Tom
Mooney, the son of Irish immigrants,
was born in Chicago on 8th December,
1882. Mooney's father was a coal miner who died of tuberculosis at
the age of 36.
When
he was fourteen Mooney started work at a local factory. The following
year he was apprenticed as an iron molder and in 1902 joined the International
Molders Union. When he saved enough money Mooney went to Europe and
visited Ireland, England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany, Hungary,
Switzerland and Italy. While in a Rotterdam art museum he met Nicholas
Klein, an American who was in Europe for a meeting of the International
Socialist Congress. By the time Mooney returned to the United
States he was a committed socialist and had begun reading the
works of Karl Marx.
In
March 1908 Mooney found work as an iron molder in Stockton. Soon afterwards
he joined the Socialist Party of America
and played an active role in the presidential campaign of Eugene
V. Debs. After the unsuccessful political campaign Mooney returned
to Chicago where he spent twelve hours
a day in the reference library reading books on socialism.
In
1909 Mooney found work in an Idaho iron foundry. The following year
he represented his party at the International Socialist Congress in
Copenhagen and met with leaders of the Labour
Party in England. On his return he settled in San
Francisco where he became a member of the Industrial
Workers of the World (IWW).
Over the next few years Mooney became friendly with some of IWW's
leading figures such as William Haywood,
Mary 'Mother' Jones and Elizabeth
Gurley Flynn.
Mooney
married Rena Hermann in 1911. He also
became the publisher of The Revolt,
a socialist newspaper in San Francisco.
The paper was a great success and acquired a circulation of 1,500.
Mooney also ran as the Socialist Party candidate for Sheriff.
In
September 1913 Mooney was asked by Edgar Hurley, a local trade unionist,
to carry a suitcase from Oakland to Sacramento. Mooney had been set-up
by Martin Swanson of the Pinkerton
Detective Agency and
when he arrived in Sacremento he was arrested and charged with transporting
explosives illegally on a streetcar. He was convicted and sentenced
to Folsom Penitentiary for two years.
Mooney
was released on appeal and in 1914 he was active in the campaign to
free Joe Haaglund Hill, a member of the
Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). Convicted
of the murder of a Salt Lake City businessman, Hill was shot by a
firing squad on 19th November, 1915.
Mooney
also associated with the revolutionary anarchist Alexander
Berkman. In 1916 Mooney helped Berkman launch the journal Blast.
Contributors to the journal included Emma
Goldman, Mary Heaton Vorse and
Robert Minor.
Unable
to find work as a iron molder Mooney worked full-time as a union organizer.
He became one of the leaders of the Californian Federation of Labor
and in 1916 became involved in a strike of streetcar workers employed
by the United Railroads (URR). On 11th June a high-voltage tower of
the Sierra and San Francisco Power Company, which served the URR,
was dynamited in the San Bruno hills. Soon afterwards the URR offered
a reward of $5,000 for information leading to the arrest and conviction
of the dynamiters.
Martin
Swanson, who now worked for the Public Utilities Protective Bureau,
became convinced that Mooney was the man responsible for the bombing.
On 13th June 1916 Swanson interviewed Israel Weinberg, a jitney bus
driver who had often taken Mooney to trade union
meetings. Swanson offered Weinberg a share of the $5,000 reward if
he could provide evidence that would convict Mooney of the San Bruno
bombing.
Soon
afterwards Swanson approached Warren Billings,
a trade union friend of Mooney. As well as a share of the $5,000 reward
Billings was offered a job with the Pacific Gas and Electric Company
if he could provide information connecting Mooney with the San Bruno
bombing. Billings refused and reported the approach to Mooney and
George Speed, the secretary of the Industrial
Workers of the World (IWW).
On
22nd July, 1916, employers in San Francisco
organized a march through the streets in favour of an improvement
in national defence. Critics of the march such as William
Jennings Bryan, claimed that the Preparedness March was being
organized by financiers and factory owners who would benefit from
increased spending on munitions.
During
the march a bomb went off in Steuart Street killing six people (four
more died later). Two witnesses described two dark-skinned men, probably
Mexicans, carrying a heavy suitcase near to where the bomb exploded.
The
Chamber of Commerce immediately offered a reward of $5,000 for information
leading to the arrest and conviction of the dynamiters. Other organizations
and individuals added to this sum and the reward soon reached $17,000.
Offering such a large reward was condemned by the editor of the New
York Times claiming it was a "sweepstake for perjurers".
On
the evening of the bombing Martin Swanson
went to see the District Attorney, Charles
Fickert. Swanson told Fickert that despite the claims that it
was the work of Mexicans, he was convinced that Mooney and Warren
Billings were responsible for the explosion. The next day Swanson
resigned from the Public Utilities Protective Bureau and began working
for the District Attorney's office. On 26th July 1916, Fickert ordered
the arrest of Mooney, his wife Rena Mooney,
Warren Billings, Israel Weinberg and
Edward Nolan.
