1915.03.03: I.W.W. AND REDS MORE DARING IN LAST 2 YEARS

March 3, 1915

I.W.W. AND REDS MORE DARING IN LAST 2 YEARS

Bombs Used Against Churches--Cathedral Damage by One.

ORATORS INCITED MEN TO VIOLENCE

Fiery Speeches Often Stopped--Many Demonstrations Aimed at the Rockefellers

The Industrial Workers of the World and various anarchistic groups in New York have been extremely active here within the last two years.

Raids upon restaurants, church, invasions and the exploding bombs—the latter costing at least four lives—have marked the trail of the Manhattan “Red.” Just what has occurred since January 1, 1914, follows:

1914.

February 27—Second Avenue Baptist Church invaded by I.W.W. Driven out by police reserves.

March 3—Frank Tannenbaum and 190 of his followers arrested in St. Alphonsus’s Roman Catholic Church, which they invaded, demanding food and shelter for the night. Taken to night court at a special sitting of the court arranged by Chief Magistrate McAdoo, Magistrate Campbell held Tannenbaum on $5,000 bail on charge of inciting a riot, and the rest of the mob were held for disorderly conduct.

Tannenbaum’s trial was held before Judge Wadhome. He was found guilty and sentenced to one year in the penitentiary and fined $300. Tannenbaum asked for immediate sentence after making inflammatory speech.

March 8—A ten inch stick of dynamite was found eight feet from St. Mark’s Church, Second Avenue and Tenth Street where I.W.W. had been given shelter a few nights before.

March 9—All Saints’ Church, Henry Street, invaded by two mobs of I.W.W. demanding food and beds for the night.

I.W.W. in Churches.

March 10—St. George’s Episcopal Church, of which the late J.P. Morgan was a member, and where his song worships, sheltered 100 I.W.W. “unemployed” in the Memorial Building, 209 East Sixteenth Street.

March 12—Riot in Cooper Union when I.W.W. attempted to break up Socialist meeting. Cry of “We want to eat. Quit talking and do something” brought the police and invaders were ousted.

March 28—Threats made against Madison Square Presbyterian Church. Thirty patrolmen detailed to watch edifice.

April 4—Two riots in Union Square. “Wild Joe” O’Carroll, Arthur Caron and six others arrested. Meeting called by the I.W.W. to discuss the question of unemployment.

April 9—Philip Novick set to work house for ten days for creating trouble during I.W.W. meeting. Of eight others arrested for were discharged; one put on probation for a year; one sent to workhouse for fifteen days and another for ten.

April 12—Jane Est, I.W.W. speaker, arrested while interrupting service in Madison square Presbyterian Church, of which Dr. Parkhurst is pastor. “This church has a minister who repudiates Christ!” she cried. “He said Christ had nothing to do with the conditions of the poor in New York.”

April 22—“Sweet Marie” Gans, I.W.W. agitator, arrested in front of Tribune office while making a speech in provoking an angry outburst from crowd. She was forced from the platform and finally rescued by police.

April 24—Becky Edelson found guilty of disorderly conduct and placed under bond of $300 to keep the peace, with Samuel Hartman, a fellow agitator. Sent to workhouse and immediately announced she would go on hunger strike.

April 25—“Wild Joe” O’Carroll, I.W.W. agitator and member of the Anti-Militarist League, in Union Square said: “if American workmen have to go to Mexico to shoot Mexican workmen, just make a mistake and turn the guns on your own officers. When you start killing them you will find that the war will stop soon enough.”

May 2—Marie Gantz arrested near 26 Broadway on a warrant charging her with uttering incendiary remarks against John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Denunciation of Rockefeller, general disorder in meetings held in the open marked one of the busiest May days known to New York police.

May 21—Mrs. J. Borden Harriman and members of the Industrial Relations Commission listened to Vincent St. John, six years secretary of the I.W.W., tell about sabotage.

No Respect for Property.

St. John said: “The I.W.W. does not advocate the destruction of human life to gain a certain point, but we are just coming to realize that the wealthy have been supporting themselves by draining the muscle and energy of the workers, without respect for their property, and we don’t intend to show any respect for the property of the wealthy if its disregard will aid us to gain our point.”

May 24—Alexander Berkman, Becky Edelson, Arthur Caron, and several hundred followers, in a riot in front of 74 East Fourth Street. Rocks thrown; police reserves called; two arrests made.

May 29—Judge Mulqueen sentenced David Shapiro, known to the I.W.W. as “Edward Gibbons,” to twenty years at hard labor in Sing Sing. Two accomplices were sent away, one for two years, the other for six months. The three assaulted and robbed Morris Sandler on April 18.

May 29—Becky Edelson, Arthur Caron, Edward Plunkett arrested in Tarrytown while attempting to hold a meeting and demonstration near Rockefeller estate.

May 30—Fifteen prisoners taken to Tarrytown jail; result of raid by town authorities upon I.W.W. and followers of Berkman.

June 1—Two followers of Berkman sentenced, one got three months and the other thirty days for causing trouble in Tarrytown near Rockefeller’s estate.

June 8-11—Tarrytown in turmoil, due to invasion of I.W.W., loudly armed men with automatic guns guard Pocantico Hills. Rifles stacked for workmen to use at given signal.

Driven from Tarrytown.

June 22—Alexander Berkman, Leonard D. Abbott and Arthur Caron, with Charles Plunkett, Becky Edelson, Helen Goldberg, Jennie Berger, Marie Yuster and Rose Yuster, leading a dozen sympathizers, driven away from John D. Rockefeller’s estate in Tarrytown by townspeople who met them near the station. Agitators were on their way to Croton Aqueduct to hold meeting which had been forbidden by the police.

