More Powerful Than Dynamite

by Thai Jones

  125–26 The speaker’s name was Arthur Woods: Arthur Woods, “The Control of Crime,” Journal of the American Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology (Jan. 1914); “as if the occasion were a picnic”: “Woods Sworn In; Plans No Shake-Up,” New York Tribune (April 9, 1914); “pray for me”: “Say a short prayer for me, will you?” is how the World reporter noted this line. “Police ‘System’ Hit at in Order by Commissioner,” the World (April 9, 1914); “No Shake Up in the Police Department,” New York Herald (April 9, 1914); Arthur Woods, “Police Administration,” Proceedings of the Academy of Political Science in the City of New York (April 1915), 54–61.

  126–28 “I have done a good many things”: Industrial Relations Final Report, 10550; After graduating Harvard: “Heads Police of New York,” Boston Daily Globe (April 12, 1914); As a police reporter: Charles Willis Thompson, “Woods to Bring Police Department into the Uplift,” New York Times (April 12, 1914); agitated for municipal reform: Michael Pearlman, To Make Democracy Safe for America: Patricians and Preparedness in the Progressive Era (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1984), 106; Arthur W. Page, ed., The World’s Work: A History of Our Time, May to October, 1914 (Garden City: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1914), 150; “Needs More Police to Check Crime,” New York Times (July 25, 1907); “Bingham’s New Deputy,” New York Times (July 25, 1907); “very much the gentleman”: Alfred Henry Lewis, “Sherlock Holmes in Mulberry Street,” New Broadway Magazine (May 1908); “Woods to Bring Police Department into the Uplift”; “Woods had ideas of his own”: Edward Mott Woolley, “The Inner Story of New York,” McClure’s Magazine (Nov. 1917); “more fitly trained”: “The Police,” Outlook (April 25, 1914).

  128 his first day in command: “Police ‘System’ Hit at in Order by Commissioner”; five hundred angry, excited radicals: “I.W.W. ‘Martyrs’ Cheered by 500, Revile Police,” the World (April 9, 1914). 128–30 the potential gravity of Berkman’s threat: Thomas J. Tunney and Paul Merrick Hollister, Throttled! The Detection of the German and Anarchist Bomb Plotters in the United States (Boston: Small, Maynard, 1919), 41; a “splutter of sparks”: Jim Rasenberger, America 1908: The Dawn of Flight, the Race to the Pole, the Invention of the Model T, and the Making of the Modern Nation (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2007), 91–94; “Bomb in Union Square,” New York Tribune (March 29, 1908); “To Get Secret Service,” New York Tribune (April 2, 1908); “Bomb Thrower Talks,” New York Tribune (April 7, 1908); released with a warning: Berkman relates the judge’s sermon slightly differently: “As long as you persist in calling yourself an Anarchist, and evidently take pride in it, it is the duty of the police to keep you under surveillance.” Quoted in “A. Berkman Arrested,” New York Tribune (March 31, 1908); Alexander Berkman, “Violence and Anarchism,” Mother Earth (April 1908); “Berkman on Anarchy,” New York Times (March 31, 1908); “Alexander Berkman Freed,” New York Times (April 4, 1908); “mightier than the Constitution”: Or, as it was alternately rendered, “This, at times, is over the Constitution.” “Over Constitution,” New York Tribune (March 29, 1908); “Complain of Schmittberger,” New York Times (April 12, 1908).

  130 Woods recalled the lessons he had learned: “Lincoln Steffens and Woods Make an I.W.W. Truce,” the World (April 10, 1914); Lincoln Steffens, The Autobiography of Lincoln Steffens (New York: The Literary Guild, 1931), 636–640; “the crowd would undoubtedly be most provocative”: Arthur Woods, Policeman and Public (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1919), 74–75. 131–32 “Free speech was beginning”: John Reed, “Writer Once Jailed with I.W.W. Describes Meeting,” the World (April 12, 1914); “Bait the Police Now the Order to the I.W.W.,” Globe and Commercial Advertiser (April 9, 1914); “the whacks of the police clubs”: “Lets I.W.W. Talk in Union Square,” New York Times (April 12, 1914); “Three cheers for the cops”: Industrial Relations Final Report, 10551.

