More Powerful Than Dynamite

by Thai Jones

  233 “In place of bombs”: “New York’s ‘Safety First’ Celebration of the Fourth,” the World (July 4, 1914); “Safe and Sane Fourth,” New York Times (June 7, 1914); “Safe, Sane Fourth Without Fireworks,” New York Times (June 28, 1914); “City Hall will be ablaze”: “Fourth Committee Takes in Lighting Rehearsal,” the World (July 4, 1914); “safe and ultra sane”: “‘Show Your Flags!’ Is Final 4th Order,” New York Times (July 3, 1914); “More Rockefeller Guards,” New York Times (June 25, 1914); Display ad, “Fourth of July Excursions,” the World (June 24, 1914); “TUT, TUT!”: “Noisy Fourth Sure, but Minus Powder,” New York Tribune (June 29, 1914); “Ship Fireworks by Mail,” New York Times (July 4, 1914).

  8. His Own Medicine

  234–35 “one of the human rookeries”: “‘Reds’ Slain by Bomb They Were Making; Woman Also Killed,” New York Tribune (July 5, 1914); “we do not celebrate the Fourth”: “Caron’s Death Won’t End It,” New York Times (July 5, 1914).

  235 Nothing … scheduled for Fifth Avenue: “Rockefellers Go Away,” New York Herald (June 25, 1914).

  235 Caron’s anger had grown: Marie Ganz, Rebels: Into Anarchy—and Out Again (New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1920), 174. very tense: Paul Avrich, Anarchist Voices: An Oral History of Anarchism in America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), 222–223.

  236 still carried the bundle with them: “Anarchists Are Questioned Closely at Police Station,” New York Herald (July 5, 1914).

  236–37 Then, a thunderburst: “I.W.W. Bomb Kills Three Foes of John D. Rockefeller and Wrecks Big Apartment House in Harlem,” New York Herald (July 5, 1914); “Explosion Hurls Debris Through Church Windows,” New York Herald (July 5, 1914); “I.W.W. Leader and 2 Others Killed in Bomb Explosion,” the World (July 5, 1914); “‘Reds’ Slain by Bomb They Were Making; Woman Also Killed”; “Anarchist Bomb Believed for Rockefeller, Kills Three I.W.W. Makers and Woman—Injures Many—Wrecks Tenement House,” the Sun (July 5,1914); “Police Find Body of Berg in Ruins,” New York Tribune (July 6, 1914); “Fourth Body in Debris of Bomb Shop,” New York Herald (July 6, 1914); gave him an overcoat: Avrich, Modern School, 221.

  238–39 Commissioner Woods arrived: “Anarchist Bomb, Believed for Rockefeller”; grieving suspects: “Anarchists Are Questioned Closely at Police Station”; “I.W.W. Leader and 2 Others Killed in Bomb Explosion.” Most papers concurred that Berkman retained his famous insouciance at this moment. However, the Herald, one of the most hostile papers in the city, disagreed: “Berkman was plainly distressed. His naturally sallow face was pasty in color and he wet his lips continually as he spoke. His remarks were delivered slowly and with an effort and he paused several times in the middle of a sentence as if to formulate his remarks.”

  239 found Upton Sinclair in his apartment: “Anarchist Bomb Believed for Rockefeller.”

  239 Becky Edelsohn and fifty or so others: “Caron’s Death Won’t End It”; Moritz Jagendorf in Avrich, Anarchist Voices, 221.

  240–41 In Tarrytown, news of the explosion: “Survivor of Bomb Explosion Eludes Police,” the Sun (July 6, 1914); “J.D. Rockefeller’s Tarrytown Estate Surrounded by a Cordon of Guards,” New York Herald (July 5, 1914).

  241 In Philadelphia’s Independence Square: “Wilson Demands High Patriotism,” New York Times (July 5, 1914).

  241 “He would have practiced a million-fold”: Alexander Berkman, “Observations and Comments,” Mother Earth (Aug. 1914).

