On October 1, 1910, union members belonging to the International Association of Bridge and Structural Iron Workers (IW) detonated explosives they placed in the Los Angeles Times Building in Los Angeles, California, starting a fire that killed 21 people and injured more than 100 others. It was termed the "crime of the century" by the Los Angeles Times newspaper, which occupied the building.
Brothers John J. ("J.J.") and James Barnabas ("J.B.") McNamara were arrested in April 1911 on suspicion of perpetrating the bombing. At the time of their trial, the pair became a cause célèbre for the American labor movement. J.B. eventually admitted to setting the explosive, and was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment. J.J. was sentenced to fifteen years in prison for bombing a local iron manufacturing plant, and later returned to the IW as an organizer.
The Times bombing remains both one of the deadliest criminal acts in U.S. history and the deadliest crime to go to trial in California.
Background The International Association of Bridge and Structural Iron Workers (IW) was formed in 1896. As the work was seasonal and most iron workers were unskilled, the union remained weak and much of the industry remained unorganized until 1902. That year, the IW won a strike against the American Bridge Company, a subsidiary of the newly formed U.S. Steel corporation. American Bridge was the dominant company in the iron industry, and within a year the IW had not only organized almost every U.S. iron manufacturer, but had also won signed contracts including union shop clauses.Rayback, pp. 219–20.Taft, pp. 275–76. The McNamara brothers were Irish American unionists. John (known as J.J.) and his younger brother James (known as J.B.) were both active in the IW.
Strike against American Bridge Co.
In 1903, officials of U.S. Steel and the American Bridge founded the National Erectors' Association (NEA), a coalition of steel and iron industry employers. The primary goal of the NEA was to promote the open shop and assist employers in busting the unions in their industries. Employers used labor spies, agents provocateur, private detective agencies, and strike breakers to engage in a campaign against the unions. Local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies generally cooperated in this campaign, which often used violence against union members.
Hard pressed by the open shop campaign, the IW reacted by electing the militant Frank M. Ryan president and J.J. McNamara the secretary-treasurer in 1905.Taft, p. 276. In 1906, the IW struck at American Bridge in an attempt to retain their contract.Foner, p. 8.Stimson, p. 380; Fine, pp. 33–46. However, the open shop campaign was a significant success. By 1910, U.S. Steel had almost succeeded in driving all unions out of its plants. Unions in other iron manufacturing companies also vanished. Only the IW held on (though the strike at American Bridge continued).Foner, pp. 7–8; Welskopp, pp. 156–57; Gottlieb and Wolt, pp. 88–89.
Dynamite campaign Union officials used violence to counter the setbacks they had suffered. Beginning in late 1906, national and local officials of the IW launched a dynamiting campaign. Between 1906 and 1911, the union blew up 110 iron works, though only a few thousand dollars in damages was done. The NEA was well aware who was responsible for the bombings, since Herbert S. Hockin, a member of the IW's executive board, was their paid spy. These hundreds of bombings were later described as perhaps the largest domestic terrorism campaign in U.S. history.Robert Fitch (2006) Solidarity for Sale: How Corruption Destroyed the Labor Movement and Undermined America's Promise. Bublic Affairs Books
Los Angeles strike Employers in Los Angeles had been successfully resisting unionization for nearly half a century. Harrison Gray Otis, publisher of the Los Angeles Times, was vehemently anti-union. Otis first joined and then seized control of the local Merchants Association in 1896, renaming it the Merchants and Manufacturers' Association (colloquially known as the M&M), and used it and his newspaper's large circulation to spearhead a twenty-year campaign to end the city's few remaining unions.Cross, p. 278; Kazin, p. 203; Milkman, p. 35. Without unions to keep wages high, open shop employers in Los Angeles were able to undermine the wage standards set in heavily unionized San Francisco. Unions in San Francisco feared that employers in their city would also soon begin pressing for wage cuts and start an open shop drive of their own. The only solution they saw was to re-unionize Los Angeles.Cross, p. 282.Stimson, pp. 33–133.
The San Francisco unions relied heavily on the IW, one of the few strong unions remaining in Los Angeles. The unionization campaign began in the spring of 1910. On June 1, 1910, 1,500 union members struck iron manufacturers in the city to win a $0.50 an hour minimum wage ($ an hour in dollars) and overtime pay. The M&M raised $350,000 ($ in dollars) to break the strike. A superior court judge issued a series of injunctions which all but banned picketing. On July 15, the Los Angeles City Council unanimously enacted an ordinance banning picketing and "speaking in public streets in a loud or unusual tone", with a penalty of fifty days in jail, a $100 fine, or both. Most union members refused to obey the injunctions or ordinance, and 472 strikers were arrested. The strike, however, proved effective: by September, 13 new unions had formed, increasing union membership in the city by almost 60 percent.Foner, pp. 9–10.
Leading up to the explosion On June 3, 1910, two days after the start of the strike, Eugene Clancy, the top IW official on the West Coast, wrote to J.J.: "Now, Joe, what I want here is Hockin," referring to Herbert Hockin, the union official in charge of the dynamite bombings. However, Hockin had been caught taking money earmarked for bombing jobs, and McNamara no longer trusted him. He asked another dynamiter, Jack Barry of St. Louis, to go to California, but Barry turned down the job when he learned of the targets. McNamara finally sent his younger brother, J.B., to California on the bombing mission.Lew Irwin, Deadly Times (Guilford, Conn.: Lyons, 2013) 74.