Mooney
and his wife were on vacation at Montesano at the time. When Mooney
read in the San Francisco Examiner
that he was wanted by the police he immediately returned to
San Francisco and gave himself up.
The newspapers incorrectly reported that Mooney had "fled the
city" and failed to mention that he had purchased return tickets
when he left San Francisco.
None of the witnesses of the bombing identified the defendants in
the lineup. The prosecution case was instead based on the testimony
of two men, an unemployed waiter, John
McDonald and Frank Oxman, a cattleman
from Oregon. They claimed that they saw Warren
Billings plant the bomb at 1.50 p.m. Oxman saw Mooney and his
wife talking with Billings a few minutes later. However, at the trial,
a photograph showed that the couple were over a mile from the scene.
A clock in the photograph clearly read 1.58 p.m. The heavy traffic
at the time meant that it was impossible for Mooney and his wife to
have been at the scene of the bombing at 1.50 p.m. Despite this, Mooney
was sentenced to death and Billings to life-imprisonment. Rena
Mooney and Israel Weinberg were found not guilty and Edward Nolan
was never brought to trial.
A
large number of people believed that Billings and Mooney had been
framed. Those involved in the campaign to get them released included
Robert Minor, Fremont
Older, George Bernard Shaw, Heywood
Broun, Samuel Gompers, Eugene
V. Debs, Roger Baldwin, John
Dewey, John Haynes Holmes, Oswald
Garrison Villard, Norman Hapgood,
Crystal Eastman, Norman
Thomas, Upton Sinclair, Theodore
Dreiser, Sinclair Lewis, Lincoln
Steffens, H. L. Mencken, Burton
K. Wheeler, Sherwood Anderson, Abraham
Muste, Harry Bridges, James
Larkin, James Cannon, William
Z. Foster, Alexander Berkman, Emma
Goldman, William Haywood, William
A. White, Carl Sandburg, Arturo
Giovannitti and Robert Lovett.
Mooney's
defence team complained about the method of selecting his jury. Bourke
Cockran pointed out that in San Francisco "each Superior Court
Judge places in the box from which the trial jurors are drawn the
names of such persons as he may think proper. In theory he is supposed
to choose persons peculiarly well qualified to decide issues of fact.
In actual practice he places in the box the names of men who ask to
be selected. The practical result is that a jury panel is a collection
of the lame, the halt, the blind, and the incapable, with a few exceptions,
and these are well known to the District Attorney who is thus enabled
to pick a jury of his own choice."
It was also discovered that William MacNevin, the foreman of Mooney's
jury, was a close friend of Edward Cunha, who led the prosecution.
MacNevin's wife later claimed her husband was in collusion with Cunha
during the trial.
The
American government also became concerned about the Mooney
and Billings Case and the Secretary of Labor, William
Bauchop Wilson, delegated John Densmore,
the Director of General Employment, to investigate the case. By secretly
installing a dictaphone in the private office of the District Attorney
he was able to discover that Mooney and Billings had probably been
framed by Charles Fickert. The report
was leaked to Fremont Older who published
it in the San Francisco Call on
23rd November 1917.
There
were protests all over the world and President Woodrow
Wilson called on William Stephens,
the Governor of California, to look again at the case. Two weeks before
Mooney was scheduled to hang, Stephens commuted his sentence to life
imprisonment in San Quentin. Soon afterwards Mooney wrote to Stephens:
"I prefer a glorious death at the hands of my traducers, you
included, to a living grave."
In
November 1920, Draper Hand of the San Francisco Police Department,
went to Mayor James Rolph and admitted
that he had helped Charles Fickert and
Martin Swanson to frame Mooney. Hand
also confessed that he had arranged for John
McDonald to get a job when he began threatening to tell the newspapers
that he had lied in court about Mooney and Billings.
Mooney's
defence team now began to search for MacDonald. He was found in January
1921 and agreed to make a full confession. He claimed he did see two
men with the large suitcase but was unable to get a good look at them.
When he reported the incident to District
Attorney Charles Fickert he was asked
to say the men were identify Mooney and Warren
Billings.
Fickert said that if he did this "I will see that you get the
biggest slice of the reward."
Later
two witnesses, Edgar Rigall and Earl K. Hatcher, came forward and
provided evidence that Frank Oxman was
200 miles away during the bombing and could not have seen what he
told the court at the trial of Mooney. In
February 1921 John McDonald confessed
that the police had forced him to lie about the planting of the bomb.
