Los Angeles Times Bombing - Background

Background

The Iron Workers union formed in 1886. The work was seasonal and most iron workers were unskilled. The union remained weak and much of the industry unorganized until 1902. In that year, the union won a strike against the American Bridge Company, a subsidiary of the newly formed U.S. Steel corporation. American Bridge was the dominant company in the iron industry, and within a year the Iron Workers had not only organized nearly every iron manufacturer in the United States but also won signed contracts which included union shop clauses. The McNamara brothers were Irish American trade unionists. John (known as J.J.) and his younger brother James (known as J.B.) were both members of and active in the International Association of Bridge and Structural Iron Workers (the Iron Workers).

In 1903, officials of U.S. Steel and the American Bridge Company founded the National Erectors' Association, a coalition of steel and iron industry employers. The primary goal of the National Erectors' Association was to promote the open shop and assist employers in breaking unions in their respective industries. Employers used labor spies, agents provocateur, private detective agencies, and strike breakers, and engaged in a campaign of union busting. Local, state and federal law enforcement agencies cooperated in this campaign, which often employed violence against union members. Hard pressed by the open shop campaign, the Iron Workers reacted by electing the militant Frank M. Ryan president and John J. McNamara secretary-treasurer in 1905. In 1906, the Iron Workers struck American Bridge in an attempt to retain their contract. The open shop movement was a significant success. By 1910, U.S. Steel had nearly succeeded in driving all unions out of its plants. Unions in other iron manufacturing companies also vanished. Only the Iron Workers held on (although the strike at American Bridge continued).

Desperate union officials turned to violence to counter the violence they had suffered. Beginning in late 1906, national and local officials of the Iron Workers launched a dynamiting campaign. The stated goal of the campaign was to bring companies to the bargaining table, not to destroy plants or kill people. Between 1906 and 1911, the Iron Workers blew up 110 iron works, although only a few thousand dollars' worth of damage was done. The National Erectors' Association was not unaware of who was responsible for the bombings. Herbert S. Hockin, a member of the Iron Workers' executive board, was a paid spy for the Association.

In Los Angeles, employers had been successfully resisting unionization for nearly half a century. Harrison Gray Otis, publisher of the Los Angeles Times, was vehemently anti-union. Otis joined and then seized control of the local Merchants Association in 1896, renamed it the Merchants and Manufacturers' Association (colloquially known as the M&M), and used the M&M and his newspaper's large circulation to spearhead a 20-year campaign to rid the city of its few remaining unions. Without unions to keep wages high, open shop employers in Los Angeles were able to undermine the wage standards set in heavily unionized San Francisco. Unions in San Francisco feared that employers in their city would soon begin pressing for wage cuts and institute an open shop drive of their own. The only solution would be to unionize Los Angeles again.