From the start, the authorities considered the five suspects in the 1916 Preparedness Day Bombing part of a collected conspiracy. The Mooneys, Billings, Weinberg, and Nolan, they alleged, worked together on the bombing and, as a result, should be tried together. Indeed, the prosecution considered all of the defendants “indissolubly linked,” and “the act of one is the act of all.” The prosecution never strayed from this idea throughout and made the argument repeatedly in opening statements and questioning. During the period of late 1916 to mid-1918, a series of trials and appeals unfolded that demonstrated not only the legal complexities surrounding the case(s) but also the determination on both sides to convict or exonerate the group we may call the “San Francisco Five.”
The Warren Billings trial was the first on the docket, slated to begin in October 1916. Spectators crowded the courtroom and struggled to find seats, with some grabbing a spot in front of the jury box. Accounts of the room’s atmosphere described it simply as “tense.” Billings reportedly sat with countless eyes on him, and his expression seemed frank. He looked—not surprisingly, given his age—young. The sun peeked through shaded windows, and his hair was a yellowish-brown, with a glint from the bright sun.1
The jury in the Billings trial consisted of 12 men, described on the whole simply as “old”; it was a fair characterization. The members of the jury included “eight acknowledged ‘retired’ men – the trade name for professional jurymen.” Its foreman was 83-year-old Hugh Fraser, who some said was completely deaf. He had in some ways made a career of being a juror, for 11 years according to one account. Some alleged that the jury as a whole could be working in this way as “daily servants.” Another juror was William Humbert, who Billings advocates alleged had pocketed $1,048 serving as a juror in recent years. F.W. Meinhardt earned $616 and Charles Dobler took $702. It was asserted that 8 of the 12 jurors held no job, except hoping and angling for jury service to make money. “Half of the dozen are peddlers of lottery tickets,” and now as jurors, critics charged, they “obeyed the voice of their master, and employer, the District Attorney, who has the power to starve them.” These defenders alleged that the jury worked for the prosecution for the $2 a day fee.
Besides their age, the jurors possessed some less than scrupulous associations. Foreman Fraser had served on the jury during the “Dowdall Frame-up,” a case where police allegedly planted a stolen coat in his tent to get a conviction during a crime wave. Dowdall received a 50-year sentence. Given his antilabor leanings, Fraser apparently paid no attention to Billings’ alibi, given during the questioning. He seemed dismissive of Billings overall. Many on the jury also seemed to have a familiarity with the prosecution team. During his initial arguments, the Assistant District Attorney Brennan said to them, “Many of you know me.” While jury members denied knowing him, Billings’ defenders claimed years of relationships, some up to nine years. They also claimed to see knowing glances and smiles between those in the jury box and the Assistant District Attorney.2
Noted San Francisco anarchist and attempted Frick assassin Alexander Berkman came and sat in the courtroom to watch the proceedings. He noticed how the prosecution had members of the Sons of Veterans and Grand Army men prepared to testify, men considered patriots who might cast doubt on anyone opposed to preparedness. Among the jury, he described one man looking “heavy, coarse, and red-faced … next to him was a pale, anemic man that looked half wolf, half fox.”3
When witnesses began taking the stand, a mother and daughter, Nellie and Sadie Edeau, testified to seeing Billings at 721 Market, though they did not mention spotting Weinberg or the Mooneys. Two other witnesses, Peter Vidovich and Herbert Wade, corroborated the Edeaus’ story, and also claimed to have seen Billings at 721 Market, though they placed him at the building between one and two and half hours before the times mentioned by the other witnesses. In addition, Vidovich said Billings was about 5'9" when in actuality he stood about 5'4".
In his own defense, Billings claimed that he left his house between 1:30 and 2:00 in the afternoon and took a jitney bus and rode to 11th and Market. Because police had modified the bus schedule in light of the parade planning on Market, he testified that he got off the bus and walked north on Market, up Grant Avenue, and then down Union Square Avenue. There, he spotted the Reception Saloon and grabbed a glass of beer. Walking around downtown, he ended up on Turk and Taylor, where he went into another saloon and had another glass of beer, afterward helping the drivers of a Cadillac and Ford navigate backing out and avoiding a collision.4
Yet, a particularly key witness in his trial, and in subsequent ones, ended up being one Estelle Smith. Smith undeniably had a dubious past as a “woman of the underworld” and a “morphine addict … taking dope at intervals while on the witness stand.” Other descriptions were more explicit, such as in Theodora Pollock’s essay on the trial, that summarized her as “a prostitute, Estelle Smith, once indicted for murder in an incestuous ‘love’ shooting and later dragged into the police net in a red light raid along with a negro.” According to Congressman Gerald Nye’s retelling of the Billings proceedings, she was forced to falsely identify Billings only after authorities threatened her and promised jail time if she did not identify him. Interestingly, and suspicious observers suspected it was because of her possible impeachment, Charles Fickert chose not to use her as a witness against Mooney. Yet, he employed her testimony against Billings during this first trial.5
The last significant prosecution witness to testify was John McDonald. Papers sympathetic to Billings described him as “a dope fiend … who boasted to responsible people of the money he was to receive for his testimony,” who had “seen Billings” as “in a dream” deposit the fatal suitcase. He had also “seen” Mooney with Billings until the prosecution was shown a picture, accidentally taken, which proved Mooney to have been a mile and a half away, when the prosecution admitted that he didn’t see Mooney but asked the jury to convict Billings on this same man’s “seeing.” As the International Socialist Review summarized, the case against Billings seemed to rest on the testimony of people like Smith and McDonald, individuals thought of as either “criminals or underworld ‘stools.’”
By the time the prosecution rested its case against Billings, three separate witnesses had testified to Billings’ location between 1:55 and 2:00 that afternoon, and all had him at different places. McDonald said he was at the explosion site on the corner of Market and Steuart. John Crowley said he saw Billings one block away and headed away from Market. Finally, Estelle Smith swore she saw him three-quarters of a mile away at 721 Market. According to Pollock, “Against them stood the twenty witnesses for the defense, entirely reputable people, unknown to and without friendly feeling for the defendant – working people, store-keeping people and professional people.” Yet, “over-zealous for their masters, the Chamber of Commerce and the public utilities, the District Attorney’s office proved Billings in three places at the same time.” After all, he wore a “light-dark” suit, a plain suit, and a striped suit. He was 5'3" and 5'9" and he had a new black suitcase and an old yellow suitcase. Conflicting opinions abounded.6
While these contradictions might have helped Billings’ case, when on the stand, Israel Weinberg swore that Martin Swanson sought him out before the Preparedness Day explosion and offered him $5,000 to testify that Mooney had dynamited the high-power electrical wire towers. Billings claimed Swanson approached him with the same proposal. With this revelation, the defense attorneys challenged the prosecution to place Swanson on the stand and defend these statements. Fickert asked for a recess, and when court resumed, he failed to call Swanson, who ultimately did not testify.7
More testimony supporting Billings came from a witness named Louis Rominger, a former detective and “strikebreaker” during Spokane, Washington’s labor troubles. At the police station, he said Billings was not the man he had helped with a suitcase. He said Billings stood 5 inches shorter than the man he saw on the day of the attack and simply was not him. After interviews with the prosecution, though, he said the man was Billings. When asked why he changed his mind and identification, he said, “They will be sore at me if I don’t identify Billings.”