Despite this new evidence the Californian authorities refused a retrial.
After
the publication of this new evidence it
was generally believed that Charles Fickert
and Martin Swanson had framed Mooney
and Billings. However, Republican
governors over the next twenty years: William
Stephens (1917-1923), Friend Richardson
(1923-1927), Clement Young (1927-1931),
James Rolph (1931-1934) and Frank
Merriam (1934-39) all refused to order the release of the two
men.
The
international campaign to free Mooney and Billings continued. In a
survey carried out in 1935 and it was discovered that Tom Mooney was
one of the four best known Americans in Europe (other three were Franklin
D. Roosevelt, Charles A. Lindbergh
and Henry Ford).
In
1937 a group of politicians led by Caroline
O'Day, Nan Honeyman, Jerry
O'Connell, Emanuel Celler, James
E. Murray, Vito Marcantonio, Gerald
Nye and Usher Burdick asked President
Franklin D. Roosevelt to intercede
in the case. When Roosevelt declined Murray and O'Connell introduced
a resolution in the Senate calling on Governor Frank
Merriam to pardon Mooney and Billings.
In
November 1938 Culbert Olson was elected
as Governor of California. He was the first member of the Democratic
Party to hold this office for forty-four years. Soon after gaining
power Olson ordered that Mooney and Warren
Billings should be released from prison. Rena
Mooney, who welcomed her husband as he left San Quentin was quoted
as saying: "These twenty-two long years have been moth-eaten.
Life to me has been something like a cloak. There is little left but
the tatters."
A
crowd of 25,000 greeted Mooney in San
Francisco. Over $20,000 in debt, Mooney planned a lecture tour
on the merits of the New Deal, trade
union rights and the dangers of fascism
in Europe. However, he was a sick man and a month after being released
from prison he had an emergency operation to remove his gallbladder.
For the next two years he had three more operations and spent most
of his time in hospital. Tom Mooney died on 6th March, 1942.
Tom Mooney in his cell in San Quentin
(1)
Tom Mooney, letter to Governor William Spry
on the Joe Haaglund Hill case (September
1915)
If you are not in favor of Justice, then you can only be expected
to be treated as you would treat others.... We are not going to see
any working man perish without being avenged, when we are satisfied
he was not proven guilty of the crime charged in our estimation. Every
principle of justice was denied this man.... If Utah takes this life
it will pay dearly for so doing. Governor the Issue is up to you.
Act, and Act Right, or others will act right. Our demand is that Hillstrom
be pardoned.
(2)
Tom Mooney, letter to Mary 'Mother' Jones
(December 1915)
The California Light and Power Council called a strike against the
Pacific Gas and Electric Co. one of the largest and most powerful
corporations in this state. The Pinkerton Detective Agency was put
on the job by the Gas Co. at the time I was out of work and I at all
times feel it my duty to do all in my power to aid and assist any
or all aggregations of workers on Strike for better conditions. Five
of them were sent to the Penitentiary of this state for periods of
from one to five years on evidence secured by Pinkertons. The Building
Trades Council of Calif. Fought with the Gas Co. and aided in the
Defeat of the strikers when the entire state Federation of Labor was
supporting morally and financially the strike.
(3)
Israel Weinberg reported in court how Martin Swanson threatened to
destroy his jitney business unless he gave evidence that would convict
Tom Mooney of the San Bruno bombing.
I replied "I guess I can make a living without the jitney business,"
and he (Swanson) said, "Well, Weinberg, it is no use for you
to talk like that; it is easier for you to make five thousand dollars,
it would not take much to convict them, - just a little circumstantial
evidence, - it would not be necessary for you to say that you remember
all the details."
(4)
The Organized Labour journal in San Francisco was highly critical
of the War Preparation march (22nd July, 1916)
Behind the military banners and martial glory they (the workers) see
the grinning skulls of Homestead, Latimer, Coeur d'Alene and Ludlow
- skulls of working men, women and children, shot, murdered and burned
to death by militia men - soldiers.
And close in front appear the thousands of graveyards in Europe -
the international cemetery - and in liberty-loving America the ghastly,
bleaching bone heaps, on the great desert, of the Mexican peons and
poor people fighting unto death for the land and liberty.
Look, paraders and players for the bloody dripping dollars of the
armament and munition trusts, the glorious human gore stream is rushing
to engulf the marchers.
(5)
Paul Scharrenberg, Coast Seaman's
Journal (26th July, 1916)
This great Republic may have foes abroad but some of its most deadly
enemies are to be found right at home. They are the industrial vampires
who undermine the Nation's vitality by cruel, merciless exploitation
of labor. Special privilege, monopoly and greed are rampant. Starvation
wages and long enervating hours of toil are imposed upon millions
of
American toilers, of whom one-third are poverty-stricken all the year
around. Yet they have the nerve to ask Organized Labor to take part
in military preparedness parades designed to intimidate some unknown
foreign foe when the known foes of the Nation who live among us, are
brazenly taking the lead in these demonstrations.
