The 1917 Sacramento Governor's Mansion bombing took place just before midnight on December 17, 1917 when about 25 sticks of dynamite exploded near the rear porch of the Governor's Mansion just blocks from the Capitol Building.
The 1917 Sacramento Governor's Mansion bombing took place just before midnight on December 17, 1917 when about 25 sticks of dynamite exploded near the rear porch of the Governor's Mansion just blocks from the Capitol Building.
Well known militant and socialist as well as suspected dynamitist, Thomas Mooney, was tried and convicted in 1916 for the Preparedness Day Bombing in San Francisco, which led to the death of ten and injury of forty more. His trial, it seemed, was nothing more than a show with coached witnesses and the air of a lynch mob. [1] While the American Socialist Party was at first ready to expel him, his local branch stood by him and he began to gain the support of an increasingly agitated domestic and international left wing community, which only further radicalized with the introduction of the draft. [2] So much so that Woodrow Wilson felt compelled to start a letter writing campaign to the Governor of California William Stephens to commute Mooney's death sentence. [3] Stephens seemed to have missed his chance when in November 1917, The San Francisco Call ran an exposé suggesting Mooney was framed by prosecutors, basing its findings on a federal investigation conducted under Wilson's orders. [1] (The allegations later gained even more veracity: the prosecution’s case was riddled with perjury, corruption, suppression of evidence, conflict of interest, and other irregularities ignored by prosecutors.) [3] In the meantime, efforts to recall local District Attorney Charles Fickert, who spearheaded the effort to prosecute Mooney, grew more and more promising with each passing day.
At 11:55 p.m. on December 17, 1917, the Governor and his wife Flora awoke to what they described as a "nervous shock". While no one was injured, including all of the servants, windows were shattered as far as two to three blocks away. [4] When the police arrived, they found Governor Stephens, with little care, wading through the wet, muddy basement in search of a clue as to how the bomb had been placed. [5] While neither he nor his guard had seen the perpetrator nor the act first hand, they both expressed the belief that the bomb had been thrown from an alley running about 40 feet from the rear of the house. As for the motive, Stephens was convinced of it "probably having been done with a view to terrorism, the chief weapon of the alien enemy," a claim likely linked to his recent series of addresses urging support for the war. [4]
Accounts of one to two men seen fleeing the scene as crowds began to gather were recorded, but none were found despite an extensive search of downtown.
Almost immediately, the Sacramento Chief of Police and most newspapers blamed the Industrial Workers of the World. [6] On Christmas Eve, two members of the IWW were arrested after police claimed they'd picked up dynamite at the union's headquarters in Sacramento. Three days later, the Governor received a letter giving him an ultimatum: $50,000 or nine bombs will be set off across the city. While nothing came of the letter, police raided locals across Northern California [6] and a further 51 union workers were arrested and thrown in jail in January 1918, where 5 died (four to the influenza epidemic and one to tuberculosis) [1] [6] A further 46 were charged with conspiracy to violate the Espionage Act in spite of protests from a local Department of Justice agent. His concerns regarding the prosecution's motives fell on deaf ears in large part because Governor Stephens, Assistant Attorney General Raymond General, the President of the Sacramento Chamber of Commerce and the publisher of the Sacramento Bee all pushed hard for charges and a conviction. [6] Their efforts succeeded and in January 1919, a jury took one hour to convict all 46. All but three were sentenced from 1 to 10 years. The exceptions included two who had access to attorneys and received 2 month sentences as well as the one woman who received a fine. [6] In total, 2,000 Wobblies (IWW members) were arrested between 1917 and 1918 for "anarchism" or "anti-war efforts". [7]
Weeks after the trial of the 46 IWW members, the California Criminal Syndicalism Act was signed into law, making it a felony, punishable by 1 to 14 years in prison, to advocate "violence or sabotage" as a means of bringing about "a change in industrial ownership or control, or affecting any political change." The statute was used to broadly intimidate political opponents from speaking out and was ruled unconstitutional almost 50 years later.
This harsh crackdown on labor and the months long anti-union campaigning by the Chamber of Commerce and Downtown Association led many progressives to voice their suspicion. [8] The District Attorney's election had taken place the day after the bombing after all, and the heavy press coverage surely would have helped him. What's more: the bomber didn't seem intent to injure. With all this in mind, a San Francisco reporter on the beat learned that the mansion's guard may have worked with a prominent detective to set up the whole thing. That detective, Martin Swanson, had in fact attempted to set up Mooney in a similar fashion years earlier. [9]
The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), whose members are nicknamed "Wobblies", is an international labor union founded in Chicago in 1905. The nickname's origin is uncertain. Its ideology combines general unionism with industrial unionism, as it is a general union, subdivided between the various industries which employ its members. The philosophy and tactics of the IWW are described as "revolutionary industrial unionism", with ties to socialist, syndicalist, and anarchist labor movements.
Joe Hill, born Joel Emmanuel Hägglund and also known as Joseph Hillström, was a Swedish-American labor activist, songwriter, and member of the Industrial Workers of the World. A native Swedish speaker, he learned English during the early 1900s, while working various jobs from New York to San Francisco. Hill, an immigrant worker frequently facing unemployment and underemployment, became a popular songwriter and cartoonist for the union. His songs include "The Preacher and the Slave", "The Tramp", "There Is Power in a Union", "The Rebel Girl", and "Casey Jones—the Union Scab", which express the harsh and combative life of itinerant workers, and call for workers to organize their efforts to improve working conditions.
