22 Years After

From Oregon to Pennsylvania, from Rhode Island's pipe-smoking scion William H. Vanderbilt to Minnesota's boyish Harold Stassen, keynote of the gubernatorial inaugurations popping over the land last week was the return of Republicanism--epitomized by Wisconsin's "hardheaded" Julius Peter Heil. But in one State the political pendulum swung far to the Left. That was moonkissed California where Culbert Levy Olson, 62, started his State's first Democratic administration in 44 years. Governor Olson celebrated by pardoning the most famed prisoner in the U. S.

For 22 years roundfaced, balding Thomas J. Mooney has been simmering like an Irish volcano in San Quentin prison. There he was sent because someone put a bomb in a suitcase and left it on San Francisco's Market Street, where it blew up to kill ten and injure 40 marchers and spectators in a Preparedness Day Parade on July 22, 1916. Charged with the crime principally because he was a rough labor leader even in a day and place where roughness was the rule, 33-year-old Mooney was convicted along with 22-year-old Warren K. Billings.

Mooney's friends later proved that both the principal State witnesses committed perjury. They produced photographs of Mooney with a clock in the background showing that he was over a mile from the explosion when it occurred. But after Governor William Dennison Stephens was induced by Woodrow Wilson to commute Mooney's death sentence to life imprisonment, four California Governors reopened the case only to snap it shut again.

One day last week it was opened and closed for good. Governor Olson brought Tom Mooney, dressed in a neat striped prison-made suit, from San Quentin to Sacramento. The grey-haired convict stepped up beside the grey-haired Governor before an audience of 500 in the Assembly chamber. He listened to a speech in which Culbert Olson simply stated his conviction that the Preparedness Day bombing was not the work of Tom Mooney. The Governor waited 30 seconds for someone to contradict him before he handed over an unconditional pardon.

Said Tom Mooney: "Governor Olson, I shall dedicate the rest of my life to work for the common good. . . . Dark and sinister forces of Fascist reactionism are threatening the world."

Few hours later Governor Olson collapsed before a microphone at the State Fair Grounds, was hospitalized for nervous exhaustion. But Tom Mooney would not let his own impaired health stand in the way of the greatest day of his life. From Sacramento next day he motored to San Francisco at the head of a caravan of 20 cars that swelled to 200. In a parade San Francisco labor had arranged for him, Tom Mooney refused to ride in an automobile. He walked, bareheaded, ahead of the members of his old A. F. of L. Moulders' Union, ahead of Harry Bridges, ahead of everybody. The siren of the Ferry Building, block away from the scene of the 1916 bombing, screeched as it had that day. Crowds five deep lined the streets, once almost pushed the guest of honor into the band. Parents held up their children to get a look at Tom Mooney.

Losing no time to "work for the common good," Tom Mooney next day joined a picket line of striking clerks in front of San Francisco's Kress Department Store. He gave the strikers half of $10 given him on release from prison, sent the other half to American Newspaper Guildsmen striking against Hearst in Chicago.

That Warren K. Billings, now 44, has been the forgotten man of the "Free Mooney" crusade has not bothered Tom Mooney unduly. The two split over Billings' willingness to accept a parole, which Mooney opposed as an admission of guilt. Because Billings had been previously convicted of a felony (transporting dynamite), the Governor can pardon him only on recommendation by California's Supreme Court. Last week Tom Mooney, after visiting Warren Billings at Folsom Prison, announced his hope that Labor would now find a rallying cry in "Free Billings."

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