July 4—Carl Hanson, Charles D. Berg and Arthur Caron blown to pieces while making bomb, believed to have been meant for Rockefellers. Six story tenement house, 1626 Lexington Avenue, near 103d Street, wrecked. Thirty families living there endangered; twenty persons injured; one woman killed. Italian flag torn down and red flag put in place at Garibaldi celebration in Rosebank, Staten Island. Attempt made to pull down American flag frustrated.

July 11—700 patrolmen with night sticks, also 50 mounted men, stationed in Union Square while Anarchists paid tribute to memory of Caron, Hanson and Berg; 9,000 in front of the speaker’s stand; red flag shown and inflammatory speeches made. No disorder, although meeting was almost broken up by militant peace advocates headed by Frank Urban.

September 19—Propaganda League I.W.W. held meeting in Union Square. One hundred and fifty protest against the arrest of J.M. Rangel, Charles Cline, and twelve other I.W.W. caught trying to take arms to Mexico. Deputy Sheriff had been killed by one of the band. Joseph J. Ettor, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Pietro Allegra, P. Korinsky and L. Nelson made fiery speeches.

October 13—Bomb explosions in St. Patrick’s Cathedral on north side of church interior, directly in front of St. Bernard’s Chapel. Small pieces of iron and screws, fragments of the bomb, marked one of the several Italian panels back of the Crucifix. Doors of three pews wrecked. Hole one foot in length and six inches in diameter made. Particles of the infernal machine chipped ceiling. Explosion occurred toward dusk.

October 13 midnight—St. Alphonsus Roman Catholic Church damaged by bomb which exploded near front entrance, West Broadway. Priests shaken out of beds. Brother Patrick cut by flying glass. Windows broken. Damage $1,000.

1915.

January 9—“Church worst enemy,” cry of I.W.W., headed by Joseph Ettor, as they broke up meeting called by Interchurch Unemployment Committee, Labor Lyceum, Fourteenth Street and Second Avenue.

January 16—Cardinal Newman, Father Bernard Vaughan and John Mitchel quoted as in favor of defying law and order in speech of Elizabeth Gurley Flynn at opening campaign of I.W.W. at 64 East Fourth Street.

February 4—Five I.W.W.’s fined $5 each for refusing to pay for food, referring bill to Mayor Mitchel.

February 16—I.W.W. induce 125 workers in shop run by Mayor Mitchel’s Committee on Unemployment to quit work, after demanding $2 a day in place of 50 cents for bandage rolling.

 

ATTACK INEXPLICABLE SAYS MGR. LAVELLE

Mgr. Lavelle, rector of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, had little to say about the attempt to wreck the edifice. “It is all inexplicable to me,” he said.

“I cannot explain these attempted outrages in the cathedral by any manner of reasoning, and they are all the more abominable and mysterious because the cathedral stands for the very lifeblood of the people.

“We must face facts as facts, however, and try to guard against such attacks, but that doesn’t mean that we can understand them.

“Sometimes it is said that the cathedral is attended by the wealthy and cultured of the city, but it is the church of all the people.”

Since the attempt to explode a bomb in the cathedral near the Fifth Avenue entrance last September, Mgr. Lavelle said, a careful watch had been kept to guard against attacks by dynamiters.

 

TERRORIST SYSTEM A MISFIT IN U.S.

Prof. Robinson Blames “Idea-Glimmerings” for Bomb Attempt.

CONDITIONS PROVE REDS IN ERROR

Pair That Planted Explosive Weak Criminals, Asserts One Analist [sic].

“Foreigners, with idea-glimmerings not worked out, with a terrorist philosophy that is a misfit in this country—that is how I would describe the planters of the bombs in St. Patrick’s Cathedral yesterday and anarchists of their type,” said John Harvey Robinson, professor of history in Columbia University and an authority on his historical philosophical subjects, in discussing last night, the arrest and frustrated plot of Abarno and Carbone.

“There is no justification for the existence of anarchists in the social conditions of this country,” he maintained. “It is hard to conceive the motives which impel such actions as theirs. One can understand the thoughts of a Russian nihilist who is not a criminal in the true sense, but who is working along the lines of a definite philosophy toward a definite end, or of the terrorists of Paris who engaged in the fight for the Commune in 1871.

“But things are different in this country. I can trace no analogy between conditions before the Commune of 1871 and the conditions in this country today which precede what the two Italian anarchists are said to have planned a commune of anarchy and riot in New York. There is no parallel of effect.

“The idea of a Commune being established here by men of the type of Abarno and Carbone is absurd. Even the most disreputable, the most-down-and-out of the hoboes and the unemployed in the city, would never follow such leaders to wholesale plunder and murder.

“The proof that conditions in this country do not justify the actions of the two men and their kind—that anarchy and anarchism are not natural outgrowths of existing society here is simple enough. Think what would happen if anarchists tied up the subway for a day! The whole city would band together for their suppression. Our civilization is too complex, too delicate, too sensitive, to stand such shocks without retaliation. There are not enough anarchists in the country to succeed in terrorizing New York for any length of time, for the simple reason that the community is constructed in such an orderly manner that no disturbance would be tolerated by it.

“The case of the Commune in Paris was different. The country and the city were already in a state of semi-anarchy. Police power and the more certain power of public opinion had vanished from Paris with the capture of the city, the death of her best citizens in the war with Germany and the starvation and suspension of business which followed. It can be said, in a general  way, that the struggle of the Commune in 1871, during which the Hotel de Ville, the Luxemburg and other public buildings were burned and thousands died before and behind the barricades of the anarchists, was the more or less natural result of conditions in the community.