In spite of it all, the jury found Billings guilty of murder in December 1916, and Judge Frank Dunne handed down the sentence: life in jail. A great deal of the trial evidence, of course, had been questionable, with much of the incriminating testimony for Billings coming from nefarious characters, indeed. His defenders summarized the conviction this way: “An ex (?) detective, an ex-strikebreaker policeman, two women dead-beats – such are the people, and practically all of the people, who sold Billings’ young life for a part of the reward of $21,000 offered for the conviction of the bomb planter.”8
Billings’ defenders remained stunned and quickly rallied behind him. As one defense pamphlet noted, after all, to them, the conviction came on the word of three key witnesses: “one prostitute, one convict, and one drug victim.” Expectedly, defenders again mobilized on Billings’ behalf in print. Writing in Emma Goldman’s Mother Earth, Alexander Berkman called the trial, in the title to his piece, “Legal Assassination.” James Brennan, the Assistant District Attorney, handed the conviction and the sentence to life in prison. Berkman called Brennan’s work toward the conviction a “masterstroke of villainy.” After all, he claimed, the D.A. made explicit claims about the wider accusations about labor and radicalism. In court, Brennan had spoken of the “class opposed to preparedness … the class opposed to preparedness is also opposed to our government … such anarchist teachings are propagated by The Blast.”9
The defense made a number of discoveries between the Billings conviction and the impending Mooney trial, set to kick off the next month, in January 1917. Mooney’s lawyers first obtained an affidavit from William Kirch, whose office was next door to 721 Market and looked onto the building’s roof. Kirch testified that he did not see Billings come to the roof of the building. Moreover, when the district attorney’s office brought Kirch to the Richmond police station to identify Billings, he said he was not the man he saw on the roof.
Newspaper interviews during this period also revealed that Estelle Smith began to change her retelling of the parade day’s events and now revealed she could not recognize the woman who came to 721 Market, that it was not Rena Mooney, and the man who came to the building (Warren Billings) carried not a suitcase, but a smaller black camera case. More conflicting revelations came when four defense witnesses that worked at Uhl Brothers Paper next door also testified to seeing a man with a camera and large camera box on the roof until 3:30. T.K. Statler, a general agent for Northern Pacific Railroad, busied himself at work before leaving his office in the Monadnock Building at 1:30 and walked to the corner of Steuart and Market streets to view the parade. He arrived at 1:45 and said he saw a suitcase on the street.10
The role of suitcases in the dastardly deeds of radicals, interestingly, was certainly part of a pattern, at least for Robert Minor in the International Socialist Review. “Since the McNamara plea,” he said, referencing Los Angeles, “there has been a ghost in nearly every labor dispute. That ghost is ‘the suitcase.’” Time and again, he pointed out, corporate agents imagined a suitcase full of dynamite, and it had become “a California institution.” It happened in the L.A. Times case and the instance of Billings being asked to transport dynamite, for example. By the time of the San Francisco attack, Minor wrote, “The only way to scare labor off from defense of a labor case is to shout ‘SUITCASE’ at them instead of ‘Book!’” The outgrowth of this was that the “public excitement” in the state meant that “everybody sees suitcases, with $17,000 as their reward for the ‘seeing.’”1
Tom Mooney’s trial got underway in the superior court on January 3, 1917, also in Judge Frank Dunne’s courtroom. William Bourke Cockran spearheaded Mooney’s defense. A New York lawyer of note, Bourke Cockran, as he was known, volunteered his services, without compensation, to help Maxwell McNutt on the defense team. Newspapers covering the trial compared Cockran’s involvement to Clarence Darrow’s similar work on behalf of the McNamara brothers years earlier. Once again, Charles Fickert handled the prosecution duties. Assistant District Attorney Edward Cunha aided him.11
Leading the jury as its foreman was William V. MacNevin, who, it was claimed, was a close friend of Cunha’s. Publicly, he swore to not knowing Cunha, but Mooney’s allies claimed that MacNevin visited a lawyer’s office each night to exchange messages with Cunha. The foreman, some said, updated Cunha on the progress in convincing the jury and “winning them over.” A real estate man of some note, MacNevin allegedly was offered a seat on the Real Estate Board for his work on the jury for the prosecution. For their part, Mooney defenders long alleged these kinds of dirty dealings in constituting juries. According to Cockran, none of those selected to serve had “another occupation worth pursuing,” so the jury boxes were filled in the Mooney case, and others, with “the lame, the halt, the blind, the decrepit, and the worthless.” It was charged that many were either antilabor, friends with the prosecutor, looking for spoils, or a combination of all of these.
Mooney’s family and friends filled the courtroom. Mooney’s mother reportedly sat with her eyes shut and rocking back and forth, moaning during the proceedings. Rena Mooney’s sister sat in the courtroom, too, quietly crying. Meanwhile, Mooney’s friends claimed that they could see Assistant D.A. James “Jim” Brennan in his chair, as well as the D.A. Fickert, smiling throughout.12
Much excitement understandably surrounded the trial. Reporter Edward O’Connor described the mood in the courtroom during the Mooney trial that January, saying the air felt “charged with electricity.” “It was persecution, not prosecution that Mooney suffered when he stood trial,” he would remember. It became clear to him that Fickert still hoped to pin blame on Mooney, and public sentiment had been worked up against the state’s most famous suspect. The anti-Mooney crowds outside the courtroom did not help Mooney’s cause. They crowded the building to such an extent that not all could squeeze inside. Those inside the building filled the halls and packed the courtroom all the way to the rails by the counsel tables. According to O’Connor, “the whole city was anti-Mooney.” Cockran glibly said that if the case were tried in New York, he would have not been “one bit afraid of the verdict.”
During testimony, just as they did during the earlier Billings trial, the Edeaus again maintained on the stand that they saw Billings, Weinberg, and the Mooneys at the scene that day. However, when brought in to identify Mooney and Billings in jail, they “failed to identify” the men. Mrs. Edeau said, though, that “in her heart” and with the “brown eyes” of her dead husband telling her so, she knew Mooney and Billings were the guilty parties. Remarkably, their testimony was allowed before the jury as unimpeached and genuine.13
For their part, the defense again reasserted the failure of the Edeaus, during the Billings trial, to place the Mooneys or Weinberg on the scene at 721 Market. Yet, now during the proceedings of the Mooney trial, the defense noticed, they went into “elaborate” detail when discussing the Mooneys and Weinberg at or in front of the building there. Sadie Edeau now testified that she saw Billings, Tom, and Rena Mooney at the Kamm Building, half a mile from the bomb site, about 25 minutes before the blast. As she and her mother stood there to watch the parade, Sadie said she saw Billings walk, suitcase in hand, in the direction of where the explosion occurred. She also recalled a Ford car, being driven by Weinberg, arriving in front of the building a few minutes later. The Mooneys got in, she said, and drove off in the direction Billings had taken.14
Again a state witness, John McDonald, claimed to see Warren Billings walk north along Steuart Street, carrying a suitcase in his right hand, and set the case down near the saloon on the corner of Steuart and Market, taking glances at his watch. During his time on the stand, McDonald stated of Billings, “I noticed his actions right away” and paid close attention to him. McDonald claimed that he thought Billings was playing a joke on someone by grabbing the case. McDonald subsequently testified that Billings met Tom Mooney, who emerged from the saloon. Mooney, according to McDonald, also frequently checked his watch and the two had an extended conversation. Both men, according to McDonald, appeared very nervous and pulled out their watches before walking out through the parade in different directions. McDonald said he turned away and started to walk, but after about 100 ft, the explosions rang out. McDonald later identified Mooney and Billings after their arrest as the men he saw that day.15
McDonald’s past again caught some suspicion. At one point, McDonald was described as “a derelict of the San Francisco streets.” Mooney and Billings’ defenders also pointed out how McDonald, sometimes known as “McDaniels,” “was an associate of the lowest stratum of waterfront characters of the drug-using sort, living by his wits in the alleys of the city, working occasionally in five-cent lunch houses.” Mooney defenders later described McDonald as “a former circus acrobat … a tramp waiter and … also a drug addict.”16
