TOM MOONEY

Historical Essay

by Chris Carlsson

Market and Steuart Streets moments before the Preparedness Day Bombing, July 22, 1916. This picture was suppressed by the prosecution for 20 years. The arrow points to what some think may have been the actual bomber.

July 22, 1916 "Preparedness Day:" A turning point in labor history for San Francisco and perhaps for the entire United States.

A large parade up San Francisco's Market Street had been organized by the Chamber of Commerce and the conservative business establishment to drum up patriotism and support for U.S. entry into the European war (WWI). In addition to the war in Europe, U.S. troops were already gathering at Nogales to invade Mexico in pursuit of Pancho Villa, Irish exiles had passed only three months since the Easter Rebellion in Ireland, a bloody strike on San Francisco's waterfront had killed a man and left dozens injured only a month earlier. At 2:06 pm, as marchers were entering Market Street from Steuart (between the old SP building at 1 Market Plaza, and the new Federal Reserve Building), a bomb exploded, killing ten and critically injuring 40 more.

A militant San Francisco labor leader, Tom Mooney, his wife Rena, a radical worker named Warren K. Billings, and two others were soon charged with the crime. Then District Attorney Charles Fickert had been elected in 1909 with a secret fund of $100,000 put up by United Railroads, a company formed in 1905 when Patrick Calhoun bought up most of the city's streetcar lines and merged them into one company. One of DA Fickert's first acts was the dismissal of corruption charges pending against Calhoun, his chief counsel and his chief assistant, thereby ending the famous graft trials which had brought down political boss Abe Ruef and previous Mayor Schmitz.

Mooney had been a major actor in numerous strikes and organizing campaigns. By the end of 1915 he'd become a thorn in the side of the San Francisco Labor Council as much as the Chamber of Commerce with his radical calls for industrial unionism; Pacific Gas & Electric and its then subsidiaries (San Joaquin Light & Power Co., Western Electric Co., Sierra & SF Power Co.) considered him a dangerous foe after a big strike from May 1913 through January 1914.

In late 1915, Mooney had targeted the non-union United Railroads for organizing. In 1916, California had two major cities, San Francisco and Los Angeles, the former known as the most unionized city in America, the latter as a bastion of conservatism and the most open shop (i.e. non-union) city in the country. San Francisco's Chamber of Commerce keenly felt the difference, as new investment was mostly heading south to Los Angeles and the land of cheap, abundant labor.

Between June 9, 1916 and July 17, the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce claimed that 38 "non-union workers" [scabs] were sent to the hospital because of attacks by striking longshoremen. Two strikers were dead. In this violent atmosphere the Chamber issued its first public endorsement of the open shop on June 22, 1916. On July 10, a meeting of over 2,000 merchants packed the floor of the Merchant's Exchange and endorsed the creation of a standing "Law and Order Committee" of the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce to "rid San Francisco of anarchistic elements." By year-end the Law and Order Committee had a fund at its disposal of $1 million.

Behind the scenes was one Martin Swanson, a detective with a long involvement in strikes, and various labor confrontations in San Francisco, mostly working for PG&E, the Pacific Telephone and Telegraph Co. (later PacBell), and other utilities and railroads. Swanson had spent a couple of months trying to frame Mooney for a bombing of PG&E power lines just south of San Francisco on San Bruno mountain, offering bribes of $5,000 to several of Mooney's allies. He also maintained constant surveillance and harassment of Mooney, Billings, and the anarchists Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman, who were living at 569 Dolores in the Mission District.

After the Preparedness Day bombing, Swanson was appointed as investigator for the (clearly corrupt) District Attorney that same evening. Over the next two years it was gradually revealed that Martin Swanson was the man primarily responsible for finding and coaching false witnesses against Mooney and Billings. In spite of revelations showing that all the evidence against them was faked, and a convincing demolition of the state's case in each of the trials, Warren Billings first, and then Tom Mooney were both convicted of first degree murder by juries of conservative, retired businessmen under the control of the district attorney.

Both Mooney and Billings had their death sentences commuted to life sentences by California's governor in 1917. It took another 22 and a half years before Tom Mooney was granted an unconditional pardon by newly-elected liberal Democratic governor Olson in January, 1939. Warren Billings would receive his release from prison in 1942.

READ MORE:

Frame-up by Curt Gentry, © 1967, WW Norton & Co., New York.

Life of an Anarchist: The Alexander Berkman Reader, ed. Gene Fellner, Four Walls Eight Windows, New York: 1992.

More on Tom Mooney

Photos: Bancroft Library, Berkeley, CA

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Chamber of Commerce cartoon warning population

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