  132 “With such a man as police commissioner”: The Story of John Purroy Mitchel, unpublished typescript, 2, William B. Meloney Papers. RBML; Reminiscences of Robert Binkerd, Columbia University Oral History Collection; black hair … turning gray: “The Young Mayor of the Greatest American City, Henry W. Hall,” the World (April 26, 1914). 133–34 workdays usually began at breakfast: Reminiscences of Robert Binkerd, 53; Peter Stuyvesant: “A $500,000 Project,” New York Tribune (April 30, 1908); “Newest Riverside Structure,” New York Times (Jan. 3, 1909); “Mayor Mitchel’s friends”: Edwin R. Lewinson, John Purroy Mitchel, Symbol of Reform (doctoral thesis, Columbia University, 1961), 137, 143–144; “Quite a lot of time of this office”: Reminiscences of Robert Binkerd, 54; Reminiscences of William H. Allen, Columbia University Oral History Collection, 233; Hall “The Young Mayor of the Greatest American City”; mayor warned reporters: “Mayor’s Headache Gone,” New York Tribune (March 15, 1914); “Mitchel Was Subject to Intense Headaches,” New York Times (July 7, 1918); “mental incompetents”: “Half of New York’s Insanity Cases Could Be Prevented,” New York Times (Sept. 18, 1910); “Mayor’s Own Story of Escape From Death: ‘I Had a Pistol; I Wish I Had Used It,’” the Sun (April 18, 1914). 135–36 descending … onto City Hall Plaza: Moses King, King’s How to See New York (New York: Moses King, Inc., 1914), 71; “Spring in City Hall Park,” New York Times (April 4, 1907); “The Weather,” New York Times (April 17, 1914); “The Weather,” New York Times (April 18, 1914); “the experience of this afternoon”: “Madman Shoots at Mayor Mitchel,” Globe and Commercial Advertiser (April 17, 1914); “Woods Sought to Prevent Shooting,” New York Tribune (April 18, 1914); “Almost Expected Attack, Mayor Tells Press Club,” New York Tribune (April 18, 1914); “Second Crank for Mayor,” Evening Post (April 18, 1914); “Attempt to Kill Mitchel; Frank Polk Is Wounded,” Evening Post (April 17, 1914); “Bullet Sent to Assassinate Mayor Misses Him and Wounds Corporation Counsel Polk,” the Sun (April 18, 1914); “Mayor’s Own Story of Escape from Death”; “Prepared for Attacks, Mayor Tells Press Club,” the Sun (April 18, 1914); “Mahoney, Locked in with Capt. Tunney, Breaks Down and Tells His Life Story,” the Sun (April 18, 1914).