  241 New Yorkers strolled the parks: “All Sang ‘Yankee Doodle,’” New York Times (July 5, 1914).

  242–44 On Blackwell’s Island: “Chapter Six: Vacations in the Workhouse,” in Isidore Wisotsky, Such a Life, unpublished typescript, Tamiment Library, New York University; Frank Tannenbaum, “What I Saw in Prison,” the Masses (May 1915); squinting over the pages: “Books I Read in Jail,” Frank Tannenbaum Papers, box 3, RBML; Jane Roulston to Frank Tannenbaum, May 28, 1914, Frank Tannenbaum Papers, box 4, RBML; “industrial conditions”: Harry Rappaport to Frank Tannenbaum, July 9, 1914, Frank Tannenbaum Papers, box 4, RBML; “I.W.W. principles”: Jane Roulston to Frank Tannenbaum, July 30, 1914, Frank Tannenbaum Papers, box 4, RBML.

  244–47 The next week was tense: “New York Penitentiary, Blackwell’s Island,” Twentieth Annual Report of the State Commission of Prisons for the Year 1914 (Ossining, NY: Sing Sing Prison, 1915), 137-138; could be heard in Manhattan: Frank Tannenbaum, “A Strike in Prison,” the Masses (July 1915); “700 Join Mutiny; Island Shop Fired,” New York Times (July 10, 1914); the cooler: Frank Tannenbaum, “The Blackwell’s Island Hell,” the Masses (June 1915); Tannenbaum, “A Strike in Prison”; Commissioner Davis arrived: “Woman Calms Blackwell’s Mutiny Gang,” New York Tribune (July 11, 1914); “Quiet on Island; Miss Davis Here,” New York Times (July 11,1914); Tannenbaum, “A Strike in Prison”; “How a Woman Commissioner Deals with Prison Problems,” Outlook (July 25, 1914); “Correction Dep’t After 6 Months Under Miss Davis,” the World (Aug. 2, 1914); After seven days in isolation: George Palmer Putnam, “The New Tannenbaum,” New York Times (June 26, 1921); “Jail Ban on Goethe Enrages Tannenbaum,” New York Tribune (March 10, 1915); “do nothing rash”: Jane Roulston to Frank Tannenbaum, July 14, 1914, Frank Tannenbaum Papers, box 4, RBML.

  247 the wreckage at 1626 Lexington Avenue: “Anarchistic Printings, a Press and Cartridges Found in Flat,” the World (July 6, 1914).

  248 Alternative versions of the story: “Alexander Berkman’s Opening Address,” Mother Earth (July 1914); Upton Sinclair, “Bomb Tragedy a Mystery,” Apeal to Reason (July 18, 1914); “Survivor of Bomb Explosion Eludes Police.”

  248–49 “The whole aspect of affairs”: “Need of Another Sort of ‘Clean Up Week,’” New York Herald (July 6, 1914); “Anarchy and Dynamite,” Outlook (July 18, 1914); Avrich, Modern School, 223; Alexander Berkman, “A Gauge of Change,” Mother Earth (July 1914); “Anarchists Prepare for Public Funeral,” New York Herald (July 6, 1914); it was time for the authorities to react: “Dying by Their Own Dynamite,” the World (July 6, 1914); “Fourth Body in Debris of Bomb Shop,” New York Herald (July 6, 1914); “Anarchy seems to have met its deserts”: “I.W.W. Jeered by Tarrytown Throng,” New York Herald (July 7, 1914). The World had the mayor’s statement slightly differently: “Anarchy seems to have got its just deserts. It was a lamentable accident, of course, but it seems to have justified fully the action of the police in taking precautionary measures. The police will continue to take such measures.” From “Mayor and Woods to Enforce Order at Reds’ Funeral,” the World (July 7, 1914).

  250 a showdown between Berkman and Woods: “Anarchists at Cremation of Three Bomb Victims,” New York Herald (July 9, 1914); “Will Seize Bodies of Bombmakers if Unburied To-Day,” the World (July 8, 1914); “Mayor Signs New Law for Parades,” the World (July 9, 1914); “Bodies of the Dead Anarchists Burned,” New York Times (July 9, 1914).

