0. A. Tveitmoe: Labor Leader
    byLloyd Hustvedt (Volume 30: Page 3)

THE FUTURE looked grim for Olaf Anders Tveitmoe on April 16, 1894, as he stood in the courtroom in Red Wing, Minnesota, and heard the district judge, W. C. Williston, sentence him to eighteen months of hard labor at the Stillwater State Prison. He appeared alone and no one spoke on his, behalf. He was twenty-eight years old, intelligent, idealistic, married and the father of two children. He was six feet tall, had sandy hair and slate blue eyes, and despite his powerful-looking frame he weighed only one hundred fifty-five pounds. {1}

Born in Valdres, Norway, December 7, 1865, Tveitmoe came in 1882 to the Holden community in Goodhue county, Minnesota, where he worked as a farmhand. {2} Because he had received some secondary education in Vestre Slidre, Valdres, he was placed in the second year of a three-year preparatory program when he entered St. Olafs School (later St. Olaf College) in the fall of 1886. Following the classical line of study he did fairly well, with average scores of 92 and 89 respectively for his two years of academy work. He attended only thirty weeks of a thirty-six-week term as a college freshman, which perhaps explains why his [3] average dropped to 77. This concluded Tveitmoe’s formal education. {3}

Tveitmoe may have helped to found the Manitou Messenger, the St. Olaf College student newspaper, in 1887. In all events he functioned as its first business manager and later became exchange editor, which involved selecting excerpts from many sources. He revealed a wide range of reading. Only one article in the Messenger, Den norske bonde (The Norwegian Farmer) is known to have been written by Tveitmoe. For an academy student it is ably written, in Norwegian, with a certain poetic flair. Assisted by hindsight, one can see that his main points have importance: The Norwegian rural folk owed their cultural progress, first, to their adoption of Christianity; second, to their sustained struggle for independence; and third, to their gradual acceptance of enlightenment. Much, however, remained to be accomplished in the last-mentioned category. {4}

After leaving St. Olafs School in the spring of 1889, Tveitmoe married Ingeborg Ødegaard, who had also emigrated from Valdres in 1882. A son, the first of six children, was born on May 25, 1891. {5} Life remained unsettled. He continued doing farm work, taught in a Norwegian religion school, and served a brief stint as postmaster at Sogn, a small country store in Warsaw township, Goodhue county. More important, he turned his energies to the Farmers’ Alliance movement, and for the better part of a year served as county lecturer for that cause. Late in September, 1892, he bought from Peter M. Ringdal, a Populist political aspirant, a share in the Tribune, a Farmers’ Alliance newspaper in Crookston, Minnesota. {6} Tveitmoe had little or no money, but Ringdal agreed to accept notes if backed by collateral. Either as total or partial payment, Tveitmoe gave Ringdal a promissory note for $200, dated October 1, 1892, due [5] one year later, at eight percent interest. The note was countersigned by K. K. Hougo, a Leon township farmer of moderate means and an acquaintance if not a friend of Tveitmoe. Tveitmoe became editor and secretary of the Tribune Publishing Company, a position for which he was hardly ready. His English was crude, his tone harsh and caustic, and his language perhaps even libelous when he went after those he felt had betrayed the party. Then without explanation Tveitmoe’s name was removed from the Tribune’s masthead for January 31, 1893. After a few months, he began to work for Normanden, a Norwegian newspaper in Grand Forks, North Dakota. Later the Tribune went over to new owners with promises of better management and a more moderate tone.

Then something unexpected happened. A few months after Ringdal received Tveitmoe’s note, he sold it at a discount to the Citizens State Bank in Cannon Falls, Minnesota, the very bank where K. K. Hougo did his banking. When Hougo was informed about this transaction, he denied ever signing the note. Exactly what transpired later is not known, but more than a year passed before Tveitmoe was indicted, on March 15, 1894, for “forgery in the second degree.” The Goodhue county sheriff apprehended him a week later. His plea was “not guilty.” A jury trial held on March 31, which could not have lasted much over an hour, produced no witnesses for the defense and three witnesses for the prosecution: Hougo, Ringdal, and H. A. Striver of the Citizens State Bank. J. C. McClure, Red Wing’s city attorney, defended Tveitmoe, but there was no defense. The jury found him guilty as charged. A motion for a new trial was denied, but a request for a twenty-day stay was granted. He entered Stillwater Prison on April 20. {7}

Certain that he could redeem the note when the time came, Tveitmoe had acted recklessly. It is strange that [6] no one came to his aid. Norwegians in Goodhue county were not always kind to each other, but as a rule they did not let their own go to prison if they could prevent it. Near by was a solid pocket of settlers from Valdres who could have helped. No mention was made at the trial whether restitution had been or could be made for the [7] note. The fact that Tveitmoe had moved to another state may be an explanation. It is possible that he sought no help. Later in life he declared that since boyhood his credo had been “never to ask for bread from a friend, and never to beg for mercy from an enemy.” Ultimately some external support must have entered the picture; Governor Knute Nelson granted him a pardon on December 19, 1894. Tveitmoe returned to his family in Grand Forks. {8}

All was quiet until June 22, 1897. As secretary for a planned cooperative colony, named Ny Hardanger, to be located near Toledo, Oregon, Tveitmoe appealed in Rodhuggeren (The Radical), of Fergus Falls, Minnesota, for participants. Using the language of the Populists, he called upon day-slaves, factory drudges, exhausted farmers, and all with will and courage to join the venture. The colony would operate on the utopian principles of John Ruskin; members would be required to invest $500, and an unnamed person had provided a seed fund of $3,000. He closed by asserting that socialism “can work.” He anticipated opposition and he was right.

Waldemar Ager, writing for Reform, in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, picked up the cudgel. Rather than attacking the cooperative plan, he focused on Tveitmoe’s dreary picture of the working man. Ager, who classified himself as a working man, declared that his experiences had been pleasant, and he dismissed Tveitmoe as a “calamity howler.” Ager’s article unleashed heated responses from many sources both in support and in opposition. Ager, unduly unkind in his polemic, ultimately alluded to Tveitmoe’s past. The debate ended when S. Romtvedt from Windom, Minnesota, president of the proposed colony, stepped in with a sober article, declaring that such cooperative enterprises had enough problems without adding newspaper feuds. Tveitmoe, he stated, [8] had been asked to step down as secretary until an investigation could be made. {9} At this time or shortly thereafter, Tveitmoe moved to Toledo with his family, which had grown to three children. A fourth child, a daughter, was born at Toledo, December 31, 1897. No information is available as to the outcome of Ny Hardanger except that it failed. Some time in 1898, Tveitmoe moved to San Francisco where in a short period of time he rose to power and high position in the labor movement.

San Francisco was rapidly becoming the most unionized city in the nation when Tveitmoe arrived in 1898. The total number of union members in California in 1902 was listed at 67,500, and 45,000 of these were in San Francisco alone. Los Angeles, for example, had fewer than 5,000. The depression of the early 1890s had given way to a much improved economy because of the war in the Philippines, the gold rush in Alaska, increased trade with the Orient, development of California oil, and irrigation in the Imperial Valley. Ironically enough the earthquake disaster of 1906 proved to be a blessing for labor, making necessary the rebuilding of large sections of the city. San Francisco’s remoteness from other large urban centers also favored the unions in their rise to power. There was no nearby supply of labor from the outside in the event of industrial disputes. {10}

There were three central labor bodies in San Francisco in 1898: the San Francisco Waterfront Federation, the San Francisco Labor Council, and the San Francisco Building Trades Council. The Labor Council, formed in 1892, replaced two earlier clashing councils which had voluntarily disbanded to clear the way for one organization. The need for a separate federation for the building trades continued to be felt, however, and in February, 1896, [9] a permanent organization was effected by seven unions -- carpenters, painters, decorators, and others -- representing 4,000 members. By the summer of 1901 the Council had grown to thirty-six component unions with 15,000 members. In theory the Building Trades Council was at its inception a subordinate body of the Labor Council. In fact some building trades unions held membership in both organizations. In practice, however, the Building Trades Council became increasingly independent and ultimately one of the most powerful central bodies of its kind in the country. Two men helped to make it so: Patrick Henry McCarthy and Olaf Tveitmoe.

P. H. McCarthy had helped to organize the Building Trades Council in 1896, but did not become its president until July, 1898. At this time Tveitmoe was working as a cement worker’s helper. The cement workers were organized in June, 1899. Tveitmoe became this union’s first secretary and later its president. The new union enjoyed astonishing success. Within three months it had more than 200 members and had succeeded in increasing wages from $2.50 to $4 per day and reducing hours from ten and twelve to eight. {11} Tveitmoe’s precise role in this success is not known, but in light of what followed it must have attracted the attention of McCarthy and other leaders. When the Building Trades Council started its own newspaper, Organized Labor, first issued on February 3, 1900, Tveitmoe became its editor. The following July he was elected recording and corresponding secretary of the Council. Because the proceedings of the weekly Council meetings were carried in Organized Labor, his election to this office may have had a practical side, yet it further concentrated power into the hands of these two men. McCarthy and Tveitmoe then took the major initiative in forming the state Building Trades Council in 1901, [10] which in time built to an affiliation of nineteen local councils organized on the county level. McCarthy became president of this state federation and Tveitmoe became its general secretary, positions they both held until 1922. They ruled, then, not only over the strongest of the local councils but over everything called building trades in California.

P. H. McCarthy, referred to unflatteringly in some circles as Pin Head McCarthy, was born in Ireland, March 17, 1861. Having learned the carpenter's trade he, like Tveitmoe, came to the United States at the age of seventeen. He helped organize the National Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners in Chicago before going to San Francisco in 1886. In a short time he became president of the Carpenters Union, Local 22, the largest in San Francisco. Much interested in local government, he helped to draft a new charter for San Francisco in 1900, and later served on the city Civil Service Commission. He was elected mayor of San Francisco in 1909, but was defeated in 1911, and again in 1915. Rumor had it that he aspired to become governor.

McCarthy and Tveitmoe complemented each other in beneficial ways. McCarthy was more of a public figure, but within the rank and file of labor itself Tveitmoe was equally conspicuous. The boundaries between personal ambition and dedication to the cause could sometimes be blurred in the ease of McCarthy; with some justice it was thought that he aimed to "rule or ruin." On the other hand, Tveitmoe, if he did not exactly shun the limelight, never actively sought it. McCarthy may have been the more practical of the two in matters of labor organization and strategy, but also the narrower in vision in that he focused to a selfish degree on the interests of the building trades. Tveitmoe, much more the philosopher, had a global concern for working men, skilled and unskilled alike. As far as labor leaders go, [11] however, they were both conservative in practice. They headed the elite unions where pride in skilled workmanship was an honored tradition.