  Chief-Inspector Judas

  137–38 he parades through a perpetual ovation: The parade route traveled from the Battery north on Broadway to Twenty-third Street, where it jagged east to Madison Avenue and then proceeded to Fortieth Street, where it turned west for a block, then back south on Fifth Avenue to the reviewing stand in Madison Square. As for the cheers, the Tribune reported, “Inspector Schmittberger received the most generous applause.” In the Sun a similar view appears. “Inspector Schmittberger … although he made no effort to show himself … was picked out and cheered by the crowds at several points. At the corner of Broadway and Houston street the applause for Schmittberger was so persistent that he had to stop and raise his hat several times.” The New York Herald writer offers a commensurate description: “The plaudits fell upon Schmittberger from sidewalk, office windows and tops of office buildings. He was the principal feature of the parade.” The Times alone is contradictory, saying at one point that Schmittberger “did not receive as noisy or as enthusiastic a greeting” as some others earlier in the parade, but granting him “the lion’s share” at the reviewing stand. “Populace Cheers Police on Parade,” New York Herald (May 3, 1903); “Crowd Cheers the Police,” the Sun (May 3, 1903); “Called Record Parade,” New York Tribune (May 3, 1903); “5,000 Police in Long Line,” the World (May 2, 1903); “Police Parade Past Cheering Thousands,” New York Times (May 3, 1903); “Max! Schmitzy!”: Lincoln Steffens, The Autobiography of Lincoln Steffens (New York: The Literary Guild, 1931), 269; “Schmittberger Best Shot,” New York Tribune (Dec. 27, 1915); “Police Samson”: Steffens, Autobiography, 266; “big, burly six-footer”: “Lifting the Lid,” the Outlook (Nov. 14, 1917); brass buttons: From photographs and the early Edison Company actuality “New York Police Parade, June 1, 1899.” Also, see the chapter on uniforms in Rules and Regulations of the Police Department, City of New York (New York: J. W. Pratt Co., 1908), 203–210. Prussian Order … von Moltke: When Schmittberger finally visited Berlin
in 1902, he found the policemen there sleepy and lackadaisical, despite their pointed helmets. “Schmittberger Chief,” New York Tribune (Feb. 19, 1909); Bertram Reinitz, “The Evolution of the Police Inspector,” New York Times (Aug. 25, 1929); a crisp salute: “M.F. Schmittberger Police Chief, Dead,” New York Times (Nov. 1, 1917); handiest horseman: Lincoln Steffens describes his horsemanship; as chief of the traffic squad, he transformed the mounted branch into what one military man referred to as “the finest cavalry in the world.” “Schmittberger Now Chief Inspector,” New York Times (Feb. 19, 1909); truest sharpshooter: “Schmittberger Best Shot”; “artist” with a baton: Steffens, Autobiography, 278; small mouth, blue-gray eyes: From photos and Schmittberger’s April 1902 passport application: Ancestry.com, U.S. Passport Applications, 1795–1925 (online database); “cuffed and cursed”: “Dr. Parkhurst Defends Capt. Schmittberger,” New York Tribune (Feb. 9, 1909); nasty and vindictive: “Pleads Repentance,” New York Tribune (Feb. 8, 1903). forbidden … from marching: “Ready for the Police Parade,” New York Tribune (May 31, 1901).

  138–39 Such curses had covered him: “Schmittberger, Chief Inspector, Is Dead at 66,” New York Tribune (Nov. 1, 1917); “Says Schmittberger Had to ‘Squeal,’” New York Times (Feb. 8, 1903); “thief and a crook”: “Philbin Backs Jerome,” New York Tribune (Feb. 10, 1903); “Raps Schmittberger,” New York Tribune (Feb. 7, 1903); “marked man”: “Socialists Meet; Police in Charge,” New York Times (April 5, 1908); “Marked for Bomb,” New York Herald (May 13, 1908); loathed: “Mr. Jerome Denounces Capt. Schmittberger,” New York Times (Feb. 7, 1903); “Schmittberger, Chief Inspector, Is Dead at 66”; Frank Marshall White, “The Chief Inspector of New York’s Police,” New York Times (March 14, 1909); “police work of any kind”: “The Captain to Retire,” New York Tribune (Feb. 11, 1903); a “hard drubbing”: “Dark for Schmittberger,” New York Tribune (Oct. 3, 1905); “has got to go!”: “Schmittberger Attacked,” New York Tribune (July 30, 1902).

  139 “unmarred by a single complaint”: Schmittberger was born in Bavaria in 1851; he emigrated to the United States with his family as a child. As a Bavarian, his penchant for Prussianism might seem to require explanation. But once in New York City, all Saxons were as one. Schmittberger himself was often referred to as the “Big Dutchman.” “Has Served Twenty Years,” New York Herald (Jan. 29, 1894). shrewd and patient: “Lifting the Lid”; “Has Served Twenty Years”; funny things: “Schmittberger Caught,” New York Tribune (Oct. 12, 1894).

  139 “loud buzzing”: “The Crowning Exposures,” New York Tribune (Dec. 22, 1894); “A Field Day Indeed,” New York Tribune (Dec. 22, 1894); “All the City Excited,” New York Tribune (Dec. 22, 1894); “Gloom in Mulberry St.,” New York Tribune (Dec. 24, 1894); “The Week,” the Nation (Dec. 27, 1894); “The Results of the Investigation,” the Independent (Dec. 27, 1894); New York State Senate, Committee on Police Dept. of the City of New York, Report and Proceedings (Albany, 1895), 5311.