For over a year, from July 30, 1916, until around October 1917, the man who described himself as “a waiter long out of work” seemed to benefit from being a staple state witness in the Billings and Mooney trials. McDonald, the defense said, “had been nearly all the time fed, clothed, housed and supplied with money” by the San Francisco Police Department. The man who struggled to find work, they said, could now be seen “pleasure riding in the luxurious automobile of the assistant district attorney.” They suggested all of this, clearly, to raise eyebrows at the treatment and possible conflicts of interest surrounding the testimony. Still, McDonald remained a perennial and important witness for the prosecution in, at minimum, the Billings, Mooney, and Weinberg cases. He had, after all, plainly testified first and said he saw Billings and Mooney together outside the saloon, moments before the blast, looking at their watches before walking away just moments ahead of the blast.17
The only person to seemingly corroborate McDonald’s testimony placing Mooney and Billings at the scene was strikebreaker John Crowley. Convicted of a felony (for marrying and giving his 17-year-old wife syphilis) and out on probation for stealing a watch at the time of his testimony, his credibility certainly came under fire. Beyond this, the defense committee raised, Crowley had been living with five men known as “female impersonators,” who “wore women’s clothes and had other men come spend the night in their apartments.” For Mooney defense committee partisans, it was “disagreeable” that “the scum of society” were employed by the prosecution.18 Despite being dubbed as “a sneak thief … who had been convicted of the most revolting felony … who is a habitué of houses where male perverts pick up their companions,” Crowley emerged as another key witness for the prosecution. He testified that he spotted Billings the day of the bombing, too, and only took notice of the accused because as “the colors” was played, Billings was the only man not to remove his hat. Crowley did not mention, though, Billings carrying a suitcase or accompanied by Mooney. Instead, Crowley claimed to see Billings with a tall, slender, mustachioed man, either “a Spaniard or Mexican.” There were, of course, accounts that described things differently. While he waited to march in the parade that afternoon, Hyman Myers, a Captain in the First Regiment of California Volunteers, failed to see anyone moving back and forth on Steuart Street. In fact, Captain Myers recalled, it was a “friendly crowd, the same you might find any day.”19
Yet, if the prosecution had a new star witness, it was a man named Frank Oxman. A horse dealer who had been traveling home from some business in Kansas City to Oregon, he had stopped in San Francisco. He planned to conduct some similar land dealings in the city that July and checked himself into the Terminal Hotel. The hotel happened to overlook the explosion site, and on the day of the parade, he went out onto the street to watch, crossing the street to buy some fruit before things got underway.20
Described as having a “sturdy frankness,” Oxman appeared disinterested on the stand, testified with an effortless simplicity, and offered remarkable detail. Even Judge Griffin commented on Oxman’s “unshaken” testimony. Even Oxman’s look, he said, seemed to lend to the witness’s strength. His very appearance, said Judge Griffin, “made a profound impression on the jury.” His time on the stand, in Griffin’s opinion, seemed to mark a turning point in the case. So, Oxman the Oregon cattle dealer, with the manner of a reputable and prosperous one, offered testimony inconsistent with McDonald’s that he saw Mooney riding in the front passenger seat of a Ford, driven by Israel Weinberg. In the back seat, he said, were Billings, Mrs. Mooney, and the “stubby mustached” man (presumably Ed Nolan). He claimed that, at 1:40, Mooney, Billings, and the mustachioed man jumped from the car with a tan, leather suitcase, which had been sitting on the car’s running board, and Billings “very excitedly” got out, shoved Oxman aside, and, with the mystery man (who was carrying the case), walked south on Steuart Street, eventually setting the case on the side of the building/saloon, following him close behind; then, the explosion rang out. The two men, he said, returned to the spot where Mooney was waiting. A conversation followed over the next two minutes, and Oxman reportedly heard Mooney say to Billings, “We must get away from there; the bulls will be after us.” Eventually, according to Oxman, they got back in the car and headed south. Oxman did write the number “5187,” the number of Weinberg’s car, on an envelope, as he had thought the group were thieves that had nabbed the case, rummaged through it, and then dumped it. He said he did not see the explosion, but heard it.
Oxman left town the next day, but representatives from the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office and the Police Department office came to visit him at his ranch in Oregon and ask some questions. Oxman agreed to come back to San Francisco and testify. There, he identified the jailed Mooney and Billings, with less certainty in identifying Weinberg, Nolan, and Rena Mooney. Despite a probing cross-examination from defense attorney W. Bourke Cockran about all of this, Oxman did not quiver, and it quickly became clear that his testimony could best advance the prosecution’s case.21
Without question, the Oxman testimony levied a blow against the defense, especially because he precisely and calmly delivered it. His story allowed for the Mooneys to both be on the corner of Market and Steuart, with time to return to the roof of the Eilers Building. His time on the stand had resonated in the court, indeed. Oxman’s testimony left such an impression that a Sunset magazine reporter confessed, “Without Oxman, had I been a juror, I might have returned a verdict of acquittal in the Mooney case; but with his testimony, under my oath, I would have been forced to convict.”22
Yet, a bit of mystery, and resulting skepticism from the defense, surrounded Oxman. Before he ever appeared on the witness stand, the defense did not know if there was a witness like him or that such a person would testify. The defense contended that his appearance and statements were “sheer invention” for two reasons. First, because he was able to specifically identify four people among “a congested mass of humanity” that the photographic evidence demonstrated. In addition, Oxman seemed a nefarious character to begin with. He had reportedly deserted his first wife and entered into a second and, as the defense charged, bigamous marriage. He had also been indicted for fraud. His neighbors in Illinois and Oregon “almost uniformly” testified to his “reputation to veracity.” Defenders went as far as to claim that Oxman took the stand “under the influence of liquor.” Fremont Older, who served as editor of the city’s Bulletin since 1895, was a frequent defender of the defenseless and critic of corporate and governmental power. “Oppression beyond a certain point will always result in violence,” he wrote. While he initially may have thought Mooney and Billings guilty, in the pages of his paper, he began to take a different tone, especially after more revelations about Oxman. Older took on the Mooney case in earnest and led the looks into Oxman’s past. He discovered that Oxman had participated in a number of fraudulent land deals in Indiana. He eventually concluded simply, “None of the five people who were arrested for the crime had anything to do with the commission of it.”23
As the defense noted, other problems with Oxman’s validity as a witness emerged under cross-examination as well. To begin, when police brought him in to identify the defendants, for each suspect, police called them in by name, essentially helping Oxman identify them. Also, as the prosecution reminded the court, organizers had diverted all jitney traffic from Market Street before 1 pm, and that afternoon the only car allowed down Market Street or to stop on Steuart Street was a police vehicle carrying Supervisor Gallagher and two newspaper reporters. During the trials of Mrs. Mooney and Weinberg, at least 18 police officers testified that no automobile could have passed down Market Street on the parade day, as Oxman claimed.24
In early February, whether Mooney and his team were ready or not, it came time for the jury to levy a verdict. After deliberating for six and half hours, the jury returned to the courtroom for the big moment. At 9 pm on the evening of February 10, 1917, jury foreman and local real estate man William MacNevin stood and announced: “We the jury, find the defendant, Thomas J. Mooney, guilty of murder in the first degree.” One brief flash of quiet met a yell from Mooney’s sister, Annie, who exclaimed, “Oh, my brother, my brother; Tom, Tom!” His mother yelped a similar, “My boy, my boy!” Other friends and family members fell to the floor. Mooney stood resolute, with his eyes fixed on the jury. He reportedly stared at them for about 30 seconds before letting out a wry smile. The state sentenced Mooney to be hanged on May 17, 1917.
Even though he had a death sentence, Mooney’s own union, Local No. 164 of the International Molders Union, elected him as a delegate to its 25th national convention in Rochester, New York, that year. A symbolic gesture, it demonstrated the labor community’s apparent support and resolve in what had the potential to be a long fight for Mooney’s freedom. Even though he had a death sentence, Mooney’s own union, Local No. 164 of the International Molders Union, elected him as a delegate to its 25th national convention in Rochester, New York, that year. A symbolic gesture, it demonstrated the labor community’s apparent support and resolve in what had the potential to be a long fight for Mooney’s freedom.
