THE CONVICTED DYNAMITARDS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 298, 9 May 1913, Page 8

THE CONVICTED DYNAMITARDS.

RE-ELECTED BY LABOR UNIONS. San Francisco, April 2. Unabashed by the conviction of more than 30 of its officials for conspiracy to promote the McNamara dynamitings, the International Association of Bridge and Structural Ironworkers has re-elected Frank N. Ryan, the most prominent of all the men found guilty, as its president. Likewise, the States Building Trades Council 'of California has reelected a». secretary-treasurer Olaf Tvietmoe, another of the convicted dynamitards, the man who is alleged to have furnished the fund 9 with which J. B. McNamara operated when he blew up the Los Angeles Times building and killed. 21, men. This, challenging action on the part of the Labor organisations seems to indicate that it is their intention to stand by their representatives, guilty or innocent. At the same time that Ryan was retained in the presidency of his union another of the convicted dynamitards was elected vice-president, and fund? were voted to defend the convicted men in the case of a new trial, and to care for their families. This union is affiliated with the American Federation of Labor, the central unionist organisation which Samuel Gompers has so long and so successfully led. Gompers, who publicly disavowed sympathy with the McNamara crimes arid the individuals' who instigated them, is now being urged to take action with the object of expelling the Ironworkers' Union from the federation. Undoubtedly there ,are many unioin workmen in either trades who have no sympathy with Ryan while the verdict against him stands, and who feel that dynamiting methods do more harm to the cause than good. It is being pressed on Gompers that he should refuse to "allow this anarchistic association to affiliate any longer with the association of which he is the head," to quote the New York Tribune.