“But that cannot be said of any attempted Commune in New York nor of the acts of the anarchists later. These can be attributed to misapplication of half-formed ideas and ideals, fitted, perhaps, to Russia or even to Italy, but not to conditions in the United States, which are totally different.”

Speaking more definitely of the make-up of the Bresci anarchists, A.T. Poffenburger, engaged in laboratory research and experimental work with the department of psychology at Columbia University, spoke of the terrorist plans revealed by yesterday’s arrests.

“There is no one positive type of mind that belongs to the ‘red,’” he said. “It is always possible to trace the causes of the criminal bent or his anarchistic instincts, if the facts of his birth and his life are known. It resolves itself into a matter of heredity and environment. I have not yet seen Carbone and Abarno, but I have known men of their stamp. Their mental attitude may be best expressed by “The world owes me a living!”

“It is not surprising that the two are so young. Tendencies which lead to crime usually show themselves between thirteen and twenty-five, or even earlier.”

1914.07.21: ARTHUR CARON, "DYNAMITER"

1914.07.09: FOUR ARE KILLED IN ANARCHISTS' DEN

July 9, 1914

FOUR ARE KILLED IN ANARCHISTS' DEN

NEW YORK POLICE BELIEVE BOMB PLANT HAS BEEN DESTROYED

THINK EXPLOSION ACCIDENTAL

Friends of Victims Charge Murder, However--Much Inflammatory Literature Gives Officers Clew [sic] to Work on.

New York, July 7.--In the ruins of the Lexington avenue tenement house,wrecked Saturday by the premature explosion of a powerful bomb which killed Arthur Caron and three other persons, the authorities have found evidence that Caron's apartment was a center for the distribution of inflammatory literature which was printed there and that at the time of the explosion it was apparently a bomb factory, filled with the ingredients of death dealing missles [sic]. A small printing press, revolutionary pamphlets and circulars, an electric dynamo, two electric batteries, cartridges and bits of steel, were among the articles uncovered which tend, in the opinion of the police, to show an anarchistic plot at assassination.

Theory of Police

That a demonstration, halted by the bungling of some one who was preparing an infernal machine for its mission, was planned against the Rockefeller family in Tarrytown, is the theory upon which the authorities are working.

Two of those killed in the wrecked, apartment were prominent agitators who were to be placed on trial at Tarrytown today on charges of disorderly conduct in connection with the campaign of demonstration inaugurated against John D. Rockefeller, Jr., as a protest against his attitude in the Colorado coal mine strike.

The body of the fourth victim of the explosion has Just been found. It is that of Chas. Berger [sic], known in I. W. W. circles as "the big Swede," an associate of Caron. The other victims were Chas. [sic] Hanson and Mary Claves [sic]. 

The woman lived in an apartment; next to the one occupied by Caron and his associates.

Identification of Berger's [sic] body was made by Louise Berger, step-sister of Hanson, who lived in the flat where the explosion occurred.

Not An I. W. W.

Equally as interesting as the discovery of anarchistic literature and electrical machinery in the ruins of Caron's room, was the assertion by I. W. W. leaders that Caron was not a member of that organization, having recently been refused admission.

They declared that the I. W. W. had nothing to do with the explosion. Why Caron was denied a place among the workers was a point they did not make clear.

A gruesome but suggestive piece of evidence was a severed hand which clutched two small pieces of wire made ready for connections. The authorities believe that the owner of this, hand' was in the act of making an electric connection for one of the bombs and a battery when the explosion occurred
and he was blown to pieces.

Attack on Christianity.

The search for papers and notes was minute and some note books with the names of several anarchists were, found, but the police would not say any of them was important as documentary
evidence of a plot. There were also pamphlets which had been sold at I. W. W. meetings. One poem,
a vitriolic attack on Christianity is believed to have been on the little press.

Louise Berger declared that the three men who died in the explosion were murdered. She made this statement as she was being taken from the morgue, where she had identified Berg's body, to a police station for further questioning.

"Those boys were murdered, I know they were," she said.

Asked if she would continue her membership in tbe anti-militarist association, she replied:

"Why, of course. Why shouldn't I. Do they think that by killing some of our members they can destroy our organization. Well, they can't, nor will I rest until 1 have run down the murderers of my brother and the other boys."

1914.07.08: MISSING MURPHY HAS BOMB SECRET

July 7, 1914

MISSING MURPHY HAS BOMB SECRET

Police Unable to Locate Man, Who Survived Explosion.

SAY FOES SENT DYNAMITE.

Police Anxious to Locate Man Who Disappeared — Berkman Insists That No I. W. W. Members Were Manufacturing Bomb — Thinks Enemies of Caron Responsible For Outrage.

New York, July 6.--The whereabouts of Michael Murphy, the young I.W.W. sympathizer who escaped death in Saturday's bomb explosion in the flat of Charles Berg on Lexington avenue is still unknown to the police. It is believed that with his reappearance would come at least a partial solution of the bomb mystery.

The police feel sure that Murphy was in the flat at the time the explosion killed Arthur Caron. Carl Hanson and Charles Berg. I. W. W. sympathizers, and Mrs. Marie Chavez, who lived in another flat in the same building. Murphy fell through two stories in a mass of debris. With his clothing all but torn from him he ran to the East One Hundred and Fourth street police station, and, claiming that he had been slightly injured in a subway explosion, obtained a coat to cover his almost naked shoulders. He then telephoned news of the disaster to Alexander Berkman and was told to go to Wesheld, N. J., where Leonard Abbott, head of the Ferrer school, was giving a ????. He then dropped out of sight.

