April 20th, 2009
The Day Wall Street Exploded
The Day Wall Street Exploded
A Story of America in its First Age of Terror
by Beverly Gage
Very few people recall the event. Even many of those who every day pass the pock marked wall on Wall Street have no idea what happened there on September 16, 1920. That day a horse drawn wagon full of dynamite exploded outside the J.P. Morgan building, killing 39 people and injuring hundreds, many very seriously. Until the Oklahoma City bombing, it was the deadliest terrorist bombing on American soil.
Who committed this terrible deed? Was it an accident, a wagon transporting dynamite where it wasn’t supposed to be? Or was it labor anarchists, protesting the brutal arrest of many of their brothers including Sacco and Vanzetti? Or was it communists trying to stir up anti-labor feeling in the US after their recent success in Russia? Beverly Gage starts by taking us to the Haymarket riot of the 1880′s and leading us through the successes and failures including the violence of the anarchist labor movement. With World War I and Woodrow Wilson’s anti-sedition laws, many in the labor movement found themselves in prison and those on the outside became more inflamed by the anti-union position of the Federal government. Were they the ones who placed the bomb on Wall Street?
Next, Gage takes us through the investigation and describes perhaps the most inept attempt at solving a crime ever attempted by the Federal government. The predecessor to the FBI was assigned the task and two directors found themselves out of jobs, not because of their failure to solve the crime, but because of the embarrassing way they failed to solve it. Only a few short years after the bombing, with the Roaring 20′s in full bloom, the bombing became a thing of the past and the investigation was never concluded.
Gage makes some interesting points about how the government used the fear after the bombing to ignore civil rights and jail suspects secretly and without trials that can perhaps be tied to more recent history. But she avoids the mistake of trying to tie 1920 to 1995 or 2001. Each of these bombings has its own history and its own cause. Gage does a brilliant job of discussing the bombing and the history of the suspects, especially the US labor movement, as well as the investigation that became a wasted effort of forcing the evidence to fit preconceived notions. This is an excellent book about a mostly forgotten piece of American history that is well worth reading.
