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AMERICAN FEDERATION of LABOR
Executive Council.
President, Samuel Gompens.
Secretary, FRANK Mohiuson.
Treasurer, John B. LEnnox,
Bloomington, Ill.
First Vice-President, JAMEs Duncax, Fifth Vice-President, WM. D. HUBER,
Hancock Bldg., Quincy, Mass. Carpenters' Bldg., Indianapolis, Ind.
Second Vice-President, John Mitchell, Sixth Vice-President, Jos. F. Walentine,
3 Claremont Ave., Mount Vernon, N. Y. Commercial Tribune Building, Cincinnati, Ohio.
Third Vice-President, James O'Connell, Seventh Vice-President, John R. Alpine,
402-407 McGill Bldg., Washington, D. C. 401-6 Bush Temple of Music, Chicago, Ill.
Fourth Vice-President, D. A. Hayes, Eighth Vice-President, H. B. Praham,
930. Witherspoon Bldg., Philadelphia, Pa. Star Bldg., St. Louis, Mo.
Sº 801-809 G ST. N. W.
LoNG DISTANCE TELEPHONE, MAIN 3871-2
cABLE ADDRESS, ‘AFEL.'
CŞtº ºf Tº Mºrºzºr paº- º %/0, (2/2, CZG%. Dec. 9, 1911.
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TO ORGANIZED LABOR, GREETING:
In the recent past , the good name and high ideals of our
great labor movement, its men, and the cause of humanity it
and they represent, have been at tacked as never before. Every
enemy, every "interest", arrayed against the organized Workers
has howled like dervishes. They hope to bring our tried,
trusted and faithful men into disrepute, to destroy your con-
fidence in the i r integrity and the reby weaken, and finally
crush, the organizations of labor.
Every union member deplores violence and crime, whether
Committed by an ordinary out law, by a corporation director or
agent, or by a so-called union man. Lab or resents the in sinu -
at i on that be cause one or two union members be came criminally
fanatical or f an at i ca 1 ly criminal, that the rank and file,
and the officers of the labor movement, are responsible e i ther
legally or morally.
Labor in its history has me t, resisted, and over come the
bitter hostility of its foes. Lab or , standing for the great
cause of just ice and humanity, Will again.
Men and Women of Lab or : St and firm, be true to your -
selves and to each other. Let the spirit of fraternity, jus-
tice, freedom and solidarity imbue your every thought , word and
action. St and by your union. Organize the yet unorganized
workers, and lab or Will triumph.
The following statement of the McNamara Ways and Means



Committee is commended to the thought ful conside ration of you
Please read it at your meeting and in sert
G T it
and all interested.
it in your minutes for future information and reference.
{D your teeth and organize
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Fraternally yours,
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Secretary.
President
American Federation of Labor.
A STATEMENT
To the American Public on the McNamara Case:
The McNamaras stand before the world self-convicted of
great crimes. They have been sentenced to terms of impris-
onment—J. B. during his natural life, J. J. for fifteen years.
The position of labor in connection with the effort made to
afford these men an opportunity for adequate defense before
the courts has been attacked and misrepresented to such a
degree as to require a clear statement at the hands of the
undersigned, who are in the best position to make an authori-
tative statement at this time—a statement that will be strength-
ened by some review of the principal points of the case.
Was there an explosion of gas in the Los Angeles Times
building when it was destroyed? Immediately after the dis-
aster, the press reports stated that men who had been at work
in the building spoke of an odor of gas for some time pre-
vious to the explosion. Gas leakage in the building, it came
out later, had been known to others. Many conservative trade
union officials, newspaper writers and publicists, on making
an investigation in Los Angeles, soon after, were positive in
assuring the public that they believed gas had destroyed the
building. Among the mine workers, not one man, so far as
information has reached us, has believed the destructive explo-
sive was dynamite. Prominent officials of the United Mine
Workers, cautious, honorable men, whose word is taken as
truth by all who know them, who are familiar with mining
explosives, declared that the effect of the explosion was not
that which follows a discharge of dynamite. Were all these
men speaking from blind partisanship or from honest convic-
tion? Were they utterly mistaken? The answer has now
been supplied by the prosecution. While the “gas theory” was
being hooted at by enemies of the unions, while even so late
as last Friday night, an editor of the New York Times was
inditing a contemptuous slur at John Mitchell for supposing
“that proof would be adduced to show that an explosion of
gas destroyed the Los Angeles Times building,” the prosecu-
since declared it was the result of dynamite.
tion knew that gas was an agency in the explosion and a great
factor in the destruction which ensued. W. J. Burns in a
press interview Saturday last said: “Why, McManigal told us
in his first confession that McNamara turned open the stop-
cocks of the gas mains of the building when he set the bomb.