(6)
Alexander
Berkman, speech (6th August, 1916)
I understand that there was an explosion on Market Street, today.
It is not known who was responsible, and I hope that public judgment
will be suspended. We do not know the possibilities underlying the
tragedy, and I will not discuss them. But I want to remind you all
of the old saying that he who lives by the sword, by the sword shall
perish. Those who create
hatred in the minds of the people, those who favor training men to
murder, can expect that their teachings will bring thoughts of murder
to others. Those who are responsible for the preparedness movement
are responsible for violence.
(7)
Tom Mooney, telegram sent to the San Francisco police chief on 28th
July 1916.
Wife and I left San Francisco last Monday 8:45, for week's vacation
at Montesano. See by Examiner I am wanted by San Francisco police.
My movements are and have been an open book. Will return by next train
to San Francisco. I consider this attempt to incriminate me in connection
with the bomb outrage, one of the most dastardly pieces of work ever
attempted.
(8)
Charles Fickert, during the trial of
Warren Billings (September 1916)
Gentlemen, the case here is by far more serious than any other case
that was ever submitted to any jury. It is not a question of this
defendant against Mrs. Van Loo; that unhappy woman is at rest; those
orphan children must go through life, thinking of the scenes that
were enacted there. But here, gentlemen, was the offense: This American
flag—this American flag was what they desired to offend. They
offended that by killing the women and men that worshipped it. Here
is another photograph of Mrs. Van Loo, dying on the streets of our
city, and in a feeble hand she holds the American flag, and if that
flag is to continue to wave, you men must put an end to such acts
as these. So far as I am concerned, no personal consequences are going
to swerve me one jot from my sworn duty. What are personal consequences,
what are political consequences in a crisis like this? Gentlemen,
the very life of the Nation is at stake. No foreign foes were on our
land at this time, but some traitor, some murderous villain, who,
with his associates, perpetrated this crime, and to disgrace the flag,
they took the life of this unfortunate woman.
Now, we have here, gentlemen, enough evidence at 721 Market Street
- and God only knows, if it had not been for the action of Estelle
Smith, and those who saw him there. God only knows, there may have
been three or four hundred children of the working class of San Francisco
blown into eternity.
He (Billings) probably delighted in hearing the cries of these women
and children. My God! You have heard it described here, and I have
seen it afterwards - women with babes in their arms, their legs shot
away, crawling away from the wreck of the cruel shell, and if you
could have heard the cries of some of those children, if you could
have seen, like I have seen, my friend Lawlor there blown beyond recognition,
you could not have thought lightly of it.
(9)
Maxwell McNutt, defending Warren Billings
at his trial (September 1916)
This historic case was spawned in the brain of a private detective
named Martin Swanson, and hatched in the super-heated perfervid imaginations
of the Smiths, the Kidwells, the Moores and the McDonalds, and fostered
and brought into being and reared by the Fickerts, the Brennans, and
the Traffic Squad.
Every bit of evidence, with the exception of those four men that were
on the roof of the Eiler's Building, every bit of evidence that has
been produced before this jury, had been volunteered at some time
or another to the Prosecution, and had been put in the ashcan. Why?
Because it did not fit the "dream" of McDonald.
(10)
Charles Fickert, during the trial of
Tom Mooney (January 1917)
This defendant and his fellow-anarchists, in the time of peace, murdered
ten men and women because these anarchists were bent on destroying
the very government which Lincoln preserved and defended. The question
which concerns you, gentlemen, here, as well as every other citizen
of this great republic, is either to destroy anarchy or the anarchists
will destroy the State.
If the moral fibre of the people of this nation has been so weakened;
if the seeds of anarchy have been so implanted in the body politic
that we refuse or neglect to defend our citizens at home or abroad;
when helpless women and children can be ruthlessly slain on the streets
of our city, and those who murder them go unpunished, because those
who have been sworn to enforce the laws have tailed through neglect
or fear to do their duty - we can then say farewell to the greatness
of our nation; our boasted civilization is then only a self-delusion
resting on the edge of a political abyss.
(11)
Bourke Cockran, complained about the way that the jury was selected
in San Francisco made it difficult
for Tom Mooney to obtain a fair trial (17th May 1917).
The method of selecting jurors in San Francisco is that each Superior
Court Judge places in the box from which the trial jurors are drawn
the names of such persons as he may think proper. In theory he is
supposed to choose persons peculiarly well qualified to decide issues
of fact. In actual practice he places in the box the names of men
who ask to be selected.