Eugene Debs received a telegram from San Francisco on February 24, 1917, from John Snyder at the Oakland World. Sentenced to hang, Mooney, in Snyder’s words, was “doomed” if labor organizations and the Socialist Party of America failed to rally support. “We are counting on you, Gene,” the note finished. Debs followed through and emotionally put it to socialists about Mooney that “he is to hang by the neck until he is dead” on May 17. In his editorial, Debs implored labor to help Mooney: “We can save him. We have got to save him … Every labor union and every Socialist local must swing into line,” he wrote.25
After the conviction, Mooney’s attorney W. Bourke Cockran immediately hit the lecture circuit on Mooney’s behalf. The International Workers’ Defense League sponsored talks like his in New York. Speaking on March 14 at Carnegie Hall, he put forth a theory as to where blame for the bombing might really rest. A Mexican, he proposed, enraged by the recent U.S. excursions across the border, might have set the bomb as retribution. He explained that this idea failed to see further inquiry because the San Francisco D.A. (Fickert) was content putting a former agent of the United Railroads of San Francisco (Swanson) in charge of the investigation and centering his attention on broader subversive elements in the United States. On Sunday, March 25, 1917, Cockran gave another address at a large mass meeting at Chicago’s Coliseum. Sponsored, in part, by the Chicago Federation of Labor, his talk made plain that police and local corporate interests had matter-of-factly blackballed Mooney, because, as a labor organizer, it was assumed by so many that Mooney must also be an anarchist up to this task. In his remarks, Cockran called the Mooney conviction “an absolute travesty of justice” and demanded a federal investigation, as the case’s outcome was “threatening all the state.” He spoke to a captivated and receptive crowd of 10,000 in Chicago, a city that had just experienced an injunction by local Judge Jesse Baldwin against a wage increase for ladies in the garment industry. They were more than willing to hoot, jeer, and groan at the mention of Judge Baldwin’s name. They applauded at Cockran’s assertion that the business interests of San Francisco, should they win, would bring “good-night to the American republic.” They clapped in agreement when Cockran returned to the Mooney case and Swanson’s leadership in a conspiracy against one individual, Tom Mooney himself.26
A small victory for the defense team came two months after Tom Mooney’s conviction, in April 1917, when the state released Edward Nolan. After nine months in jail, the state decided not to bring his case to trial. Detective Duncan Matheson, who had been placed in charge of the collective “bomb cases,” suggested to the court that the incriminating bomb materials found in Nolan’s basement (plaster of paris, black powder, and saltpeter) turned out to be more harmless: flour, moulder’s welding powder, and Epsom salts. When this revelation occurred, the prosecution brought in a “powder expert,” who testified that the salts could be used in a high explosive. Matheson recommended Nolan be released on bail, as the evidence did not warrant a trial. Photographers snapped pictures of him with his wife Ada as he left the county jail after those nine months. During his time in prison there, he was described “as brave and wise and true a fighter for liberty for the workers and as pure hearted an idealist as the American labor movement has ever been privileged to make a fight for.” On himself and the other defendants, he said, “They’ve got us in here now, but by God, we don’t intend to go down without making a fight out of it. That’s all we ask.”27
Just as both legal teams mobilized to either challenge or support the Mooney verdict, a bombshell came to light. The defense discovered two shocking letters written on Terminal Hotel stationery and penned by Frank Oxman. An attorney for Mooney, Edwin McKenzie, traveled to Grayville, Illinois, to the home of F.E. Rigall, and returned with the letters. The San Francisco Bulletin published copies of the letters on April 11. In them, with promises of covered expenses, Oxman wrote how he “need[ed] a witness,” presumably to echo him, and that he will post him on the questions he’d be asked. As they appeared in the Bulletin, the letters read:
Mr Ed Rigall,
Grayville, Ill.
Dear Ed has ben a Long time sence I hurd from you I have a chance for you to cum to San Frico as a Expurt Wittness in a very important case you will only hafto anscur 3 & 4 questiones and I will Post you on them you will get milegage and all that a witness can draw Proply 100 in the clearr so if you will come ans me quick in care of this Hotel and I will mange the Balance it is all ok but I need a wittness Let me no if you can come Jan 3 is the dait set for trile Pleas keep this confidential Answer hear
Yours Truly
F. C. OXMAN
Mr F. E. Rigall December 18, 1916
Grayville II
Dear Ed Your Telegram Recived I will wire you Transportation in Plenty of time allso Expce money will Route you by Chicago, Omaha U.P. Ogden S. P. to San Frico I thought you can make the Trip and see California and save a letle money as you will Be alowed to collect 10c Per mile from the state which will Be about 200 Besids I can get your Expences and you will only hafto Say you seen me on July 22 in San Frisco and that will Be Easey dun. I will try and meet you on the wa out and Tolk it over thu State of California will Pay you but I will attend to the Expces The case wont come up untill Jan 3 or 4 1917 so start about 29off this month. yon know that the silent Road is the one and say nuthing to any Body the fewer People no it the Better when you ariv Registure as Evansville Ind little more milege.
Yours truly
F. C. OXMAN
So, according to the defense, he was asking Rigall to arrive and provide false testimony against Mooney, though Rigall would not offer the testimony. Oxman, it seems, hoped Rigall could serve as “the boy” he claimed to see on parade day. While Oxman had presented himself in court, and as the prosecution echoed, as a “rich, respectable, disinterested cattle man from Oregon,” the letters proved damning.28
Rigall had, in fact, come to San Francisco at Oxman’s urging but quickly returned home to Illinois. He later claimed that during this visit, Oxman took him to the site of the explosion and together they rehearsed the testimony Rigall might give. Oxman, of course, encouraged Rigall to testify in a manner that substantiated his own testimony. Rigall later claimed to have a problem with this, telling Oxman he had never even been to San Francisco prior to this visit and certainly not on the day of the explosion; Oxman allegedly said, “Hell, you were here as much as I was!” In fact, on the day of the Preparedness bombing, July 22, Rigall was far from the West Coast in Niagara Falls, New York. The D.A.’s office later admitted they knew him to be “the bunk,” yet continued to promise that a witness named “Regal” would appear on the stand and validate Oxman’s testimony.29
With the Oxman letters now firmly in the public eye, Charles Fickert provided a lengthy statement to the local newspapers that they published on April 24, 1917. He began it by recounting some of the more horrific details of the attack, calling the defendants “anarchists and murderers.” He also chastised Fremont Older, the editor of The Bulletin for demanding an acquittal of “red-handed murderers, the blood of whose innocent victims calls aloud, not for vengeance, but for the just retribution of the law.” Fickert appealed to the residents of San Francisco to uphold and support the verdict, so that “San Francisco is not made the home and refuge of anarchism.” The Chamber of Commerce’s “Law and Order Committee,” chaired by Frederick J. Koster, echoed the D.A.’s sentiments, and that weekend ran full-page ads, under the caption “Law and Order,” in all of the city’s newspapers. The ads aimed to remind the city of the crime committed and to keep vigilant, given the distractions of the now-prominent war cause, as radicals hoped to “take full advantage” of redirecting public attention to “spread again their doctrine of anarchy.” About 25 representatives of organized labor, calling themselves a “committee of citizens,” responded with a similar advertisement two days later (under the same banner of “Law and Order”) and asked for an investigation into the possibility of perjury. Obviously, the Oxman letters empowered labor organizers and Mooney advocates to continue to question Fickert, the prosecution, and the verdict’s legitimacy.
Amid all of the swirling fallout from her husband’s verdict and now the Oxman letters, Rena Mooney also got her time in court. Her trial began on May 21, 1917. Judge Seawell presided, after the voluntary withdrawal of Judge Dunne. Expected to take only a month, the trial would last twice that, moving well into July.30
From the outset, the prosecution attempted to portray her, like her husband and comrades, as a radical unionist. Dictaphone recordings of Charles Fickert purportedly made plain his plans to get “that son-of-a-bitch Mrs. Mooney.” At the start of the proceedings, the D.A. stood before the court and asked for the death penalty in his opening statement. Rena Mooney was a “cold-blooded slaughterer of women and children,” he said, involved in the explosion the previous July. He compared Mrs. Mooney to Mrs. Surratt of the Lincoln assassination conspiracy, and said that she should shed her blood for the murder, just as Surratt did. The climax of his remarks was the statement to the jury, “Either you will destroy anarchy or the anarchists will destroy the State.”