We knew all the time that a part of the explosion was due to
gas.” Now, the possible terrific force of a gas explosion, even
in the open air, was shown in the wreckage caused by the
accident at the Grand Central Station, New York, December
19, 1910, while the Los Angeles disaster was being discussed
throughout the country.
The fact of a gas explosion led all others in importance in
the minds of the organized workers. Nearly all of them were
convinced that it was an established fact. The most cautious
reasoners among them regarded the possibilities of the fact
sufficient to hold to belief in it until proof to the contrary could
be produced. They were willing to suspend conclusive judg-
ment while awaiting evidence.
The public also wanted such facts regarding the circumstan-
ces of the explosion as could be accepted as evidence of the
way it came about. What was given the public, first and
foremost? On the instant, at the hearing of the explosion, H.
G. Otis broke into a savage denunciation of trade unionists,
accusing them of having caused the disaster, and he has ever
By this course,
he diverted the case from one in which citizens in common
should have proceeded, through legal methods alone, to search
for the truth. He threw the unions on their defense, outraged
them, insulted their officials, raised animosities that could have
been avoided. He was at once backed up by the small circle
of bitter enemies of trades unionism, whose fulminations were
largely made up of transparent falsehoods leveled at trade
unions in general and at the leaders of trade unions.
Despite all clamor it must be remembered that, with few
exceptions, the international trade unions, more than 120 in

number, are and have usually been in normal business relations
with the employers of their members. Many of them have for
years arranged their differences and their working conditions
with employers through trade agreements or other methods
resulting in a minimum loss through suspension of work.
Violence in cases of dispute are not common to them. Trade
unionists have been made aware, by experience, that stories of
disorder by unionists during strikes or lockouts have been
systematically exaggerated
Therefore, aware of the necessity of trade union organiza-
tion of the incalculable amount of good in various forms done
by and through their unions every year, of the long and bitter
campaign carried on by Otis, Kirby, Post and others, to de-
stroy trade unionism, and perceiving the intention of these
plotters and their detectives to ignore the apparent, and, to
their minds, proven cause of the Times disaster, and to turn
that terrible event solely to account as a means of discrediting
trade unionism, the unions energetically stated their side of
the case to the American public as they saw it at that time.
When, after six months, the McNamaras were arrested, it
was in Russian style, not American. Holding the members
of the Executive Board of the Structural Iron Workers in
confinement without warrant, hurrying J. J. McNamara away
from Indianapolis in an automobile and by circuitous routes
taken to California—what were these but features of high-
handed irregularity, and tyrannical lawlessness, known in
arrests in Russia that precede transportation of prosecuted
citizens to Siberia? And, when Detective Burns has through-
out been doubted by so great a part of the American public, it
!has been largely the fault of his proceedings at this point, and
of his own defouling the reputation of his craft, for has he
not said: “Private detectives, as a class, are the worst lot of
blackmailing scoundrels that live outside of prisons.” (See
page 357, McClure's Magazine, August, 1911.)
J. J. McNamara had not been of sufficient prominence among
1abor men to be the subject of discussion as a leading figure,
but what was generally known of him was to his credit. He
was seen at conventions as a man of pleasing appearance and
of mild manner. He was spoken of as self-educated and a
faithful secretary of his organization. His speech and his
writings for his magazine were reputed to be conservative.
When placed under arrest, and throughout his imprisonment,
lis bearing was undemonstrative. His letters to officials of
the A. F. of L. and telegram to the Atlanta Convention were
concise and without suspicious characteristics. In no wise, to
common observation, had he shown abnormal traits.
