A fine essay from de Cleyre on the case of the McNamara brothers shook the Socialist and labor movements. Labor activists, John J. and James B. McNamara were accused of the bombing of the anti-union Los Angeles Times building on October 1, 1910 resulting in at least 20 deaths. At first they pleaded innocent, with luminaries such as Samuel Gompers, Clarence Darrow, and L.A. Socialist Job Herriman defending them. With just days to go until an election in which Job Harriman was running for Los Angeles mayor, the McNamaras changed their plea. Admitting their guilt campaign of bombings, many ‘respectable’ Socialists and labor leaders abandoned the brothers immediately. Frank Bohn was among those that did not. John was sentenced to fifteen years; James to life. He died in prison on March 8, 1941.
‘The McNamara Storm’ by Voltairine de Cleyre from the Agitator. Vol. 2 No. 5. January 15, 1912.
The psychologic storm provoked by the admission of guilt on the part of the McNamara brothers has set all manner of human nature dancing naked in the limelight, and for the most part it has been a very sorry exhibition, though some expressions have come from quarters least expected, revealing qualities higher than I supposed resided there. I take pleasure in recognizing this in the case of two men, on whom as public characters, or rather on their public work, I have set no very great value. For years I have regarded John Mitchell as a timid conservative and a weakling; but in this crisis he has spoken as a human being,–oh, with so much more humanity that Socialist Congressman Berger, who wants “the limit of the law,” or that insect-man, the Socialist Mayor of Butte, who added his voice to the mob yelling “coward.” Asked to pronounce himself as to the punishment due the McNamaras, John Mitchell answered with gentle, I may say Christian, dignity: “I have nothing to say about their punishment; it is not for me to punish.”
The other man is Morris Hillquit, a Socialist of the most legal variety, opposed to terrorism in all its forms. Yet in the very article opposing it, Hillquit says: “I am not at all inclined to join in the general chorus of indignation against them, or in the savage demands for their blood. I know they are victims of the class war, just as much as the men who perished by their crime.”
In the midst of the foaming, raging cry of “Hang, hang! Not high enough, nor quick enough! Limit of the Law,” and all the rest of the ferocity with which men of capital and men of labor are disgracing themselves, those two have maintained their humanity–John Mitchell and Morris Hillquit–and to their everlasting honor!
As to Samuel Gompers, the reports have been so confusing, and his charges of misquotation have been so vehement, that it is impossible for me to form an estimate of his attitude; in one report, he is quoted as saying: “I am not a hound, I am not a hound; I do not seek human life in punishment for any crime.” So that at least relieves him from blood-thirst; and as to other unworthy utterances attributed to him, I prefer to give him the benefit of the doubt, since he says he has been misrepresented.
But the voice that sounded with the thrill of an Evangel was the voice of Lincoln Steffens, in his article of December 4th–a voice drowned it is true from every side with sneer and blame and misunderstanding. And indeed it was very naive of him to think that the judge, the prosecuting attorney and their owners, the capitalists, could be capable of that great act of moral generosity he seems to have expected from them, that they could be touched by any higher motive than the preservation of municipal loaves and fishes, than “wisdom and the saving of money,” than the miserable motive of keeping men alive rather than hanging them, in order to torture confessions out of them; very naive to think he could help to stop the war between capital and labor. Oh, very naive, indeed; but none the less splendid for that!
To come to the consideration of the thing itself, I reiterate what I said a week ago: “The main question this case puts to the world for its answer is, What are the causes which make men of good feelings, kindly and sympathetic men, as those who know them say these brothers are–as Clarence Darrow says they are, as Lincoln Steffens says they are–what are the causes which make men like these come to the conclusion that destructive attacks upon property (personally I do not believe they ever meant to take any one’s life) are justifiable, are the only means by which workingmen can better their conditions here and now?”
This is the question the Times victims died to put before the world, the question whose discussion the McNamara brothers are burying from it with years of prison life.
I am aware that any number of theories are current. I know that some persons have jumped to the conclusion that these men were not really union men at all, but merely agents in the employ of a concern, or concerns, rivaling the National Erectors’ Association; that the thousands of dollars which it is assumed (quite without any definite knowledge) were spent in committing acts of violence by these two men, were furnished by capitalists at war with each other.
I admit that this may be possible.
On the other hand, I am aware there is a newspaper theory, possibly a government theory, that there was a bloodthirsty conspiracy by all the heads of union labor, etc., etc.
I admit that this may be possible.
But with all respect to the people whose minds must work in devious ways to discover a crooked path over which events may have proceeded, my own opinion is that while those theories are possible they are extremely improbable.
The socialistic press, in accordance with an old-time policy of putting the blame on the enemy, and especially the Appeal to Reason, notably through Eugene Debs and one of its ridiculous figures, Mr. George Shoaf, who worked up a faked disappearance last summer to the disgust of every sensible reader, put forward the notion that General Otis had blown up his own building. And while I thought that was a bare possibility, it sounded the height of improbability to me. And so do these other theories.