  140 “a villain … in two worlds”: Steffens, Autobiography, 274.

  141–42 he was promoted to chief inspector: “Schmittberger Now Chief Inspector,” New York Times (Feb. 19, 1909); in his apartment: “Mr. Jerome Denounces Capt. Schmittberger.”

  5. Somebody Blundered

  143 the magistrate had disclosed his sentence: Frank Tannenbaum to his parents, undated, c. March 1914, box 5, Frank Tannenbaum Papers, RBML; Department ferry: Bouck White, Letters from Prison: Socialism a Spiritual Sunrise (Boston: Richard G. Badger, 1915), 115; “Gotham’s Fleets,” New York Tribune (Nov. 24, 1907).

  144 “had ceased to be a human being”: Frank Tannenbaum, “What I Saw in Prison,” the Masses (May 1915).

  144–46 Blackwell’s Island … A narrow two-mile-long shard: “Blackwell’s Island Uses,” New York Times (March 16, 1902); “Blackwell’s Island for Playground,” the Survey (May 18, 1912); “pathetic beauty”: Mary Grace Worthington, Fifty Benevolent and Social Institutions in and Near New York (New York: Douglas C. McMurtrie, 1915), 56; Dr. William G. Le Boutillier, “Blackwell’s Island Abuses,” New York Times (Feb. 11, 1894); rechristen the island: Rev. Louis Albert Banks, ed., T. DeWitt Talmage: His Life and Work (London: O.W. Binkerd, 1902), 91; a report on the penitentiary: “Blackwell’s Island,” New Bedford Mercury (Jan. 2, 1829); “Department of Correction,” in Henry Bruère, ed., New York City’s Administrative Progress, 1914–1916 (New York: M.B. Brown Printing and Sending Co., 1916), 151; “Blackwell’s Island a Prison Terrible,” New York Times (March 27, 1914); Memorandum from Burdette G. Lewis, deputy commissioner of the Department of Corrections, to William A. Prendergast, city comptroller, undated, 1914, box 17, folder 172, Department of Corrections Correspondence Received, John Purroy Mitchel Papers, Municipal Archives; “doesn’t like your face”: Frank Tannenbaum, “What I Saw in Prison.”

  146–47 Tannenbaum’s initial discouragement: In the original note, Berkman signed this letter “Alex B.” For the sake of clarity, I have used his full name. Alexander Berkman to Frank Tannenbaum, April 1, 1914, box 2, Frank Tannenbaum Papers, RBML; “only an ignorant boy”: George Palmer Putnam, “The New Tannenbaum,” New York Times (June 26, 1921). 147 his correspondents kept him informed: Maurice Woolman to Frank Tannenbaum, April 2, 1914, box 2, Tannenbaum Papers, RBML; The police bore down: Helen Hill to Frank Tannenbaum, April 5, 1914, box 3, Tannenbaum Papers, RBML; “a giant protest meeting”: Charles Plunkett to Frank Tannenbaum, April 3, 1914, box 4, Tannenbaum Papers, RBML.

  147–48 I.W.W. DEFIES POLICE: Charles Plunkett to Frank Tannenbaum, April 3, 1914, box 4, Tannenbaum Papers, RBML; “And this is an attack”: Charles Willis Thompson, “So-Called I.W.W. Raids Really Hatched by Schoolboys,” New York Times (March 29, 1914).

  148–49 to rectify these misperceptions: Mary Heaton Vorse, A Footnote to Folly (New York: Farrar & Rinehart Inc., 1935), 73; “Want Tannenbaum at Carnegie Hall,” New York Times (April 19, 1914); an authentic I.W.W. meeting: “Haywood Openly Stirs Sedition,” New York Times (April 20, 1914); “Ignore Call to War Says Haywood,” the Sun (April 20, 1914); “Strike Threat if War Is Declared,” New York Tribune (April 20, 1914).