The practical result is that a jury panel is a collection of the lame,
the halt, the blind, and the incapable, with a few exceptions, and
these are well known to the District Attorney who is thus enabled
to pick a jury of his own choice.
(12)
Judge Franklin Griffin, letter to Charles
Fickert (26th April,
1917)
In the trial of Mooney, there was called as a witness by the people
one Frank C. Oxman, whose testimony was most damaging and of the utmost
consequences to the defendant. Indeed, in my opinion, the testimony
of this witness was by far the most important adduced by the People
at the trial of Mooney. In confirmation of these statements, I would
respectfully call your attention to the transcript filed on the appeal.
Within the past week there have been brought to my attention certain
letters written by Oxman prior to his having been called to testify,
which have come to the knowledge and into the possession of the defendant's
counsel since the determination of the motion for new trial. The authorship
and authenticity of these letters, photographic copies of which I
transmit herewith, are undenied and undisputed. As you will at once
see, they bear directly upon the credibility of the witness and go
to the very foundation 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 unhesitatingly have granted it.
Unfortunately, the matter is now out of my hands jurisdictionally,
and I am therefore addressing you, as the representative of the People
on the appeal, to urge upon you the necessity of such action on your
part as will result in returning the case to this court for retrial.
The letters of Oxman undoubtedly require explanation and
so far as Mooney is concerned, unquestionably the explanation should
be heard by a jury which passes upon the question of his guilt or
innocence.
I fully appreciate the unusual character of such a request coming
from the trial court in any case and I know of no precedent therefor.
In the circumstances of this case, I believe that all of us who were
participants in the trial concur that right and justice demand that
a new trial of Mooney should be had in order that no possible mistake
shall be made in a case where a human life is at stake.
(13)
Edward Cunha, who led the prosecution against Tom Mooney, was interviewed
by John A. Fitch of the Survey magazine
in July, 1917.
If the thing were done that ought to be done this whole God damn dirty
low down bunch would be taken out and strung up without ceremony.
They're a bunch of dirty anarchists, everyone of them, and they ought
to be in jail on general principles. I'm not speaking now as an officer,
I am just speaking as a man and a citizen, to show you my attitude.
I'm disgusted with all this outcry over Mooney, - making a hero of
him by Older and all that bunch where he is 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 him get out. If I knew that every
single witness that testified against him had perjured himself in
his testimony I wouldn't lift a finger to get him out. I told him
to get out if he could.
And now people like Judge Griffin are going around saying he ought
to have a new trial. Why, Judge Griffin almost cried there on the
bench because we searched the Blast office without a search warrant.
The Blast office, run by Berkman and that bunch of anarchists. Berkman's
the man who shot Frick and he told me he did it on general principles
because Frick is a capitalist. Berkman told me that he had no country
and that he'd just as not spit on the American Flag. I ought to have
murdered him right there for saying that. My only regret now is that
I didn't. They'd talked in the Blast about stopping the Preparedness
parade. They urged a meeting of protest and then they said that stronger
measures should be taken. Do you think I was going to wait around
2 or 3 days for a search warrant for people like that? Now if it was
your house or mine it would be different, but I'm glad there was a
district attorneys office here with guts enough to go ahead and search
those people without waiting for a warrant.
(14)
The Secretary of Labor, William Bauchop
Wilson, delegated John Densmore,
the Director of General Employment, to investigate the Mooney-Billings
case. By secretly installing a dictaphone in the office of the District
Attorney he was able to discover that the men had probably been framed
by Charles Fickert. Densmore's report
on the case was passed to the Secretary of Labor in November 1917.
As
one reads the testimony and studies the way in which the cases were
conducted one is apt to wonder at many things - at the apparent failure
of the district attorney's office to conduct a real investigation
at the scene of the crime; at the easy adaptability of some of the
star witnesses; at the irregular methods pursued by the prosecution
in identifying the various defendants; at the sorry type of men and
women brought forward to prove essential matters of fact in a case
of the gravest importance; at the seeming inefficacy of even a well-established
alibi; at the sangfroid with which the prosecution occasionally discarded
an untenable theory to adopt another not quite so preposterous; at
the refusal of the public prosecutor to call as witnesses people who
actually saw the falling of the bomb; in short, at the general flimsiness
and improbability of the testimony adduced, together with a total
absence of anything that looks like a genuine effort
to arrive at the facts in the case.
These things, as one reads and studies the complete record, are calculated
to cause in the minds of even the most blase a decided mental rebellion.
The plain truth is, there is nothing about the cases to produce a
feeling of confidence that the dignity and majesty of the law have
been upheld. There is nowhere anything even remotely resembling consistency,
the effect being that of patchwork, of incongruous makeshift, of clumsy
and often desperate expediency.
