LABOUR AND DYNAMITE

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1634, 28 December 1912, Page 3

LABOUR AND DYNAMITE

extraordinary evidence.

An. amazing confession of dynamite crimes was made on .November 9, at Indianapolis, whore forty-five Labour men liave bean on trial, accused of dynamite plotting. Ordie M'Mamgal swoie -that he had been employed by -officials of the International Association of Bnclp and Structural Ironworkers to dynamite nonunion jobs, and'that he had been selected because .he had worked m a stone quarry. ana was, therefore, acquainted with explosives. Ho declared- that_ the MacNamara brothers already convicted for dynamiting the Los Angeles Times building, knew he had been engaged to strike terror into the hearte ?f non-union-ists.' Witness gave,.a long list, of erosions which'he had arranged, and said he had been driven to crime by tlio threats of union officials. ' . , M'Manigal, according to his story, simply revelled in. dynamite. H© secured most of the explosive from a stone quarry, where his uncle was employed, l'rozen sticks' of dynamite were thawed, in In home, and so great : wJ the contempt which familiarity bred, that lus little daughter built houses with them. Witness declared that he sent a souvenir spoon to his wife in Chicago,..after each successful explosion, and he was ordered, he swore by union officials m Indianapolis to send a newspaper clipping, descriptive of the explosion, as a receipt or certificate.

DYNAMITER'S METHODS. He named various men, all officials of the Association of Bridge and Structural Ironworkers, as amongst tlie executive of the dynamite group, besides the JVlacNamaras, now undergoing sentence who knew of Ms dynamiting. He named Hockins secretary and, treasurer of the Ironworkers as the leading conspirator. Fearing arrest after tho first dynamite job in June 1907, lie said he. had wanted to return to work, and Hoctas then threatened: "No you dont. Wove got the whip-hand now, and you must stick to the job." Witness • .described the methods by which lie dynamited nonunionists jojte, and said that so far as possible he always tried to save life. - He mentioned, aa an instance, that he had nailed up tho door of . a public-house near' a place where he was operating, bo that customers should not come into the street' and get hurt during the explosion. The. witness appears to have carried dynamite about- in trams and tramcars in iv most nonchalant fashion. Usually ho placed a few pounds in a suit-case, and sometimes deposited the same in a cloak-roonr for days. At hrst he dynamited houses by. depositing a tew sticks in the basement, but later he was induced to operate with nitro-glycerine and an alarm-clock and battery attachment, 60 . that a bomb set for eleven hours ahead could be and witness be hundreds of' miles away when the explosion came, and thus prove an story without evincing profound emotion. Through their, counsel they have maintained from the first that the prosecution has been engineered by capital to discredit the friends of. organised labour, and they maintain that H'Manigal s oonfession, having beh bought and paid lor by capitalists, is worth nothing.