consequence.
I have already said that when a
man calls the McNamaras “mar-
8
tyrs,” he is not telling us anything
about the McNamaras, or their con-
duct. Let us then inquire what, if
anything, he is telling us about him-
self, or about his feelings, when he
applies the word “martyr.”
Let us first try to understand as
minutely as possible the mental
processes involved in designating
the McNamaras as “martyrs.”
Manifestly this is a feeling-judg-
ment, based upon some kind of
sympathetic emotion. Psycholog-
ically this implies some degree of
emotional identification of the
speaker with the McNamaras. Per-
haps he has a sympathetic interest
in those whom the McNamaras
were trying to help. Such an at-
titude lends charity even to the use
of disapproved means. Such a per-
son, at the time of using the epi-
thet, is expressing a feeling atti-
tude, as though the workers, whom
he believes to be accepting injustice
under the force of economic neces-
sity, were occupying a large, pos-
sibly an unduly large, place in the
focus of his attention. Perhaps a
specially sympathetic or vivid view
of their unfortunate wives and
9
children is in his mind, because of
some similar tragic situation in his
own family history. If neither of
these influences affects him, then it
may be that his feelings at the mo-
ment are determined by a great
emotional aversion to some partic-
ular employer or generally the ben-
eficiaries of unjust and oppressive
exploitation; that is, for those
whose greed so often makes the ex-
ploiter blindly indifferent to the
suffering and wrong by which he
profits and to which he contributes.
It is now well known among gen-
etic psychologists that the real
source of this sympathetic feeling
may be obscured in the remote
emotional tones and associations
which came into existence during
infancy or childhood, and are trans-
ferred to present situations by pro-
cesses of which the individual is
wholly unconscious. Whatever the
cause, his characterization of the
McNamaras as “martyrs” is merely
the expression of a feeling-state in
the speaker and it imparts no
information whatever about the
causes, the motives, the character
or the “morality” of their conduct.
10
If we imply any of these things, as
necessarily contained in the word
“martyrdom,” we are again expres-
sing only our own equally blind
feeling attitude toward something
in the situation, and exhibiting our
own inefficient psychologic under-
standing.
If those who judge the McNa-
maras as martyrs had not been
blinded by their feelings, they
might have seen that penalized con-
duct in its broader relation; not
only in relation to its causes in the
related acts of the Steel Trust, but
also in its relation to the causal or
sustaining public opinion, which ig-
nores or excuses, and at least im-
pliedly justifies, the provoking con-
duct of the Steel Trust. If not
blinded by sympathetic feeling,
such a person might also have seen
the dynamiting in relation to the
letter of the law and the evolution-
ary forces which, at least now, still
seem to make some penal law in-
evitable even though un-ideal and
deplorably infantile.
Let us now try similarly to un-
derstand also the man who calls the
McNamaras “criminals.” Of course
11
the penal statutes were violated,
and in this sense there can be no
doubt of their status as criminals.
The very asking of the question,
therefore, implies that it was not a
legal but a moral judgment that
was desired. Of course, a convic-
tion under our present system of
criminal procedure does not at all
involve an issue of moral turpitude,
because the rules of evidence pre-
clude all inquiry into the inducing
causes of that condition which we
call the criminal mind or criminal
intent. In the absence of such in-
quiry and evidence as to the causes
of the psychologic imperative in-
volved, there can be no adequate
understanding, and no excuse for a
moral judgment. Even the moral-
ist should not indulge in any judg-
ment as to relative degrees of mor-
al turpitude, as for example be-
tween the McNamaras and those
who contributed to the motive for
dynamiting, without a full inquiry
and understanding of both. I re-
peat that this is impossible under
present modes of court procedure.
What, then, is it that we express,
if we characterize the McNamaras
12
as moral criminals? Clearly, this
also expresses only a feeling atti-
tude in ourselves and gives no il-
lumination to anyone's understand-
ing of the act or of the persons so
characterized. The person who
designates the McNamaras as mor-
al criminals has the same blurred
and incomplete vision which we
have seen to be possessed by those
who characterize them as martyrs.
In both cases the mental mechan-
ism is the same.
In the warfare between the ex-
ploited and the exploiter, many be-
long economically to the exploited,
yet emotionally identify themselves
with the exploiters. Not having
achieved an economic-class-con-
sciousness, such persons of course
act in accordance with their
feelings and not in harmony with
any conception of their class inter-
ests. All persons who thus feel
themselves personally outraged by
the McNamaras will be possessed
by strong aversions, such as tend
to preclude them from even trying
to understand the forces which
made the McNamaras what they
are. Likewise, and quite as un-
13
consciously, these sentimentalists
become compelling factors which
contribute to the psychologic im-
perative impelling someone to the
next inevitable dynamiting plot.
Persons possessed by such feel-
ings necessarily tend to make two
justifications for their moral judg-
ments. One of these is the senti-
mental relative overvaluation of the
lives unintentionally destroyed in
the Times Building explosion, and
the other is the sentimental correl-
ative overvaluation of the sacred-
ness of the violated statutes.