How could Tveitmoe, new to the ranks of labor, attain high office overnight among the most skilled of workers? A number of reasons can be cited. The higher echelons of expanding labor needed men with education and an ability to write. Later scattered references indicate that some may have had an exaggerated picture of Tveitmoe in this respect: He had come from a wealthy and prominent family in Norway; he had received higher education both in his homeland and in this country; and he had taught school and owned a newspaper in Minnesota. Without further information, such credentials seem impressive.

He possessed advantageous physical and personal traits. He was tall for that time and exuded physical strength, but this was combined with a certain scholarly and aristocratic bearing. While he gave many speeches, he was more a quiet persuader than an orator, and this built trust. He was deeply loyal to cause and friends, generous and kind to a degree which generated loyalty in return. Although he might be the last to call for a strike, he would give all for its success once under way, and when it was over, he was the first to forget. Louis Adamic called Tveitmoe "a dark Scandinavian . . . a 'gorilla'." {12} He may have been a "dark Scandinavian," but a "gorilla" he was not. He was an intellectual and a would-be philosopher, tormented by carping unions on the one hand and industrial greed on the other.

The ideology of the Farmers' Alliance to which he had adhered transferred with ease to the cause of labor. In 1892, the Omaha Platform of the People's Party of America, a third-party movement of disaffected farmer and labor organizations, declared that the people were demoralized, that workers were denied the right to [12] organize, that the toil of millions was boldly stolen to build colossal fortunes for a few, and that the Pinkerton system was a menace to liberty. In addition, the platform called for the restriction of Asian contract labor and other "undesirable" immigration, and for the nationalization of railroads, telegraph, and telephone. Throughout most of his life Tveitmoe clung to the belief that the world hovered between utopia and catastrophe. The Omaha Platform, in its preamble, predicted that the alternatives to the needed reforms were "social convulsions, the destruction of civilization, or the establishment of an absolute despotism." He also found comfort in the Farmers' Alliance doctrine that "the cranks win." Because they are progressive thinkers in advance of their time, "cranks" are always in the minority. All reformers from Galileo to John Brown must run the gantlet of ridicule and abuse. But, fortunately, abuse is followed by a degree of toleration, which is succeeded by a hearing, which in turn gives way to public support. Henrik Ibsen's plays, which Tveitmoe read with care and understanding, provided additional support for such thinking. {13}

Ignatius Donnelly, prominent Minnesota Populist and author, was a decided influence. Since Donnelly lived in nearby Hastings, Minnesota, they must have met when Tveitmoe stumped in Goodhue county for the Farmers' Alliance. Donnelly was much interested in Norse mythology, specially in the concept of Ragnarok, according to which world cataclysm is followed by an age where "all ills grow better." In all events, Tveitmoe read Donnelly's novels, and Caesar's Column (1890) remained especially vivid in his mind. In this novel the final struggle between capitalism and a tortured and maddened working class was commemorated by a huge column of bodies encased in concrete.

Tveitmoe came to San Francisco with a fair foundation [13] in the classics as well. He must have been alone among the labor bosses in being able to drop an occasional Latin quotation. His reading in Norwegian literature may not have gone far beyond Norse mythology, Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson, and Henrik Ibsen. When Bjørnson was on his deathbed late in 1909, Tveitmoe carried a long article on him in Organized Labor, including a translation of the first chapter of Bjørnson's novel Arne. He regarded Ibsen as the greatest revolutionary of them all and used effectively for the cause of labor the title of Ibsen's last play, When We Dead Awaken. While Tveitmoe was hardly a pious man, he knew the fundamentals of Lutheran theology and was much attracted to the Sermon on the Mount. He unsuccessfully promoted a plan to attach a chaplain to each of the local councils. {14}

In all likelihood his reading of Charles Darwin, Herbert Spencer, Georges Sorel, and Thorstein Veblen took place after he came to San Francisco. Veblen, a second-generation compatriot from Valdres, Norway, taught at nearby Stanford University from 1906 to 1910. Tveitmoe's earlier efforts to found a cooperative colony in Oregon emerged later in new form. For many years he unsuccessfully promoted a plan that the Council and its affiliated unions should buy a large tract of California land as a refuge for working families hurt by strikes, lockouts, or general unemployment. During temporary idleness the vast skills found in the building trades could be used for building for themselves. The cost, claimed Tveitmoe, would not exceed what otherwise had to be raised by way of defense funds and strike pensions. He watched painfully as the land he had in mind rose in price from eight dollars an acre to one hundred. {15}

As an instant influence on Tveitmoe when he came to San Francisco, Burnette G. Haskell (1857-1907) merits [14] mention. More brilliant and better educated but more erratic than Tveitmoe, Haskell in 1882 had founded in San Francisco the International Workingmen's Association, a secret card-carrying socialistic organization which reached its peak of popularity ten years before Tveitmoe arrived. The organization began to dissolve when Haskell turned his energies to the founding of an ill-fated communistic colony near Visalia, California. Many of his disciples, however, inspired by the Communist dictum, "Workers of the World, Unite! -- You have nothing to lose but your chains -- You have a world to win," had become leaders in various San Francisco unions. Tveitmoe clearly reappears in Haskell's appeal, "Educate, organize, agitate, unite." He either shared or adopted Haskell's vision of labor libraries, labor temples, lyceums, and a stronger labor press, together with a hope for universal brotherhood and global interdependence of workers. Along with his emphasis on education, Haskell drifted toward violence: "War to the palace, peace to the cottage, death to luxurious idleness . . . . Arm, I say, to death! for Revolution is upon you." To the contrary, Tveitmoe wrote against violence, not only for moral reasons but as the worst possible political tactic. It invited public wrath and played into the hands of the employers who could at times destroy their own property in such ways that the unions would get the blame. {16}

A positive and perhaps stabilizing influence on Tveitmoe for the years to come was a fellow countryman, Andrew Furuseth, without question the most respected labor leader in San Francisco. Both were members of the San Francisco Norwegian Club and they saw each other frequently. Save for one instance when he scolded Furuseth for what he felt was meddling in labor matters outside his domain, Tveitmoe wrote about him with respect and affection.{17} [15]

Organized Labor, with offices at 429 Montgomery Street, was an eight-page, five-column weekly which came out on Saturdays. It was governed by a board of directors representing stockholders who owned 50,000 one-dollar shares. As a rule the affiliated unions subscribed on behalf of their members and Tveitmoe was thereby spared the financial problems of many editors. While circulation figures were not made public, the newspaper seemingly never lacked for either subscribers or advertisers. The directors declared a 20 percent dividend at the end of the first year, but the subscription rate of $1.50 may have been slightly higher than was common for other weeklies, {18} When the state council was organized in 1901, Organized Labor became a statewide newspaper.

Nearly from the beginning the front cover made tip the editorial page, often characterized by daring headlines, followed by text which used bold print and much enlarged letters for slogans, epigrams, and phrases deserving emphasis. Dashes and exclamation marks were used liberally. Most of the inside pages were given over to routine business, like local union news, reports and proceedings of the weekly council meetings, including the minutes of the Labor Council, with whom relations, more often than not, were strained. The newspaper kept a watchful eye on labor news across the country; listed California firms declared "unfair" but spoke well of them when they had corrected their errors; listed the names of members who had transgressed union rules, and chastised recalcitrant unions without mercy. There was a section "For the Ladies" which for a time was written by one Mary Field, an outspoken advocate of women's rights. {19} When space permitted, articles of general interest were added, including the curious choice of Cole Younger's version of Jesse James's Northfield bank robbery. {20} The normal pattern could be [16] interrupted to make room for the proceedings of the annual convention of the state council, or for the issues surrounding Labor Day, which was met with enthusiasm. But by 1913, Tveitmoe declared that Labor Day parades had served their purpose. He advised his readers to "commune with nature or your inner self. But do not walk when it leads nowhere. Labor has walked too long." {21}

In the first issue the editor promised a newspaper of which no union member would be ashamed. The paper would at all times advance the interests of labor and seek to harmonize differences between existing unions. He declared that the cause of labor went far beyond shorter hours and increased wages; it included educated children, happy homes, prosperous communities, good government, and the development of a higher esteem for the working class. Arrogant wealth had been and would remain an enemy, but equally destructive were the passions, selfishness, and prejudices found within the ranks of labor itself. If increased wages, claimed the editor, meant only more beer and not increased comfort and recreation, all was lost. The editor extolled productive labor, but decried drudgery. A system of labor which sapped health, shortened life, and starved the intellect had to be abolished. He closed by asserting that "all education is of no avil, if the idea of justice is not uppermost." {22}

A thorough treatment of Tveitmoe's twenty-two-year career as journalist would require a separate article. Basically he lived up to the promises made in the first issue. Organized Labor urged an end to child labor, supported woman suffrage and welcomed women as political candidates, but drew the line when women took over men's work at lower wages. It opposed the war in the Philippines, capital punishment, conscription, and potential American intervention in the [17] revolution in Mexico. A special target was the power of judges to issue court injunctions and administer punishment for contempt of court. Because both could be used as fearful weapons against labor, California judges were watched with care. Sun Yat Sen was regarded as one of history's foremost revolutionaries. Tom Mann, England's pacifistic labor leader, with whom Tveitmoe corresponded, received attention. He liked George Bernard Shaw's directive that the soldiers should shoot the generals and go home, but feared that the generals would be quickly replaced. Beginning around 1910, one can detect a drift toward broader concerns of labor. Unskilled workers, he wrote, had been neglected, as had farmhands and migrant workers. Tveitmoe ultimately showed sympathy for the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), and he dared to present a long and objective but also friendly description of syndicalism. If Organized Labor had ever been a parochial newspaper, this became less and less true. Tveitmoe anticipated World War I years in advance and saw its coming as the feared cataclysm. {23} In 1912 he still had hope: "Neither prison bars nor grim gallows can seal the sighs for liberty or stem the pen that writes the hopes that cheer. Let the workers of the world clasp hands over the oceans which divide them, both mentally and physically, from Peking to London. Let them fight by ceasing to work for the drones, and the final battle is done." But later he could only despair as the workers of Europe turned nationalistic when the war broke out. {24} However, Organized Labor remained patriotic when the United States entered the war and there were no strikes within the building trades unions in California during that time.