  250–51 “Comrades, friends, and sympathizers”: “The Lexington Explosion,” Mother Earth (July 1914); “Anarchists at Cremation of Three Bomb Victims,” New York Herald (July 9, 1914); “‘Reds’ Cremated; Leader Announces Funeral Saturday,” the World (July 9, 1914); “Bodies of the Dead Anarchists Burned,” New York Times (July 9, 1914); A radical sculptor: “800 Police Ready to Quell Anarchy in Union Square,” New York Herald (July 11, 1914); “The Lexington Explosion.”

  252–54 All efforts turned to the memorial: “Anarchists Insist on Marching for Bomb Makers,” New York Herald (July 10, 1914); “5,000 at Memorial to Anarchist Dead,” New York Times (July 12, 1914); “Anarchists Hold Memorial Meeting for Bomb Makers in Union Square; Violent Speeches May Cause Arrests,” New York Herald (July 12, 1914); “Comrades, idealists”: 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), 103; “we believe in violence”: “Rebecca Edelsohn’s Speech,” Mother Earth (Aug. 1914); “proscribed utterances”: “Anarchists Hold Memorial Meeting for Bomb Makers in Union Square.”

  9. The War
Has Spoiled Everything

  257 his father used to walk with him: “Research Notebooks,” 60–61, 124, Rockefeller Family Papers. John D. Rockefeller, Jr., Personal Files, Record Group III2z, series V, Biographical Works, box 57, folder 503, RAC; isn’t a God: Raymond B. Fosdick Interview with Rev. Charles Schweikert; Rockefeller Family Papers, Record Group II, OMR, series V, Biographical Works, box 57, folder 502, RAC; Lydia Bodman Vandenbergh and Earle G. Shettleworth, Jr., Revisiting Seal Harbor and Acadia National Park (Charleston: Arcadia Publishing, 1997), 66–69.

  258 No affront was too obscure: John D. Rockefeller, Jr., to Ivy Lee, June 10, 1914, quoted in Industrial Relations Committee, Vol. 9, 8869; “vacillating”: John D. Rockefeller, Jr., to Ivy Lee, June 5, 1914, Industrial Relations Committee, Vol. 9, 8868; “infamous statements”: Refers to a story in Everybody’s written by George Creel; John D. Rockefeller, Jr., to Ivy Lee, June 11, 1914, Industrial Relations Committee, Vol. 9, 8871; “every Governor”: The article he liked was John J. Stevenson, “Labor and Capital,” Popular Science Monthly (May 1914), quoted in John D. Rockefeller, Jr., to Starr J. Murphy, June 29, 1914, Rockefeller Family, OMR, Business Interests, Record Group III2C, box 20, folder 178, RAC.

  258–59 Ivy Lee’s series of pamphlets: “No ‘Massacre’ of Women and Children in Colorado Strike,” Struggle in Colorado for Industrial Freedom (July 26, 1914); “educative campaign”: “Letter to Wilson Rockefeller’s Idea,” New York Times (May 17, 1915); “teaching in our colleges”: Ivy Lee to Starr J. Murphy, July 3, 1914.

  259 Unlike Junior’s other philanthropies: Ivy Lee to J.F. Welborn, July 17, 1914, Rockefeller Family, Record Group 2, OMR, Business Interests, Record Group III2C, box 22, folder 200, RAC; “under the auspices”: John D. Rockefeller, Jr., to Starr J. Murphy, June 29, 1914, Rockefeller Family, OMR, Business Interests, Record Group III2C, box 20, folder 178, RAC; to President Wilson: John D. Rockefeller, Jr., to Ivy Lee, June 10, 1914, Industrial Relations Committee, Vol. 9, 8869, 8875, 8876.

  260 his campaign … had cost him a sunset: “Bar Harbor: Mr. and Mrs. John D. Rockefeller, Jr., Among Arrivals,” New York Tribune (July 5, 1914); “not the slightest”: “At Bar Harbor,” New York Tribune (July 1, 1914); “Guarding John D. Rockefeller, Jr., from I.W.W. Invaders at Seal Harbor,” New York Herald (July 6, 1914); “Police Find Body of Berg in Ruins,” New York Tribune (July 6, 1914); Pinkerton’s National Detective Agency invoice, July 31, 1914, Rockefeller Family Papers, Record Group I, John D. Rockefeller, series A, box 267, folder 1784, RAC.