Deputy Commissioner of Police Rubin and Acting Captain Jones, who are in charge of the case, say that Murphy, so far as they know, has committed no crime and cannot be brought back to the city if he desires to stay away, but it is thought that Murphy's hands [hold] the secret of the death dealing bomb and its makers.

Says Foes Sent Bomb.

Berkman still insists that the bomb was not made in the Berg flat, but that the three men and Mrs. Chavez were murdered by enemies who sent the bomb to the flat. Berkman and other friends of Caron insist that the dead man always was opposed to violence and never had preached it in any of his public speeches. The fact that his body was perfectly recognizable argues, his friends say, that he was not connected with the bomb plot. Caron was killed by a blow on the back of the head from a piece of flying debris.

Although Caron was violently beaten by the police last May in Union square, he never had threatened violence against them. His strong arguments, those familiar with him contend, have been always for organization. Throughout the entire winter and spring, as the young graduate of the Worcester polytechnic school waxed more and more violent of tongue, he continued to use the same plan. He did not fear violence, but he argued that the time for it had not yet come.

In speech after speech he declared that the anarchists were not strong enough for violence. he used vile language often and had a remarkable flow of invective, much of which was directed at John D. Rockefeller, Jr., but invariably avoided advocacy of violence. he spoke of Marie Ganz, the girl who declared she was going to "shoot Rockefeller like a dog," as a "poor little music hall fool."

1914.07.08: BOMBMAKERS ARE CREMATED DESPITE PROTEST OF ‘REDS’

July 8, 1914

BOMBMAKERS ARE CREMATED DESPITE PROTEST OF ‘REDS’

Berkman and Friends Follow Bomb Victims—Declare Meeting Will Be Held.

The bodies of Arthur Caron, Carl Berg and Charles Hanson, victims of the premature explosion of their own bomb in the tenement at No. 1626 Lexington avenue Saturday, were cremated this afternoon at Fresh Pond, L.I. They were saved from potter’s field, where Health Commissioner Goldwater was ready to order them, by the submission of Alexander Berkman and his fellow Anarchists to the mandate of the authorities that there could be no public funeral and demonstration over the bodies next Saturday in Union Square.

But Berkman insisted that a demonstration would be held and that the ashes of the dead would be substituted for the bodies, despite objections of Mayor Mitchel and Police Commissioner Woods. His plans include speeches by himself, Charles Plunkett, Pietro Allegra, Arthur Sullivan, Carlo Tresco and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn. Berkman notified members of the Anti-Militarist League of a meeting tonight in the Ferrer School to raise money for this demonstration and for the funerals.

The removal of the bodies from the Bellevue morgue ended a situation which was becoming embarrassing to the authorities, who did not wish to appear to discriminate against the “reds,” it was accomplished, however only after a final protest from Berkman, who contended that he was not sure of the identification of Berg and Hanson, only parts of whose bodies were found, and a violent objection by Becky Edelson, who got Commissioner Goldwater on the phone from the morgue and demanded that the bodies be held till the missing parts had been found.

DECLARES PRECEDENT WAS ESTABLISHED IN TRIANGLE FIRE.

“Your department established a precedent in the Triangle fire,” declared the young woman, apparently in answer to Mr. Goldwater’s objection that he didn’t care to establish a precedent for the retention of bodies beyond the legal ninety-six hours.

“Those bodies were kept for two weeks and you are discriminating agains us because we are the sort of people you don’t like. If you are allowing your department to be bulldozed by other officials I am sorry for you.”

But Mr. Goldwater was firm, although he had already granted an extension from 10 o’clock until noon

(Continued on Second Page)

DEAD ARE CREMATED DESPITE PROTESTS OF THE ANARCHISTS

(Continued from First Page)

At the request of the undertaker, who declared he could not make the bodies ready, so it was a few minutes before 12 o’clock when the band of a score of Reds marched into the morgue and passed around Caron’s coffin.

Leonard Abbott and Berkman were there. Becky Edelson supported Louise Berger, in whose flat the explosion occurred and who collapsed when she found her half-brother’s body must be buried “piecemeal,” as she expressed it. Isidor Wisotsky, Charles Plunkitt [sic], Rose and Marie Yuster and little Lillian Rubel, in short skirts, were in line.

Each wore a mourning band of black, four inches wide, on which was sewn an inch and a half strip of red, and each carried a red carnation, which was dropped on the coffin as the line passed. Then the mourners lined up ten abreast in front of the morgue and followed the two hearses bearing the bodies to the Thirty-fourth street ferry.

OPERATORS HIRED BY BERKMAN CLICKED THEIR CAMERAS.

Moving picture cameras clicked as the procession advanced and dozens of policemen lined the streets, for large crowds gathered on every curbstone, but there was no disorder and the parade, being a funeral procession, was not interfered with.

There were no services when the crematory was reached, except the playing of the “Marseillaise” on the pipe organ and a short speech by Berkman, in which he repeated that there would be public memorial services in Union Square at 2 o’clock Saturday, to which the urns of ashes would be brought from the office of Mother Earth, No. 74 West One Hundred and Nineteenth street, by a band of paraders.

Then two big doors in the chapel were thrown open and the plain pine coffins were disclosed on the movable platform which was to carry them into the cremating furnaces. The platform began to move, the doors of the furnace swung open and the coffins disappeared behind them. Louise Berger, already faint with grief and excitement, nearly collapsed.

There was another spectacle in store, however for Berkman invited all who would—and nearly every one accepted—to a plate glass window in the rear of the furnaces, where the gas flames were seen playing about the coffins until they were concealed by the fire. Then sliding doors shut off this view and Berkman and the others returned to Manhattan.