  149–51 Haywood … “leader of all poor devils”: Carl Hovey, “Haywood and Hay-woodism,” Metropolitan Magazine (June 1912); “strength of an ox”: Quoted in Beverly Gage, The Day Wall Street Exploded: A Story of America in Its First Age of Terror (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 69; “a scarred mountain”: John Reed, Adventures of a Young Man: Short Stories from Life (San Francisco: City Lights, 1975), 123; 38 Colt … two-gun man”: J. Anthony Lukas, Big Trouble: A Murder in a Small Midwestern Town Sets Off a Struggle for the Soul of America (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997), 204, 235; “long on talk”: “How They Love ‘Big Bill,’” Common Cause (Dec. 1912); preferred discussing poetry: Hutchins Hapgood, A Victorian in the Modern World (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1939), 293; an indictment against “Big Bill”: “Sedition, Says Washington,” New York Times (April 20, 1914).

  151 in Mayor Mitchel’s office: “No Plot Involved, the Mayor Asserts,” New York Times (April 18, 1914); “nuts”: Woods put Sergeant Gegan on this assignment. Arthur Woods to Theodore Rousseau, secretary to the mayor, April 28, 1914, Records of the John Purroy Mitchel Administration, Police Received, box 69, folder 725, NYC Municipal Archives; Rousseau to Woods, April 27, 1914, Records of the John Purroy Mitchel Administration, Police Sent, box 19, folder 384, NYC Municipal Archives; Rousseau to Woods, May 1, 1914, Records of the John Purroy Mitchel Administration, Police Sent, box 19, folder 385, NYC Municipal Archives.

  151 a looming war with MEXICO: Arthur S. Link, Wilson: The New Freedom (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1956), 394; “watchful waiting”: Edgar Eugene Robinson, Foreign Policy of Woodrow Wilson, 1913–1917 (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1917), 203; Robert D. Schulzinger, U.S. Diplomacy Since 1900 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 51–59; “Tammany Prepares to Recruit Troops,” New York Times (April 24, 1914); “Bulletins Keep Washington Posted,” New York Tribune (April
23, 1914); “Support of Wilson Pledged by Press,” New York Times (April 22, 1914); “Navy Yard Astir to Get Ships Off,” New York Tribune (April 15, 1914).

  152 officials heard some … commotion: “Mob Attacks I.W.W. Anti-War Agitators,” the Sun (April 23, 1914); “Mob Woman Talker Who Decries War,” New York Times (April 24, 1914).

  152–54 “exploits of one Becky Edelsohn”: “In a Revolt Against Established Authority Young Women of the Fiery Becky Edelson Type Take Their Share of the Labor Agitation,” New York Tribune (May 10, 1914); “a tremendously fiery person”: Paul Avrich, Anarchist Voices: An Oral History of Anarchism in America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), 206, 218; “Becky’s eyes”: “In a Revolt Against Established Authority”; “a girl with power”: Robert E. Platt, “Becky and the Respectables,” Woman Rebel (Aug. 1914); Born in Ukrainian Odessa: Telephone interview with Robert Plunkett, Becky’s son, July 15, 2011. The 1910 census taker recorded her year of birth as “abt 1889.” they had become lovers: Candace Falk, Love, Anarchy, and Emma Goldman (Now Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2000), 38–41, 97; “more men in a day”: Charles H. McCormick, Hopeless Cases: The Hunt for the Red Scare Terrorist Bombers (Lanham: University Press of America, 2005), 52; “a source of irritation”: Emma Goldman, Living My Life: Volume 2 (London: Pluto Press, 1988), 535.

  155–56 “we not merely permit free speech”: Testimony of Arthur Woods, Industrial Relations: Final Report and Testimony, Volume 11 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1916), 10550; Arthur Woods, “American Citizenship on Trial,” Harvard Alumni Bulletin (March 18, 1920); “Woods has nerve”: Lincoln Steffens, The Autobiography of Lincoln Steffens (New York: The Literary Guild, 1931), 636–640; Walter Lippmann, Drift and Mastery, vx–vxi; “graveyard work”: State of New York, Minutes and Testimony of the Joint Legislative Committee Appointed to Investigate the Public Service Commissions (Albany: J.B. Lyon Company, 1916), 117.