  260–61 did not talk about his anxiety: “Recollections of My Father,” Rockefeller Family Papers, Record Group 2, OMR, series I: “Correspondence,” box 7, folder 72, RAC; Robert F. Dalzell, Jr., and Lee Baldwin Dalzell, The House the Rockefellers Built: A Tale of Money, Taste, and Power in Twentieth-Century America (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 2007), 111–116; “We should hesitate”: John D. Rockefeller, Jr., to John D. Rockefeller, Aug. 31, 1912, Rockefeller Family Papers, Record Group 2, OMR, Series I: “Correspondence,” box 2, folder 15, RAC; “live with the fear”: Rockefeller Family JDR, Jr., Personal: Speeches, Record Group III2Z, series V, box 57, folder 503, Research Notebooks, vol. 26, RAC; “I am wondering”: John D. Rockefeller, Jr., to John D. Rockefeller, Aug. 7, 1914, Rockefeller Family Papers, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., Personal: Record Group III2Z, box 2, folder 15, RAC; “people call it courage”: “Research Notebooks,” 30, Rockefeller Family Papers, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., Personal Files, Record Group III2Z, series V, Biographical Works, box 57, folder 503, RAC.

  261–63 On a perfect summer evening: The temperature that day ranged from 73 to 79 degrees; to the Tombs: “To Break ‘Starving’ of Becky Edelson,” New York Times (July 21, 1914); “Reba’s Bill of Fare to Contain Force,” the Sun (July 22, 1914); “Reba Edelson, in Jail, Begins Hunger Strike,” the World (July 21, 1914); The next morning: “Forcible Feeding Awaits Edelson Girl’s Need of It,” the World (July 23, 1914). The Times version of this encounter implies less reserve on Becky’s behalf, saying she “objected in noisy tones” to her examination. “Becky Edelson Begins Her Strike,” New York Times (July 22, 1914); “Reba Edelson May Be Fed in Prison by Force,” the World (July 22, 1914); “Becky Edelson Begins Her Strike,” New York Times (July 22, 1914); “Hunger Strike Means Matteawan,” New York Tribune (July 22, 1914); For the remainder of the day: “Reds May Use Force for Hunger Striker,” the Sun (July 23, 1914); Mary Harris, I Knew Them in Prison (New York: Viking Press, 1936), 12; telegram, July 24, 1914, Alexander Berkman to Emma Goldman, the Emma Goldman Papers.

  263 newspapers eagerly aggravated the situation: “What Would You Do with Becky?” New York Call (July 23, 1914); “The Old and the New,” Woman Rebel (Aug. 1914).

  263–64 “blazed a trail of precedents”: Mabel Jacques Eichel, “Katharine Bement Davis,” Woman’s Journal (April 13, 1928). Katharine Davis has been discussed as one of several characters in two important group biographies. Ellen F. Fitzpatrick, Endless Crusade: Women Social Scientists and Progressive Reform (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), and Estelle B. Freedman, Their Sisters’ Keepers: Women’s Prison Reform in America, 1830–1930 (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1981). She was also featured in Antonia Petrash, More Than Petticoats: Remarkable New York Women (Guilford, CT: TwoDot, 2002). Thomas C. McCarthy, historian for the New York City Department of Correction, wrote a mini-history of her life. See McCarthy, New York City’s Suffragist Commissioner: Correction’s Katharine Bement Davis (Department of Correction, 1997). Important studies of women’s penal history include Estelle B. Freedman, Their Sisters’ Keepers; Nicole Hahn Rafter, Partial Justice: Women in State Prisons 1800–1935 (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1985); Eugenia C. Lekkerkerker, Reformatories for Women in the United States (The Hague: J.B. Walters, 1931).

  264 the prison developed into a proving ground: “A Revolutionary Appointment,” Outlook (Jan. 17, 1914); quoted in Edward Marshall, “New York’s First Woman Commissioner of Correction,” New York Times (Jan. 11, 1914).

  264 Fifty-four years old: “Katherine B. Davis, the Tamer of Rebel Souls,” Current Opinion (Nov. 1914); Fitzpatrick, Endless Crusade, 101; “A Revolutionary Appointment”; “Miss Davis Takes Hold of Her Work,” New York Times (Jan. 3, 1914); Jean Henry Large, “A Man’s Job,” in Fitzpatrick, Katharine Bement Davis.