Franklin Henry Little, commonly known as Frank Little, was an American labor leader who was murdered in Butte, Montana. No one was apprehended or prosecuted for Little's murder. He joined the Industrial Workers of the World in 1905, organizing miners, lumberjacks, and oil field workers. He was a member of the union's Executive Board when he was murdered and lynched.
William Dennison Stephens was an American federal and state politician. A three-term member of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1911 to 1916, Stephens was the 24th governor of California from 1917 to 1923. Prior to becoming Governor, Stephens served as the 27th Lieutenant Governor of California from 1916 to 1917, due to the death of John Morton Eshleman, and served a brief time as Mayor of Los Angeles in 1909 due to the resignation of Arthur C. Harper. He served as the 27th Mayor of Los Angeles in 1909.
The Centralia Tragedy, also known as the Centralia Conspiracy and the Armistice Day Riot, was a violent and bloody incident that occurred in Centralia, Washington, on November 11, 1919, during a parade celebrating the first anniversary of Armistice Day. The conflict between the American Legion and Industrial Workers of the World members resulted in six deaths, others being wounded, multiple prison terms, and an ongoing and especially bitter dispute over the motivations and events that precipitated the event. Both Centralia and the neighboring town of Chehalis had a large number of World War I veterans, with robust chapters of the Legion and many IWW members, some of whom were also war veterans.
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The San Diego free speech fight in San Diego, California, in 1912 was one of the most famous class conflicts over the free speech rights of labor unions. Starting out as one of several direct actions known as free speech fights carried out across North America by the Industrial Workers of the World, the catalyst of the San Diego free speech fight was the passing of Ordinance No. 4623 that banned all kinds of speech in an area that included "soapbox row" downtown. Clashes with the police in the area led to riots, multiple deaths including the deaths of police officers, vigilantism, and the retaliatory kidnapping and torture of notable socialists, including Emma Goldman's manager Ben Reitman. As a direct result of the aftermath of this fight, the neighborhood of Stingaree was razed to the ground and the obliteration of San Diego's Chinatown.
Benjamin Harrison Fletcher was an early 20th-century African-American labor leader and public speaker. He was a prominent member of the Industrial Workers of the World, a left-wing trade union which was influential during his time. Fletcher co-founded and helped lead the interracial Local 8 branch of the IWW’s Marine Transport Workers Industrial Union.
The Blast was a semi-monthly anarchist periodical published by Alexander Berkman in San Francisco, California, USA from 1916 through 1917. The publication had roots in Emma Goldman's magazine Mother Earth, having been launched when her former consort Berkman left his editorial position at that publication.
Free speech fights are struggles over free speech, and especially those struggles which involved the Industrial Workers of the World and their attempts to gain awareness for labor issues by organizing workers and urging them to use their collective voice. During the World War I period in the United States, the IWW members, engaged in free speech fights over labor issues which were closely connected to the developing industrial world as well as the Socialist Party. The Wobblies, along with other radical groups, were often met with opposition from local governments and especially business leaders, in their free speech fights.
The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) is a union of wage workers which was formed in Chicago in 1905 by militant unionists and their supporters due to anger over the conservatism, philosophy, and craft-based structure of the American Federation of Labor (AFL). Throughout the early part of the 20th century, the philosophy and tactics of the IWW were frequently in direct conflict with those of the AFL concerning the best ways to organize workers, and how to best improve the society in which they toiled. The AFL had one guiding principle—"pure and simple trade unionism", often summarized with the slogan "a fair day's pay for a fair day's work." The IWW embraced two guiding principles, fighting like the AFL for better wages, hours, and conditions, but also promoting an eventual, permanent solution to the problems of strikes, injunctions, bull pens, and union scabbing.
The Tulsa Outrage was an act of vigilante violence perpetrated by the Knights of Liberty against members of the Industrial Workers of the World on November 9, 1917 in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Arthur Patrick L. "Pat" Quinlan (1883–1948) was an Irish trade union organizer, journalist, and socialist political activist. Quinlan is best remembered for the part he played as an organizer for the Industrial Workers of the World in the 1913 Paterson silk strike — an event which led to his imprisonment for two years in the New Jersey State Penitentiary.
Warren Knox Billings was a labor leader and political activist, who was convicted with Thomas Mooney of the San Francisco Preparedness Day Bombing of 1916. It is believed that the two were wrongly convicted of a crime they did not commit. Billings served 23 years in prison before being released in 1939 and finally being pardoned in 1961 by governor Edmund G. Brown.
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The 1923 San Pedro maritime strike was, at the time, the biggest challenge to the dominance of the open shop culture of Los Angeles, California until the rise of the Congress of Industrial Organizations in the 1930s.
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Elmer Smith (1888–1932) was a 20th-Century American lawyer and Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) union defender, who played a key role in the 1919 Centralia massacre (Washington).
sacramento governor's mansion 1917 bomb.