Los Angeles Times bombing

The night the presses fell silent

It was the hour when a city’s machines keep their second shift. In the dim of the printing plant, the presses clicked and thumped, paper like slow moving waves, men and boys tending the giant rollers and type cases. Ink stained their fingers and faces. For many, the night was work and routine; for the Los Angeles Times, it was also the moment the operation that stoked the city’s anger and influence never slept.

Shortly after 1:00 a.m. on October 1, 1910—modern accounts often cite about 1:07 a.m.—a timed bomb set beneath or near the plant detonated. The concussion blew out windows, shredded masonry, and ruptured boilers. Fire took hold almost immediately. Floors collapsed into the darkened guts of the building. Men trapped amid fallen beams and burning paper screamed for help. Rescue crews and neighbors hauled men out of the wreckage by hand; others were found beyond saving. By dawn, the familiar routine of presswork had been replaced by a blackened ruin, singed type, and a body count that would eventually reach twenty-one.

The scale of the blast and the pattern of destruction left little doubt to investigators: this was not an accident. It was deliberate sabotage aimed at one of the city’s most powerful institutions.

The paper that had made enemies

To understand why someone would target the Times, you have to look at more than a building. You have to look at a paper that had become a civic engine and, in the eyes of many laborers, an enemy.

Under Harrison Gray Otis, the Los Angeles Times was a force of opinion. Otis used its pages to champion business, to endorse civic leaders, and to argue for the "open shop"—the principle that employers should not be bound to recognize or bargain with trade unions. In the booming, often chaotic Los Angeles of the early 1900s, rapid construction and infrastructure projects invited fights over wages, hours, and who got the job. Contractors and civic leaders often refused to negotiate with unions; the Times editorial line furnished legitimacy to that resistance.

Militancy grew in some unions in response. The International Association of Bridge and Structural Iron Workers—known simply as the Iron Workers—counted among its ranks men who believed that economic pressure alone would not win fair conditions. In the late 1900s and into 1910 and 1911, a wave of dynamite attacks targeted employers, contractors, and symbols of anti-union power in multiple cities. These operations, informal and secretive, were part retaliation, part terror: they sought to intimidate bosses who refused to bargain and to retaliate on behalf of workers who had been beaten or blacklisted.

The Los Angeles Times, with its open-shop advocacy and connections to powerful local employers, was both symbol and target. In that climate, someone decided to strike at the heart of what the paper represented.

When a whisper of dynamite became a roar

The explosion itself was brief and brutal. Contemporary accounts describe walls ripped open, printing machinery hurled into the street, and fires that fed on ink and paper. The night-shift employees—compositors, pressmen, a young copy boy—were the people most exposed to the blast. Many of the dead were buried beneath collapsing floors. Rescue came quickly but under terrible conditions: smoke that stung the eyes, timbers that threatened to fall, and the knowledge that more could still be trapped inside.

Newspapers next morning printed columns of names, lists of the dead and injured, and photographs of the gutted facade at Broadway and First. On the street, a stunned public watched as a fire department fought to keep the flames from spreading to neighboring blocks. For the Los Angeles Times itself, the attack was a deep wound—the printing plant obliterated, presses gone, and a disruption to the business that paid civic bills and wielded public influence.

Authorities moved fast. The nature of the explosion, residue found at the scene, and the pattern of destruction convinced investigators that the building had been bombed. The scale and apparent planning elevated the case beyond local arson: this was part of an interstate campaign of sabotage that had already left a trail of frightened businessmen across American cities.

Burns and the private war against bombers

Local police were competent but overwhelmed. Into that breach stepped private detection—most prominently the William J. Burns Detective Agency. Burns, already a national figure in private investigation, specialized in undercover work, informants, and cross-jurisdiction operations. His agents infiltrated radical networks, cultivated insiders, and followed leads from one city to the next.

What began as a search for a set of perpetrators turned into a sweeping counter-campaign against a hidden dynamite ring. Burns’ operatives traced materials, intercepted correspondence, and used paid informers to map a loose constellation of militants who had been involved in bombings and attempted bombings in California and beyond. The operation blurred the lines between private and public authority: local police cooperated; federal interest followed; business leaders cheered.

Over the months that followed, the net tightened. In April 1911, after months of undercover work and surveillance, investigators arrested two brothers who would become the center of the case: James B. McNamara and John J. McNamara. The arrests were the product of an interstate sweep—the culmination of the Burns operation and of pressure from city leaders eager for answers. The McNamaras were members of the Iron Workers, and the case the prosecution would build painted them as central actors in a campaign of militant sabotage.

The arrests electrified the nation. The Los Angeles Times led with the story and used it to underline its long-held convictions about union violence. Business groups hailed a victory; labor organizations faced a crisis of image.