Fickert hammered at this portrayal of Mrs. Mooney. The prosecution claimed that during the attempted strike of the United Railroads men, she “violently attacked” a motorman on July 14, 1916. The evidence, the defense would later counter, showed that she did in fact climb over the side of a streetcar but to pin a union button on a motorman named Peterson. During the trial, too, the district attorney further alleged that as she watched the parade file past, Mrs. Mooney said, “What a beautiful mess I could make of those marchers with a machine gun.” Unsurprisingly, none of the witnesses on the roof with her made this kind of declaration. Still, this characterization, however substantiated or not, composed a key part of the prosecution’s attacks on Rena Mooney.31
In reality, Mrs. Mooney had worked as a music teacher of some note in California. Some of her pupils even performed at the Panama-Pacific Exposition, and organizers set time aside at the event in their honor. Her defenders emphasized the broader defense claim that she “has no other interest in life” than her dedication to her students. Rena Mooney was not the gentle music teacher she claimed to be, alleged Fickert, who claimed she had “almost all known books on anarchy and revolution.” She was, according to him, “filled with rage and a desire to commit violence.”32
As far as her explanation for her activities on the day of the bombing, Rena Mooney claimed to have led a studio class in the Eilers Building on July 22, 1916. Her practice space for her students, which Fickert called a “den,” had a piano in the center of the room and two smaller ones on one wall. Shelves of music books were stacked on the opposite wall. The studio’s building, to commemorate the patriotism of the day’s events, was draped in a huge American flag. Tom had run out for breakfast that morning and claimed to stay in the rest of the day. Rena had left for some shopping during the morning with one of her pupils, before returning for late morning instruction until about 12:30. At around 1:30, Mrs. Mooney’s sister, Belle Hammerberg, and her cousin, a Mrs. Timberlake, arrived. When they heard the music from the parade, they headed to the roof of the building, mingling with others there for the same purpose. Subsequent photos showed her and Tom on the roof of the studio building, where they also lived on the fifth floor at the time, looking down on the parade. The prosecution, meanwhile, put them at the scene of the explosion on the lower end of Market Street. The photo with the clock hands, as an alibi, existed, but the Mooneys did not know about it and the State only gave it up due to a court order, though the hands of the clock were attempted to be tampered with. The “clock alibi” was an important part of the case, and a photograph expert was again called in to restore the picture and reveal the hour clearly.33
During the two months of the Rena Mooney trial, the prosecution called 126 witnesses to the stand. Nellie Edeau, dubbed “a dressmaker with hallucinations,” and her daughter Sadie, “who sees just what her mother sees,” again offered, as far as the defense was concerned, suspicious testimony. They claimed that the Edeaus were “fully unmasked” when brought to San Francisco, and when shown Mooney and Billings, Mrs. Edeau said she “had never seen either of them before in her life.” Edeau was later charged with perjury. Another key repeat prosecution witness, John McDonald, followed up his earlier and certain testimony that placed Mooney and Billings at the scene and then their hasty departure out into the crowd. McDonald, a witness who had great significance in convicting Billings and Tom Mooney, continued to receive sharp criticism. Alexander Berkman, far from an objective source, nevertheless continued to describe him as “a man-about-town of the lowest character, a dope fiend who would sell his mother’s womb for a smell of opium.”34
When she took the stand in her own defense on July 16, Mrs. Mooney testified “with no indication of nervousness,” giving a detailed description of her movements on the previous July 22, the now-infamous bombing day. She coolly recounted being either in her apartment or on the roof that day, never going near the scene of the explosion. Mrs. Fickert came to the courtroom during the trial’s final days and she sat, according to Mooney’s friends, with her knitting in hand and “with a happy party of friends” watching Rena Mooney’s fate unfold.35
While rumors circulated that the jury stood at 9 to 2 for acquittal, the jurors in the Rena Mooney trial remained deadlocked behind closed doors on July 24. Only “frequent loud talking” could be heard, indicating “serious difference of opinion.” The next day, the court acquitted Rena Mooney—yet for only one of the nine indictments against her, so she remained in jail. As her defenders charged, she and Israel Weinberg were thrown back in jail, despite their acquittals, because of the “Chamber of Commerce partisan tool Judge Dunne.” Some said that Fickert remained determined to try her again and again until he secured a conviction.36
On August 4, 1917, approximately 150 schoolchildren, many of them her past pupils, took to the streets on behalf of Mrs. Mooney. Mary Mooney, Tom’s mother and her mother-in-law, organized the boys and girls in their protest. Wearing red armbands and carrying banners reading, “We Want Mrs. Mooney Free” and “We Love Our Music Teacher: Set Her Free,” the boys and girls paraded to the hall of justice. Tom Mooney reportedly waved to the children from his cell in the county jail, located next to the hall of justice.37
Acts of protest to the verdicts started to occur far from San Francisco too. Certainly, in the words of the press, Tom Mooney had become a “cause celebre” for labor activists and others, culminating, perhaps, with the demonstrations outside the American Embassy and before the U.S. Ambassador’s home in Petrograd, Russia. Many Russian exiles returned after the Revolution and brought with them tales of the unfolding Mooney case. While characterized as a “mob of radicals,” the demonstrators in Petrograd hoped to show support for who they called “a Socialist named Mooney,” one of their own in the United States. This mass protest certainly drew more U.S. and international attention to the Mooney case. “Our government,” the Philadelphia Public Ledger argued, “is having enough difficulty already in convincing revolutionary Russia that we are indeed a liberal, democratic and justice-loving nation. We should not add to the burden by executing Mooney without retrial.”1
Retrials were certainly on the mind of Mooney and Billings supporters, and in coming months and years, a complex series of legal maneuverings, challenges, and appeals unfolded. In trial after trial, from the rulings in the Billings case to Mrs. Mooney’s decision, as some in the press observed, the testimony “hopelessly contradicted each other.” Often with continually new and sometimes conflicting testimony, the legal battle to exonerate the convicted drew national and international attention, and the fight for Mooney and against the state looked like it would reach the highest levels. While nothing would be solved in the short term, his longer fate appeared tenuous.38
Billings began his formal appeal in February 1917. Much of the attention of the appeal, as it had in earlier proceedings, centered on the building at 721 Market Street, a two-story building about 4,000 ft. from the explosion site. A school principal from Hawaii named Herbert Wade arrived just after 1 pm. He had just bought a new watch at Sorenson’s jewelry store a few days earlier, and took note of the time, checking how the new watch kept time compared to a Market Street clock. When he arrived at the building, he took a moment to look at the display case on the street level. Full of exhibited teeth, the box showcased the work of the dentist in the building he was there to see. As he prepared to head upstairs for his dental work, Wade claimed to see Warren Billings wearing a gray suit and hat and carrying a small, dark red suitcase, smaller than an ordinary one, preceding him up to the dental office. A police officer by the name of Earl Moore testified that he noticed a single Ford car, distinguishing because it had a tear or scratch on its backseat, parked in front of the building and blowing its horn. While unsure of the precise time, Officer Moore claimed to see Billings, too, but with no suitcase and his hands in his pockets and on the sidewalk. When the cop asked Billings about the driver, Billings replied, “I don’t know; he will be here in a minute” and walked away. After Israel Weinberg’s arrest, Officer Moore inspected his car and he claimed it was the same Ford with the marked backseat. Nellie Edeau, the dressmaker from Oakland, also claimed to see Billings on the roof of the building, spotting him high above and later in conversation with Officer Moore. She remembered Billings because of his pale face and light-colored hat. Her daughter Sadie also claimed to see Billings on the roof, and as he leaned over, she thought he might fall. In sum, conflicting reports about the whereabouts of the suspects persisted. The defense, quite simply, claimed again during appeals that the state was trying to put Billings in three places at the same time. According to the defense, the various identifications of Billings at or around 721 Market Street “would be amusing if the situation were not so serious.”39