Although he had the medium to do so, Tveitmoe never placed himself in the foreground. In fact, he warned against those who would pose as heroes. The labor movement was not built on "noise, bombastic [18] phrases, and honeyed words." The real hero is not the object of worship. On the contrary he is more often subjected to the "vilest vituperation and denunciation." "This maudlin, nauseating hero worship which infests the labor movement is disgusting to all who have the least spark of manhood in them." This did not mean, o£ course, that personalities like Samuel Gompers, Clarence Darrow, Mother Jones, and P. H. McCarthy were neglected. But in keeping with this view, Organized Labor carried only one article on Joe Hill (Joseph Hillstrom) and his death sentence in Salt Lake City. Although the article was long, no mention was made of his poetry and labor songs and there was no later article about his execution. {25}

Tveitmoe's style varied with the occasion. He could publish what amounted to written lectures in a clear, logical, and sober fashion. When ideas became bigger than his language could carry, he drifted into slogans and epigrams. While he often pleaded for temperate language, especially in negotiations, he did not hesitate to call names when reconciliation was impossible or unwanted. He assessed the Petaluma Daily Courier as follows: "One of the most bitter and densely ignorant, stupid, irascible, anarchistic, anti-union-labor country sheets that has ever mutilated grammar, spoiled rhetoric, or disgraced a venerable but dilapidated printing press." His affinity for alliteration could go to lengths like "Its [the trusts'] clammy claws clutch the whole world." To the publisher-editor of the Los Angeles Times he wrote: "Pass, brutal bully, into the oblivion you have merited." He described Los Angeles as follows: "There she stands the queen of the southland, with her hand outstretched for the tourists' gold and her heel upon the neck of the wage worker. The mistress of Huntington's all-devouring industrial system, bowing in servile obedience to a band of putrid pirates, whose [19] carcasses were so rotten and decayed they could neither be saved nor purified by all the salt and water in the Pacific Ocean." Rarely in labor history have secretary's reports included poetic pieces like the following: "When the earth was young and warm and moist, storing up treasures and wealth for the life, comfort, happiness, and wellbeing of its future inhabitants, there was no 'Big Business' and no children of Big Business." Tveitmoe rarely used humor. He could be ironic when he converted MM&E (Manufacturers, Merchants, and Employers Association) to "Money, Misery, and Exploitation.'' When William Randolph Hearst turned against labor he was dubbed "Willie Worst." Tveitmoe was perhaps at his best when confusion and comedy set in at the time the San Francisco hackmen were being organized. Union drivers refused to take part in the same funeral procession with non-union hackmen. Each party therefore took a separate route to the cemetery, but ultimately had to meet in a ugly mood at the grave site. Tveitmoe's conclusion was that "A nonunion corpse is nearly as bad as a living scab." {26}

Test and triumph came early for the new secretary of the Building Trades Council of San Francisco. The millworkers, still on a ten-hour day, wanted a reduction to eight. Organized Labor took a moderate and conciliatory tone, hoping for successful negotiations. Before any strikes were called, the millowners declared a lockout on August 11, 1900. Building contractors ran out of materials and unions throughout the building trades were threatened with work stoppages. The Building Trades Council established its own mill which ran around the clock, supplying the contractors with the needed materials and thereby frustrating the millowners' plan to enforce support from the building contractors. The mill-owners had to yield, but they argued that now they could not compete with outside mills having longer [20] hours and lower wages. The Council came to the rescue. It promised that their unions would work only with materials prepared by union mills where working conditions equaled or surpassed those for which they had bargained, establishing not only a closed shop but a closed market as well. It would be difficult to overstate what this victory meant to the Building Trades Council in terms of future power. From 1901 to 1905 it controlled not only its labor body but the entire industry. When S. H. Kent, president of the Builders Exchange, was asked in the East about labor problems in San Francisco, his abrupt answer was, "We have no labor troubles, we give the men what they want." In 1905, Tveitmoe could weep with Alexander the Great, "There is nothing more to organize in the building industry in San Francisco." The Labor Council, which regarded the Building Trades Council as its subordinate, claimed credit for the victory. Tveitmoe was magnanimous. He denied the truth of this, but pointed out that goals were more important than who received the credit. All of labor had gained. {27}

In fact there were hardly any strikes within the building trades in San Francisco for the next twenty years. The electrical workers wanted a strike in 1907, but the Council refused to endorse it. When this union refused to obey, it was expelled and the Council created a new union, made up of members loyal to the central body. The most serious strike came in 1910. Because they had to prepare their material, hod carriers began work fifteen minutes early, morning and noon, making an eight-and-one-half-hour day. They wanted an eight-hour day. The strike put the bricklayers out of work, which in turn put others out of work. After more fuss than the issue warranted, the strike was settled. The hod carriers continued to work the additional half-hour but received extra pay. By 1914 the employers had [21] banded together into the Building Trades Employers Association. The Council waited for the day it could put an end to this threat. This happened when the house-smiths wanted an eight-hour day. Fifty firms agreed but ten companies locked out their workers. The Employers Association demanded return to work under the old conditions. The Council responded that these workers had been locked out and that they had found other work. The lockout ended in 1917 and the Employers Association disbanded.

The beginning of the end of the McCarthy-Tveitmoe regime can be traced back to 1916. The longshoremen's strike of that year, which had nothing to do with the Building Trades Council, aroused San Francisco employers. The Chamber of Commerce created a law and order committee which became the Industrial Relations Committee of the Chamber of Commerce when the United States entered World War I. Its main objective was to make San Francisco an open-shop city. The war did much to demoralize the building industry. Perhaps half of the workers went to the shipyards. Prices rose faster than wages, yet there were no strikes. The attitude grew that San Francisco was backward, that Los Angeles, with its open-shop policy, was thriving, that the unions prevented initiative on the part of the employers, that the closed-shop system prevented the normal flow of capital into construction, and that union rules were oppressive and added to costs.

Confrontation took place in 1920 when seventeen of the building crafts unions asked for an increase in wages. Their case was just. Based on 1914 index figures, the cost of living stood at 200 while wages registered 170. The Builders Exchange, the employers' association in the building trades, now a strong body of contractors and suppliers, ordered the employers to refuse all increases. Negotiations broke down and the Exchange [22] threatened a lockout for October 7, 1920. The Industrial Relations Committee of the Chamber of Commerce held the balance of power. The Building Trades Council agreed to arbitrate. While the arbitrators were in session prices began to fall at an astonishing rate and when the award was made the arbitration board announced a seven-and-one-half percent reduction in wages. The Building Trades Council refused to accept the award, arguing that the issue was only whether wages should be increased. The Builders Exchange declared a lockout for May 9, 1921. The Industrial Relations Committee obtained the support of bankers, suppliers, and other local employers. Union employers could obtain neither materials nor loans. The Building Trades Council tried, as it had done in 1900, to provide the needed supplies, but the materials field was too broad. Against a background of earlier successes, it tried litigation but failed. The Building Trades Council voted to accept the award on June 10. But there was more humiliation. The employers notified their employees that they could return to work only under open-shop conditions. A general strike followed, but it was soon lost, marking a complete overthrow of the closed-shop system which had dominated San Francisco building trades for more than twenty years. Tveitmoe, now a sick man, was spared much of the hostility that came P. H. McCarthy's way. McCarthy resigned as president of the San Francisco Building Trades Council in January, 1922, and shortly thereafter as president of the state council. Tveitmoe as secretary did likewise, but continued as editor of Organized Labor. Against a background of beneficial labor legislation which had been passed in California after 1910, the defeat was not as crushing as it would appear on the surface.

How did McCarthy and Tveitmoe transform a fledgling central labor body into a machine that for twenty [23] years dominated the building industry in San Francisco, if not in the entire state of California? The answer is centralization of power, discipline, and conservative prudence. From the beginning the Council isolated its component unions by not allowing them, at the cost of expulsion, to ally themselves with any other federation. Believing that solidarity was more important than numbers, care was exercised as to what unions were admitted, and unruly ones were expelled. The Council had, in fact, the awesome power to unseat delegates regarded as detrimental to the interests of the Council, and could therefore crush any seeds of strife that could grow into civil wars. This power went so far that several delegates were fined in 1914 for taking President McCarthy's name in vain. Another source of power was that only the Council could issue quarterly working cards, without which no union man could work. In some cases unions were kept in line through heavy assessments which created debt obligations. At no time was there any hint that the officers of the Council were corrupt in financial matters, but there were frequent mutterings that they intervened in local union elections, and that the election laws were loose enough to permit manipulation.

Whatever the truth may be, McCarthy's and Tveitmoe's positions were secure as long as they had the support of the Council delegates. It was a sore point for many that a general referendum was not used between 1904 and 1921. In fact, the rules did not even require majority support of the individual unions, only that of the larger ones. Unions with 100 or fewer members seated three delegates. Larger unions added one delegate for each 100 additional members. For example, the Carpenters Union, Local 22, of which McCarthy was also president, had twenty delegates, ten percent of the entire Council. This practice was in direct violation of [24] American Federation of Labor (AFL) regulations which did not permit representation from any one union to exceed ten. So confident was the Council that it did not affiliate with the AFL until 1908, when the AFL granted flexibility on some of its rules. {28}

If the methods of the Council were not at all times democratic, the blessings that flowed from it were many. It brought about much needed uniformity of practice within the building trades. Independent strikes became virtually impossible. Without the support of the Council, strikes would lead to certain Failure and expulsion. Control over the business agents prevented any "private arrangements" between union and employer and eliminated graft like "strike insurance." The Council brought into line unions which exacted too high initiation fees, imposed exorbitant fines, or gave unduly severe examinations. In fact, the Council functioned as a court of appeals and could reverse decisions made by local unions. If the unions at times chafed at their loss of former independence, the San Francisco employers were pleased. So carefully did the Council monitor the economic climate that it informed its unions in 1903 that it would endorse no demands for higher wages until times became more prosperous. When the earthquake struck San Francisco in 1906, the Council suspended its working regulations and did not exploit the disaster to labor's advantage. The same cannot be said for many other segments of the San Francisco business world. {29}

