Thomas Mooney
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Thomas Joseph Mooney (December 8, 1882—March 6, 1942) was an American labor leader in San Francisco, who famously spent 22 and a half years in prison for a crime he did not commit, implicated in the Preparedness Day bombing of 1916.
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[edit] Life
[edit] Early life
The son of Irish immigrants, Mooney was born in Chicago, Illinois. His father Bernard had been a coal miner and a militant organizer for the Knights of Labor in struggles so intense that in one fight he was left for dead by anti-unionist thugs. He died of "miner's con" (now known as silicosis) at the age of 36, when Tom, the oldest of three surviving children, was ten years old. Mooney held many jobs as an industrial laborer before developing a career as a labor, anarchist, and socialist activist.
As a young man, Mooney toured Europe where he learned about Socialism. Arriving in California, he met his wife Rena, and found a place in the Socialist Party of America and the presidential campaign of Eugene V. Debs. In 1910, Mooney won a trip to the Second International Conference in Copenhagen by selling a huge number of subscriptions to the socialist Wilshire Magazine. On his way home, he visited the British Trade Union Congress in Sheffield, England.
[edit] Suspected dynamiter
Upon his return, he joined the Industrial Workers of the World, but quickly left, because of certain disagreements. Later in life, Tom admitted that he began a campaign of dynamiting Pacific Gas and Electric Company power towers on behalf of P.G.& E. workers. Mooney had been tried but never convicted of transporting explosives for the purpose of blowing up transmission lines.
Tom was well known as a militant, a socialist, and a suspected dynamiter. He was tried and convicted for the Preparedness Day bombing, July 22, 1916 in San Francisco, known as the "the best damned union town in America". The bomb exploded at Steuart and Market Street near the Embarcadero. Mooney had been tipped off to threats that preceded the parade and pushed resolutions through his union, the Molders, and the San Francisco Central Labor Council and the Building Trades Council warning that agent provocateurs might attempt to blacken the labor movement by causing a disturbance at the parade. Ten deaths and forty injuries resulted from the explosion in the midst of the Preparedness Day parade.
[edit] Trial
Thomas Mooney, his wife Rena and two associates, Warren K. Billings (1893-1972) and jitney driver Israel Weinberg were arrested. There was a show trial carried out in a lynch mob atmosphere that included several witnesses whose perjury was coached by deputy prosecuting District Attorney Eddie Cunha and D.A. Charles Fickert. It included one who claimed her "astral body" was not at the scene. Mooney and Billings were convicted in separate trials and sentenced to be hanged. Rena Mooney and Weinberg were acquitted.
After Mooney was sentenced, the Socialist Party tried to expel him, but his local branch held out. Due to agitation from Petrograd to Mexico City, President Woodrow Wilson became involved. Although no one on the defense committee knew about the intervention, Wilson telegraphed Governor William Stephens asking him to commute Mooney's sentence to life imprisonment, or at least stay the impending execution. Later, a commission set up by Wilson found little evidence of Mooney's guilt.
[edit] In prison
In 1918, Mooney's sentence was changed to life imprisonment, the same as Billings's. Quickly, Mooney, prisoner No. 31921, became the most famous political prisoner in America, and perhaps the world.
Evidence of perjury and false testimony at the trial became common knowledge. A world-wide campaign to free Tom Mooney followed. During that time his wife Rena, Bulletin editor Fremont Older, Alexander Berkman, Emma Goldman, Hollywood celebrities, international politicians and many well-known persons campaigned for his release. Even after the fact of his innocence became clear, he sat in prison for twenty-two and a half years.
[edit] Release and later years
Mooney was granted release in 1938 by Democrat Governor Culbert Olson. The Sunday after Mooney was pardoned, he visited the grave of his mother, one of his greatest supporters, on Mount Tamalpais.
He then walked in parade up Market Street from the Embarcadero to the Civic Center with an honor guard of one hundred husky longshoremen with their hooks, led by Mooney's own Local 164, International Molder's Union, in the vanguard. No police or politicians were invited; reactionary bosses of the big unions were unwelcome and stayed away. Tom thumbed his nose at the Hearst building at Third and Market, a gesture against the local press editors who railed against him for decades.
Tom went to bat for Billings's release, and travelled around the country making speeches. He drew a full house at Madison Square Garden in New York City.
He died at Saint Luke's Hospital in San Francisco in 1942. A great funeral celebration was held at the San Francisco Civic Auditorium. He is interned at Cypress Lawn Memorial Park in Colma.
[edit] References
- Estolv E. Ward, The Gentle Dynamiter, Ramparts Press, Palo Alto, California 94303: 1983. LC #82-80645, ISBN 0-87867-089-0, ISBN 0-87867-00-4 (paperback)
- Curt Gentry, Frame Up, WW Norton & Co, New York: 1967.
- Gene Fellner (editor), Life of an Anarchist: The Alexander Berkman Reader, Four Walls Eight Windows, New York: 1992.
[edit] External links
- Mooney's story
- Spartacus School on Mooney
- Modern American Poetry website's essay on Mooney (with pictures)
- Free Tom Mooney!. Brief history illustrated with campaign buttons.