Bombing
On the evening of September 30, 1910, J.B. left a suitcase full of dynamite in the narrow alley between the Los Angeles Times Building and the Times Annex, known as "Ink Alley", which contained the paper's printing press. The suitcase was left near barrels of flammable printer's ink. The dynamite had a detonator connected to a mechanical windup clock, set to close an electric battery circuit at 1:00am, and set off the explosion. J.B. left similar bombs, also set to explode at 1:00am, next to the homes of both Times publisher Otis and Felix Zeehandelaar, secretary of the M&M. He then boarded a train to San Francisco, and was out of town when the bomb at the Times Building went off.Ortie McManigal testified that Jim McNamara had told him that all three bombs (the Times Building, the Otis home, and the Zeehandelaar home) were set for 1 am ("M'Manigal repeats boast of M'Namara," N.Y. Times, 15 Nov. 1912, p.4.) Most other sources reflect this, and say that the bombs were timed to explode at 1 am. For example: Geoffrey Cowan, The People v. Clarence Darrow (New York: Random House, 1993) 87, and Lew Irwin, Deadly Times (Guilford, Conn.: Lyons, 2013) 116-118. In addition, Jim McNamara's confession specified that he set the bomb at the Times Building for 1 am. Dennis McDougal, however, wrote that the Times Building bomb had been set for 4 am, but detonated prematurely; the bomb at the Felix Zeehandelaar home set for 1 pm, and the bomb at the Otis home for 2 pm. Privileged Son (Cambridge, Mass.: Perseus, 2001) 50, 53.
This was an escalation of the bombing campaign. Previously, only non-union workplaces had been targeted. Now the IW was expanding the targets to the homes of anti-union leaders, and a newspaper noted for its anti-union editorial policy.Lew Irwin, Deadly Times (Guilford, Conn.: Lyons, 2013) 71.
At 1:07 a.m. on October 1, 1910, the bomb went off in the alley outside the three-story Times Building, located at First Street and Broadway. The sixteen sticks of dynamite in the suitcase bomb were not enough to level the whole structure, but the bomb ignited natural gas piped into the building. The Times was a morning paper, and so had employees working during the late-night early-morning hours. The bombers were unaware that a number of Times employees were working overnight to produce an extra edition the next afternoon which would carry the results of the Vanderbilt Cup auto race."Robert Sawyer." Motorsport Memorial. 2012. Accessed 2012-10-11. The bomb collapsed the side of the building, and the ensuing fire destroyed both the Times Building and Ink Alley. Of the 115 people still in the building, 21 died (most of them in the fire).Cross, pp. 282–83; Adamic, p. 151."Fire Kills 19, Unions Accused", New York Times, October 2, 1910."Twenty-One Killed and More Injured In the Dynamited 'Times' Building," Los Angeles Times, October 2, 1910; "Los Angeles Times Ruins Yield Five More Bodies", New York Times, October 3, 1910The exact number of deaths is uncertain. The remains of twenty were identified. Parts of either one or two additional bodies were pulled from the rubble. Source: Lew Irwin, Deadly Times (Guilford, Conn.: Lyons, 2013) 337-338. The Times called the bombing the "crime of the century","The Crime of the Century," Los Angeles Times, October 16, 1910 and Otis excoriated unions as "anarchic scum," "cowardly murderers," "leeches upon honest labor," and "midnight assassins."Adamic, p. 211
An unresolved contradiction was J.B.'s knowledge of the gas pipes in the Times Building. After he confessed to the bombing, he insisted that he had not known of the gas pipes.McDougal, p. 53. However, Ortie McManigal testified that before their arrest, J.B. had told him that he had gone into the Times Building – he was challenged twice, but each time passed by saying he was on his way to the composing room – went into the basement and wrenched off a gas valve to maximize the destruction."M'Manigal repeats boast of M'Namara," N.Y. Times, 15 Nov. 1912, p.4.
Other bombs On the morning of October 1, Zeehandelaar's maid found a package behind a bush beneath a bedroom window. Police were called, and opened and disarmed the bomb. The spring of the mechanical clock had apparently been wound too tightly, slowing the clock, and preventing the bomb from exploding on time. The unexploded bomb contained valuable clues as to the bombers' method. In addition, investigators were able to trace the dynamite back to its source.
The caretaker at the Otis home heard of the Zeehandelaar bomb, and decided to search around the estate. He found a leather suitcase behind some bushes under a bay window. Again the police arrived, and carried the suitcase away from the house and out in the open. However, while they were cutting open the suitcase, the clockwork alarm went off inside the suitcase. The police ran to safety just before the bomb exploded. Investigators speculated that, like the Zeehandelaar bomb, the clock mechanism at the Otis house had been wound too tightly, delaying the explosion.
On the same night as the Times explosion, there was a reported attempted break-in at an auxiliary building, in which two men were chased off by a security guard. The incident was at first assumed to be another bombing attempt."Editors and printers meet awful death in flames following big explosion," Oakland Tribune, 1 Oct. 1910, p.2.
The IW strike committee in Los Angeles and Samuel Gompers, president of the American Federation of Labor (AFL), immediately condemned the bombing and claimed no labor union or individual could have been responsible.Foner, pp. 11, 14; Irwin, pp. 14–15.
Bombing returns to L.A.