Confessions beneath the courthouse lights

The criminal case that followed threatened to explode into a political and social conflagration. Prosecutors prepared murder charges tied directly to the Times bombing; the stakes were high. If the brothers stood trial, the evidence and the network of informers might expose more of the dynamite campaign—and possibly implicate others in or outside organized labor.

The defense assembled prominent counsel, including famed attorney Clarence Darrow, who was retained to navigate the perilous legal and political waters. Darrow was a deft courtroom strategist and a public figure often associated with labor defense—his presence underscored how politically charged the proceedings had become.

In a move that stunned many observers, the case did not end with a dramatic jury verdict after a prolonged trial. On December 1, 1911, James B. McNamara entered a guilty plea to the bombing of the Los Angeles Times building. To avoid the death penalty, he accepted a life sentence and was sent to San Quentin. John J. McNamara pleaded guilty to related conspiracy charges; contemporary reports commonly list his sentence at 15 years. The plea agreement halted a potential inquiry that might have widened the list of implicated actors. It also left unanswered questions about culpability beyond the brothers—about whether higher union officials knew more or whether the violent campaign was the work of isolated cells.

For the victims and the city, the plea was a legal closure but not a moral one. The bodies had already been buried. Families had already suffered. For employers and civic leaders, the pleas justified the hard line they had long taken against unions. For many in labor, the confessions deepened a crisis of reputation and forced a new urgency to distance mainstream unions from violent tactics.

A city remade by smoke and politics

The human toll was immediate and raw: twenty-one dead, more than a hundred injured, livelihoods disrupted, and a printing plant destroyed. Property losses were substantial; contemporary estimates put the damage in the tens to low hundreds of thousands of dollars—a large sum in 1910 that meant rebuilt presses, reconfigured facilities, and financial strain.

But the nonmaterial damage ran deeper. The bombing hardened attitudes. Employers used the event as a pretext to drive harder on open-shop policies, to blacklist militant organizers, and to contract private security to counteract union activity. Civic leaders and newspapers openly called for law-and-order responses. The Iron Workers suffered a reputational blow from which parts of the union movement would take years to recover.

At the same time, established labor organizations, including the American Federation of Labor, moved quickly to condemn bombings and violent tactics. The story gave the moderate wing of the labor movement cover to marginalize more radical elements and to emphasize legal, political, and organizational methods over clandestine violence.

The Burns Detective Agency’s role also raised long-term questions about the expanding use of private policing. Burns’ methods—undercover operatives, paid informants, and aggressive surveillance—were praised by business leaders and law enforcement as effective. Critics worried about entrapment, overreach, and the privatization of policing powers. Those debates would continue in courts and in the press in the years ahead.

The case that reshaped the story of labor

A century later, the Los Angeles Times bombing is a touchstone in U.S. labor history because it demonstrates how a single violent act can ripple outward—shifting public sentiment, changing legal practice, and altering the strategies of powerful institutions. The McNamara pleas are central facts: James B. McNamara admitted guilt and received life; John J. McNamara pleaded guilty to related charges and served a substantial term. But the event’s deeper meaning lies in the collision of forces that produced it.

Historians still debate the causes and the consequences. Some ask whether private detectives like Burns coerced confessions or crossed ethical lines. Others examine how the Times’ own rhetoric—relentless attacks on unions—became justification in the minds of some militants to strike back. Questions remain about the extent to which union leadership sanctioned or knew of violent plots, and scholars continue to trace how the publicity around the trial reshaped public policy toward labor.

The physical ruin on Broadway was eventually rebuilt; the Los Angeles Times recovered and continued to grow in influence. For the families of the dead and for the workers who survived, the scars remained. For the broader labor movement, the bombing helped push activism toward strategies that favored public sympathy and legal remedy over clandestine sabotage.

What the blast still tells us

The Times bombing is not just a story about one device or two defendants. It is an account of how rapid urban growth, industrial conflict, a combative press, and the temptations of clandestine retaliation can combine to produce tragedy. It shows how private power—whether wielded by a newspaper magnate, a private detective agency, or a union cell—can reshape public life.

We remember the charred facade at Broadway and First, the image of men in overcoats staring at the wreckage, and the list of names printed in black columns. We remember, too, how the law responded: with manhunts, courtroom drama, and a plea that closed one chapter while opening others. The bombing marked a turning point for labor in America—one that pushed the movement to rethink tactics, and that gave employers new justification for aggressive anti-union measures.

The questions the case raised—about justice, guilt, and the proper bounds of protest—are not only artifacts of 1910. They continue to echo in debates about violence, civil disobedience, and the limits of private power in the years since.