The Hattiesburg news. (Hattiesburg, Miss.) 1908-1917, 1912-12-28

the trial.
one was that on October 1. 1911 O
actiy one year after the Los Angel,
. Times building was blown up. with
loss OF twenty-one lives, the FEEDER,
( authorities at indianapolis first co,
sidered the possibility of prosecution
, for illegal Interstate shipment of dvn,
mite and nitroglycerin on passenge
trains. Ortie E.'sMeManigals confe,
sion, obtained after he and the Mon,
mara brothers had been arrested i'm
plicated others as having actually ca,
ried explosives in suit-cases on trains
or as having entered into a consp:,
acy This indicated. in District Az
torney Charles w. Miller's opinion. tn,
necessity for a grand jury investiga
tion. Indianapolis was the headouar
tiers OF John ]. Mcnamara, secretar,
of the iron workers union, and the
point at which, it was charged. the
conspiracy was entered into and from
which the explosives were carried.
Another coincidence was that the
trial began on Oct. 1, 1919, the second
anniversary of the Times explosion,
The Federal grand jury, after several
months investigation, returned indict.
ments against fifty-four union labor
officials. Before the defense began its
case this number had been reduced to
forty-one on account of various elimi-
nations.
AS motive for the crimes charged
the government referred to the strike
against employers of non-union labor
consisting of bridge, viaduct and build
ing contractors who maintained an
open shop" policy.h employing work
men regardless of whether they be.
longed to the union or not. This strike
never has been called Off 1t was al
legged that a warfare waged by the
union spread all over the country un.
til violence was resorted to, or, as
was stated, "picketing spread to slug
ging, slugging to dynamite and dyna-
mite to nitroglycerin."
Mcnamara, at the headquarters of
the union in Indianapolis, although lat
er named by witnesses as the active
perpetrator of the explosions, was then
unsupported by the contractors. But
the advent of McManigal and James
B. Mcnamara, brother of the union
secretary as regularly hired dynamit-
ers, working under John Us direction,
and as McManigal charges, with Hook
ms leadership, the explosions became
so bold as to arouse suspicion that
they were the work of an organized
band.
Detectives already had been work
ing on the case when the killing of
twenty-one people in Los Angeles by
bomb set off at l o'clock in the
morning, showed that the desperation
Of the dynamiters had reached the
murder stage.
Much of the evidence that was pre-
GUIDED at Los Angeles by the pleas Of
guilt by the Mcnamara brothers came
out here. Federal Judge Albert B.
Anderson ruled that while the specific
charges were illegal transportation all
'ther evidence relative to explosions
night be offered as showing a motive.
The testimony was that the destruc-
ion of the Times building was not
strictly part of the campaign against
lon-union iron and steel work, but was
lone in an effort to unionize various
rades in Los Angeles. James B. Nc
Napara, who set the bomb, was
'rlnter. Witnesses stated that McNa-
nara afterwards expressed little re-
ret that twenty-one people were kill
ID, and, in fact, expressed disappoint-
nent that he had not killed General
harrison Gray Otis, proprietor of the
lines; that the dynamiter was sent
the coast at the solicitation of Tveit-
Zoe, a recognized union labor leader,
nd that Tveitmoe furnished David
aplan and M. A. Schmidt, who were
Iso indicted for murder but who new
: were captured.
All of the one hundred explosions
anne in for scrutiny by the jury here,
nd the field operations extended from
oston to Los Angeles.
who caused those explosions ?" was
70 question before the jury.
Broadly the charges were that J. ].
cNamara began them and thought
EN- an effective means of fighting
pen shop" contractors. Make the ,