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.
Rolfe’s dramatic narrative begins: “At 1:07 a.m. on October 1, 1910, there was a rumble deep within the earth and an eerie orange-black glow filled the sky over First Street and Broadway in the heart of Los Angeles’ Business District. With a great cacophony of sirens and bells, every fire unit in the city converged on the corner where the six-story Los Angeles Times building, the apple of General Otis’ eye, was set aflame from its stone foundation to the predatory eagle on the summit of its roof.”
The production staff found themselves trapped on the upper floors amidst the metal and wooden debris and choking smoke. Several men made it to the windows overlooking a terrified crowd of onlookers, who’d first left their houses believing an earthquake had struck. They stood scattered on the street side — many in their bedclothes and robes.
Rolfe notes that at this horrendous scene “much of the mood of the crowd was initially jubilant, because the Times founder, General Harrison Gray Otis, was anything but liked by the town’s working folks. Of course, as Times employees’ wives among them watched their husbands’ funeral pyre from a helpless distance, the initial reaction turned to weeping.
“Some hardy souls tried to rescue those trapped, many of whose muffled cries could be faintly heard through the stone walls. Fire crews arrived and made attempts to save lives with ladders and nets. A group of rescuers, carrying flashlights and wearing handkerchiefs over their faces, approached as well, but a wall of blistering hot smoke and belching flames pitched them back.”
Losing their lives were one assistant night editor, two telegraph operators, Harry Chandler’s secretary, three printers, one machinist, one compositor, one pressman, one apprentice and nine Linotype-operators.
Crossfire versions
Remarkably, the remaining Times staff rallied. They went off to an auxiliary plant on Spring Street, and got out a scathing edition of the paper that very morning in which the managing editor, Harry E. Andrews, stated: “Unionist Bombs wreck the Times” and then swore to his readers: “they can kill our men and wreck our buildings, but by the God above us, they cannot kill the Times.”
Rolfe takes a competing point of view in his book as he concentrates on the story of a now forgotten lawyer named Job Harriman, who initially came forward to represent the McNamara Brothers, but also entered the Los Angeles mayoral race at the same time.
Harriman was a tall, well-spoken Midwesterner cut from the same cloth as his earlier Indiana countryman, Abe Lincoln. Through exceptional turns in his life, Harriman arrived in San Francisco when a spirit of reform was overtaking that city in the 1880s. He joined a utopian community in Altruria, then ran for vice president on the socialist ticket with Eugene Debs, relocated to Los Angeles, reinvented himself as a lawyer for social causes, and successfully polled the most votes in the initial mayoral election in October 1911.
Rolfe believes that Harriman’s Race was stolen from him when Darrow prematurely had the McNamaras plead guilty — after Darrow had allegedly been witnessed bribing a prospective juror on the streets of downtown — just days before the trial was to begin.
Regarding the bombing itself, Rolfe said the version of the L.A. Union workers differed very dramatically. “The trade unionists argued that the cause of the Times explosion could not have been dynamite, because most of the windows survived in the building’s blackened skeleton until the heat became too intense, and only then did they melt, shatter, and fall away.
“Their representatives reported in The Citizen, “If sufficient dynamite had exploded to blow up that building, every window for three blocks would have been broken, and not a soul in the basement would have come out alive. They said any person may go and see that the floor of the basement directly beneath where the dynamite had been placed shows no effect of the downward action of dynamite. Windows directly across the street were unbroken.”
The only other logical conclusion was a natural gas explosion, combined with volatile ink casks stored there in Ink Alley, where the ostensible suitcase bearing nine sticks of dynamite had been placed.
As Rolfe warmed to his topic, he also observed: “The unionists were quick to point out that on the night of the explosion, Otis himself had been out of town, returning by train from Mexico, where he had been tending to his business interests.
“His son-in-law, Harry Chandler, was almost always was on the premises at that hour, in fact, often stayed until the paper ‘was put to bed.’ On this night, however, he had gone home early, an hour or so before the explosion.”
Suspiciously, though, when the explosion occurred, “Chandler happened to be on the street – not far from the building.”
“Now, Otis had spent little to improve this building in 10 years. Instead of maintaining the old plant, which was increasingly becoming a fire trap because of its faulty gas system, he had plans drawn up for an entirely new facility.”
All of the business archives had been removed from the original building to the auxiliary plant that he had built. And Morrow Mayo states in his 1930s book “Los Angeles” that “Otis had raised the insurance on the old building.”
“So, the unionists’ theory was not out of the ballpark. The amount of dynamite that was set off in Ink Alley was not enough to do more than blow out a wall. Only nine sticks of dynamite were attached to the timer in the suitcase” as claimed by Ortie McManigal, an alleged co-conspirator who never served time, and signed a “confession” made out by Detective Burns.
“Still, in the end, Otis gained far more than he lost from the great blast that jolted the city that fatal October morning.”
Epilogue
In the ensuing six month investigation, Detective Burns cast a wide net over the entire nation. His controversial means of arresting and retaining the McNamara Brothers in Detroit and Indianapolis cast suspicion over the entire affair and led workers across the country to believe the McNamaras were railroaded into taking the blame for the Times bombing.
Rolfe’s questioning of the official story allowed me to become a history detective by reading primary documents. In the essays that he shared from the likes of Louis Adamic, Morrow Mayo, Eugene Debs and pioneering muckraker Lincoln Steffens, I learned of probable agents provocateurs who had infiltrated the Ironworkers Unions, fraudulent machinations in the days leading up to the McNamara Trial and the public taking to the streets in angry protests.
The six-month search for suspects led to American labor leader Samuel Gompers, seeking out and urging a wary Clarence Darrow to rise to the occasion and agree to defend James and John McNamara.
This is all before Darrow’s most well-known role in the Scopes “monkey and evolution” trial. Darrow was known as a leading defender of labor and had won a similar case of “railroading.”
He insisted that besides a hefty $50,000 for his lawyer’s fee, he also be given a defense fund of $300,000 to handle what amounted to a huge public relations push on behalf of his clients. In 2010 terms this would be nearly $4 million, and Otis, the Merchants Manufacturers and the National Erectors Association matched them dollar for dollar to see the McNamaras hanged.
Both defense and prosecution employed spies and “stool pigeons,” some acting as “double agents” and getting paid by both sides.
By the time jury selection was completed in December 1910, a dramatic run-off election for mayor between socialist Job Harriman and incumbent George Alexander was at its nail-biting finale.
Unexpectedly and bewilderingly, Clarence Darrow chose to plead James McNamara guilty of the Times bombing, and his brother John guilty of planning a subsequent bombing at Llewellan IronWorks. He agreed to life for James and 15 years for John.
This “explosive news” led to the discrediting of Harriman as champion of the McNamaras and his loss of the election the next day.
Harriman responded two years later by launching a utopian community dedicated to cooperation in Llano Del Rio, near Lancaster.
The National Labor Movement was disgraced and vilified. Based on the precedent of the McNamara indictments, 100 more “dynamite-related” incidents were pursued and won by capital in its “undeclared war” with the Working Man of America.
Sifting through the ashes of what took place, you begin to ask yourself if a road not taken by Los Angeles back in those fateful days might have led to a far different future 100 years hence.
Writer Eric Vollmer and Public Works Improvisational Theatre are embarked upon a centennial inquiry into the Los Angeles Times bombing and its aftermath, collaborating in the arts project with Lionel Rolfe and Brenda Varda.for more see latimesbomb.org. ER