Attention also turned to Billings’ alleged weaponry and preparations during his appeal. At the time of the attack, Billings lived in a rooming house run by Mrs. Belle Lavin at 2410 Mission Street. His room sat unmarked by a number, and it was at the top of the stairs, on the right-hand side of the hall. The authorities, led by Martin Swanson “of the Gas Company,” went there to search the home. Mrs. Lavin allowed them to look around and they discovered, inside a drawer, a can that contained .22 caliber bullets and one .38 caliber bullet, as well as some ball bearings. They also found a pistol wrapped in a white cloth and folded into Billings’ overalls. The state further maintained that Billings (accompanied by Mooney, of course) used dynamite in the attack. Coming with the use of this explosive would surely have been a distinct odor and a cloud of smoke. As the defense pointed out with testimony from a number of individuals, however, the accounts varied widely, and they maintained the lack of certainty. The State’s explosives expert, John Shaw, could only say a “high explosive” was employed but could not definitely identify its type of detonation apparatus.40
The court determined that Billings’ previous case had been heard “with absolute fairness and impartiality,” and deemed prior proceedings “sufficient … to support the verdict.” The district court of appeal denied his petition for a rehearing.41
The same month, Mooney’s lawyers and defense also filed almost immediate appeals, and his formal appeal began before the California Supreme Court in September 1917. Mooney’s lawyers for the proceedings were John Lawlor and Maxwell McNutt. They based their appeal and the ongoing Mooney defense on, in addition to procedural matters (notably, the denial of a motion for a new trial), what they alleged amounted to insufficient and “wholly circumstantial” evidence and the reasonable doubt surrounding the link between the explosives and Mooney or Billings. The prosecution lacked, according to one account, “one scintilla” of direct evidence linking Mooney or his associates to the production and placing of the bomb. Instead, the state continued to rely on the circumstantial associations of Mooney and his colleagues as proponents of “direct action” as a tactic for labor and radical agendas. Twenty pages of one prosecution brief, for example, outlined the “History of Thomas J. Mooney, Revolutionary Anarch.” Elsewhere, it mentioned in a caption “all defendants connected with ‘Blast.’” One prosecution witness, Mrs. Kidwell, recalled sitting at the window of the dentist’s office at 721 Market, waving an American flag at the soldiers who filed past. While she patriotically waved her flag, she testified that she spotted Tom and Rena Mooney standing in front of the building and with them was a “Mexican looking man.” All three, she said on the stand, looked up at the building and also seemed angry with her for waving the flag. For the prosecution, this type of alleged behavior, and testimony, demonstrated the radical and anti-American leanings of the accused.42
The prosecution had also relied, Mooney’s lawyers contested, on incriminatory and contradictory testimony witnesses who had raised eyebrows during the Mooney trial. Indeed, only three witnesses offered material testimony against Tom Mooney: Frank Oxman, John McDonald, and the Edeaus (really considered one in the same, as they had given similar statements). There remained significant problems with all three, the defense maintained.
The collective Edeau testimony saw impeachment because of their failure to actually identify Mooney and Billings. Attention turned to Oxman. Not only were his revealed letters to Rigall incriminating but also his testimony proved suspect, as no jitneys were allowed on the streets where he claimed to see Weinberg’s car with Mooney and Billings in it. Also, there emerged a fundamental contradiction in the Oxman testimony: at the time of the crime, he had said he spotted Mooney and Billings drive down Market, get out, set down the suitcase, and then drive off. McDonald, though, had Billings walking down Steuart Street, waiting a few moments, and then walking through the crowd. McDonald did not see Mooney. So, one of them was, at best, inaccurate or, at worst, lying. As it turned out later, McDonald confessed to the California Supreme Court that he lied when he placed Mooney and Billings with a suitcase on the corner of Market and Steuart streets before the bomb went off.43
During the proceedings, the defense called dozens of witnesses. A key point of the defense’s case lineup of witnesses was placing the Mooneys at the Eilers Building studio. This spot, it was important to establish, stood approximately a mile and a half from the explosion site. In addition, a line of witnesses was to demonstrate that the Mooneys were at the Eilers Building for both an hour before and after the blast. A number of the witnesses for the defense put Tom and Rena Mooney either at their home at 975 Market St. or on the roof of that building. Three photos, taken from the west of the Eilers Building and looking down Market, showed Mr. and Mrs. Mooney, and photographic experts confirmed that a Market Street clock showed the times as 1:58, 2:01, and 2:04. So, based purely on the photographic evidence, the Mooneys were accounted for on the building. The defense also explained the related problem with John McDonald’s testimony, where he claimed he saw Billings at “eight or ten minutes to two.”44
After the close of the Billings trial and as the state prepared for the Mooney trial, new questions also surfaced surrounding the photographic evidence being employed, as the photos employed during the trials became significant evidence. Mooney had firmly testified during the Billings trial that he and Rena were on the roof of the Eilers Building. Charles Fickert offered photos from a Brownie camera in his possession that showed the rooftop and the defense hoped Mooney would be pictured. The defense persuaded the court to order the pictures handed over, but when they arrived, they were dim and of low quality. After Billings’ conviction, the defense also insisted upon new and higher quality copies of the photos in question. Wade Hamilton, who worked as a clerk for Eilers Music Company next door, took three photos of the parade on Market Street that day, and the prosecution used pictures as evidence during the Billings trial. They seemed to show in the foreground people on the roofs of the buildings watching the parade. The defense, however, asked for the films, which the prosecution could not produce, but they did provide enlargements of the photos. Prior to the Mooney trial, the defense asked Judge Griffin to order the release of the films and the police department delivered the films. Upon inspection under a microscope and magnified 25,000 times, the new prints and their view of the Market Street clock showed the three times: 1:58, 2:01, and 2:04. At the studio of Theodore Kytka, under police supervision, these enlargements showed Mrs. Mooney in the 1:58 one, and Tom and Rena (and others) in the 2:01 and 2:04 ones. Other photos produced also showed the group on the roof at 2:10 and between 2:45 and 3:00. These photos and times, with Mooney on the rooftop, already seemed to refute the assertion by the prosecution, and the McDonald testimony, that placed Mooney at or near the scene of the explosion.45
Fascination with the unfolding events in California caught the attention of newspaper editors across the country, who asked their reporters to head west and generate objective looks at the case. The Survey—for some, a rather conservative New York paper—sent its correspondent John Fitch to California to examine the bomb case and the Oxman perjury. His piece, which aimed to offer an unbiased review, appeared in July and found itself reprinted in labor and left papers like Organizer Labor. He concluded, “It’s a very strange case … perhaps it can’t be understood.” Fitch stayed in the city for two weeks, interviewing lawyers on both sides, examining records, and speaking to citizens. He left, wondering aloud in his piece: “Are the defendants guilty … I do not know.” While he sat in the office of Edward Cunha, the Assistant District Attorney, Cunha made the prosecution’s unyielding stance clear as he bounded from his chair and paced the room, saying to Fitch: “They’re a bunch of dirty anarchists, every one of them, and they ought to be in jail on general principles. I’m disgusted with all this outcry over Mooney – making a hero of him, when he’s an anarchist and a murderer. If he ought to be out of jail, let him get out. The courts are open to him. But I’m not going to help.” He scoffed at Judge Griffin’s call for a new trial and reminded the reporter how Griffin “almost cried” when he learned that the police searched The Blast offices without a warrant. Cunha could not believe that the attempted assassin of Frick and a “bunch of anarchists” would receive such sympathy.46
Despite what the leftist press called a “farcical trial,” the California Supreme Court confirmed the death sentence for Mooney. The decision upheld, ominous possibilities circulated—including a “nation-wide upheaval of labor,” as some promised in papers like the Philadelphia Public Ledger—that Mooney’s execution would only “throw a match into the explosive labor situation.”47
The next month, in October 1917, the state tried Israel Weinberg. To much less fanfare, this trial concluded quickly on November 27, 1917, with an acquittal of the murder charge on the first ballot. The jury deliberated for about 20 minutes. Now, the acquittals and problems with witness testimony only complicated the logic of the prosecution’s determinations to consider all of the defendants as one. The defense later pointed out the flaw in this position, of course, in light of the acquittals for Rena Mooney and Israel Weinberg.48