That there is a sentimental over-
valuation of the particular lost lives
will be apparent when we see the
moral judgment passed upon the
McNamaras, made by ignoring the
fact that this loss of life was un-
intentional. It will be further man-
ifested if the person ignores the
larger social and relatively imper-
Sonal motive which prompted the
use of dynamite. Another confir–
mation of this prejudice may per-
haps be found in the persistent ig-
noring of the many lives which are
annually more or less directly sac-
rificed, by the Steel Trust and other
14,
large exploiters, from the sole mo-
tive of increasing dividends. In
such matters, relative judgments
are the most important, and surely
if the steel-mill and mine owners
may incidentally take many lives
merely to save the expense of saf-
ety devices, then the McNamaras
should be equally allowed a few
killings, as an incident to the war-
fare in the wage-interests of the
producing class.
When our material or emotional
interests are promoted by the law,
we always acquire an exaggerated
estimation of its value and sacred-
ness. Now we glorify it and insist
that there is a sort of eternal fit-
ness, if not divine right, that the
hangman shall have his prey.
As one hears the emphasis put
upon legality by the adherents of
the exploiters, a psychologist's sus-
picions are naturally aroused by the
knowledge that in such matters we
are prone to announce enthusiasti-
cally a general dogma when we are
only concealing or intellectualizing
a particular desire. Thus the meas-
ure of our zeal exhibits the meas-
ure of our craving to be the bene-
15
ficiary of legality. This suspicion
is encouraged when upon further
observation we see an indifference,
conspicuous by contrast, when the
law is violated by those with whom
we identify ourselves, at least in
phantasy or emotional attitude, be-
cause we feel, though we may not
be fully conscious of it nor even
formulate it, that their crimes are
committed in the furtherance of
impulses which we share, or of
which we have a sympathetic un-
derstanding and of which we have
not yet been made ashamed.
When a law is violated by a class
or in the interests of a class with
some aspects of which we even un-
consciously crave to be identified,
then the letter of the law can be
quite ignored without producing
any great moral upheavals. The
reason is that now we have sym-
pathetic understanding and desire
impels us to find extenuating or ex-
cusing circumstances. It would
speak well for our understanding
if we could find them in all cases.
Anyway, you have not been fair
enough to try to acquire a sympa-
thetic understanding of all con-
16
cerned, if you are still impelled to
utter moral judgments, especially
of the absolute sort instead of the
relative sort.
My desire thus far has been to
induce the checking of a general
habitual tendency to express our
more intense feeling in terms of
moral praise or blame, because such
feeling-judgments are always void
of understanding, just in the degree
that the inducing feelings are in-
tense.
The other aspect of my desire is
to divert the energy usually ex-
pended in an effort to justify feel-
ing attitudes which are derived
from unknown sources, and to in-
duce its expenditure in the enlarge-
ment of our understanding of the
forces that produce McNamaras.
Thus I hope to promote a more
adequate and just understanding of
these men themselves.
If you really have such funda-
mental craving for a sense of jus-
tice so refined as to require that you
shall seek understanding, rather
than proofs of your own relative
self-righteousness, then you will
show this superiority by your fu-
17
ture hospitable attitude for men
like the McNamaras.
Even more is now required. You
must listen, and insist that all oth-
ers shall also listen, while the Mc-
Namaras tell you their story—tell
you what they think impelled them
to act as they did. And then you
must not be angered or even impa-
tient if it shall appear that suffer-
ing has made them bitter and that
they exhibit intensity of feeling by
harshness of language. If your de-
sire really to understand is stronger
than your vanity of respectable su-
periority, you must be absolutely
calm under the most vigorous de-
nunciation of things as they are
and of those for whom they seem
to exist in unfair abundance. Also
you must be really anxious to listen
to their most “outrageous” alleged
remedies for social evils and to es-
timate their possible value accord-
ing to objectively derived stand-
ards.
But now I come to the most dif-
ficult task of all. You must really
crave to listen to all this, not merely
to find out whether they are crim-
inals or martyrs—whether among
18
the damned or the saints. Leave
all moral judgments as to the Mc-
Namaras to those infantile minds
that have not yet outgrown the
child’s impulse to pose as a Daniel.
But listen—listen to discover as
much as possible of your own un-
conscious contribution to the state
of things that makes such relative-
ly intelligent workers as the Mc-
Namaras desperate and that creates
violent revolutions when enough of
the workers come to feel as the Mc-
Namaras felt.
"When we see our contribution to
the final tragedy, then and then
only do we have sufficient under-
standing to entitle us to pass moral
judgments—on ourselves of course.
If we have even approximated to
the state of development which I
have tried to portray and promote,
we never would think of passing a
moral judgment upon anyone but
ourselves.
I have asked you to help to see
to it that everybody—that is, the
greatest possible number of per-
sons—shall hear and understand
the inner meaning of the “crime”
of the McNamaras. So long as you
19
are unwilling or unable to do all
this, you cannot claim to be super-
ior to, and probably not even the
equal of, the McNamaras. So long •
as you cannot act according to this
ideal which I have portrayed, you,
too, are among those infantile ones
who solve social problems through
the methods inspired by prejudice
and passions, that is, by violence of
the intellectually blind. That places
one either into or below the evolu-
tionary class to which the McNa-
maras belong.
20