Mrs. Marie Chavez, an innocent victim of the explosion, was not buried today. Her husband, Pastor Chaves, a Cuban cigarmaker, arrived from his home in Tampa Fla., and said he would take charge of the body, although he had been separated from his wife for several years.

1914.07.07: MURPHY FLEES CITY, FEARING FRAME-UP

July 7, 1914

MURPHY FLEES CITY, FEARING FRAME-UP

Police Can't Find Only Man Who Escaped Alive from the Room Where Bombmakers Died.

BERKMAN ADMITS HE'S GONE

Caron's Mother Won't Claim Body--Aldermen to Prevent Public Funeral--Delay Tarrytown Trials.

...

1914.07.05: ANARCHIST BOMB, BELIEVED FOR ROCKEFELLER, KILLS THREE I. W. W. MAKERS AND A WOMAN—INJURES MANY—WRECKS TENEMENT HOUSE

July 5, 1914

ANARCHIST BOMB, BELIEVED FOR ROCKEFELLER, KILLS THREE I. W. W. MAKERS AND A WOMAN—INJURES MANY—WRECKS TENEMENT HOUSE

Infernal Machine Planned for Use at Tarrytown Tomorrow. Say Police.

BODIES OF TWO ARE BLOWN TO PIECES

Arthur Caron Dead on Fire Escape—Thirty-four Families in Peril.

ONE CONSPIRATOR HAS MARVELOUS ESCAPE

Mike Murphy Drops With Bed Through Two Floors and Escapes Unhurt.

A dynamite bomb of terrific. strength, supposed to have been completed early yesterday morning for use at Tarrytown when the dozen or more I. W. W. agitators recently arrested near the summer home of John D. Rockefeller will be arraigned, exploded a few minutes after 9 o'clock yesterday morning in the top floor rooms of the flathouse at 1626 Lexington avenue, between 102d and 103d streets, on the west side of the avenue.

Three young anarchists, all identified with the recent disturbances of the unemployed and all implicated in the fights near Mr. Rockefeller’s Tarrytown home, and a woman living in the rooms next to theirs were killed. The body of one anarchist was shattered so that the pieces were gathered up in newspapers.

THE DEAD:

CARON, ARTHUR, 24 years old, unmarried; lived in apartment 35, sixth floor front.

BERG, CHARLES, lived with Caron.

HANSON, CARL, about 30 years old, also lived with Caron.

CHAVEZ, MRS. MARIE, 35 years old; lived in adjoining apartment.

THE INURED:

ALBIN, Mrs. Lillian, a widow, 45 years old; body bruises, taken to Harlem Hospital.

CASAMENTE, Peter, 29 years old, a salesman; lives at 2416 Belmont avenue, the Bronx; head and body badly cut, may die; taken to the Reception Hospital; was buried for three hours in wreckage in the basement of the house.

LEBEN, Isidor, 129 East 102d street, a tailor; body bruises; taken to Harlem Hospital.

D’ANGELO, Vincent, 29 years, top floor rear; right arm fractured, lacerations of body; removed to Metropolitan Hospital from Reception Hospital.

MAAS, Mrs. Ella, of 129 East 102d street, 30 years old; suffering from hysteria.

METROPOLO, Max D., 68 years old; left leg hurt; taken to Flower Hospital.

ROCKLEY, Lena, 20 years old; feet cut; in care of friends.

All three of the men who were killed and a woman who lived in the flat with them had attended a meeting the night before at the Francisco Ferrer Association’s school at 63 East 107th street, where, with Leonard Abbott, president of the Free Speech League; Alexander Berkman, the anarchist, who served time for shooting Henry C. Frick and others who have been making demonstrations against the Rockefellers in Broadway and at Tarrytown, they talked over the visit to Tarrytown tomorrow. 

Bits of Wire in Fingers. 

Imbedded in the thumb and fingers of part of a hand found by Assistant District Attorney Walter R. Deuel and the police late last evening in a room adjoining the one in which the explosion occurred were bits of copper wire such as might be used to set off a bomb.

The bomb literally blew off the southern part of the three upper floors of the sick story building and hurled the right shoulder and part of the scalp of one man over the room of the German Evangelical Church next door and onto the pavement of 103d street, half a block north.

Amid the wreckage of the room, where portions of bodies were found, Inspector Cahalane and detectives dug out of the debris a printing press, piles of books and pamphlets in various languages on anarchistic subjects, a loaded magazine pistol, a blackjack, a quantity of large caliber rifle cartridges and the tops of two storage batteries.

One leaflet, evidently printed on the hand press in the anarchists’ rooms, was headed “Bulletin No. 2” and read: “Why wait longer for these money tyrants to come to our terms? We must employ force. Force is our remedy.”

July 5, 1914

I.W.W. BOMB KILLS FOUR—WRECKS BUILDING

When the dust of the explosion had settled slightly the crowds of panic stricken people in the streets cold see the body of the man thought to be the bomb maker. Arthur Caron, an agitator who was arrested during the Union Square riots of the unemployed and who was to have been arraigned with the I.W.W. prisoners at Tarrytown tomorrow.

Caron, who was born of French parents in Connecticut twenty-four years ago, lay dead across the fourth floor fire escape, or what was left of it, two floors below his own room on the front of the Lexington avenue side of the building. The back of his head was badly shattered and the bones of his arms and legs were broken. The dynamite had blown away all of his clothing except a shirt, collar and tie and a pair of garters.

Charles Berg, with Caron, Carl Hanson, Hanson’s stepsister, Louise Berger, and a man who calls himself Mike Murphy, but is thought to be Michael Auspenti, occupied the three room apartment together. Bits of ribs and pieces of flesh found later are thought to be all that the explosion left of Berg.