It is not the purpose of this report to enter into a detailed analysis
of the evidence presented in these cases - evidence which, in its
general outlines at least, is already familiar to you in your capacity
as president, ex officio, of the Mediation Commission. It will be
enough to remind you that Billings was tried first; that in September
1916, he was found guilty, owing largely to the testimony of Estelle
Smith, John McDonald, Mellie and Sadie Edeau, and Louis Rominger,
all of whom have long since been thoroughly discredited; that when
Mooney was placed on trial, in January of the year following, the
prosecution decided, for reasons which were obvious, not to use Rominger
or Estelle Smith, but to add to the list of witnesses a certain Frank
C. Oxman, whose testimony, corroborative of the testimony of the two
Edeau women, formed the strongest link in the chain of evidence against
the defendant; that on the strength of this testimony Mooney was found
guilty; that on February 24, 1917, he was sentenced to death; and
that subsequently, to wit, in April of the same year, it was demonstrated
beyond the shadow of a doubt that Oxman, the prosecution's star witness,
had attempted to suborn perjury and had thus in effect destroyed his
own credibility.
The exposure of Oxman's perfidy, involving as it did the district
attorney's office, seemed at first to promise that Mooney would be
granted a new trial. The district attorney himself, Mr. Charles M.
Fickert, when confronted with the facts, acknowledged in the presence
of reputable witnesses that he would agree to a new trial. His principal
assistant, Mr. Edward A. Cunha, made a virtual confession of guilty
knowledge of the facts relating to Oxman, and promised, in a spirit
of contrition, to see that justice should be done the man who had
been convicted through Oxman's testimony. The trial judge, Franklin
A. Griffin, one of the first to recognize the terrible significance
of the expose, and keenly jealous of his own honor, lost no time in
officially suggesting the propriety of a new trial. The attorney general
of the state, Hon. Ulysses S. Webb, urged similar action in a request
filed with the Supreme Court of California.
Matters thus seemed in a fair way to be rectified, when two things
occurred to upset the hopes of the defense. The first was a sudden
change of front on the part of Fickert, who now denied that he had
ever agreed to a new trial, and whose efforts henceforth were devoted
to a clumsy attempt to whitewash Oxman and justify his own motives
and conduct throughout. The second was a decision of the Supreme Court
to the effect that it could not go outside the record in the case
- in other words, that judgment could not be set aside merely for
the reason that it was predicated upon perjured testimony.
There are excellent grounds for believing that Fickert's sudden change
of attitude was prompted by emissaries from some of the local corporate
interests most bitterly opposed to union labor. It was charged by
the Mooney defendants, with considerable plausibility, that Fickert
was the creature and tool of these powerful interests, chief among
which are the Chamber of Commerce and the principal public-service
utilities of the city of San Francisco. In this connection it is of
the utmost significance that Fickert should have entrusted the major
portion of the investigating work necessary in these cases to Martin
Swanson, a corporation detective, who for some time prior to the bomb
explosion had been vainly attempting to connect these same defendants
with other crimes of violence.
Since the Oxman exposure, the district attorney's case has melted
steadily away until there is little left but an unsavory record of
manipulation and perjury, further revelations having impeached the
credibility of practically all the principal witnesses for the prosecution.
And if any additional confirmation were needed of the inherent weakness
of the cases against these codefendants, the acquittal of Mrs. Mooney
on July 26, 1917, and of Israel Weinberg on the 27th of the following
October would seem to supply it.
These acquittals were followed by the investigation of the Mediation
Commission and its report to the President under date of January 16,
1918. The Commission's report, while disregarding entirely the question
of the guilt or innocence of the accused, nevertheless found in the
attendant circumstances sufficient grounds for uneasiness and doubt
as to whether the two men convicted had received fair and impartial
trials.
Ordinarily
the relentless persecution of four or five defendants, even though
it resulted in unmerited punishment for them all, would conceivably
have but a local effect, which would soon be obliterated and forgotten.
But in the Mooney case, which is nothing but a phase of the old war
between capital and organized labor, a miscarriage of justice would
inflame the passions of laboring men everywhere and add to a conviction,
already too widespread, that workingmen can expect no justice from
an orderly appeal to the established courts.
Yet this miscarriage of justice is in process of rapid consummation.
One man is about to be hanged; another is in prison for life; the
remaining defendants are still in peril of their liberty or lives,
one or the other of which they will surely lose if some check is not
given to the activities of this most amazing of district attorneys.