  265 “little better than medieval”: Katharine Bement Davis, “Charities and Correction,” in The Government of the City of New York (The New York State Constitutional Convention Commission, 1915), 86–97; Edward Marshall, “New York’s First Woman Commissioner of Correction,” New York Times (Jan. 11, 1914); Harris, I Knew Them, 6.

  265–66 Edelsohn had not eaten for several days: “Rebecca Doesn’t Let Up on Her Hunger Strike,” the Call (July 25, 1914); “It’s Hunger Strike of Doubt in Reba’s Case,” the World (July 25, 1914); “Lemon Fattens Becky Edelson,” New York Herald (July 25, 1914); “Says Reba Fakes Food Strike,” the Sun (July 25, 1914); “Becky Edelson ‘Fasts’ Well on Tabloid Food,” the World (July 30, 1914); recipe. “Forcible Feeding Awaits Edelson Girl’s Need of It,” the World (July 23, 1914); “It will not hurt her”: “Hunger Strike Means Matteawan”; a female reporter: Djuna Barnes, “How It Feels to Be Forcibly Fed,” the World Magazine (Sept. 6, 1914). This essay’s sensational tone requires a careful interpretation. For such an exegesis, see Barbara Green, “Spectacular Confessions: ‘How It Feels to Be Forcibly Fed,’” Review of Contemporary Fiction (Sept. 1993).

  267 metaphor for the … powers of the state: Robert Carlton Brown, “What Call Readers Think: Forcible Feeding,” New York Call (July 24, 1914); “Rebecca Doesn’t Let Up on Her Hunger Strike”; “On Hospital Cot, Becky Shuns Food,” New York Call (July 24, 1914).

  268 finally starting to flag: Rebecca Edelsohn, “One Woman’s Fight,” Woman Rebel (Aug. 1914).

  268–69 “Hereafter I must decline”: Katharine Bement Davis, “To the Press of New York City,” John Purroy Mitchel Papers, box 17, folder 174, New York Municipal Archi
ves; confidential letter to the mayor’s secretary: Katharine Bement Davis to Theodore Rousseau, July 30, 1914, John Purroy, Mitchel Papers, box 17, folder 174.

  269 The potential for a European conflict: “Bright Prospect for Peace,” New York Times (July 10, 1914); “A Threat of War,” New York Times (July 24, 1914); “A General European War Still in the Balance,” New York Tribune (July 28, 1914); “Critical Days,” New York Times (July 31, 1914); “unthinkable”: “The Man of the Hour,” New York Times (July 28, 1914).

  269–70 the struggle spread to New York City: “Spook Fleet Off the Hook,” New York Times (Aug. 7, 1914); “all met on common ground and argued”: “Reserves Throng to Answer Calls,” New York Times (Aug. 4, 1914); “Mayor Bars All but Stars and Stripes,” New York Times (Aug. 7, 1914); “Women to March in Funereal Black,” New York Tribune (Aug. 7, 1914); “Belgian neutrality”: “Wait in Times Sq. for News of War,” New York Times (Aug. 17, 1914); “Shut up”: Mary Chamberlain, “The Clutch of Militarism,” the Survey (Oct. 3, 1914); “white heat”: “Our Peaceful Land of Many Tongues,” New York Tribune (Aug. 7, 1914).

  270–71 “impartial in thought”: “The American People and the Great War: Address of President Wilson to the People of the United States, Aug. 18, 1914,” the Independent (Aug. 31, 1914); Edwin A. Weinstein, Woodrow Wilson: A Medical and Psychological Biography (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981), 256; “American citizens first”: “Mayor Bars All but Stars and Stripes.”

  271 “Is she alive or dead”: John Jones, “Becky Edelson Submerged,” New York Times (Aug. 17, 1914); Harris, I Knew Them, 13; thirty-one days: Rebecca Edelsohn, “Hunger Striking in America,” Mother Earth (Sept. 1914); “Becky Edelson Out; Says She Fasted Whole Month,” the World (Aug. 21, 1914); “Free Becky Edelson; Funeral Plans Off,” New York Times (Aug. 21, 1914).