Alexander Berkman later identified by the hair the piece of scalp and armless shoulder picked up in 103d street as a part of Carl Hanson.

Rescuers soon after the explosion found the body of Mrs. Marie Chavez, who occupied the adjoining rooms to Caron and the others down on the fourth floor, where it had fallen from the sixth floor through holes in the flooring.

Louise Berger, Hanson’s stepsister, had left the flat a few minutes before the explosion and was talking to Alexander Berkman at the publication office of Mother Earth, which is also the home of Emma Goldman, who is away and Berkman, when the bomb exploded.

Auspenti, or Murphy, was in bed at the time. Bed and sleeper dropped through two floors where wreckage formed an arch over Auspenti. The police and firemen dug him out dazed, but unharmed.

A leg supposed to have been Hanson’s was found on the roof of 129 East 102d street, a block south of where part of his torso was found. The back of his head was lying in 103d street near Lexington avenue, about thirty feet from the torso. 

Injured May All Recover. 

The injured all are expected to recover. Mr. and Mrs. Forgang and two children, who lived on the first floor, and Mr. and Mrs. Schauber, who had a flat on the third floor, were missing last night. There is a probability, however, that these occupants of the building, in which were about 140 people at the time of the explosion, may have gone to the home of friends unharmed.

With the aid of the District Attorney’s office the police immediately began an examination of all the anarchists and members of the I.W.W that they could lay hands on. 

Anarchists Rounded Up. 

Marie Ganz, just out of prison where she served sixty days for threatening to kill the Rockefellers, was questioned at length by Assistant District Attorney Walter R. Deuel and Deputy Police commissioner Joseph Rubin. Alexander Berkman, leader of the local anarchists; Julius Salmon, one of his followers, and others were rounded up outside the Ferrer School and elsewhere and taken to the East 104rh street police station to be cross-examined.

The preliminary work of the police and the District Attorney’s office had not succeeded in establishing any connection between Caron and the explosion. Berkman, Marie Ganz, Salmon and others declared that if Caron was working with dynamite or other high explosives they had no knowledge of it. They were inclined to scout the idea.

The explosion occurred at 9:25 o’clock in the morning, when many of the thirty-four families in the house were hardly out of bed for the holiday.

Policeman Thomas Lamb, who was at the southeast corner of 104th street and Lexington avenue, and Policeman Berg were thrown to the ground by the shock. They ran to the tenement house as soon as they had regained their feet. Other persons for blocks around had been overturned by the force of the explosion.

Just before they entered the house, still enveloped in a tremendous dust cloud, they met Policeman Sammons and McGarvey, both off duty. All four men entered in face of imminent peril.

They got most of the families out of the house with the aid of firemen who were called. Reserves from three stations, 100 men in all, had to be summoned to keep back the big crowds. 

Woods at the Scene. 

Police Commissioner Arthur Woods, Inspector Schmittberger, Deputy Commissioner Rubin, Inspector Cahalane, Borough President Marks, officers of the Building Department, Fire Chief Kenlon, Coroner Helenstein with two Coroner physicians and a half dozen ambulances arrived within the half hour following the disaster.

What the first comers saw when, after five full minutes, the dust had swept aside, was half of a six story tenement still standing. The south half toward 102d street, had apparently vanished in air. The part of the house which remained standing was throbbing and swaying.

On a front fire escape on the fourth floor hung the body of a man, his head caught between two iron scantlings. This was Arthur Caron. On the sixth floor—or what was left of it—under a heap of debris lay the body of Mary Chavez, with whom Caron boarded. Next door to the tenement is a little red brick church, the German Evangelical edifice of the neighborhood. An iron pipe eleven feet long had pierced its room and shattered a pew inside.

In the midst of the wreckage a man’s straw hat dangled from a front fire escape. A cheerful canary piped and trilled indoors. Its song was interrupted by screams of women.

Arthur Caron was not identified until his body had been lifted from the fire escape and taken to the East 104th street station. In his packets were found skeleton keys and a note book containing the names and addresses of several women in Lowell and Lawrence, Mass. It contained also the name of Leonard Abbott, head of the Free Speech League. This lead to the identification. Newspaper men who have had occasion to follow the doings of the I.W.W. and the anarchists here and at Tarrytown recognized the body.

It appears that Caron boarded with the Chavez family. An Anarchist known as “Mike” Murphy, a young fellow with black hair and quick wits, is probably the only person who can tell what Caron was doing at the time of the explosion. 

A “Miraculous Escape.” 

Murphy had what Assistant District Attorney Rubin called “a miraculous escaped—only work for it.” When the corner of the building was obliterated at one stroke and Caron was flung to his death below Murphy sank right down with the debris, landing in a heap of it near the ground in a [little] pocket which saved him from anything worse than a severe jolting.

He went to the police station, identified Caron’s body and left to tell Alexander Berkman. Berkman told Murphy to go over to the anarchist picnic at Westfield, N.J. where Leonard Abbott and others of the Tarrytown raiders were assembled, to tell them the news. That was why, when the police recognized the dead man as an I.W.W. leader and began hastily looking for Murphy, alert young Mike was some distance away. We will be brought to the city and questioned as soon as possible.

The police do not hesitate to say that they believe Caron had a large quantity of dynamite stored in his room, perhaps for use at Tarrytown. They figure that Caron was either making some of it up into a bomb or handling it in some way when it exploded.

Inspector Owen Eagan, the explosive expert and chief of the Bureau of Combustibles, who surveyed the tenement directly after the explosion, said that it was undoubtedly caused by dynamite in a large quantity. 

