https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles_Times_bombing



The Los Angeles Times bombing was the purposeful dynamiting of the Los Angeles Times Building in Los Angeles, California, on October 1, 1910, by a union member belonging to the International Association of Bridge and Structural Iron Workers. The explosion started a fire which killed 21 newspaper employees and injured 100 more. It was termed the "crime of the century" by the Times.

Brothers John J. ("J.J." ) and James B. ("J.B." ) McNamara were arrested in April 1911 for the bombing. Their trial became a cause célèbre for the American labor movement. J.B. admitted to setting the explosive, and was convicted and sentenced to life in prison. J.J. was sentenced to 15 years in prison for bombing a local iron manufacturing plant, and returned to the Iron Workers union as an organizer.

Background
The Iron Workers Union 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 union 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 Iron Workers Union had not only organized almost every United States iron manufacturer, but had also won signed contracts including union shop clauses. The McNamara brothers were Irish American trade unionists. John (known as J.J.) and his younger brother James (known as J.B.) were both active in the International Association of Bridge and Structural Iron Workers (the Iron Workers).

Strike against American Bridge Co.


James (left) and John McNamara

In 1903, officials of U.S. Steel and the American Bridge Company founded the National Erectors' Association, a coalition of steel and iron industry employers. The primary goal of the National Erectors' Association was to promote the open shop and assist employers in breaking the unions in their industries. Employers used labor spies, agents provocateurs, private detective agencies, and strike breakers to engage in a campaign of union busting. 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 Iron Workers reacted by electing the militant Frank M. Ryan president and John J. McNamara the secretary-treasurer in 1905. In 1906, the Iron Workers struck at American Bridge in an attempt to retain their contract. However, the open shop movement 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 Iron Workers held on (though the strike at American Bridge continued).

Dynamite campaign
Union officials used violence to counter the setbacks they had suffered. Beginning in late 1906, national and local officials of the Iron Workers launched a dynamiting campaign. Between 1906 and 1911, the Iron Workers blew up 110 iron works, though only a few thousand dollars in damages was done. The National Erectors' Association was well aware who was responsible for the bombings, since Herbert S. Hockin, a member of the Iron Workers' executive board, was their paid spy.

Los Angeles strike
Los Angeles employers 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 using it and his newspaper's large circulation to spearhead a 20-year campaign to end the city's few remaining unions. 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.

The San Francisco unions relied heavily on the Iron Workers, 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 Iron Workers struck iron manufacturers in the city to win a $0.50 an hour minimum wage ($13.26 in 2018 dollars) and overtime pay. The M&M raised $350,000 ($9.3 million in 2018 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 50 days in jail or 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.

Leading up to the explosion
On June 3, 1910, two days after the start of the strike, Eugene Clancy, the top Iron Workers' Union official on the West Coast, wrote to J. J. McNamara: "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 J. J. McNamara no longer trusted him. McNamara asked another dynamiter, Jack Barry of St. Louis, to go to California, but Barry turned down the job when he learned of the targets. J. J. McNamara finally sent his younger brother, James B. McNamara, to California on the bombing mission.

Bombing


The Los Angeles Times Building after the bombing disaster on October 1, 1910. Nicknamed "the fortress", the 1886 brick and granite building was on Broadway and First Street, across the street from the present 1935 building.

On the evening of 30 September 1910, J. B. McNamara left a suitcase full of dynamite in the narrow alley between the Times building and the Times annex, known as "Ink Alley." 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 am, and set off the explosion. He then left similar bombs, also set to explode at 1 am, next to the home of Times publisher Harrison Gray Otis and the home of Felix Zeehandelaar, secretary of the M&M. McNamara then boarded a train to San Francisco, and was out of town when the Times building bomb went off.

This was an escalation of the bombing campaign. Previously, only nonunion workplaces had been targeted. Now the Iron Workers union was expanding the targets to the homes of anti-union leaders, and a newspaper noted for its anti-union editorial policy.

At 1:07 a.m. on October 1, 1910, the bomb went off in the alley outside the three-story Los Angeles Times Building located at First Street and Broadway in Los Angeles. The 16 sticks of dynamite in the suitcase bomb were not enough to destroy the whole building, 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. The bomb collapsed the side of the building, and the ensuing fire destroyed the Times building and a second structure next door that housed the paper's printing press. Of the 115 people still in the building, 21 died (most of them in the fire). The Times called the bombing the "crime of the century", and publisher Otis excoriated unions as "anarchic scum," "cowardly murderers," "leeches upon honest labor," and "midnight assassins."

The exact number of deaths is uncertain. The remains of 20 were identified. Parts of either one or two additional bodies were pulled from the rubble.

An unresolved contradiction was J. B. McNamara'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. However, Ortie McManigal testified that before their arrest, McNamara 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.

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