Leftist Violence and the Los Angeles Times Bombing

This is a fascinating piece, yet ultimately frustrating, by Lew Irwin, "Bombing of The Times in 1910 Set Labor Back a Generation."

Shortly after 1 a.m. on Oct. 1, 1910, 100 years ago Friday, a time bomb constructed of 16 sticks of 80% dynamite connected to a cheap windup alarm clock exploded in an alley next to the Los Angeles Times. It detonated with such violence that for blocks around, people ran panic-stricken into the streets, believing that an intense earthquake had hit the city.

The explosion destroyed the Times building, taking the lives of 20 employees, including the night city editor and the principal telegraph operator, and maiming dozens of others. Two other time bombs — intended to kill Gen. Harrison Gray Otis, the publisher of the newspaper, and Felix J. Zeehandelaar, the head of a Los Angeles business organization — were discovered later that morning hidden in the bushes next to their homes. Their mechanisms had jammed.

Eventually, two brothers, J.B. McNamara, who planted the bombs, and J.J. McNamara, an official of the International Assn. of Bridge and Structural Iron Workers union who ordered the attacks, were arrested, convicted and imprisoned.

In its day, the Times bombing was equivalent to the 2001 destruction of the World Trade Center. It was called "the crime of the century," and it remains the deadliest crime to go to trial in California history. It would lead to investigations, arrests and trials of union leaders across the country who, it turned out, funded hundreds of terrorist bombings at mostly nonunion construction projects between 1907 and 1911. They included officials of the California Building Trades Council in San Francisco, the ironworkers union and the United Brotherhood of Carpenters in Indianapolis, the Machinists Union in Syracuse, N.Y., and the Building Trades Council in Detroit. Hirelings of the union involved in executing the bombings were also brought to trial — 46 members of the ironworkers union alone. In addition to the McNamaras, who were sentenced in 1911, 39 men were convicted and sent to prison in 1912; five others received suspended sentences.

The testimony during their trials and their convictions devastated the American labor movement, virtually paralyzing it until the New Deal. The McNamaras' case in particular wrecked the career and tainted the reputation of the most prominent defender of labor of the day, Clarence Darrow, who was hired by the American Federation of Labor to defend the brothers.

To save the lives of his clients, Darrow negotiated a deal with the district attorney and the brothers pleaded guilty. Afterward, Darrow was arrested and was twice forced to defend himself against charges of attempting to bribe two prospective jurors. He was acquitted in the first trial; the second ended in a hung jury. Darrow would not return to the public spotlight until 1924, when he rescued his reputation as the defender of thrill-killers Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb and as the hero of the Scopes "monkey trial" the next year.

The terrorism that gripped America 100 years ago is barely mentioned in California history books today. The Times long ago resigned itself to making at least a modicum of peace with the unions. The attack on the newspaper is now regarded as an embarrassment to organized labor, which has never gotten around to an unequivocal denunciation of it. A 1996 history of the Ironworkers Union says that "the dynamite conspiracy and the bombings are neither a point of pride nor a reason for guilt. The Iron Worker leadership had no real option other than to succumb in the open shop battle, which was unacceptable to them.... And despite other consequences of the dynamite campaign, they did save the union. The international officers stretched the limits of zeal in a righteous cause."

J.B. McNamara, his guilty plea notwithstanding, remained unrepentant for the rest of his life. In a letter sent from his San Quentin prison cell to his mother, he wrote that in all great battles, men must sometimes be sacrificed for the greater good.

There's more at the link.

This is frustrating since Irwin is so unhappy that the bombing was a "setback" for organized labor. I see it for what it was: typical of the left's inherent impulse toward destruction and death. And like we saw in the late-60s with the Weather Underground, and later in Germany with Baader-Meinhof, the cycle turns and political violence becomes respectable. Violent provocateurs are gearing up now. We saw the potential in Toronto last summer. The left's own frustration will stay capped for only so long.