Meanwhile, the California Supreme Court ordered a recall election for Charles Fickert in November 1917. It came, according to the paper, “as an outgrowth of the Mooney bomb prosecutions.” Behind the scenes, Mooney supporters even claimed, Fickert offered bribes to several individuals to testify against Mooney. Fickert allegedly approached Arthur Silkwood of the Electrical Workers’ Union 151 and told him to testify or he would “get his job and let his family starve.” Silkwood remained resolute. Fickert supposedly contacted Warren Billings and offered him a job with the Gas Company in return for testifying against Mooney. Billings allegedly told Fickert, “Go to hell.” Finally, the D.A. reached out to Israel Weinberg and promised $5,000 to him if he helped “get” Mooney, though Weinberg refused. Yet, with the support of Theodore Roosevelt, business leaders, and the Chamber of Commerce, Fickert survived the recall easily.49
At the American Federation of Labor’s (AFL) annual convention that fall, Woodrow Wilson spoke on behalf of the war effort and the helpful role labor could play. Collectively, the labor organization focused on this case, doubted the prosecution’s honesty, denounced the Mooney trial (noticing the “gravest doubt” surrounding the testimony), endorsed the formation of the President’s special commission, and demanded a retrial for the five accused. During the proceedings in Buffalo that November, AFL delegates adopted a lengthy formal resolution outlining these demands. “Without such new trials,” they declared in the statement, “there will remain the firm conviction that a grave miscarriage of justice has been allowed with the knowledge of the authorities.” State labor conventions quickly followed suit. Also, by this point, at least ten California judges had examined the case and declared there enough to warrant a new trial, particularly in light of the charges of subornation and perjury.50
Those in the press that supported Mooney and his fellow defendants hoped that help and intervention might come from outside of California. For both “national and international reasons,” the New York Globe called upon the President to intervene, even indirectly, because of the jurisdiction of courts. If other business consumed his time, the editors called on other national leaders like Elihu Root, Theodore Roosevelt, or Samuel Gompers to look into and report on what was already known as “the Mooney case.” Many publicly echoed this sentiment and called on President Wilson to act.51
Wilson heard these demands and he ordered the Federal Mediation Commission to conduct an investigation of the case. Direct presidential involvement was significant and in some ways unusual. It spoke to the importance of the case and its legal fallout for labor across the country. As the Newark News wrote, “Something more is at stake than one man’s life.”52 Appointed by Wilson in late 1917, the Commission conducted an exhaustive investigation. Its Chairman was the Secretary of Labor William B. Wilson. Other members included John Spangler of Pennsylvania; E.P. Marsh of Washington; Verner Reed of Colorado; John Walker of Illinois; Felix Frankfurter of Massachusetts, who acted as Secretary and Counsel; and Max Lowenthal, who took the role of Assistant Secretary. Secretary of Labor Wilson appointed these members and led the committee in its fact finding.53
The Commission made its findings public in the middle of January 1918. In its report, the Commission first offered some background observations about the case: “Without question, the explosion was murder designed on a large scale,” they admitted, and stood as a “most heinous crime.” The “threatening” pre-parade letters, moreover, “undoubtedly had a common source,” though the authorities did not find the letters “significant,” nor were they able to identify the author(s). Indeed, the Commission determined, Mooney, at the time of his arrest, was a “well-known labor radical” on the west coast, who “associated with anarchists,” and was an advocate of “direct action.” Undeniable, the Commissioners decided, was that Mooney and his wife were “leaders in a bitter and unsuccessful fight” to organize the carmen of the United Railroads of San Francisco. The connections to this labor action and the attempts to connect him to the dynamiting of the Pacific Gas & Electric Co. remained important context in considering Mooney’s case, they wrote.
The Commission also identified what they called a number of “peculiar elements” surrounding the case. For example, they admitted that the utilities Mooney had agitated against “sought ‘to get’” Mooney. Swanson, a private detective, they determined, orchestrated the investigation that fueled the prosecution, attempted to associate Mooney with the electric tower dynamiting earlier in the year, and, along the way, offered to “reward” Billings and Weinberg for implicating Mooney. He shifted from this investigation and work, once the explosion occurred, to working directly for the district attorney and police during their investigation. Mooney and the others were arrested within four days of Swanson coming on board. The Commission recognized that the case was “a clash of forces of wide significance,” as San Francisco was “a community long in the grip of bitter labor struggles.” As a result, public opinion easily swayed against the accused, aided by “the arts of modern journalism,” a reference to the new sensational journalistic stylings of the era. Speaking to the long and antagonistic history of labor and capital in and around San Francisco, this case reaffirmed, in the Commission’s mind, the existence of “an old industrial feud.”
They also found “ground[s] for disquietude.” Citing the Oxman testimony, they noted that his “convincing detail” placed Mooney and Billings at the right place at the right time to incriminate them for the attack. Yet, after Mooney’s conviction came a number of pre-testimony letters from Oxman that incriminated him, essentially corroboration of the testimony he was to—and did—give. After the revelation of the Oxman letters, Judge Griffin called on the state’s Attorney General U.S. Webb to begin taking steps for a retrial. In a letter to Webb, Griffin wrote: “They [the Oxman letters] bear directly upon the credibility of the truth of the story told by Oxman on the witness stand. Had they been before me at the time of the hearing of the motion for new trial, I would have unhesitatingly have granted it.” Because the trial was now beyond his control, he urged Webb to see the case back to court for retrial. He recognized the “unusual character of such a request” from a trial court (and could not think of a precedent), but saw no margin for error when “a human life is at stake.”54
As of January 1918, the Commission outlined the “present status” of the case. The Attorney General had asked the Supreme Court, in light of the Oxman revelations, for a new trial. The Court, under law, found itself unable to “consider matters outside the record.” So, the case fettered on appeal. Meanwhile, in “the East,” they noticed, there emerged a great interest in the case and the “meetings of protest” in Russia showed its reach. So, this spirit of protest and “the liberal sentiment … was aroused” in Russia and the United States, with the firm belief of many that the criminal justice system was intentionally or unintentionally working against the cause of labor “by its enemies in an industrial conflict.” The Commission certainly realized in their report that the case and its influence extended well beyond California and, if not handled well, could prove disastrous in a myriad of ways.
As 1918 began, the Wilson Commission made a number of recommendations. They asked that if the Supreme Court found it necessary, because of the jurisdictional limitations, to uphold the Mooney conviction, that the Governor of California, working with the prosecution, consider a path to a new trial. They also suggested postponing Mooney’s execution until a new trial could be considered. Wilson’s Commission warned “the feeling of disquietude aroused by the case must be heeded, for if unchecked, it impairs the faith that our democracy protects the lowliest and even the unworthy against false accusations,” which served as a strong warning to get the process right, so as to not shake confidence in “the system.” On the heels of the Commission’s findings, President Wilson personally asked Governor Stephens to grant Mooney clemency.55
Tom Mooney waited.
1 Robert Minor, “The Suitcase Ghost,” International Socialist Review, 1916, 424–425.
1 The Sun (Baltimore, MD), June 2, 1929; The Survey 38 (May 5, 1917), 124; Philadelphia Public Ledger, September 25, 1917.
1 Maxwell McNutt. “Petition for Pardon for Thomas Mooney. Before the Governor of California,” April 8, 1918, MICH, 46; Alexander Berkman, “Legal Assassination,” Mother Earth 11 (October 1916).
2 Theodora Pollock, “Will Labor Stand,” International Socialist Review, 1916, 362; Minor, “Frame Up,” 8–13.
3 Alexander Berkman, “Legal Assassination,” Mother Earth 11 (October 1916); McNutt, “Petition for Pardon,” 15–16.
4 Appellant’s Opening Brief, The People of California vs. Warren K. Billings (February 1917), Labadie/Michigan Collections, 49–51.
5 Pollock, “Will Labor Stand,” 360–361. Chicago Sunday Tribune, September 28, 1919; Nye, “Justice for Tom Mooney,” 16. Later allegations later came out that Frank Oxman offered her “a sum of five figures” to similarly testify against Weinberg. John A. Fitch, “The San Francisco Bomb Cases,” The Survey 38 (July 7, 1917): 310.
