Berkman was the leading force in the Caplan-Schmidt Defense League. Charged with conspiracy in the 1910 Los Angeles Times bombing, for which the McNamaras were found guilty, Matthew Schmidt and Dave Caplan eluded police for several years. Schmidt was arrested in September, 1914 and sentenced to life for providing the explosives.Perhaps stung by the experience of the McNamaras, both Caplan and Schmidt heroically chose to fight the case on ‘straight revolutionary lines.’ ‘Schmidtie’ was released after a long campaign in August, 1939 after twenty-five years at San Quentin. Caplan, arrested in 1915, would be found guilty of involuntary manslaughter. Sentenced to ten years, he was released in 1923.

‘David Caplan’ by Alexander Berkman from The Blast (San Francisco). Vol. 1 No. 10. April 1, 1916.

THE TRIAL of David Caplan will open in Los Angeles on April 3d. He is charged with complicity in blowing up the Times Building, on October 1st, 1910. J.B. McNamara pleaded guilty to the charge and is now serving a life sentence in San Quentin. Mathew Schmidt was recently convicted in the same connection and sentenced to life imprisonment.

What is the outlook for David Caplan?

Let us look the situation square in the face.

The Merchants & Manufacturers’ Association, the Otis interests, the Burns Detective Agency, the prosecution of Los Angeles County and the whole respectable, law-abiding citizenship of Los Angeles is and has been a solid unit for the conviction of Schmidt and Caplan. They have carried out the first part of their program to the extent of a life sentence for Schmidt. They will carry out the second part with the same precision. They may even carry out some other parts later on. It is no use fooling ourselves by hiding our heads, ostrich like, in the bushes and pretending not to see. No one else but ourselves are the sufferers from this kind of willful blindness.

It is not a question of guilt or innocence. To Labor’s enemies, the worker charged with active opposition to capital, is guilty even if innocent. To me, the worker at the bar of his enemies is innocent even if guilty. Innocent or guilty, Caplan is convicted beforehand in the courts owned by the masters. Caplan realizes this, as every intelligent worker must realize it. Therefore Caplan has decided, I understand, to cast the old tactics overboard. He knows he has nothing to hope from the legal line of defense followed in the Schmidt case. In that trial the labor and legal advisers of Schmidt took the stand that Mat could hope for a “fair trial” and “justice” at the hands of the Otises and their hired lackeys. If they honestly believed it, in spite of all past experience to the contrary, they were criminally stupid. If they merely pretended to believe such fairy tales, their sacrifice of Schmidt was the most damnable treachery.

I have been informed, on reliable authority, that Caplan refuses to be similarly sacrificed. He has nothing to hope from a legal defence on conservative lines. He has nothing to lose by taking the boldest stand. He has everything to gain–and first of all his self-respect–by facing his enemies as a man, a conscious worker and intelligent rebel against injustice and persecution.

It is therefore that I rejoice in the determination of Caplan to follow a new line of procedure in his trial. And with me, every true friend of labor must rejoice in the brave stand of David Caplan. Enough of the cowardice and hypocrisy imposed upon Labor’s prisoners of war by pretended friends and spokesmen of Labor. Enough of the crawling, begging and pleading at the feet of the masters.

Such an attitude leads only to the gallows and the penitentiary. The strong scorn the weaklings. And justly So. That’s why no true man has any sympathy with cowardice and meekness. That’s way Labor, the great giant, is making itself the laughing stock in the eyes of the world by its eternal submission. It is time, high time, for the giant to straighten his bent back, look the world square in the face, and boldly proclaim: I can, because I will and dare!

Not till then will Labor have any real claim to respect, nor the power to achieve. It will be the proudest moment in the life of labor, its greatest red letter day, when at last the rebel shall arise out of the ranks and throw the challenge into the very face of the masters: YOU are the guilty, who feed on the blood of our children and devour the bodies of our people. You are the real murderers and enemies of man. I challenge your iniquitous justice, I defy your rules of the game!