(15)
George Bernard Shaw referred to the Tom Mooney
case in a letter to Frank Harris
(December, 1917)
That sort of thing is always going on in America. I have no illusions
about the Golden West; probably, however, it only
appears to be the worst place in the world politically and judicially,
because there is less hushing up; that is, less solidarity among the
governing class than in England and Russia.
(16)
Woodrow Wilson, letter to Governor William
Stephens (22nd January, 1918)
Will you permit a suggestion from me in these troubled times which
perhaps justify what I should feel hardly justifiable in other circumstances?
The suggestion is this: Would it not be possible to postpone the execution
of the sentence of Mooney until he can be tried upon one of the other
indictments against him, in order to give full weight and consideration
to the important changes which I understand to have taken place in
the evidence against him?
I urge this very respectfully indeed but very earnestly, because the
case has assumed international importance and I feel free to make
the suggestion because I am sure that you are as anxious as anyone
can be to have no doubt or occasion of criticism of any sort attach
itself to the case.
(17)
William Randolph
Hearst had used his newspapers to campaign for the conviction
of Tom Mooney. However in 1918 he changed his mind about his guilt
and stated in the New York American that Mooney should not
be executed. Fremont Older responded
to this decision in an article published in the San Francisco Bulletin
(21st March, 1918)
The public tolerated the trial methods because the lies knowingly
given currency by the Hearst papers had convinced it that Mooney and
his fellow prisoners were guilty. When Hearst denounces those methods
he denounces himself. When he asks clemency for Mooney he asks that
a wrong be undone which could never have been done without his conscious
aid.
There can be no excuse or evasion for Hearst. All that he or his New
York editor knows now about the trial of Mooney he and his San Francisco
editors knew a year ago. If it appears now that Mooney has been unjustly
treated it appeared so then.
The only difference is that a year ago it took courage and a willingness
to make sacrifices, to demand justice for Mooney and that now it is
dangerous for a newspaper to stand out against that demand.
Fickert's ship is going down. And the rats are leaving it.
(18)
Woodrow Wilson, letter to Governor William
Stephens (June, 1918)
I beg that you will believe that I am moved only by a sense of public
duty and of consciousness of the many and complicated interests involved
when I again must respectfully suggest a commutation of the death
sentence imposed upon Mooney. I would not venture again to call your
attention to this case did I not know the international significance
which attaches to it.
(19)
Eugene Debs,
speech in Canton, Ohio (16th June 1918)
They would have you believe that the Socialist Party consists
in the main of disloyalists and traitors. It is true in a sense not
at all to their discredit. We frankly admit that we are disloyalists
and traitors to the real traitors of this nation; to the gang that
on the Pacific coast are trying to hang Tom Mooney and Warren Billings
in spite of their well-known innocence and the protest of practically
the whole civilized world.
I
know Tom Mooney intimately - as if he were my own brother. He is an
absolutely honest man. He had no more to do with the crime with which
he was charged and for which he was convicted than I had. And if he
ought to go to the gallows, so ought I. If he is guilty every man
who belongs to a labor organization or to the Socialist Party is likewise
guilty.
What
is Tom Mooney guilty of? I will tell you. I am familiar with his record.
For years he has been fighting bravely and without compromise the
battles of the working class out on the Pacific coast. He refused
to be bribed and he could not be browbeaten. In spite of all attempts
to intimidate him he continued loyally in the service of the organized
workers, and for this he became a marked man. The henchmen of the
powerful and corrupt corporations, concluding finally that he could
not be bought or bribed or bullied, decided he must therefore be murdered.
(20)
Earl Hatcher was interviewed by Frank Oxman's attorney in October
1918.
Jim I lied to you in San Francisco last year when you asked me if
Oxman was down there when that explosion took place. He was not there
at that time any more than you was. He ate dinner at my house that
day and never left Woodland until after a o'clock. He never got to
San Francisco until after 5 o'clock that evening.
I have stood up for Oxman and been loyal to him because I considered
him one of my best friends, but he has turned me down cold. It hurt
me like the devil Jim to think he would treat me the way he has. Have
written him several letters reminding him of his moral obligation
to me. Some of them he doesn't even answer. He has made me lots of
promises to help me out and every appeal I have made to him he has
evaded. Jim I got my little wife to stand by the old man when he was
in trouble. She lied to those attorneys when they came to Woodland,
just to help Oxman.
Every thing has gone wrong with me this year and I could not make
a dollar. When I asked Oxman for a loan to help feed and clothe my
wife and babies he turned me down. Does that look right. If I had
gone on the stand and told what I know, Oxman would be in the State
Prison today.