Eagen Explains Theory. 

“Dynamite explodes downward,” Eagen explained. “The resistance of the air above causes that. Here there was half a boxful of the stuff on the top floor or just under the roof, maybe, and something set it off. Half a boxful of dynamite is a quantity you don’t often find outside an explosive factory or a storeroom for blasting purposes. The box would be about the size of a beer case. 

“When the stuff exploded its force was exerted directly downward and it made dust of the building from the sixth floor down to the third on that corner of the house. You can see that none of the force was exerted sideways—the other half of the house is only slightly shattered and the wall of the six story tenement adjoining on the south is almost unmarred.

“The only possible conclusion is that some one was making, or was going to make, high explosive bombs.

The Building Department investigated as soon as the firemen were through with a preliminary survey and decided that after shoring and bracing Lexington avenue surface cars might operate safely in front of the wrecked house. Pedestrians were still to be barred from the block. The tenement, which is owned by the Taxpayers Realty Company, will eventually have to be demolished, it is thought. It was of the new construction, erected since 1902.

As soon as the police learned the identity of Arthur Caron and the nature of the explosion they sent around to the Ferrer School to get all of Caron’s acquaintances they could. The Ferrer School is closed and the police learned that many members of the Francisco Ferrer Association had gone to Westfield, N.J. on the anarchist picnic. Julius Salmon, who totes the soap box which is the rostrum at anarchist meetings and peddles Mother Earth, Berkman’s magazine, at such meetings, was found and taken to the East 104th street station to be questioned by the Assistant District Attorney Deuel and Deputy Police Commissioner Rubin.

Salmon said he knew Caron, of course from talking with him at the anarchist street meeting and meeting him elsewhere, but he was not well acquainted with him and had never heard or thought of Caron as a possible dynamiter. 

Caron Awaiting Trial. 

“We had a meeting at the Ferrer School last night at which Caron was present,” Salmon said. “It was a meeting of all the Tarrytown prisoners and their friends to discuss going up to the trials at Tarrytown on July 11, next Saturday. The cases of Caron and others arrested there for their street meeting to denounce the Rockefellers come up next Saturday.

“We just talked over the prospects of the trials and how we should all get up there and that was all the meeting was about. There was no talk or hint of violence at Tarrytown or elsewhere.”

Marie Ganz, who had just been let out of Queens County Jail in the morning her sixty-day sentence expiring was next examined.

“Of course I knew Arthur Caron,” she said. “I have known Arthur since the unemployed agitation last winter. I didn’t know him before, didn’t know him closely, and know hardly anything about his earlier life.

“He was just a working man when he got into this agitation. Once he told me that he had lost his mother, his wife, and his child, one right after the other, in a short time. This blow first stunned and then embittered him. Then he lost his job and couldn’t get another. He began to attend unemployed meetings and became a speaker at some of them and it was there I first met him.

“I had never visited him in his home. He was a quiet fellow but not a dynamiter. When wrought up he spoke bitterly, but that was the end of it.” 

Protégé of Upton Sinclair. 

At this point Upton Sinclair’s description of Arthur Caron who was one of Sinclair’s protégés, was recalled. Sinclair spoke enthusiastically of Caron to a Sun Reporter at Tarrytown one night recently.

“Arthur Caron,” said Sinclair. “was just a plain working boy who had no part in the unemployed or other agitations until the day of that meeting in Union Square, where the police attacked the I.W.W.

“Caron was crossing the square and saw a policeman smashing ‘Wild Joe’ O’Carroll over the head with his club. This sight made Caron nearly frantic. He ran over to the policeman and O’Carroll and cried out: “What are you doing to that man? What are you doing that for? Let him go!”

“Another policeman seized Caron and struck him in the face with his club. This blow smashed Caron’s nose and he was in the hospital for some time. 

“That made him an embittered man and an agitator.” 

Berkman Identifies Bodies. 

Alexander Berkman came to the East 104th street station of his own accord and was questioned by Commissioner Rubin and Assistant District Attorney Deuel. It was about 3 o’clock when he arrived. He identified the body of Caron and later that of Hanson. Berkman said he was pretty certain of his identification.

Berkman told Mr. Rubin that Miss Louise Berger had come to his house, the Mother Earth headquarters, at 74 West 119th street, about 9 o’clock in the morning and talked with him about the Tarrytown plans for tomorrow. Some one called up, he said, it might have been Mike Murphy, and told him about the explosion. Later Berkman said he telephoned to the Francisco Ferrer School and told Murphy to go out to Leonard D. Abbott, who was at his country place at Westfield, N.J. and tell him about the death of Caron.

Abbott had planned to give a picnic yesterday at Westfield to the anarchists, I.W.W.s and the Tarrytown prisoners at which plans for the demonstration at the Rockefeller’s home town were to be discussed. Berkman and Murphy told him he thought it was a subway explosion in the street which had wrecked the house.

Berkman was very frank in his story of the meeting on Friday night at the Ferrer School. He was entirely composed and emphatically declared that it was intended to employ no force in Tarrytown. The meeting, he said, was held in the upper floor of the school after a lecture in the courtyard on single tax. Caron, Murphy, Abbott, Beckie Edelsohn, Berg, Louise Berger, the prisoners and other sympathizers were present and ways and means of defending the prisoners at their trials tomorrow were laid out. They also had a telephonic conference with their counsel. Justus Scheffield, during the meeting.

It adjourned soon after midnight, but most of the conferees went to a café at Lexington avenue and 114th street, Berkman said and had some drinks and more discussion. A few girls were there, too, Berkman did not stay long as he had business to attend to. It was after 1 o’clock when the second meeting broke up.

