Rena
Herman, the daughter of a carpenter, was born in Missouri. Rena became
a music teacher and married Tom Mooney
in
1911. Over the next few years the couple were members of the Socialist
Party of America and were active in local trade union activities.
In
1916 Rena and her husband became involved in a strike of streetcar
workers employed by the United Railroads (URR). On 11th June a high-voltage
tower of the Sierra and San Francisco Power Company, which served
the URR, was dynamited in the San Bruno hills. Soon afterwards the
URR offered a reward of $5,000 for information leading to the arrest
and conviction of the dynamiters.
Martin
Swanson, who worked for the Public Utilities Protective Bureau,
became convinced that Tom Mooney
was
the man responsible for the bombing. On 13th June 1916 Swanson interviewed
Israel Weinberg, a jitney bus driver who had often taken Mooney to
trade union meetings. Swanson offered Weinberg
a share of the $5,000 reward if he could provide evidence that would
convict Mooney of the San Bruno bombing.
Soon
afterwards Swanson approached Billings. As well as a share of the
$5,000 reward Billings was offered a job with the Pacific Gas and
Electric Company if he could provide information connecting Mooney
with the San Bruno bombing. Billings refused and reported the approach
to Mooney and George Speed, the secretary of the Industrial
Workers of the World (IWW).
On
22nd July, 1916, employers in San Francisco
organized a march through the streets in favour of an improvement
in national defence. Critics of the march such as William
Jennings Bryan, claimed that the Preparedness March was being
organized by financiers and factory owners who would benefit from
increased spending on munitions.
During
the march a bomb went off in Steuart Street killing six people (four
more died later) and 40 were badly wounded. Two witnesses described
two dark-skinned men, probably Mexicans, carrying a heavy suitcase
near to where the bomb exploded.
The
Chamber of Commerce immediately offered a reward of $5,000 for information
leading to the arrest and conviction of the dynamiters. Other organizations
and individuals added to this sum and the reward soon reached $17,000.
Offering such a large reward was condemned by the editor of the New
York Times claiming it was a "sweepstake for perjurers".
On
the evening of the bombing Martin Swanson
went to see the District Attorney, Charles
Fickert. Swanson told Fickert that despite the claims that it
was the work of Mexicans, he was convinced that Warren
Billings and Tom Mooney were
responsible for the explosion. The next day Swanson resigned from
the Public Utilities Protective Bureau and began working for the District
Attorney's office.
On
26th July 1916, Fickert ordered the arrest of Rena Mooney, Warren
Billings, Tom Mooney, Israel Weinberg
and Edward Nolan. None of the witnesses of the bombing identified
the defendants in the lineup.
The
prosecution case was instead based on the testimony of two men, an
unemployed waiter, John McDonald and
Frank Oxman, a cattleman from Oregon.
They claimed that they saw Billings plant the bomb at 1.50 p.m. Oxman
also said he saw Tom Mooney and
his wife talking with Warren Billings
a few minutes later. However, at the trial, a photograph showed that
the couple were over a mile from the scene. A clock in the photograph
clearly read 1.58 p.m. The heavy traffic at the time meant that it
was impossible for Rena and her husband to have been at the scene
of the bombing at 1.50 p.m. Despite this, Mooney was sentenced to
death and Billings to life-imprisonment. Rena Mooney was found not
guilty but was kept in prison until 30th March 1918 before being allowed
home.
A
large number of people believed that Billings and Mooney had been
framed. Those involved in the campaign to get them released included
Robert Minor, Fremont
Older, George Bernard Shaw, Heywood
Broun, Samuel Gompers, Eugene
V. Debs, Roger Baldwin, John
Dewey, John Haynes Holmes, Oswald
Garrison Villard, Norman Hapgood,
Crystal Eastman, Norman
Thomas, Upton Sinclair, Theodore
Dreiser, Sinclair Lewis, Lincoln
Steffens, H. L. Mencken, Burton
K. Wheeler, Sherwood Anderson, Abraham
Muste, Harry Bridges, James
Larkin, James Cannon, William
Z. Foster, Alexander Berkman, Emma
Goldman, William Haywood, William
A. White, Carl Sandburg, Arturo
Giovannitti and Robert Lovett.