(21)
Draper Hand, statement to Mayor James Rolph
(November, 1920)
Swanson sent for me and asked me to take Oxman to the North End station
and show him Weinberg's auto. They had taken the car out there. I
took Oxman to see the car. It was his first and only sight of the
car. Oxman was very much concerned, when he saw the car, to find out
if it were possible for a man to sit in it and hold a suitcase as
he was going to describe in court. He had me get in the car and let
my hand hang down over the side, as if I were holding a suitcase.
He wasn't satisfied till I got in and did as he wanted; after that
he thought his version was all right - that the defense wouldn't prove
it impossible.
There wasn't any license plate on the car when I took Oxman to see
it. If the plate had been there it would be bad for the prosecution
if Oxman were asked if he hadn't got the number when he saw the car
at the police station. Cunha had had the plate taken off that car.
It was in a drawer in an inner office at the station. Cunha told me
to copy the number. I did that and gave it to him. As far as I know
Oxman never saw the license plate itself.
(22)
Draper Hand, statement to Mayor James Rolph
(November, 1920)
McDonald
said to me, "Unless I get a job I'm going to spill everything
to Fremont Older."
I went to Lieutenant Goff and warned him to arrange a job of some
kind for McDonald. Then he was given a job - in Tracy or somewhere
in the interior of the state.
He didn't tell everything then, but I'm sure that he'd tell the truth
if he were brought here now.
(23)
John McDonald was interviewed by the
San Francisco Call (7th February, 1921)
About
a week before the trial of Thomas J. Mooney, Assistant District Attorney
Ed Cunha sent for me and I went into his private office. He read over
the testimony which I had given in the Billings trial. He said to
me: "You had better make the time that you saw the man set the
suitcase at 1:30 instead of 1:50." I said to him: "Mr. McNutt
will grab that right away; he will see that I changed my testimony
from what it was in the Billings trial."
He said, "Oh, hell, we will beat him on that. You can say that
you were not positive about it at the time of the first trial."
He said, "You see, if that suitcase was set at 1:30 that would
give them time to get back up Mission street on top of the Eilers'
building".
I followed the instruction of Mr. Cunha, and said that I was not positive,
that it might be between 1:30 and 1:45.
(24)
Robert Lovett, All Our Years
(1948)
It was inevitable that the case of Tom Mooney should become a
fixation of liberals. An aggressive labor leader in San Francisco,
he was deliberately "framed" as having caused an explosion
which resulted in the death of several participants in a "preparedness"
parade. Felix Frankfurter, on a mission to examine and report to President
Wilson on labor difficulties in the West, saw through the plot and
warned the president of the danger in the execution of an innocent
man whose fate was exciting workers all over the world.
After commutation of the sentence to imprisonment for life, the long
struggle began. One by one the folds of perjury were peeled away until
the nucleus of the noxious growth was reached. The bluff cattle buyer
"who had seen Mooney plant the bomb" was shown to have been
miles away from the scene. He was also revealed as having written
to a friend in Ohio to come to California to add another lie. Was
he prosecuted for perjury? To ask the question is naive. Year after
year governors and the Supreme Court of California wriggled like snakes
to avoid a formal admission of the criminality of the state. It was
not until the Christmas of 1938 that Tom Mooney was pardoned.
(25)
Judge Franklin Griffin, letter to
Governor Clement Young (20th January,
1928)
Speaking very frankly, it seems to me that the great obstacle in the
way of Mooney's pardon has been his alleged bad reputation. In other
words, he has been denied real justice because the opinion seems to
be prevalent, that he is a
dangerous man to be at large and therefore should be, innocent or
guilty, kept in prison. Conceding, for the sake of argument, that
Mooney has been all he is painted, it is, to say the least, most specious
reasoning; indeed, no reason at all, why Mooney should be denied the
justice which, under our system, is due even the most degraded. Moreover,
such a doctrine is more dangerous and pernicious than any Mooney has
been accused of preaching.
(26)
In April, 1933, Heywood Broun was expelled
from the Socialist Party for sharing
the lecture platform with members of the Communist
Party during a rally demanding the release of Tom Mooney and the
Scottsboro Nine. He wrote about the
event in the New York World-Telegram (29th April, 1933)
I don't expect the Communists to love me, and I'm not going to love
them. I hope from time to time to say many things about them, and
I expect the same in return. But I think it would be a fine idea not
to fight until Tom Mooney is free and the Scottsboro boys are acquitted.
(27)
Richard H. Frost, The Mooney Case (1968)
The Mooney case festered unresolved for more than twenty years, its
causes widespread, its consequences pernicious. The trials and imprisonment
of Mooney and Billings revealed dramatically the intolerance and injustice
accorded radical dissenters before, during, and long after the First
World War. The case, developing out of class social tensions and public
anxieties accompanying the Preparedness Day crime, was forged through
the repeated abuse of fair procedures by local law enforcement officials.
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