Contributing to the success of the Council and to the building of a trust base with San Francisco employers was Tveitmoe's patience and "pragmatic conservatism.'' Organized labor, he pointed out, was as susceptible to arrogance of power as any other group, and periods following successful strikes were specially dangerous. He urged that the unions be loyal to their [25] employers, that they live up to the letter of their contracts, that the business agents be candid and open in their negotiations and never resort to "diplomatic trickery.'' He went so far as to support fines for shoddy workmanship. Tveitmoe, to be sure, was never gentle with external agencies that threatened organized labor, but he was no less firm when he went after unions for petty quibbling, for feuding, for incessant jurisdictional disputes, and for their too frequent attention to immediate goals at the expense of long-range ones. While Tveitmoe defended to the end labor's right to strike, he saw it as a last resort -- as an industrial war where the losses on both sides were heavy. He believed that seventy-five percent of past strikes could have been prevented, and that the ideal union was the one that reached its goals with the fewest strikes. But, if a strike could not be averted, careful preparation was a prerequisite: educational meetings, increase in dues, acquisition of good lawyers, sympathy of at least one or two daily newspapers, and finally the patience to wait for the right moment. {30}

Tveitmoe's "go slowly" thinking, which prevailed throughout his lifetime, emerged as early as 1901. When the Labor Council took in a rash of newly-created unions, hastily put together by an eastern organizer who did not remain to watch over the children he had fostered, Tveitmoe became worried. "A group of men with union cards," he wrote, "is no more a union than a pile of bricks is a house." It was sad, he continued, "to behold the embryo union tumble out of the cradle and endeavor to carry away the earth and the planets on top of it." Borrowing imagery from Hans Christian Anderson, he noted that the Labor Council had "gathered under its wings a varied collection of eggs and hatched some curious ducklings and labeled them trade unions." Unskilled labor had done what skilled labor never dreamt [26] of doing, namely, "Organize today! Strike tomorrow!" {31} When one shaves away the bombastic Populist-Labor rhetoric that Tveitmoe could and often did use, a responsible citizen emerges.

More through fickle fate than through personal wish or design, Tveitmoe became involved in San Francisco politics. The background for this is highly complicated, but a simplified explanation must suffice. The teamster strike in San Francisco in 1901 was bitter and violent. When the teamsters were defeated, they, and many unions with them, felt that the city administration had favored the employers. This led to the formation of the Union Labor party, which considered Andrew Furuseth as a candidate for mayor. He not only refused to be a candidate, he rejected the entire concept of the party, calling it "class politics," a party rising more out of resentment than common sense. Furuseth reversed his position later when a San Francisco grand jury failed to indict men involved in violence against the unions. We already have class politics, he concluded. {32}

Tveitmoe, speaking for his Council, opposed the idea of a labor party, claiming that a municipality was best served when public servants were selected from the broader community without regard to class. What was worse, he added, working men ceased to be working men when they became politicians. {33} Undaunted by such rebuffs from high places, the party found a candidate for mayor in Eugene E. Schmitz, president of the Musicians Union, an orchestra conductor and a composer of modest talents. Astonishingly enough the young, handsome, affable, but politically inexperienced Schmitz blossomed into a successful campaigner, and to the consternation of the "better people" won the 1901 election. Organized Labor, which had supported the Democratic candidate, proved to be a gracious loser and [27]
Tveitmoe wrote kindly about Schmitz as a person. But when Schmitz ran for reelection in 1903, Tveitmoe was far from gracious: "The prattling parasite who preaches class hatred and scares away investors from this great city is a public enemy. {34} In this election Organized Labor supported the Republican candidate, but Schmitz won handily.

When the next election came up, in 1905, new developments had taken place which led Tveitmoe's newspaper to support the Union Labor party as strongly as it had formerly opposed it. Many were puzzled, claiming opportunism as a motive. Whatever motives may have been involved, the surface arguments were convincing enough. The San Francisco Citizens' Alliance, an avowed enemy of labor, had been formed in 1904. Organized Labor believed that the Alliance was behind the move which fused the Democrats and Republicans on a common ticket for the sole purpose of defeating the Union Labor party. The alternative to supporting the Union Labor party, the argument went, was to back the Citizens' Alliance, an unthinkable position. The Building Trades Council could not have chosen a worse time to shift position. Schmitz and his administration were embroiled in multiple but as yet unproven charges of graft and corruption. Later, word had it that when the Union Labor party was swept into office in the fall of 1905, all the burglar alarms in San Francisco went off on their own initiative. {35}

Dating back to the election of 1901, Abraham Ruef a brilliant attorney and a genius in campaign strategy, had step-by-step entrenched himself as "city boss." He had visions of becoming a United States senator, and was more interested in power than in money, though he did not shun the latter. He had taught Schmitz all he needed to know to be mayor and proved to be an able counselor in both good deeds and bad. Sketched in bold lines, the [28] picture was as follows: If business establishments both small and large were in doubt as to the outcome of franchises, licenses, contracts, and proposed ordinances, they could "retain" Ruef as their attorney; he in turn would exert influence on Sehmitz and his eighteen-member Board of Supervisors. The largest of the "attorney fees" that Ruef received was $200,000 from Patrick Calhoun's United Railroads of San Francisco. Ruef passed on some of his disguised bribe money to Schmitz and the supervisors.

Some of the leading citizens of San Francisco had become suspicious as early as 1902. Among them were Fremont Older, the crusading editor of the San Francisco Bulletin, and Rudolph Spreckels, the multi-millionaire owner of the San Francisco Gas and Electric Company. They wanted to "get Ruef" and "clean up" the city. President Theodore Roosevelt assisted. He released to their services Francis J. Heney, a government special prosecutor, and William J. Burns, a competent and relentless detective who worried little about the ethics or legality of his methods. In this arrangement, Spreckels paid the bills and Older provided the publicity.

The famous San Francisco graft prosecution, however, was not formally inaugurated until October 20, 1906. For five months the state labored to build a case on slender evidence. Then in March, 1907, Older, Spreckels, Heney, and Burns forced one Golden M. Roy, under threat of exposure for a forgery in Oklahoma, to participate in a trap which led to the successful bribing of several supervisors. This trap in turn led to confessions from sixteen supervisors that they had accepted bribes. They were granted immunity for the evidence they provided against Ruef and the mayor. Based on a promise of immunity for all but one indictment, Ruef confessed on May 15, 1907, and changed his [29] plea to guilty. The "Immunity Contract" was, however, later voided and Ruef was tried again, found guilty, and sentenced to San Quentin penitentiary for fourteen years. In a separate trial, Schmitz was found guilty on June 13, 1907. The judge ordered him jailed immediately and on July 8 sentenced him to San Quentin for five years. The district court of appeals later reversed this decision and was upheld by the state supreme court. {36}

On January 17, 1907, Schmitz appointed Tveitmoe and J. J. O'Neil, editor of the Labor Clarions, the Labor Council's newspaper, to fill two vacancies on the Board of Supervisors, and they were inducted into office January 21, 1907. As matters turned out, they were the only two supervisors not involved in the graft scandal. When the mayor was absent, Tveitmoe found himself in the unique position of presiding over a board made up of self-confessed felons, men whom Tveitmoe had labeled as lacking even "the honesty to stay bought." The reason that these men continued to serve on the board for more than three months after their confession was that they had become Rudolph Spreckels' puppets. Had they resigned immediately, then an indicted but yet not convicted mayor would have had to appoint their replacements. When the mayor was sentenced on July 8, his office had to be declared vacant. A likely course of events would have been that the supervisors would elect Tveitmoe or O'Neil as mayor. The supervisors would then resign from office, leaving their vacancies to be filled by the new mayor.

Nothing of the sort happened. Instead, the supervisors, at the behest of Spreckels, chose Charles Boxton, a fellow grafter, as mayor. This gave the prosecutors time to produce a "candidate" from outside the board. A week later the "boodle board," as it had come to be known, elected Edward B. Taylor their mayor. His first order of business [30] in that office was to accept the resignations of those who had voted for him. Tveitmoe declared that he would not sit on the new board until a court had ruled on the legality of this election. When the court found the methods valid, Tveitmoe returned to fill out his term. {37}

"We are intent on redeeming the city and vindicating Union Labor," wrote Tveitmoe to his wife and his son Angelo, who were visiting relatives in Norway. In the coming election he hoped for a ticket "made up of the best, ablest and cleanest men in the city." {38} This was more than a dream. By 1905 the Union Labor party had become rather a name than a reality, and a rehabilitated Union Labor party had high potential for success. In addition, public opinion was turning against the prosecution, which many felt had promised more than it had delivered. True, they had succeeded in convicting two men for receiving bribes, but progress was slow in prosecuting the sources of bribes higher up. By August, 1907, Tveitmoe was frequently mentioned as the likely candidate for mayor on the Union Labor ticket; in fact, he was the only one mentioned. Tveitmoe made no formal announcement, but played an "I am in the hands of friends" role, letting, as it were, the office seek him rather than he it. {39}

Meanwhile Burns, the detective, sent his son Raymond to Minnesota, and on September 24 the San Francisco Bulletin carried a front-page spread under the headline, "Supervisor O. A. Tveitmoe Proves to Be Ex-Convict." The cruelty went even farther. It carried the mug shots (front and side view) of Tveitmoe with shaven head, in prison uniform bearing the number 3920. The Bulletin justified its action by pointing out that Tveitmoe had visited the convicted Schmitz at the Ingleside jail, thereby identifying himself with the "Schmitz-Ruef reign of thievery and bribery." It continued, "In a crisis where this man is a LEADER striving [31] to persuade good citizens to follow him in ways he knows to be bad, it becomes the sacred obligation to aid those citizens to see him for what he is, that they may not place him in any greater trust than his qualities deserve." {40} The Bulletin not only wanted to "get" the grafters, it was after the entire Union Labor party. With Tveitmoe out of consideration, the candidacy went to P. H. McCarthy. The appointed-incumbent Taylor won the election; but in 1909, he refused to run, and against weaker candidates McCarthy won the election by a plurality of 10,000 votes. His administration was a "clean" but a weak one. Tveitmoe wrote many of McCarthy's speeches.