I have never been a member of a union, because my occupation is one which doesn’t call for it. I have often regretted it; but this week I have been glad, glad my voice was my own and free, owing no allegiance to any association whose interests would be my gag. For all that I have no inside knowledge, however, I judge from outside observation of them that certain elements of human nature work in them precisely as they do in all associations.
Human nature in general is very quick to let some one else stand in the breach. Most people believe in force; all governmentalists do. It’s only a question of applying it. Unionists believe in force, non-unionists believe in force, scabs believe in force, capitalists believe in force, judges and hangmen believe in force, ministers of the gospel believe in force, Socialists believe in force, and a good many Anarchists believe in force. Furthermore, they believe in force used successfully. But not all of these, not anything like all of these want to use force themselves; they want some one else to use it for them; they are charmed when it is used successfully; but when it fails, they are horrified! and terrified! And they lift up their voices on high, howling, Vae Victis, Vae Victis!
Now I think that people in unions, as out of them, are very ready to let active and able people fight their battles for them, without inquiring very much about how it’s done. I don’t suppose it ever came into many of the ironworkers’ heads to consider the work of the officers at all. They paid their dues, elected representatives because they thought them able, and thought no more about it. But these men who were able, why had they come to the conclusion that they must fight in such a way?
I have tried to think it out, and I have concluded so: These were men who were familiar with the lives of ironworkers. They were not like those of us who sit in houses, and work over ledgers, or library shelves, or cloth, or cookery, who cry over a burnt finger or a sprained joint, who know little or nothing of the risks of mining, machine-shops, steel manufacture and structural work. Those who work at such employment, or mix constantly with those who do, acquire a recklessness toward life, which is the spiritual toll humanity must pay for the iron triumphs of its iron civilization.
I understand that the average life of a structural ironworker at his trade is ten years. Try to understand what that means,–the fallen, the crushed, the mangled, the maimed and lamed, the highway outcasts, the poorhouse remnants, the Dead. Try to understand what feeling that engenders in the breast of him who lives with it, sees it, feels it.
And then, putting aside all the spy theories for the moment, put this to yourself as one of the possible explanations. Put it to yourself that you are one who saw all these murders, committed by society in its utter indifference as to how it accomplishes its iron triumphs so they are accomplished; that you have the spirit of recklessness in yourself–that great, that dauntless spirit which is one of the highest qualities of human nature, that whereby it has dared and done, hurled itself against the Impossible, from the pygmy conjured the giant; put it that you considered yourself a soldier in a guerilla warfare upon a merciless devourer of human lives; that you took your own life in your hands and struck; that (as often happens in war) you overshot your mark and struck your own side; that you were caught by the enemy; that you resisted till you saw resistance was useless; both for yourself and those for whom you believed yourself to be fighting; that you opened your mouth at last and said, “Yes, I did it,”–and no more. (These men have said no more.) And then that you heard the “hang” cry going up from your own side louder than from your enemies; that you knew there were hypocrites among them who were shouting “treason,” not because you had fought but because you were caught; that to the others, the honest ones, you knew you could never, never explain; that you were going down to a living grave; to pass within the ring of stone forever, utterly, utterly un-understood! Put that to yourself as one of the possibilities of this case, and then–be silent, till you have certain knowledge to curse upon.
As for the rest, I wish that every one might read the editorial in the Chicago Daily Socialist of December 5th. It surged out of a man’s heart; I like it; it gives the lie to all this hypocritical cant of the common press about the Times victims. Who cries vengeance for the criminals who killed the workers in the Cherry mine? or the Johnstown and Austin floods? or the victims of the 1907 panic, which Wharton Barker, the banker, tells us was connived in by Theodore Roosevelt? Who now are the criminals responsible for the 200 miners buried alive at this moment at Briceville? Every day they murder more, calmly and cold-bloodedly, than died in the Times disaster. And let them cease their hypocrisy. And let our people hurl back at them their own cry: “Murder is murder.” Let them understand who are the fundamental criminals, and what is the fundamental crime. Let them ask not indeed for vengeance, but the abolition of this scheme of property right for some in what belongs to us all, whereby we are brought to this horrible war, and driven to conclude that there is no way of getting any meager portion of what is ours but by violence.
The Syndicalist began as The Agitator, based in the Washington state anarchist community of Home. With writers like Earl Ford, JW Johnstone, and William Z Foster it was inspired by the revolutionary syndicalism of the French CGT, they felt they were political competitors to the IWW and in early 1912, Foster and others created the Syndicalist Militant Minority Leagues in Chicago with chapters soon forming in Kansas City, Omaha, Minneapolis, St. Louis, Denver, Seattle, Tacoma, Vancouver, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. They renamed The Agitator The Syndicalist as the paper of the Syndicalist League of North America with Jay Fox as editor. The group then focused on the AFL. The Syndicalist ceased publication in September 1913 with some going on to form the International Trade Union Educational League in January 1915. While only briefly an organization, the SLNA had a host of future important leaders of the Communist movement. Like Foster, Tom Mooney and Earl Browder who were also members.
PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/agitator/v2n05-w29-jan-15-1912-agitator.pdf