The
American government also became concerned about the Mooney
and Billings Case and the Secretary of Labor, William
Bauchop Wilson, delegated John Densmore,
the Director of General Employment, to investigate the case. By secretly
installing a dictaphone in the private office of the District Attorney
he was able to discover that Mooney and Billings had probably been
framed by Charles Fickert. The report
was leaked to Fremont Older who published
it in the San Francisco Call on 23rd November 1917.
There
were protests all over the world and President Woodrow
Wilson called on William Stephens,
the Governor of California, to look again at the case. Two weeks before
Tom Mooney was
scheduled to hang, Stephens commuted his sentence to life imprisonment
in San Quentin. Soon afterwards Mooney wrote to Stephens: "I
prefer a glorious death at the hands of my traducers, you included,
to a living grave."
Over
the next few years Rena Mooney worked hard for her husband's freedom.
She addressed public meetings all over America in order to draw attention
to the case and to help raise funds to pay for her husband's legal
costs.
In
November 1920, Draper Hand of the San Francisco Police Department,
went to Mayor James Rolph and admitted
that he had helped Charles Fickert and
Martin Swanson to frame Mooney. Later
two witnesses, Edgar Rigall and Earl K. Hatcher, came forward and
provided evidence that Frank Oxman was
200 miles away during the bombing and could not have seen what he
told the court at the trial of Mooney. In February 1921 John
McDonald confessed that the police had forced him to lie about
the planting of the bomb. Despite this new evidence the Californian
authorities refused a retrial.
After
the publication of this new evidence it was generally believed that
Charles Fickert and Martin
Swanson had framed Mooney and Billings. However, Republican
governors over the next twenty years: William
Stephens (1917-1923), Friend Richardson
(1923-1927), Clement Young (1927-1931),
James Rolph (1931-1934) and Frank
Merriam (1934-39) all refused to order the release of the two
men.
In
1937 a group of politicians led by Caroline
O'Day, Nan Honeyman, Jerry
O'Connell, Emanuel Celler, James
E. Murray, Vito Marcantonio, Gerald
Nye and Usher Burdick asked President
Franklin D. Roosevelt to intercede
in the case. When Roosevelt declined Murray and O'Connell introduced
a resolution in the Senate calling on Governor Frank
Merriam to pardon Mooney and Billings.
In
November 1938 Culbert Olson was elected
as Governor of California. He was the first member of the Democratic
Party to hold this office for forty-four years. Soon after gaining
power Olson ordered that Mooney and Billings should be released from
prison. Rena, who welcomed her husband as he left San Quentin, was
quoted as saying: "These twenty-two long years have been moth-eaten.
Life to me has been something like a cloak. There is little left but
the tatters."
(1)
Edward Nolan, a fellow defendant in the San Francisco bombing case,
paid tribute to Rena Mooney in a letter he wrote to her on 24th January
1921.
Every time I have seen you so courageously hoping on, a most depressing
feeling of sorrow has been with me for days. Dear woman if I might
have one wish in this world satisfied, then it would be to know that
your battle for right and justice and love was won and the terrible
dragging uncertainty of hope deferred ended in a glorious reunion.
(2)
Edward H. Hamilton, San Francisco Examiner (12th June 1923)
It can be said for Mrs. Rena Mooney that she has completely upset
the dictum of former Warden Hoyle that the limit of a woman's constancy
is three years.
(3)
Rena Mooney, letter to Tom
Mooney (6th August 1925)
It
seems to me more than 9 years since we were together on the
(Russian) river, I will never forget our happy times together and
I hope it will not be long until we can have our 3rd honeymoon.
(4)
Rena Mooney, on the release of Tom
Mooney in January
1939.
These
twenty-two long years have been moth-eaten. Life to me has been something
like a cloak. There is little left but the tatters.
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