Did organized labor properly express its condemnation of
violence on hearing of the Los Angeles disaster? It did by
interviews, addresses, and publications. The hundreds of
union labor papers, in their issues succeeding the event, con-
tained what, taken together, would make volumes, declarative
of the sentiments of their editors and of the rank and file of
union membership on the subject. All recognized the case as
one of mystery, the feeling shown being that of horror at the
possibility of any union man being implicated in it. Unions
framed resolutions in meetings, declaring that trade unionism
was not to be advanced by murderous acts. Union labor
officials, and many others, were quoted to similar effect. The
president of the American Federation of Labor, the day after
the disaster occurred, as published by the St. Louis Star, said:
“Labor does not stand for such outrages, nor contemplate
such crime. I cannot believe that a union man has done it,
and I deeply hope no one who was connected with the labor
movement will be found to have done it. It is inconceivable
that a union man should have done this thing. And yet, if it
is found that a union man has done it, unionism cannot be
blamed by fair-minded men for the deed of a man devoid of
any human feeling, as the perpetrator of this horrible catas-
trophe must have been. It was the act of a madman. No one
with an ounce of sympathy in his makeup could do aught but
contemplate such a crime with the deepest abhorrence.”
These facts were further fully presented in the June, 1911,
issue of the American Folerationist, in a seventeen-page ar-
ticle entitled the “McNamara Case”, in which the leading facts
up to that time were reviewed. Speaking before the St. Louis
Central Labor Union on Sunday, October 2, 1910, the day after
the disaster, President Gompers asserted he would “imme-
diately turn the dynamiters over to the proper authorities if
he could lay hands on them.” The Globe-Democrat also
quoted him as saying: “I only wish I knew the actual perpe-
trators and if I did, take my word for it, I would turn them
over to justice.” The universal condemnation of a murderous
deed in labor circles, ought to be a fact so far beyond question,
so easily ascertainable from accessible records, that no man
with any regard for his reputation for veracity could deny
it. Yet, the New York Times, in an editorial last Saturday,
printed this sentence: “From the day when James B. McNa-
mara's bomb blew his twenty-one victims into eternity, down
to the present time, no authoritative voice in the ranks of
labor has been raised to express the hope that the murderers
would be brought to justice, even should they prove to be
union men.”
Relative to other phases of the McNamara case, the article
in the June American Federationist contains these passages:
“It may be said that from that time (the kidnapping) to the
present, Detective Burns, Attorney Drew, Editor Otis, C. W.
Post, and the active agents of the extremists in the Manufac-
turers' Association in general have all played to perfection
the hysterical characters to which we are accustomed in the
pages of cheap fiction and on the boards of the Bowery class
of theatres.” -
* * “Nothing more surprised us in the series of auda-
cious acts committed by Detective Burns than his saying to a
reporter of the World, May 7, 1911: -
• ‘Samuel Gompers, President of the American Federation
of Labor, knows by this time that there was no frame-up and
that the arrests of the McNamaras and McManigal were not
the result of a plant. Why? Because Gompers has been con-
ducting an investigation of his own at Indianapolis that has
convinced him that there was no frame-up and no plants.’”
“These assertions of Burns were entirely without founda-
tion. Nothing was brought to our knowledge in Indianapolis
or elsewhere that could be used as evidence against the pris-
oners or to show that the Structural Iron Workers' Union has
been conducting a dynamite campaign against the Erectors'
Association.”
Since the McNamara's confession Burns has been reiterat-
ing this charge. The only “investigation” in which President
Gompers participated in Indianapolis was the meeting of the
prominent trade unionists held last May 10-12, called by offi-
cials of the eight international unions which have their head-
quarters in that city, and the meeting of the officials of a
large number of trade unions called by authority of the Execu-
tive Council of the American Federation of Labor, and held at
Indianapolis, June 29, 1911. What President Gompers learned
there was precisely what everyone attending the conference
learned, and that was nothing that helped to solve the mystery
of the Los Angeles disaster, or, of criminality of any kind.
Indeed, the unlawful and un-American kidnapping of Mc-
Namara formed one of the chief factors of fixing in the minds
of the working people of our country that he was innocent.
They reasoned, as they had a right to reason, that if there
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existed evidence of McNamara's guilt of the crime charged,
every protection would and should have been accorded him to
demonstrate before the courts of Indiana that he was innocent
of the crime with which he was charged. His protestations
of innocence, his demands to be represented by counsel, were
all ruthlessly ignored.
Violence, brutality, destruction of life or property, are for-
eign to the aims and methods of organized labor of America,
and no interest is more severely injured by the employment of
such methods, than that of the workers organized in the labor
movement. Therefore, quite apart from the spirit of humani-
tarianism and justice which prompts the activities of the or-
ganized labor movement, policy and hopes for success, forbid
the resort to violence. The American labor movement and its
men are loyal Americans and seek to obtain the abolition of
wrongs and the attainment of their rights within the law.