The plans for tomorrow, according to Berkman, were these: The defendants were to go up to Hastings about 7:30 in the morning and thence to Tarrytown by train, because that was the cheapest way. It was to be a peaceful demonstration. Berkman said they intended to wait for the outcome of the trials before making any other demonstration.

“Did you plan to take any ammunition of any kind with you?” asked Mr. Rubin.

Berkman fiddled with his cane, looked angry and declared that the question was an insult to his intelligence, but when pinned down to an answer replied “No.” 

Denies Threats at Tarrytown. 

Berkman denied that he had ever made any threats to Tarrytown authorities, but admitted sending wires to authorities in Paterson, N.J., expressing sentiments of a meeting called to consider possible jail sentences of agitators in that city.

Berkman was then asked to look at the parts of the body which had been picked up from nearby roofs and the sidewalk at the 103d street. He was being examined in the detectives’ room in the rear of the station house above the pen. He went downstairs to where the three bodies were laid out covered with sheets in the station house prison and when he returned declared he was pretty certain from the hair and size of the body that it was Carl Hanson’s. The police were satisfied with this identification.

About the same time that Berkman reached the station, Miss Louise Berger, Hanson’s stepsister, who lived with the “boys” and escaped the explosion by just 14 minutes came to the station house with Miss Eleanor Fitzgerald of 79 West 114th street, a teacher in the Ferrer School, who was at the Mother Earth office with Miss Berger and Berkman when news of the explosion was received.

When Miss Berger saw Caron’s body she exclaimed, “My God, it’s Arthur!” and fainted. The police did not let her see the fragments of Hanson’s bod. The woman, who is thirty-two years old and looks worn and worried, had to be supported by Miss Fitzgerald while she sat in the chair in the detectives’ room with Mr. Rubin and Mr. Deuel. She spoke in a soft low tone. 

Tells of Morning in Flat 

Miss Berger told Mr. Rubin that it was late when Berg, Hanson, Caron, and Murphy returned from the meeting. She was in bed. She slept in one of the two bedrooms and the four men in the other. The arrangement that night was Caron and Berg on the floor and Murphy and Hanson in the bed. She got up before eight o’clock with her brother and got the breakfast. She had hers, but the others who were all dressed, she said, did not eat, but went back to bed and were asleep, she thought before she left. She left about five minutes to nine and went to the Mother Earth office. She reached there just a few minutes before the explosion.

Mr. Rubin questioned Miss Berger about the apartment and its contents, but she declared she had seen no dynamite and no revolvers in the three rooms which the five of them occupied. She never went through the men’s pockets, she said. She said she had planned to go to Tarrytown with the rest of “the boys.” Caron, she said, was teaching her English, which language she could not speak very well. 

Sinclair Disclaims Caron. 

Upton Sinclair, whose protégé Caron was believed to be, because at several Tarrytown meetings Sinclair was loud in his praise of Caron, last night denied that Caron was his protégé, but admitted that he had taken great interest in him after the silent parade in front of 26 Broadway.

“For God’s sake!” exclaimed Sinclair when told Caron had been killed by his own dynamite. 

“I don’t know what to think. What can I say. I did not know the bunch in Caron’s apartment. I know him. He was with us at 26 Broadway, but I am loath to believe that he contemplated violence. If Caron was doing anything of that sort it was of his own accord. He did not impress me that way. He has been up here to see me and my wife and he assured us that he would follow the peaceful method to obtain free speech in Tarrytown. If I thought he was planning anything like force I would have had nothing to do with him. But I suppose when he was beaten up lately at Tarrytown he became embittered.”

Caron had among other names in the little note book found in his pocket the names and addresses of Mrs. Upton Sinclair, Leonard Abbot and others prominent in the free speech and I.W.W. agitation.

Marie Ganz, who just got out of jail yesterday morning after serving her two months for threatening John D. Rockefeller at a meeting denied all knowledge of the causes leading up to the explosion. She seemed to be at the outs with leaders of the anarchist and I.W.W. movement, because they had deserted her in the Queens county jail.

Joseph O’Brien, secretary of the International Workers Defence League of the anarchists and I.W.W., which aided in the defence of Caron and another man arrested during the I.W.W. demonstrations, especially at Union Square, where Wild Joe O’Carroll and Caron were beaten up, also had a denial to make.

“I am positive,” he said, “that there was no understanding between the I.W.W. leaders or representatives that bombs were to be made or thrown. The I.W.W. is opposed to bomb throwing. If shocked and surprised me when I heard what had happened to Caron, and if he was really employed in making the bomb it was a matter for his own soul and conscience.

There was no plot to blow up any of the Rockefeller family, and the I.W.W. is as much opposed to anything of the kind as the Police Commissioner could be. From my knowledge of Caron no one could be further removed from the idea of dynamiting than he was, and this makes the manner of his death more remarkable to me.”

As soon as the knowledge of the explosion spread, the Ferrer School shut up tight, and when the police went there looking for some of the leaders no one was to be found. Mother Earth headquarters at 74 West 119th street, also closed up soon after.

It was just light enough to see last enough to see last night when Assistant District Attorney Deuel, Inspector Cahalane and Capt. Jones led the way down the broken stairways of the wrecked building with Detective William Cruise in their wake caring grewsome [sic] bundles wrapped in newspapers.

Great crowds stood still on the top of the steep incline at 102d street and the corner to the north also was jammed with men, women and children who pressed against the police lines until late last night. Men from the Building Department and policemen were left in charge of the building with orders to admit no one until the police and county officers return this morning to resume the work of digging for evidence or parts of bodies in the debris on the top floors.