LOS ANGELES HORROR.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXI, Issue 96, 6 December 1911, Page 2

LOS ANGELES HORROR.

DETAILS OF THE CASE

SOME DETAILS OF THE CASE, by General Harrison Grey Otis, and it is a strong anti-trade union newspaper. Tho building in which it was formerly produced was blown up—by dynamite, it is alleged—on October Ist,. 1910, when twenty-one persons were killed and many others injured. The building caught tire and 'was completely destroyed. <. d H Mr William id. Burns,’ said to bo the greatest American detective, 1 was set the task 1 of (tracking the dynamiters, and oni April 22nd' last he arrested John J. McNamara at Indianapolis. Simultaneously, at Detroit, James' B. McNamara, and a third man, Ortis McManigal, were arrested. McManigal is said to have made a confession, alleged’ to'iiave been extorted from him" by the “third degree” methods, which consist in the continuous questioning of a prisoner by the police for hours at a time.

McManigal is said to have stated that he and .McNamaras* were responsible for the killing of 112 persons in dynamite explosions and the destruction of' property 'forth £700,000. The police declare ’that among the documents seized lit the headquarters of the Ironworkers’ Association at Indianapolis there were receipts for large sums of money paid to men on dates invariably preceding outrages in different parts of the country, and that these expenditures are omitted in the official books of the union. Included in these was the Llewellyn Ironworks explosion, to which a plea of guilty has now been entered. J3y trade unionists in the United States the alleged confession of McManigal was denounced as a cock-and-bull story, and the whole affair was alleged by them to be a plot to discredit trade union leaders. The official organ of the mine workers speaks of it as “a fiendish plot conceived by devils and executed by hellions.”

It was claimed by organised labour that the dynamite which Mr Burns says he found in Indianapolis and other towns was “planted” by him in advance and that the evidence he has gathered against the McNamara brothers was “manufactured.” The trade unionists -claimed, also, that several union men were working in the Los Angeles building unknown to the management, and that the explosion was caused by gas, which had been escaping for days. Tremendous interest was taken throughout the United States in the trial, and it was looked upon as a great battle between capital and labour. Mr Burns will receive £SOOO reward offered by the Los Angelos authorities, in addition to other amounts aggregating more than double that sum offered by different organisations for the unravelling of what is described as a terroristic conspiracy of organised labour.

The Labour Federation organised a McNamara Defence Committee, which collected over £200,000 for tlio defence if the brothers. No effort has been spared to prove their innocence, and for the past seven weeks the task of empanelling the jury has been in progress without the list being completed. iAt latest advices the sudden and wholly unexpected plea of guilty comes as a great surprise, and v wiil no doubt prove the most severe blow which organised labour in America has ever received.