Organized labor of America has no desire to condone the
crimes of the McNamaras. It joins in the satisfaction that
the majesty of the law and justice has been maintained and
the culprits commensurately punished for their crime.
And yet it is an awful commentary upon existing conditions
when any one man, among all the millions of workers, can
bring himself to the frame of mind that the only means to
secure justice for labor is in violence, outrage and murder.
It is cruelly unjust to hold the men of the labor movement
either legally or morally responsible for the crime of an indi-
vidual member. No such moral code or legal responsibiity is
placed upon any other association of men in our country.
In so far as we have the right to speak, in the name of
organized labor, we welcome any investigation which either Fed-
eral or State courts may undertake. The sessions of the Con-
ventions of the American Federation of Labor are held with
open doors that all may see and hear what is being said and
done. The books, accounts, and correspondence of the Ameri-
can Federation of Labor are open to any competent authority,
who may desire to make a study or an investigation of them.
Will the National Manufacturers’ Association, the Erectors'
Association and the detective agencies extend the same privi-
lege for public investigation and examination of their books
and correspondence?
When we were selected as a Committee on Ways and Means
to raise and dispense funds for the defense of the McNamaras
and the prosecution of the kidnappers, we were fully impressed
with the innocence of the accused men. That impression was
strengthened by their written and oral protestations of inno-
cence. We here and now, individually and collectively, declare
that the first knowledge or intimation of their guilt was con-
veyed by the press in their confessions of guilt. From the
outset we assured all contributors and the public generally
that we would publish an accounting of the moneys received,
from whom received, and to whom paid. This assurance will
be fulfilled. A report in full will first be made to the Execu-
tive Council of the American Federation of Labor, at its meet-
ing to be held at Washington, D. C., January 8, 1912.
The American labor movement has done so much for the
workers of our country in improving their condition, in
lightening the burdens which the workers have had to bear,
bringing light and hope in the homes and in the lives, the fac-
tories and the workshops of our country, that it challenges the
world of investigators. The organizations of labor of America
have been the most potent factors in the establishment and
maintenance of the largest measure of industrial peace. Their
course is of a conciliatory character, to reach trade agree-
ments with employers, and the faithful adherence to agree-
ments. When industrial conditions become unsettled, they
are more largely due to the unreasonableness of employers,
who regard every effort of the workers to maintain their
rights, and to promote their interests, as an invasion of em-
ployers' prerogatives, which are resented with consequent
struggles. If employers will be but fair and tolerant, they will
find more than a responsive attitude on the part of organized
labor, but, of one thing all may rest assured, that with exist-
ing conditions of concentrated wealth and industry, the organ-
ized toilers of our country realize that there is no hope from
abject slavery outside of the protection which the organized
labor movement affords.
The men of organized labor, in common with all our people,
are grieved beyond expression in words at the loss of life,
and the destruction of property, not only in the case under
discussion, but in any other case which may have occurred.
We are hurt and humiliated to think that any man connected
with the labor movement should have been guilty of either.
The lesson this grave crime teaches will, however, have its
salutary effect. It will demonstrate now more than ever, the
inhumanity, as well as the futility of resorting to violence in
the effort to right wrongs, or to attain rights.
In view of the great uplift work in which the men of the
labor movement have been and are engaged, and the indus-
trial problems with which they have to contend, we insist that
our organizations of labor should be judged by what they do.
and aim to do, rather than to be opposed and stigmatized be-
cause one or a few may be recreant to the good name and
high ideals of labor, and we appeal to the fair-minded citizen-
ship and the press of America for fair treatment.
SAMUEL GOMPERS,
President American Federation of Labor, Chairman.
FRANK MORRISON,
Secretary American Federation of Labor, Secretary.
JAMES A SHORT,
President Building Trades Department.
WM. J. SPENCER,
Secretary Building Trades Department.
JAS. O'CONNELL,
President Metal Trades Department.
A. J. BERRES,
Secretary Metal Trades Department.
JOHN B. LENNON,
President Union Label Trades Department.
THOMAS F. TRACY,
Secretary Union Label Trades Department.
Constituting the McNamara Ways and Means Committee.
Washington, D. C.,
December 7, 1911.
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