The day will come when the rebel worker shall take this position. The day must come. And that day will carry joy and courage to the hearts of the disinherited and rally the best elements of labor around their real spokesmen.

The penitentiaries of this country are filled with Labor’s prisoners of war. What power keeps them there? Surely not the handful of guards. Were Labor to make a determined demand for their release, no power would dare resist them. The unionists of San Francisco pride themselves, for instance, on their organized strength in this city and State. But what avails their strength if they lack the will, the intelligence or courage to use it for the benefit of the workers? San Quentin penitentiary is full of labor men. Why does Organized Labor on the Coast not demand the immediate release of the McNamaras, Albert Ryan, Ford and Suhr, Schmidt and Caplan? The Governor of the State is a “labor” man; the sheriff is a “labor” man; the warden of San Quentin a “labor” man–all put in office by the direct vote or consent of Labor. Organized Labor on the Coast has a great deal of influence, you know. But for what purpose are they using that influence? To give labor politicians fat jobs and a chance to betray the workers. If the unions of San Francisco would merely threaten a general strike the prison doors would quickly open to the McNamaras, the Schmidts and the Caplans.

Labor has the power. No one doubts it. The tragedy of it is. the labor politicians within the unions are the first to paralyze every effort of the workers to assert their power. It is therefore that men like David Caplan must rely on their own strength and on the resources of the more revolutionary element among the workers. True, the unions now and then help with money. But it is not money that is of main importance in such cases. If the workers have to match dollars with the masters, the workers lose. The moral support of labor, boldly and publicly expressed, is of a thousandfold more effect than the treasury of the richest union. If the convention of the American Federation of Labor, recently held in San Francisco, had voiced a strong public protest in the case of Mathew Schmidt, then on trial. it would have accomplished a great deal more than the $3000 voted in secret session.

It is the moral support of all labor that David Caplan demands, and has the right to demand. He demands it on the ground that when he faces the judge and jury in the Los Angeles courtroom, it will not be only David Caplan but militant Labor on trial. That being the situation, the case must be fought as a phase of the great labor struggle. a chapter in the social war.

To further this purpose, David Caplan has secured the services of Jacob Margolis, an attorney from Pittsburgh–a man of experience in the labor struggle, one with courage and ability to fight the case of Caplan on the basis of the larger issues involved, the issues of the class war.

Mr. Margolis will be assisted by other lawyers, but his instructions from Caplan himself are to ignore precedent and tradition, and to fight the case on revolutionary lines.

We urge our friends and comrades everywhere to rally to the aid of David Caplan. Make your voice resound! throughout the country. Let us be done, once and for all, with legal respectability and conformity, so much prized by those who are anxious about their sinecures in the unions or their own precious skins. We have sacrificed enough rebels to the Moloch of legality and cowardice. Let us for once show that we are men. with the self-respect and spirit of manhood.

Alexander Berkman

Alexander Berkman’s incendiary-titled ‘The Blast’ began after Berkman left New York City, and his editorial position with Emma Goldman’s ‘Mother Earth’ he had held since his release from prion in 1906, to organize the ‘Anti-Militarist League’ and anarchists circles across the country in opposition to the war and associated repression. Published semi-monthly in San Francisco, California, beginning in January, 1916 with the first issue carrying a cover legendary cartoonist Robert Minor and this statement: ‘Before a garden can bloom, the weeds must be uprooted. Nothing is therefore more important than to destroy. Nothing more necessary and difficult…To destroy the Old and the False is the most vital work. We emphasize it: to blast the bulwarks of slavery and oppression is of primal necessity. It is the beginning of really lasting construction.’ Twenty-nine issues were published, with special attention paid to the war, political prisoners, and the labor movement in California. Berkman was arrested in June, 1917 for encouraging resistance to the draft and The Blast, like so many radical journals of the time, fell to Federal repression. Berkman spent two years in Atlanta Federal Prison before being deported to Russia in 1919.

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