Blast from the past
A look back on the centennial of a great explosion and a ‘trial of the century’ for capital and labor A century ago, the City of Los Angeles was caught in the middle of an escalating struggle between labor and capital. Something had to give — and it did. On Oct. 1, 1910 a strong blast ignited a fire that reduced the fortress-like Los Angeles Times office building to rubble. The aftermath resulted in the “trial of the century” in which famous labor champion Clarence Darrow came to the defense of the accused McNamara brothers, while a formidable General Otis, the newspaper’s founder, persuaded the moneyed interests to pay for the services of well-known Detective William J. Burns, who kidnapped the brothers and then fed damning evidence about them to the prosecution team. Overture I spoke with author and some-time contributor to Easy Reader, Lionel Rolfe, about the 100th anniversary of the bombing, which claimed the lives of 20 workers and seriously injured dozens more in the resulting inferno. Rolfe is the co-author of “Bread & Hyacinths: The Rise and Fall of Utopian Los Angeles,” which details the tragedy and the aborted court proceedings in the dawning decade of the 20th century…
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