High Steel by Jim Rasenberger

Author:Jim Rasenberger
Format: mobi
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2004-06-10T16:00:00+00:00

A few weeks after the McNamaras’ arrest, a tall, stooped, unkempt figure walked into their prison cells and introduced himself. The man did not look much like a beacon of salvation, but to the McNamaras he must have seemed exactly that, for he was none other than the “Great Defender” himself, Clarence Darrow. Today, Darrow is best remembered for defending the science of evolution in the landmark Scopes Trial of 1925, but in 1911 he was America’s favorite protector of the underdog and friend of the underclass. When union officials first approached him, Darrow was reluctant to take on the McNamara case; perhaps he had an inkling of the grief it would bring him. Samuel Gompers, president of the American Federation of Labor (of which the ironworkers union was a member), implored him to reconsider, and he eventually did. He would have many opportunities to regret the decision.

Gompers and virtually every high official in the labor movement treated the McNamaras’ arrest as a frame-up. They noted that the Fortress had been having problems with its gas system for weeks before October 1 and suggested this as the probable cause of the explosion. Some even hinted darkly that Otis himself planted a bomb as a ruse to defame unionists. Otis was a monster, Burns was a stooge, McManigal was a stool pigeon, the McNamaras were martyrs—this was the party line, and it wasn’t just unionists who bought it. The McNamaras’ arrest occurred at a moment when progressive ideas were taking root in an American public fed up with enormous corporations that treated workers like chattel, and the arrest of “the boys” struck a chord among many in the middle class. Progressives throughout the country rallied to the cause, holding fund-raisers and purchasing McNamara buttons and McNamara stamps. The highlight of many of these fund-raisers was a feature film about the McNamaras, in which two handsome young actors played the brothers. (Their bereaved mother and several union officials appeared as themselves.) In Los Angeles, marchers took to the streets by the tens of thousands. A Socialist, Job Harriman, ran for mayor and looked like a winner, thanks largely to pro-McNamara/anti-Otis fervor. A socialist mayor of Otistown? It must have seemed like a cruel joke—no, a demonic hallucination—to the General.

And then, just as the trial was about to get under way, the pro-McNamara machine came to a crashing halt. Clarence Darrow had come to realize, thanks largely to information provided by his spies on the prosecution team, that the evidence against the McNamaras was overwhelming. The brothers’ only hope, he believed, was to make a deal with prosecutors and save themselves from the death penalty. On the afternoon of December 1, James pled guilty to the Times bombing. As for John, there was little evidence to connect him directly to the Times explosion, but there was plenty to prove he’d ordered McManigal’s Christmas Eve dynamiting of the Llewellyn Iron Works. John pled guilty to this lesser charge.

“Please say to the papers that I

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