More trouble lay ahead for Tveitmoe. Early in 1910 San Francisco employers informed labor leaders that they could no longer compete with Portland, Seattle, and particularly Los Angeles, where wages were thirty percent lower and working hours longer. Both employers and union labor would behest, they said, if San Francisco and Los Angeles were "equalized." Strengthening union labor in Los Angeles would be difficult, largely because of General Harrison Gray Otis, publisher-editor of the Los Angeles Times and president of the Merchants' and Manufacturers' Association, an organization of industrialists aimed at destroying labor unions. Having discovered Nietzsche, Otis believed in aristocracy, superiority, and the exercise of might. He was so vain, pompous, unfair, and vicious that even many of his supporters disliked him. Hiram Johnson, later governor of California, outdid even Tveitmoe in describing Otis: "He sits there in senile dementia with gangrened heart and rotting brain, grimacing at every reform, chattering impotently at all things that are decent, frothing, filming, violently gibbering, going down to his grave in snarling infamy." {41} [32]

Together with representatives from other trades, Tveitmoe, Andrew Gallagher, and Anton Johannsen from the Building Trades Council "invaded" Los Angeles. Tveitmoe left San Francisco with the title "President of the General Campaign Strike Committee for the Unionizing of Los Angeles." Johannsen, a Chicago carpenter, had come to San Francisco as organizer for the state Building Trades Council. He was young, handsome, fearless to a swashbuckling degree, and dispassionate. Although intelligent, his labor philosophy was simple enough: "In the absence of power all our declarations for justice are so much wind." {42} A deep, almost fraternal, friendship developed between Tveitmoe and Johannsen. In Los Angeles the strike committee was joined by Job Harriman, a prominent socialist leader who served as attorney for the struggling Los Angeles unions and was destined to be a candidate for mayor in 1911.

Because the iron workers were the toughest fighters, had a strong national organization behind them, and had the greatest grievances, the San Francisco leaders used them to spearhead the attack. They asked for a higher wage scale. When this was refused, the iron workers throughout Los Angeles struck. Strikebreakers came in from the Midwest and were met with strong-arm squads from San Francisco; deputies beat up the strikers, and the strikers beat up non-union workers; a city ordinance banning picketing was enacted, and in a short time 470 workers were arrested who in turn demanded jury trials, enough to clog the courts for many years. General Otis dashed about the city with a cannon mounted on his automobile. In his newspaper he appealed to all decent peoples to drive out the "San Francisco gorillas." On September 3, he called for drastic action. "The danger of tolerating them is great and immediate . . . . Their instincts are criminal, they are ready for arson, [33] riot, robbery, and murder." During this time, through assessment and appeals, Tveitmoe raised $334,000 in aid money for the strikers. {43}

On October l, 1910, at 1:07 a.m., there was an explosion in Ink Alley behind the Times Building, a medieval fortress of a structure. Within minutes the building was filled with gas and flames. Twenty-one persons lost their lives and the building was wrecked. Because Otis had an auxiliary plant ready, the Times came out only a few hours late. Otis screamed "anarchic scum" and "leeches upon honest labor," and invited the readers' attention to the "wails of poor widows and the cries of fatherless children." {44} From the labor side came the observation that employees had for several weeks been sickened by gas fumes and that no major officials or editors had been present at the time of the explosion; it was suggested that Otis himself had either been negligent or had planted dynamite in order to blame labor and collect insurance.

On occasion historical reality can seem more contrived than fiction. Present in Los Angeles at the time of the explosion was detective William Burns. He had been hired by the National Erectors' Association to find and arrest men behind dynamiting that had been taking place sporadically, mostly in the East, since 1905. The mayor of San Francisco engaged him to investigate the explosion in the Times building. Burns had a suspect, James B. McNamara, a printer by trade. His brother John J. McNamara was the secretary of the International Association of Bridge and Structural Workers, with headquarters in Indianapolis, Indiana. Another person Burns had under surveillance was one Ortie McManigal. Six months later, on April 14, 1911, McManigal and James B. McNamara were arrested in Detroit, and John J. McNamara was arrested later in Indianapolis. Burns extracted what was purported to be a full confession [34] from McManigal, who claimed responsibility for a string of explosions, including the Christmas Day, 1910, explosion at the Llewellyn Iron Works, the only other ease where dynamite was used in Los Angeles after the Times building was destroyed. Fearing complications with extradition, Burns kidnapped the McNamaras and brought them to Los Angeles, where they were promptly indicted.

After much hesitation Clarence Darrow agreed to defend the McNamaras. The case assumed extraordinary proportions. All of sudden the issues that had divided capital and labor for many years met for a showdown in a Los Angeles courtroom. The Times and other anti-labor factions convicted the McNamaras at once, while labor supporters throughout the country claimed that they had been framed. Samuel Gompers believed in their innocence and appealed for contributions to their defense fund. Before their arrest, Tveitmoe had announced a $7,500 reward for the apprehension of those responsible. Organized Labor never claimed that the McNamaras were innocent, only that they deserved a fair trial and able defense. Tveitmoe must have known that the evidence against the McNamaras was strong because he worked closely with Darrow in preparing for the trial. When Darrow's team was infiltrated by prosecution spies, Tveitmoe helped to develop a code, keyed to an English dictionary, to prevent further leaks. {45}

Los Angeles leaders had their own private stake in the trial which began October 11, 1910. The primary election of October 30 made it clear that Job Harriman, the socialist, would be elected mayor unless unforeseen events intervened. The McNamara case had united the socialists and the workers. Darrow's own explanation of what happened is briefly as follows: Convinced that the trial would end with conviction and execution, he [35] bargained for more lenient sentences if the McNamaras confessed. The prosecution together with men like Otis agreed to a life sentence for James B. and a ten-year sentence for Joseph J. {46} A confession, in fact, served their purposes better. It would embarrass Harriman and diminish the power of labor. The McNamaras confessed on December 1, 1911, a few days before the election. Harriman was defeated. Theodore Roosevelt wired congratulations to detective Burns.

Labor suffered a blow from which it would only slowly recover. Millions had believed in the innocence of the McNamaras and would have continued to do so even if they had gone to the gallows. Tveitmoe learned of the McNamaras' confession either in New York or on his way to New York from Atlanta where he had attended the AFL national convention. In all events, he was with Samuel Gompers when he wept, during a news conference, as he said "It won't do labor any good." Tveitmoe sent a telegram dated December 2 to his own newspaper urging everyone "to keep cool heads." On December 9, he acknowledged that "every union man and woman is justly indignant. They realize now that, not only have they been grievously imposed upon, but that the cause so dear to their hearts has received a blow from which it will not soon recover." Digging deeper he asked for national soul-searching: "How shallow to go about bellowing for their death .... How imbecile to think that any deep-lying causes of this most significant chapter of history will be in the least affected if you put these men to death or a hundred of them!" if we as a nation had no more power of reflection than this, he argued, "Then . . . we have other things to reform besides labor unions." At the annual convention of the state Building Trades Council he declared in his report that save for a few religious denominations the building trades practiced the principle [36] of non-violence more than any other group. Then came his long-remembered words: "If Labor should invoke as law AN EYE FOR AN EYE AND A TOOTH FOR A TOOTH, the world would have a deluge of human blood, without a saving Ark or a Mount Ararat, but with numberless Caesar's Colnmns to mark the final landings.'' {47}

When Tveitmoe spoke the words above, he, along with Johannsen, Eugene A. Clancy, business manager for the iron workers in San Francisco, and J. E. Muncey, an iron-worker leader from Salt Lake City, had already been indicted in Los Angeles for conspiracy. On December 31, 1911, the San Francisco Examiner carried as a headline: "Tveitmoe and Associates Indicted in Dynamite Case: San Franciscan Said to Be Head of Times Blast." Tveitmoe's leadership in the Los Angeles strife had made him a marked man. Detective Burns, with no evidence, had named Tveitmoe on the eve of the explosion as a prime suspect. Ortie McManigal's confession had come under Burns' tutelage, and it must be left to guess what may have been manipulated. According to the confession, James B. McNamara had told him that when he left for San Francisco, his brother John had instructed him to seek out Clancy, who would introduce him to "the bunch" and "the Old Man," meaning Tveitmoe. The contention was that Tveitmoe had provided James B. McNamara with two assistants, M. A. Schmidt and David Caplan, who had in fact helped McNamara to acquire dynamite. Caplan and Schmidt disappeared after the explosion. Tveitmoe acknowledged that he knew Caplan but had met Schmidt only once. In all events, indictments presented on February 6, 1912, in the United States District Court of Indiana soon replaced the Los Angeles charges. Astonishingly enough, Johannsen was not indicted in Indiana, so his ease remained hanging. But as Tveitmoe pointed out, it [37] would be difficult for even a biased court to try only one man for conspiracy.

The Indiana grand jury indicted fifty-four men on the charge of conspiracy to violate the laws of the United States, with a maximum sentence of two years; there were also twenty-five separate counts of illegally transporting dynamite and nitroglycerin on passenger trains or conspiracy to do the same. The maximum penalty was eighteen months for each offense, making possible a combined sentence of more than thirty-nine years.

Tveitmoe and Clancy, the only California men indicted, were arrested February 19. Jafet Lindeberg, a Norwegian who had made a fortune in the Alaska gold mines, posted Tveitmoe's bond for $5,000. The celebrated trial, which produced 549 witnesses and 25,000 pages of records, began October 1, 1912, exactly two years after the Los Angeles Times explosion. Judge Albert B. Anderson presided, and district attorney C. W. Miller was the chief prosecutor. John Worth Kern and William N. Harding were the main defense attorneys. A remarkable feature was that Kern was at that time a highly respected United States senator (1911-1917) from Indiana. Clarence Darrow, indicted for attempted bribery of a jury member in the McNamara case, was tied up in Los Angeles.

As was true for the McNamara ease, the trial rested heavily on McManigal's confession. Here, too, the trial operated on two levels. First was the valid prosecution of alleged criminals. Second was the attempt of capital, especially the steel industry, to administer a crushing blow to labor by convicting important labor leaders. When Tveitmoe was indicted in Los Angeles, he claimed the prosecution there had promised him immunity if he would implicate Samuel Gompers. {48} It is impossible to unravel the Indianapolis trial with any degree of clarity. The main thread is that McManigal, [38] using what he called an "infernal machine" -- a clock -- to time the explosion, had done a number of bombings under the direction of one Herbert Hockin of the International Bridge and Structural Workers, who was a subordinate of Joseph J. McNamara, who in turn was responsible to Frank M. Ryan, the president. It is worth noting that Hiram R. Kline of the carpenters union, from Chicago, and Tveitmoe were the only two men indicted outside of the iron workers. Conspiracy trials are elusive affairs; the indicted are tried both as a group and as a collection of individuals. Competent evidence against one person can, in the mind of a jury member, spill over to another because of association.

