NEWSPAPER OFFICE DYNAMITED.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXII, Issue 900, 4 October 1910, Page 3

NEWSPAPER OFFICE DYNAMITED.

NINETEEN PERSONS kieeed.

San Francisco, October 1

A terrible explosion and fire occui red in the “ Los Angelos Times ” building at Los Angelos at midnight on Friday, resulting in the complete destruction of the building and plant, valued at ,£IOO,OOO. Crowds of people watched men, whose escape from the upper floors was cut off by the flames fall backwards through the windows. The origin of the explosion is a mystery, as all the various plants in the offices were worked by electricity. The latest inteligence attributes explosion to dynamite. Many who got out of the building were seriously injured. Later news from Los Angeles states that bombs were found in the homes of the secretary of the Merchants and Manufacturers’ Association, and of General Otis, editor-in-chief ot the “Times.”

The death-roll is now ascertained, nineteen. Several of ths editors leaped from the windowe and were killed by the fall. The newspapers, in a special edition this evening charge the labour unions with tne responsibility for the outrage. General Otis is a millionaire, who has tought the unions for twenty years. He employed no union men.

The bomb at General Otis’s house was concealed in a suit case hidden iu a vine outside the drawingroom window. The police chief took the bomb in an automobile to a neighbouring park, where it exploded as the detectives ran for their lives, and the whole neighbourhood became panic-stricken. The bombs were timed to explode simultaneously with the Times office explosion, but the mechanism was faulty. Each infernal machine weighed fifty pounds. General Otis arrived from Mexico this evening, and was cheered by a crowd at the railway station. The police find that the dynamite in one of the bombs was used on work at aqueduct in course of construction locally, and this will probably afford a clue to the perpetrators.