Weekly journal-miner., 1913-01-01


 the councils of the Americal Fedora ton of Labor.
 McManigal, the self-confessed dynamiter, for weeks occupied the witness stand, relating, calmly, de eisively and without any apparent concern for himself a narrative oi violence seldom equalled.
 And what were the antecedents oi this trial?
 Back in the summer of 1905 dyna- mite was found at New Haven, Conn, on a job on which non-union workmen were employed. Later the iron workers union called strike on several contractors, and the strike became general. That was the be- ginning, according to the govern ment, and it spread until McNamara organized "dynamiting crew." Al together 100 explosions occurred, those at Los Angeles being among the number.
 Two striking coincidences attend ed the trial
 One was that on October l, 1911, exactly one year after the Los An geles Times" building was blown up with a loss of twenty-one lives, the federal authorities at Indian apolis first considered the possibility of prosecutions for illegal interstate shipment of dynamite and nitro glycerin on passenger trains. Ortie E. McManigaPs confession obtained after he and the McNamara brothers had been arrested, implicated others as having actually carried explosives in suit-cases on trains, or as having entered into a conspiracy. This in- dicated, in District Attorney Charles w. Miller's opinion, the necessity for a grand jury investigation. In dianapoEs was the headquarters of John J. McNamara, secretary of the iron workers union, and the point at which, it was charged, the con- spiracy was entered into and from which the explosives were carried
 Another coincidence was that the trial began on October l, 1912, the second anniversary of the Times" explosion. The federal grand jury, after several months investigation returned indictments against 54 union labor officials Before the defense began its case this number had been reduced to Al on account of various eliminations.
 As a motive for the crimes charged the government referred to the strike against employers of non-union la bor, consisting of bridge, viaduct and building contractors who maintained an "open shop policy, employing workmen regardless of whether they belonged to the union or not. This strike never has been called off It was alleged that warfare waged by the union spread all over the coun- try until violence was resorted to, or as was stated, 'picketing spread to slugging, slugging to dynamite, and dynamite to nitroglycerin."
 McNamara, at the headquarters of the union in Indianapolis, although later named by witnesses as the active perpetrator of the explosions, was then unsuspected by the con- tractors. But the advent of McMan- igal and James B. McNamara, broth CT of the union secretary, as regular ly hired dynamiters, working under John J.'s direction, and, as McMan- igal charges, with Hockin's leader ship, 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 a bomb set off at l o'clock in the morning, showed that the des- peration of the dynamiters had reached the murder stage.
 Much of the evidence that was precluded 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 il- legal transportation all other evi- dence relative to explosions might be offered as showing a motive. The testimony was that the destruction of the Times" building was not strictly part of the campaign against non-union iron and steel, work, but was done in an effort to unionize various trades in Los An geles. James B. McNamara, who set the bomb was 2 Orinter Wit