Because the evidence against Tveitmoe was slender, the prosecution resorted to libel and innuendo. Much was made of his role as strike leader in Los Angeles. He had raised $330,000 from "honest workers" to create a "reign of terror" in Los Angeles which culminated in the Times bombing. "You cannot allow brainy men like Tveitmoe who have the ability to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars.., to put all the responsibility on the McNamaras." Tveitmoe was said to have told John J. McNamara to "send out the wreckers." When McManigal came to San Francisco after planting explosives in the Llewellyn Ironworks on December 25, he was said to have left a note in Claney's office to the effect, "Tell Tveitmoe that his Christmas present has been delivered.'' This was linked to a letter Tveitmoe wrote to John J. McNamara on December 19, 1910, which concluded: "Trusting Santa Claus will be as kind and generous to you with surprises and presents of the season as he has been to us in the Golden State . . "Save for this Christmas greeting, the other allegations were not substantiated. It was true that James B. McNamara lived for a time in San Francisco before going to Los Angeles and that he picked up the assistance of Schmidt and [39] Caplan, who later disappeared. No evidence was produced that linked Tveitmoe to these men, save for a foolish stunt he and Johannsen pulled during the McNamara trial. Mrs. David Caplan, under constant surveillance by Burns detectives, was about to be given a subpoena. Tveitmoe and Johannsen, in the best mystery-novel style, arranged for her escape, first by taxi to Reno, Nevada, and then by train to Chicago. Tveitmoe and Johannsen claimed that their act was a humanitarian one. She had been harassed by the detectives to the point of mental breakdown. Moreover, they argued, a wife could not testify against her husband. The fact that they had accomplished this under the very nose of detective Burns only heightened Burns's intense dislike if not hatred of Tveitmoe. Burns, capable as he was, never developed professional detachment. The men he suspected and pursued were personal enemies. {49}

Much was made of a $1,000 check that John J. McNamara sent to Tveitmoe in August, 1910. But this was a clear response to an earlier letter from Tveitmoe, dated July 26, appealing for financial support for the Los Angeles strikers. Detective Burns, when he testified, cleverly managed to bring the Minnesota incident into the picture, and suggested that Tveitmoe had been behind a plot "to blow him up." Otherwise, the prosecution referred to him as the "bomber on the West Coast" and a "fat parasite" on labor, and insisted that if proper justice had been done he would be in San Quentin with the McNamaras rather than in Indianapolis. "If I were prosecuting officer of Los Angeles county," said attorney Miller in summary, "Tveitmoe would be prosecuted for murder." {50} The newspapers picked up the more dramatic charges against Tveitmoe, and out of context they were damaging.

Tveitmoe never took the witness stand, but he became one of the more conspicuous defendants. When [40] testimony was relevant, he took careful notes, but when the hearing became dull, he lost himself in a book, which proved to be The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam in Latin, a parting gift from Johannsen -- rather incongruous reading for "labor bombers." He was reprimanded for smiling when a witness was examined: "I will not permit any demonstrations, whether by smiling or otherwise,'' said Judge Anderson. Mary Field was permanently excluded from the courtroom because of "anarchistic'' statements in an article in Bridgeman's Magazine of October, 1911. The court also noted that she had talked much to Tveitmoe, who also had been overheard to drop "anarchistic" remarks. Apparently the court never learned that she was a correspondent for Organized Labor. Tveitmoe twirled his hat on his cane as he waited for the verdict of the jury, which came on December 28 after forty-one hours of deliberation. Thirty-eight men were convicted and sentencing took place on December 31. Frank M. Ryan, president of the Iron Workers International, received the longest sentence, seven years. Eight men, including Tveitmoe and Clancy, were given six years. Six were given suspended sentences, and the remainder received sentences ranging from one to four years. {51}

So sure had the prosecution been of conviction that the train, dubbed the "Dynamite Special," which would transport the convicts to the Leavenworth federal penitentiary had been ordered a month in advance. After the sentencing the convicted men were marched five blocks to jail in single file, handcuffed to a deputy on both sides, before a large crowd. In an effort to rise above the humiliation, they broke into song: "Where is Your Wandering Boy Tonight?" {52}

Normally the convicted men could have been released on bail pending appeal, but these proceedings were delayed, Tveitmoe wrote from Leavenworth on [41] January 3, 1913, praising the institution: The place was spotlessly clean, the food was good, the warden and his officers treated them like men. Had it not been for family, friends, and cause, "I might relinquish the world for my New Year's home." Later Tveitmoe elaborated on how tolerable prison life could be, if one's inner life was in order. {53}

The state building trades annual convention took place late in January, but without Tveitmoe. He was unanimously reelected general secretary. Job Harriman and Clarence Darrow were guest speakers. Behind Harriman, when he rose to speak, were two American flags. When these were drawn back, a large picture of Tveitmoe appeared. The audience arose as one in long applause. Tveitmoe, who was opposed to making heroes of labor leaders, had, for a day at least, become one. {54}

Released on bail pending appeal, Tveitmoe and Clancy returned to San Francisco on March 8. They were met by a crowd estimated at more than 2,000, and a band led a parade up Market Street, which ended with speechmaking. Tveitmoe was in fine fettle: There was no reason why labor men should not be put in prisons, if they were foolish enough to build them. Persecution, he said, had ceased the moment the "conspirators'' entered prison. He harbored no particular bitterness toward the court, for it was only part of a larger system. The Sunday issue of the San Francisco Call covered the event as a feature story. The pictures were flattering and the language sympathetic. {55}

In January, 1914, the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh District, Chicago, upheld the sentences for twenty-four of the convicted men, including Tveitmoe's friend Clancy. The decision in the case of Tveitmoe was reversed and a new trial was ordered. The court ruled that the evidence against Tveitmoe was [42] incompetent. It did not follow, because he had been a strike leader, that he had any connection with West Coast bombings. Directing special attention to Tveitmoe's Christmas greetings to McNamara, which the court must have found to be the most incriminating piece of evidence, it commented as follows: "Neither content thereof nor circumstances in evidence are indicative of reference to explosions." Proceedings for a new trial began in June, 1914, but no additional evidence against Tveitmoe had been acquired and early in July the case against him was nolle prossed, meaning that the prosecution would proceed no further. {56}

Burns detectives found M. A. Schmidt and David Caplan in February, 1915. Tveitmoe and Johannsen raised money for their defense. Schmidt was given a life sentence and paroled after twenty-two years. Caplan, a Russian Jew and a Tolstoy disciple, served two-thirds of a ten-year sentence. McManigal, the arch-bomber of them all, went free. He changed his identity and it was rumored that he later worked in the sheriff's department in Los Angeles. Schmidt quoted Guy Biddinger, a Burns detective, as follows: "They don't want you [Schmidt], nor do they want Caplan -- they want to hang Tveitmoe and Johannsen and you can help them and then you will be free." If Schmidt can be relied upon, Burns's unpaid four-year pursuit of Schmidt and Caplan may have been motivated by a continuing hope to "get" Tveitmoe. {57}

How far Tveitmoe was involved in the Los Angeles bombings must be left to conjecture. In his favor is his longtime emphasis on "civilized, twentieth-century strikes." The building trades unions in California have no history of setting explosions. The iron workers, however, had since 1905 made it costly for resisting employers by destroying cranes and other expensive equipment. The Iron Workers International had its [43] own network of men across the country and hardly needed Tveitmoe's help. Even if they trusted him, risks would be compounded if they included men outside their own unions. Whether involved or not, he became a "victim of the times." The fact that Johannsen -- on the surface, at least, as implicated as Tveitmoe -- was indicted in Los Angeles but not in Indianapolis may be attributed to a belief that his lower office was not worth the bother. The prosecution must have regarded the possible conviction of Tveitmoe as a special prize -- a powerful West Coast leader, a representative of the conservative unions, and one who stood close to Samuel Gompers. Not to be overlooked is the special animosity that detective Burns felt toward Tveitmoe. It can be safely assumed that all evidence that could be procured against Tveitmoe came to light. Burns, who had an army of detectives, had Tveitmoe under constant surveillance and had named him a suspect from the start. Burns had dearly coached McManigal's confession. McManigal, nearly illiterate, had come to regard his captor as a friend, and may have agreed to include details detrimental to Tveitmoe, some of which seem to lie beyond normal recall. It should also be kept in mind that whatever McManigal had to say about Tveitmoe consisted of his remembering what James B. McNamara had told him as they hid out together in Wisconsin. {58}

In all likelihood, however, Tveitmoe knew or came to know much more than he ever revealed. He was close to Eugene Clancy, whose conviction was upheld. The explosion, caused by sixteen sticks of dynamite planted outside the building near some ink barrels, was never intended to kill anyone. The secondary ignition of ink and gas did that. A biased labor supporter could therefore readily see it more as an unfortunate accident than as murder. Given the class-war mentality that prevailed [44] on both sides, the only thing that can be said here with certainty is that Tveitmoe would never have testified against a fellow union member, even to clear himself and that in the face of imminent defeat his posture would be to save what could be saved.

Ira B. Cross, California's labor historian, claimed that Tveitmoe's influence declined after the Indianapolis "dynamite" trial: "Although his usefulness was at an end, he retained his official connection with the building trades movement . . . until 1922. " {59} Cross's assessment need not be argued against, but it does merit elaboration. Tveitmoe suffered no apparent loss of leadership within his own unions. He took a prominent role in the Stockton, California, strikes in 1914-1915, where the strikers' own agents uncovered a clumsy plot on the part of company detectives to implicate Tveitmoe by planting dynamite in his suitcase. Despite competent evidence and later confessions, little came of this in the courts. {60} In 1911 Tveitmoe was national vice president of the Cement Workers Union and third vice president of the Building Trades Department of the AFL. If he had ever been destined for higher position on the national level, nothing came of it. The lengthy litigation process not only drained his energy, but, for long periods of time, drew him outside the mainstream of his duties. In the area of labor politics, his image had already been damaged by the Bulletin story in 1907. The fact that the appeals court had overturned the decision against him attracted only minor attention in the newspapers. Louis Adamic, as late as 1931, wrote as if Tveitmoe had been convicted and had served his six-year sentence. {61}

More to the point perhaps is the fact that, in addition to his personal decline, Tveitmoe suffered the general fate of "conservative" labor. Against a background of [45] respectability, the AFL had reached a peak of militancy in 1911, threatening even to support the Socialist party. Oppressed by the guilt of the McNamaras and the later convictions in Indianapolis, the AFL lost its momentum, leaving the field open to more radical unions who said "To hell with Gompers' polite trade unionism." Inspired by the success of industrial leaders in Los Angeles and by the tactics of General Otis, San Francisco employers began to mobilize to bring about an open-shop city. They were quite successful in gaining the support of the "moral folk" who never bothered about distinguishing between conservative and radical unions. Tveitmoe's earlier stance of "fair play" and community concern, once a source of strength, could now be interpreted as hypocrisy by the right wing and as weakness by those on the left. The Union Labor party began to lose influence in San Francisco in 1912, and ceased to be an organized force altogether when legislation ruled out party designation for candidates running for municipal offices. More with hope than with assurance, Tveitmoe wrote: "If this war [World War I] is fought to make the world safe for democracy, labor must come out a clear winner." {62} In fact, President Wilson's promise of a "reward" for labor's loyalty in World War I never materialized. Instead the war brought falling prices and unemployment as well as thousands of new millionaires who strengthened the anti-labor forces.

