Preparedness Day Bombing

The Preparedness Day Bombing was a bombing in San Francisco, California on July 22, 1916 when the city held a parade in honor of Preparedness Day, in anticipation of entering World War I. During the parade a suitcase bomb was detonated, killing ten and wounding forty in the worst such act in San Francisco history. Two labor leaders, Thomas Mooney and Warren Billings were convicted in separate trials and sentenced to be hanged. Rena Mooney and Israel Weinberg were acquitted.Fact|date=April 2008

Prelude

By mid-1916, after viewing the carnage in Europe, the United States saw itself poised with great reluctance on the edge of participation in World War I. Isolationism and anti-preparedness feeling remained strong in San Francisco, not only among radicals such as the Industrial Workers of the World ("the wobblies"), but also among mainstream labor leaders. At the same time, with the rise of Bolshevism and labor unrest, San Francisco's business community was nervous. The Chamber of Commerce organized a Law and Order Committee, despite the diminishing influence and political clout of local labor organizations. Radical labor was a small but vociferous minority which few took seriously.

The parade

The huge Preparedness Day parade of Saturday, July 22, 1916, was a target of radicals. A radical pamphlet of mid-July read in part, "We are going to use a little direct action on the 22nd to show that militarism can't be forced on us and our children without a violent protest." Mooney had been tipped off to threats that preceded the parade and pushed resolutions through his union, the Molders, and the San Francisco Central Labor Council and the Building Trades Council warning that provocateurs might attempt to blacken the labor movement by causing a disturbance at the parade. Ten deaths and forty injuries resulted from the explosion in the midst of the Preparedness Day parade.

The San Francisco Preparedness Day parade of 1916 was the largest parade ever held in the city. The 3.5 hour procession had 51,329 marchers, including 2,134 organizations and 52 bands. Ironically, the starting signals were "the crash of a bomb and the shriek of a siren." Military, civic, judicial, state, and municipal divisions were followed by newspaper, telephone, telegraph and streetcar trade unions. Many of the following divisions came from other cities of the San Francisco Bay Area.

At 2:06pm, about half an hour into the parade, a dynamite time bomb (using a clock as a timing device) exploded on the west side of Steuart Street, just south of Market Street, near the Ferry Building. The time bomb was concealed in a suitcase; the bombmaker had added heavy metal sash weights to the bomb to act as shrapnel when the explosives detonated to increase the bomb's effect. Ten bystanders were killed and forty wounded, making it the worst terrorist act in San Francisco history.

Investigations, Trials, and Convictions

Initially, the authorities, led by the San Francisco District Attorney, focused their investigations on several well-known radicals and anarchists in the city, among them Alexander Berkman, who was well known to the government for his radical politics and prior conviction as an attempted assassin. He had only recently relocated to San Francisco after being implicated in yet another bombing conspiracy, the Lexington Avenue bombing in New York City, which resulted in the deaths of several anarchists and at least one innocent bystander. Once in San Francisco, Berkman had begun his own anarchist journal, which he named "The Blast". After the Preparedness Day bombing, Berkman abandoned "The Blast" and returned to New York, rejoining Emma Goldman to work on the "Mother Earth Bulletin". The San Francisco District Attorney attempted to have Berkman extradited back to San Francisco on conspiracy allegations related to the bombing, but was unsuccessful. [Avrich, Paul, "Anarchist Voices: An Oral History of Anarchism in America", Princeton: Princeton University Press (1996)]

Two known radical labor leaders -- Thomas Mooney (ca. 1882-1942) and his assistant, Warren K. Billings (1893-1972) -- were eventually arrested. Billings, convicted previously for carrying dynamite on a passenger train, had a reputation for enjoying direct action, and Mooney, a militant socialist, was suspected of using explosives himself in past conflicts. Moreover, Mooney's union had passed out pamphlets warning about using "violent propaganda" against the marchers.

In a hasty trial, the two were both convicted. Mooney was sentenced to be executed, but a Mediation Commission set up by President Woodrow Wilson found no clear evidence of his guilt, and his death sentence was commuted. In 1918 Billings's sentence was changed to life imprisonment, the same as Mooney's. By 1939, evidence of perjury and false testimony at the trial had become overwhelming. California Governor Culbert Olson pardoned both men. Ansel Adams wrote about meeting Thomas Mooney in his autobiography. Adams was a young boy at the Panama-Pacific International Exhibition, where Mooney was working. Adams wrote, "In my memory he is a kind and gentle man."

The identity of the bomber(s) has never been determined, but has been attributed by several historians. Postwar research has led some historians to suspect involvement at some level in the bombing conspiracy by Alexander Berkman, given his knowledge of the Lexington Avenue bombing conspiracy, and his rather suspicious one-year sojourn in San Francisco. However, whether he was involved in the conspiracy or not, Berkman was almost certainly not the person who constructed the actual bomb, since he was known to have little or no technical skills with explosives. Both Mooney and especially Billings had prior knowledge of how to use dynamite (Billings was also familiar with clockwork timing mechanisms, and became a watch repairman after his release from prison), though they were by no means the only ones. [Time Magazine, "Mooney & Billings", New York: Monday, Jul. 14, 1930 issue] Another suspect group included the "Galleanists", radical anarchist followers of Luigi Galleani, particularly the elusive Mario Buda, who was a bomb-maker of deadly repute, and who was known to include heavy metal slugs in his dynamite time bombs to increase maiming and overall casualties. The Galleanists conducted most of their bomb attacks on the East Coast and Chicago, though they were also active in San Francisco. [Avrich, Paul, "Anarchist Voices: An Oral History of Anarchism in America", Princeton: Princeton University Press (1996)]

The film

A film about the events was made shortly after the bombings. The film, with its animated propagandistic prologue, was clearly aimed at local audiences. Perhaps it was thought that the film might help to "flush out" the bomber. The Hearst-Pathe film of the bombing scene was filmed after most of the bodies had been removed.

References

External links

* [http://www.sfmuseum.org/loc/prepday.html The film]