6 Pollock, “Will Labor Stand,” 360–361.
7 Fitch, “The San Francisco Bomb Cases,” 306.
8 Minor, “Frame Up,” 16; Fitch, “The San Francisco Bomb Cases,” 306.
9 Pollock, “Will Labor Stand,” 360–361; Minor, “Frame-Up,” 11; Alexander Berkman, “Legal Assassination,” Mother Earth 11 (October 1916).
10 McNutt, “Petition for Pardon,” 17–18; Opening Brief, The People of California vs. Warren K. Billings (February 1917), Labadie/Michigan Collections, 8.
11 Red Bluff Daily News, January 4, 1917; Theodora Pollock, “Will Labor Stand,” International Socialist Review, 1916, 360; “A Lynch Jury in San Francisco Convicts Thomas Mooney,” Mother Earth 12 (March 1917).
12 Minor, “Shall Mooney Hang?” 5, 37–38; Cockran, “A Heinous Plot.”
13 Fitch, “The San Francisco Bomb Cases,” 309.
14 Chicago Sunday Tribune, September 28, 1919.
15 Chicago Sunday Tribune, September 28, 1919; McNutt, “Petition for Pardon,” 6–7; Opening Brief, The People of California vs. Warren K. Billings (February 1917), MICH, 8; Appellant’s Opening Brief, The People of California vs. Thomas J. Mooney (September 1917), MICH, 9.
16 Chicago Sunday Tribune, September 28, 1919; Minor, “Frame-Up,” 10; Nye, “Justice for Tom Mooney,” 13.
17 Minor, “Frame-Up,” 10. Cockran, “A Heinous Plot;” Alexander Berkman, “Legal Assassination,” Mother Earth 11 (October 1916). Chicago Sunday Tribune, September 28, 1919; Maxwell McNutt. “Petition for Pardon for Thomas Mooney. Before the Governor of California.” April 8, 1918. MICH, 6–7.
18 Minor, “Frame-Up,” 10.
19 Pollock, “Will Labor Stand,” 360–361; Opening Brief, The People of California vs. Warren K. Billings (February 1917), MICH, 12, 17.
20 Chicago Sunday Tribune, September 28, 1919; Fitch, “The San Francisco Bomb Cases,” 308.
21 Nye, “Justice for Tom Mooney,” 18. Appellant’s Opening Brief, The People of California vs. Thomas J. Mooney (September 1917), MICH, 10; Chicago Sunday Tribune, September 28, 1919.
22 Fitch, “The San Francisco Bomb Cases,” 309.
23 McNutt, “Petition for Pardon,” 23–28; Nye, “Justice for Tom Mooney,” 12; International Socialist Review 17 (May 1917): 677; The Survey 38 (May 5, 1917), 124; Older, My Own Story, 196–197.
24 Without question, many questions surrounded Oxman as a character and as a witness. McNutt, “Petition for Pardon,” 29–30; Nye, “Justice for Tom Mooney,” 9.
25 International Socialist Review 17 (April 1917): 613–614; Constantine, Letters, 288.
26 New York Times, March 15, 1917; W. Bourke Cockran, “A Heinous Plot: An Expose of the Frame-Up System in the San Francisco Bomb Cases Against Billings, Mooney, Mrs. Mooney, Weinberg and Nolan” (Chicago, IL: Chicago Federation of Labor, 1917); The Day Book, March 26, 1917.
27 Maxwell McNutt. “Petition for Pardon for Thomas Mooney. Before the Governor of California.” April 8, 1918, MICH, 13; Minor, “Shall Mooney Hang,” 4; Theodora Pollock, “Will Labor Stand,” International Socialist Review, 1916, 363. Tom Mooney Molders Defense Committee, “Fickert Has Ravished Justice,” n.d.
28 Nye, “Justice for Tom Mooney,” 10; John A. Fitch, “The San Francisco Bomb Cases,” The Survey 38 (July 7, 1917): 310; McNutt, “Petition for Pardon,” 23–28.
29 Nye, “Justice for Tom Mooney,” 11; Organized Labor, July 14, 1917.
30 Red Bluff Daily News, May 22, 1917.
31 Bruce Watson, Sacco and Vanzetti: The Men, the Murders, and the Judgment of Mankind (New York: Penguin, 2007), 91; New York Times, July 19, 1917; McNutt, “Petition for Pardon,” 72.
32 Minor, “Shall Mooney, MICH,” 7; “Reply to the Findings … C.M. Fickert, April 9, 1918.”
33 Tom Mooney Molders Defense Committee, “Fickert Has Ravished Justice,” n.d., 8; TMDC Press Release, October 1931, Berkman, 367, IISH; Appellant’s Opening Brief, The People of California vs. Thomas J. Mooney (September 1917), MICH, 7, 55–57.
34 Chicago Sunday Tribune, September 28, 1919; New York Times, July 19, 1917. Organized Labor, July 14, 1917; Alexander Berkman, “Legal Assassination,” Mother Earth 11 (October 1916).
35 Sacramento Union, July 17, 1917; Minor, “Shall Mooney Hang?” 4.
36 The charge was ostensibly for the same crime of murder. Los Angeles Herald, July 24, 1917; Tom Mooney Molders Defense Committee, “Fickert Has Ravished Justice,” n.d. Minor, “Shall Mooney Hang?” 4.
37 Sacramento Union, August 5, 1917.
38 Organized Labor, July 14, 1917.
39 Appellant’s Opening Brief, The People of California vs. Warren K. Billings (February 1917), Labadie/Michigan Collections. 29–32, 34–6, 69, 72; McNutt, “Petition for Pardon,” 12.
40 Appellant’s Opening Brief, The People of California vs. Warren K. Billings (February 1917), Labadie/Michigan Collections. 52–53, 21–23.
41 The California Supreme Court confirmed this decision on November 5, 1917. The People, Respondent, v. Warren K. Billings, Appellant. Crim. No. 667. Court of Appeal of California, First District. September 6, 1917.
42 Appellant’s Opening Brief, The People of California vs. Thomas J. Mooney (September 1917), Labadie/Michigan Collections. 2, 13–16; Organized Labor, July 14, 1917. Chicago Sunday Tribune, September 28, 1919; McNutt, 70; Maxwell McNutt. “Petition for Pardon for Thomas Mooney. Before the Governor of California.” April 8, 1918, MICH, 11–12.
43 McNutt, “Petition for Pardon,” 19–23, 31, 32; Nye, “Justice for Tom Mooney,” 12–13. TMDC Press Release, October 1931, Berkman, IISH, 367.
44 Chicago Sunday Tribune, September 28, 1919; Appellant’s Opening Brief, The People of California vs. Thomas J. Mooney (September 1917), Labadie/Michigan Collections, 12; Appellant’s Opening Brief, The People of California vs. Warren K. Billings (February 1917), Labadie/Michigan Collections, 8.
45 Fitch, “The San Francisco Bomb Cases,” 308; McNutt, “Petition for Pardon,” 43–45. Another account says Hamilton took four, not three photos. Chicago Sunday Tribune, September 28, 1919.
46 Organized Labor, July 14, 1917; Fitch, “The San Francisco Bomb Cases,” 305.
47 New York Globe, September 15, 1917; Philadelphia Public Ledger, September 25, 1917.
48 Minor, “Shall Mooney Hang?” 4; Constantine, Letters, 390.
49 Los Angeles Herald, November 8, 1917; Minor, “The Frame-Up System,” 5.
50 “The President and Tom Mooney,” The Literary Digest 57 (April 13, 1918): 14–15; Minor, “Shall Mooney Hang?” 48; Philadelphia Public Ledger (Philadelphia, PA), September 25, 1917.
51 New York Globe, September 15, 1917.
52 “The President and Tom Mooney,” The Literary Digest 57 (April 13, 1918): 14–15.
53 Nye, “Justice for Tom Mooney,” 15; Wilson Commission/Mediation Report, January 16, 1918, MICH.
54 Wilson Commission Mediation Report, January 16, 1918, MICH.
55 Haldeman-Julius, “The Amazing Frameup,” UCLA, 13; “The President and Tom Mooney,” The Literary Digest 57 (April 13, 1918): 14–15.