In light of what has been mentioned above, it becomes more understandable why Tveitmoe, as he watched the rise of labor opposition in his own back-yard, cast some longing glances in the direction of the IWW -- why he flirted a bit with syndicalism, why he sought hope in a dream of international worker solidarity, and why he came to believe that every labor body, no matter how strong or independent, needed the backing [46] of a group of sympathetic unions, be they moderate or radical. This may also explain why a secretary of a successful but isolated building trades union turned his attention to the vast areas untouched by organized labor, like farmhands and migrant workers. In thought Tveitmoe seems to have skirted if not crossed the boundaries of socialism more than he made public. On the other hand, for reasons perhaps as much prudent as sincere, he denounced Bolshevism as a significant threat to this country during the postwar years. The antidote to it, however, was not force, but fair dealings with labor in general. {63}

Tveitmoe served for a number of years as president of The Japanese and Korean Exclusion League, which was organized in San Francisco on May 14, 1905, and renamed The Asiatic Exclusion League in 1908; his role here was, in his own time and even more in retrospect, an unattractive one. The Exclusion League can be best explained as a continuation of years of agitation against the Chinese which had led to their exclusion in 1882. When Japan relaxed its emigration restrictions, the Japanese replaced the Chinese as "cheap labor." On the whole, the Japanese were more industrious than the Chinese, more prone to organize and to protest oppression. They also bought or rented small parcels of land and turned them into prosperous fruit or truck farms. In the cities they were successful in business, and unlike the Chinese they did not form the equivalents of Chinatowns. {64} Union labor to the last man, Andrew Furuseth included, looked upon the Chinese and the Japanese as a weapon in the hands of industry to bring down wages and destroy the unions. The opposition, however, went beyond labor. Farmers and small business men discovered that their "cheap labor" could turn into dangerous competitors and unwanted neighbors. Others were out-and-out racists who wanted to preserve the West Coast for people of European background. [47]

To a degree The Exclusion League was a paper organization. In no year did its income from dues or other sources exceed $5,000. The only person to receive a salary -- $12 per week -- was a clerk-secretary. Yet the League is not so easily dismissed. The league centralized, sustained, and in all likelihood intensified anti-Japanese sentiments that were already there. It sought to carry out a three-point program, it lobbied for legislation that would restrict the entry of Japanese equal to that of the Chinese; it called for the boycotting of Japanese business establishments; and it pursued a propaganda campaign to inform the public about the "Yellow Peril." The first two measures were largely unsuccessful. The effectiveness of the propaganda campaign is more difficult to measure. In all events, the League had free ready-made voices in the labor newspapers, in many San Francisco dailies, and particularly in Organized Labor, which had even before the formation of the League campaigned for exclusion of Orientals. {65}

According to the propaganda message, the Japanese were not only a tool of the capitalists, but a social menace as well. The main arguments advanced by Organized Labor were that the Japanese could not be assimilated without injury to the larger culture; that they had such distinct racial, social, and religious prejudices that future friction was inevitable; and that it was impossible to compete with their low wages and standard of living. In a Labor Day speech, Tveitmoe declared that labor should "guard the gateway of the Occidental civilization against Oriental invasion." Despite preliminary remarks of respect for the Chinese and Japanese civilizations, he could write, "Any Caucasian who patronizes the yellow or brown is not a good citizen, not true to his race, not loyal to his ancestry, not faithful to his God and country." Tveitmoe never changed his position with regard to exclusion, but by 1910 he called for toleration and disclaimed any racial bias, though he retained the [48] thought that Asians will "bring down our standard of living." {66}

Tveitmoe was president of the Norwegian Club in San Francisco in 1906, the year of the earthquake and the year that the famed explorer Roald Amundsen arrived with his ship Gjøa after sailing through the Northwest Passage. In the civic festivities that followed, Tveitmoe, speaking in Norwegian, joined other speakers like the mayor and Benjamin Ide Wheeler, president of the University of California. Functioning as toastmaster at a banquet given by the Norwegian Club, he proposed that Gjøa be turned over to the United States government and that it be the first ship to pass through the Panama Canal. {67}

The early years for the Tveitmoes in San Francisco were economically modest at best. A daughter, Rose Anna, died in 1901, at the age of nine months. Around 1902 they moved into a home of their own at 119 Prospect Avenue. Later they bought a house in Santa Cruz, California. Investigating charges that Tveitmoe lived there in a "palatial residence or mansion," the Santa Cruz Sentinel found on Almar Avenue a "neat, attractive but unpretentious cottage," which was about to see a $300 addition. {68} When time permitted on weekends, Tveitmoe could be found sitting by the ocean with a book and his pipe. He also bought a section of land in the Mohave Desert, perhaps with the hope of finding oil, but nothing came of it. Edith Blanche, born in Toledo, Oregon, was the last of the Tveitmoe children to die, in 1976. Angelo, the oldest and the only son, worked for the Internal Revenue Service and was an excellent violinist. He met his future wife, whose name like his mother's was Ingeborg, when he visited Norway in 1907. All of the living grandchildren were born [49] after Tveitmoe died, but they remember their grandmother, who died in 1935. {69}

Tveitmoe suffered a stroke on his birthday, December 7, 1917, which impaired his left side. But as Cress Gannon, business manager for Organized Labor, stated, "He knew not what it was to give in." There was much discussion preceding the annual convention of the state council in 1922 as to whether Tveitmoe would resign as secretary. Linked as he had been to P. H. McCarthy, now unpopular because of the reversal of fortunes for the building trades unions in 1921, he chose to resign rather than risk losing an election. In a short, unsentimental resignation speech, he confessed that his assistant A. G. Gilson, who succeeded him as secretary, had for the past five years handled most of the routine work. He stayed on, however, as editor. At the following annual convention, held at San Bernardino, California, the new president, Frank C. McDonald, announced that their former secretary had died at his home in Santa Cruz on March 19, 1923, at the age of fifty-eight. {70}

It is customary to speak well of the dead. Among the many tributes to Tveitmoe, some strike a chord of inner sincerity. Cress Gannon, an intelligent Australian immigrant who had worked close to Tveitmoe since 1900 and who succeeded him as editor of Organized Labor, wrote, "To all the world he appeared to be the man nothing in the world could disturb or ruffle. His easygoing manner was assumed." Gannon then went on to make sense of his strange headline, "Poor Tveitmoe is Dead." He explained that Tveitmoe had quietly suffered much, both physically and mentally, and that he had been a victim of "injustice and cruel wrong." A close friend, Ed Gammon, called him the "friendly philosopher whom no defeat could embitter nor victory spoil . . . a genial spirit who consoled in adversity and [50] enthused in our joys." He never spared himself in a battle but when the fight was over he was the first to reconcile, claimed Gammon, and "when victory came he modestly disclaimed all credit." Gammon concluded: "The kindest, gentlest friend I have ever known is dead." There may be something in Gammon's estimate. Among Tveitmoe's papers were found a large number of old and uncollected promissory notes and I.O.U.s. Anton Johannsen, who had moved back to Chicago, saw Tveitmoe as "California's Labor Sage." The legendary Mother Jones, in a telegram to Ingeborg, called him "labor's greatest soldier." {71}

It was, then, Tveitmoe's lot in life to leave a provincial rural environment in Norway and enter a setting in America where people from all of Europe and other parts of the world became, as it were, his associates and friends or opponents. Driven by a vision of a better day, he lived out his life on the cutting edge where the less privileged met the more powerful with their claim to a greater share in America's resources and a larger voice in planning its future. Given modest changes in circumstances, especially during his Minnesota years, he might have become a lawyer, a congressman, a professor of philosophy, or even a college president. In 1919, at the state council's annual convention and in a pessimistic mood which was unlike him, he reflected on the notion that "we cannot control what happens to us." He questioned whether the world, contrary to his earlier hopes, was getting much better despite "progressive and prodigious wisdom." It was even possible that "man's temporal abode" was getting worse. Finally he found consolation in a conclusion that might appropriately serve as his epitaph: "Therefore in blessings as well as in the ills of life, less depends upon what befalls us than upon the way it is met." {72} It was perhaps with more insight than they realized that other labor leaders called him "The Old Man."

NOTES

<1> The State of Minnesota vs. O. A. Tveitmoe, County of Goodhue. District Court. First Judicial District. Case 423. Register of Criminal Action, Volume B, 347. A certified transcript of the proceedings of the trial taken in shorthand by the court reporter was carried in the San Francisco Bulletin, September 24,1907.
<2> Minneapolis Tidende, December 9, 1912. Olaf was born out of wedlock to
Ingebjørg Anfinnsdatter Berge (1832-1899) of Vang in Valdres and Anders O. Sløte from Nord Aurdal in Valdres. In 1872, she married Anders Olsen Tveitmoen, born Ristebrøtin in Vestre Slidre in Valdres. He ran the Tveitmoen farm from 1869 until his death. Olaf had two half-brothers, Anders (1873-1888) and Ola. The latter took over the farm after his mother's death, but later emigrated to San Francisco, perhaps around 1908.
<3> St. Olaf College, Record of Students, Volume 1, 32-33.
<4> Den norske bonde. Tale of O. Tveitmoe, Manitou Messenger, June, 1888. The Manitou Messenger began publication as a monthly in January, 1887.
<5> The Tveitmoes had six children: Angelo Zachary's Wingman (1891-1955); Evangeline Ingeborg (1892-1932); Clara Elizabeth (1895-1958); Edith Blanche (1897-1976); Rose Anna (1900-1901); and May Rose Arum (1903-1964). See San Francisco Census Records, 1900.
<6> P. M. Ringtail (1861-1934) later rose to prominence in Minnesota politics. He was the unsuccessful Democratic candidate for governor in 1912.
<7> State of Minnesota vs. O. A. Tveitmoe.
<8> San Francisco Examiner, January 1, 1912. Governor. Executive Journal, Volume J, 277, at Minnesota Historical Society.
<9> Reform (Eau Claire, Wisconsin), July 6, August 24, September 7, October 12, 1897, and December 9, 1912.
<10> For general information on California labor history the author has relied heavily on Ira B. Cross, A History of the Labor Movement in California (Berkeley, 1935), and Frederick L. Byan, Industrial Relations in San Francisco Building Trades (Norman, Oklahoma, 1936).
<11> Cross, Labor Movement, note 20, 338.
<12> Louis Adamic, Dynamite: The Story of Class Violence in America (NewYork, 1958), 201.
<13> John D. Hicks, The Populist Revolt: A History of the Farmers' Alliance and the People's Party (Minneapolis, 1931), 439-444; Farmers' Alliance (Lincoln, Nebraska), February 5, 1890; Organized Labor, January 1, 1910.
<14> Organized Labor, December 25, 1909, November 21, 1914, and February 10, 1917.
<15> Organized Labor, February 18, 1905, September 26, 1908, and September 20, 1913. According to Tveitmoe the unions had a six-month option to purchase 32,000 acres of land in 1901.
<16> Cross, Labor Movement, 156-165; Truth (Haskell's newspaper), November 17, 1883; Organized Labor, March 23, 1901.
<17> Organized Labor, August 3, 8, 1903, and April 24, 1915.
<18> Organized Labor, November 24, 1900.
<19> Mary Field began writing for Organized Labor in the issue of March 9, 1912. She vowed to take women "out of the kitchen and into the streets and into the world".
<20> Organized Labor, July 27, 1901. Tveitmoe had undoubtedly become acquainted with Cole Younger at the Stillwater penitentiary in 1894.
<21> Organized Labor, July 19, 1913. [52]
<22> Organized Labor, February 3, 1900.
<23> For selected references, see Organized Labor, March 10, 1900, and May 31, 1902 (child labor); May 11, September 28, 1912, January 10, June 27, 1914, and November 16, 1918 (women); March 2 and September 28, 1912 (Mexico); June 22, 1912 (courts and judges); April 20, 1912, and March 15, 1913 (Sun Yat Sen); March 30, June 8, 1912, September 27, 1913, and July 10, 1915 (Tom Mann); November 21, 1914 (Shaw); December 18, 1909, April 20, 27, 1912, and March 13, 1913 (unskilled workers and IWW); February 20, 1904, March 30, April 6, 13, 20, 27, May 11, 25, 1912, April 25, May 2, September 5 and 28, 1914 (World War I).
<24> Organized Labor, March 30, 1912, and November 21, 1914.
<25> Organized Labor, September 20, 1902, and October 2, 1915.
<26> Organized Labor, April 4, 1903, May 2, 1914, December 26, 1903. Description of Los Angeles was quoted by Anton Johannsen in New Majority (Chicago), March 31, 1923; January 20, 1912; January 19, 1901.
<27> Organized Labor, May 1, 1901, January 28 and March 11, 1905.
<28> Constitution and By-laws of the Building Trades Council of San Francisco. Organized Labor, March 11, 1905, and April 25, 1914.
<29> Organized Labor, June 6, 1903, April 21 and 28, 1906.
<30> For representative references see Organized Labor, February 24, August 11, October 20, 1900, March 30, 1901, March 4, 1905, January 16, 1909, January 29, 1910, December 5, 1914, and March 20, 1918.
<31> Organized Labor, June 22, 1901. In July, 1900, the Labor Council had a membership of thirty-four unions. Fifteen months later it had ninety-eight. On May 2, 1901, Tveitmoe observed that "San Francisco is experiencing a union Pentecost breeze. It passes; the air is charged with electricity, but beware of the storm."
<32> San Francisco Bulletin, August 25, 1901; San Francisco Examiner, October 28, 1901.
<33> Organized Labor, October 19 and 24, 1901.
<34> San Francisco Call, November 1, 1903.
<35> On November 5, 1904, Organized Labor still contended that union, should not enter politics, but on September 23, 1905, it regretted that it had no choice. For a more complete statement on the Union Labor party, see Edward Joseph Powell, "The Union Labor Party of San Francisco, 1901-1911" (Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, 1937), and Walter Bean, Boss Ruef's San Francisco (Berkeley, 1967).
<36> The conviction of Schmitz for extortion was overruled on a technicality. Extortion meant obtaining money by means of threat to do unlawful injury. The mayor had a right to withhold or threaten to withhold, for example, a liquor license. The court of appeals acknowledged that obtaining money by threatening to do a legal act was unethical, but it was not punishable by law.
<37> Journal of Proceedings: Board of Supervisors (published annually by The City of San Francisco), January 21, 1907; San Francisco Examiner, March 24, 1907 (Jay Gould is said to have defined an honest man as one who stayed bought); Proceedings, May 6, June 17, 24, July 8, 15, and 29, 1907.
<38> O. A. Tveitmoe to his wife and son, July 13, 1907.
<39> "Tveitmoe Enters Mayoralty Race," San Francisco Examiner, August 16, 1907.
<40> The San Francisco Bulletin may have held the story in order to release it just before the Union Labor party held its nominating convention. [53]
<41> Cited in Irving Stone, Clarence Darrow for the Defense (New York, 1941), 270.
<42> Industrial Relations: Final Report and Testimony!! Submitted to Congress, August 23, 1912, 5:4799.
<43> O. A. Tveitmoe, Final Report of the General Campaign Strike Committee, September 1, 1912. The brewers in Los Angeles struck first on May 19, 1910, and won a favorable settlement on August 11. By June 1, every metal-trade plant had been locked out or struck, involving 1,200 workers. They returned to work, defeated, in February, 1911. The anti-picketing ordinance was enacted July 16. Court injunctions were also used. For a complete statement, see Grace Heilman Stimson, Rise of the Labor Movement in Los Angeles (Berkeley, 1955).
<44> Los Angeles Times, October 2, 1910.
<45> Organized Labor, July 29 and October 21, 1911; New York Times, January 3, 1912; Stone,
Clarence Darrow, 273.
<46> Clarence Darrow, The Story of My Life (New York, 1932), 180-186.
<47> Organized Labor, January 20, 1912. One puzzled journalist who covered the convention changed "Caesar's Columns," a reference to Ignatius Donnelly's novel (see above, p. 00), to "Caesar's impalation poles."
<48> San Francisco Examiner, January 16, 1912; New York Times, January 16, 1912.
<49> All the major daily newspapers and news magazines covered the Indianapolis trial, which lasted from October 1, 1912, to the end of that year. The author has relied on the New York Times for general coverage and on the San Francisco Examiner, which had a special interest in Tveitmoe and Clancy. A. Bergh and Mary Field, sympathetic to the unions, reported for Organized Labor. For selected references, see New York Times, January 2, 3, 16, February 7, 19, October 5, and December 31, 1912; San Francisco Examiner, December 31, 1911, January 1, 16, 21, February 20, October 2, 5, 9, 10, 25, November 1, 8, 12, 19, 24, 27, December 1, 19, 28, and 29, 1912; Organized Labor, January 6, October 5, October 26, November 2, 9, 23, December 7, 1912, January 4, 11, and 18, 1913.
<50> San Francisco Examiner, December 1, 19, 25, 27, and 29, 1912; New York Times, December 31, 1912.
<51> San Francisco Examiner, November 24, 27, and December 1, 1912; New York Times, December 31, 1912. Hiram Kline received a suspended sentence, leaving Tveitmoe the only person outside of the iron workers to be sentenced.
<52> San Francisco Examiner, December 29, 1912. The "Conspiracy Case" was reviewed in Organized Labor, March 14, 1914.
<53> Organized Labor, January 18, 1913.
<54> Organized Labor, January 25, 1913.
<55> San Francisco Call, March 9, 1913.
<56> San Francisco Examiner, June 4 and July 4, 1914; Organized Labor printed the court of appeals decision, January 10, 1914.
<57> Organized Labor, January 15, 1916; Stimson, Labor Movement in Los Angeles, 45. Biographical sketches of Schmidt and Caplan by Pauline Jacobsen appeared in Organized Labor, April 10 and 17, 1916.
<58> Clearly with the help of detective Burns, McManigal published his confession under the title Ortie McManigal's Own Story of the National Dynamite Plot (Los Angeles, 1913). A picture of Burns appears in the front [54] material. In his book Masked War (New York, 1913), Burns writes as if Tveitmoe was the ringleader of the Los Angeles explosions and the others were his puppets. The hook was written before the court of appeals overruled Tveitmoe's conviction.
<59> Cross, Labor Movement, 284.
<60> Organized Labor, October 3, 17, and November 14, 1914.
<61> Adamic, Dynamite, 264.
<62> Organized Labor, March 20, 1918.
<63> San Francisco Call, March 18, 1919.
<64> Cross, Labor Movement, 262-267. 127,000 Japanese came to the United States between 1901 and 1908. Even after the "Gentlemen's Agreement" between the United States and Japan ill 1907, by which the latter agreed not to issue passports to either skilled or unskilled workers, 118,000 Japanese entered from 1909 to 1924. For a more complete statement, see Boger Daniels, The Politics of Prejudice: The Anti-Japanese Movement in California and the Struggle for Japanese Exclusion (New York, 1969).
<65> Organized Labor regularly carried the reports and proceedings of The Exclusion League.
<66> Organized Labor, September 7, 1907, December 26, 1908, and January 29, 1910.
<67> Ralph Enger, The History of the Norwegian Club of San Francisco (Sail Francisco, 1947).
<68> Santa Cruz Sentinel, June 19, 1913.
<69> Neale Tveitmoe, of Walnut Creek, California, a son of Angelo), provided much information on family matters.
<70> San Francisco Examiner, December 8, 1917; San Francisco Chronicle, March 25, 1922; Organized Labor, April 1, 1922; San Francisco Chronicle, March 20, 1923; San Francisco Examiner, March 20, 1923; San FranciscoBulletin, March 21, 1923.
<71> Organized Labor, March 24, 1923; New Majority (Chicago), March 31, 1923; Jones to Ingeborg Tveitmoe, March 25, 1923.
<72> Organized Labor, March 22, 1919.