The Day Wall Street Exploded: A Story of America in Its First Age of Terror

by Beverly Gage, Pam Ward (Narrator)

In The Day Wall Street Exploded, Beverly Gage tells the story of a once infamous but now largely forgotten terrorist attack. Based on thousands of pages of Bureau of Investigation reports, this historical detective saga traces the four-year hunt for the perpetrators, a worldwide effort that spread as far as Italy and the new Soviet nation. It also takes listeners back into the decades-long but little-known history of homegrown terrorism that shaped American society a century ago. The book delves into the lives of victims, suspects, and investigators: world banking power J. P. Morgan, Jr.; labor radical Big Bill Haywood; anarchist firebrands Emma Goldman and Luigi Galleani; America's Sherlock Holmes, William J. Burns; even a young J. Edgar Hoover. It grapples as well with some of the most controversial events of its day, including the rise of the Bureau of Investigation, the federal campaign against immigrant terrorists, the grassroots effort to define and protect civil liberties, and the establishment of anti-communism as the sine qua non of American politics. Many Americans saw the destruction of the World Trade Center as the first major terrorist attack on American soil, an act of evil without precedent. The Day Wall Street Exploded reminds us that terror, too, has a history.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, American History, True Crime, New York, Terrorism, Crime

Audio CD

First published December 24, 2008

Reviews

[Darya Silman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beverly Gage's THE DAY WALL STREET EXPLODED: A STORY OF AMERICA IN ITS FIRST AGE OF TERROR opens a forgotten page in American history. While some think the first explosion was the 1995 bombing of a governmental building in Oklahoma City (the episode about it is available on Youtube as part of the 'Seconds Before the Disaster' series), Beverly Gage points out that most Americans don't remember the first age of terror. In her opinion, it lasted roughly from the arrival of anarchist Johann Most, an adherent of the propaganda by deed, in 1882 to the 1920 bombing on Wall Street, a case still unsolved. The first cases of bombings were closely connected with the fight of anarchists for labor rights. The machinery and individual persons, as well as governmental institutions, were the main targets.

Beverly Gage follows the lives of several prominent anarchists, of Russian (Emma Goldman, Alexander Berkman), Italian (Luigi Galleani), and American (Bill Heywood) origins and traces the measures the American federal authorities implemented to stop the violence. The Haymarket affair, the subsequent trial of eight anarchists for their ideas rather than their deeds - the person who threw the bomb was not identified - and the execution of four defendants sparked zeal in anarchists, ready to fight injustice through violent actions. Anarchists like Alexander Berkman supported workers' strikes and gave speeches against exploitative capitalism. In 1903, the federal law banned the arrival onto American soil of anybody who was for overthrowing the government. The war years saw the prohibition of draft elusion and agitation against the existing order. The culmination of the hunt for radicals came with the Palmer Raids in 1919-20 when many prominent anarchists were expelled from the country. Emma Goldman, Alexander Beckman, and Bill Heywood ended up in the Soviet Union, lured by the promise of the new order and liberty-for-all appeal yet became disillusioned with the oppressive Soviet regime.

The bombing that took place on September 16, 1920, on the corner of Wall Street and Broad Street was perhaps meant to scare the rich bosses of Wall Street such as Jack and Julius Morgan but affected the lives and health of hard-working ordinary people on the street. The preliminary report stated that the explosion was a mere accident, a car colliding with a horse-drawn wagon, carrying dynamite for a nearby building site. That was also an official position of anarchist and socialist newspapers: left-wing felt it would become the main suspect. However, the accident theory proved to be incorrect.

The investigation tore apart the reputations of two prominent detective figures. William J. Flinn was the first one. Convinced, without any evidence, that the plotters were Italian anarchists, he descended upon Italian anarchists' offices, arrested without evidence, and sent spies to the incarcerated Italians. When his efforts proved futile, with his protector attorney-general A. Mitchell Palmer out of office, the first William J. was replaced with the second one. Willam J. Burns, unlike his predecessor, saw the threat in communism. He hired - and trusted immensely - one William Lindt who claimed to know who was behind the bombing. Others who communicated with Lindt didn't trust him in an iota: the guy was prone to lies to boost his significance and thus, his ego. Lindt was later arrested by Polish authorities, and Burns' mixing of his private practice with governmental forces came to light to the public's dismay.

I enjoyed the audiobook as a pleasant distraction to the point that I preferred it over my favorite TV show. However, the information it offered 'hangs in the air:' I know nothing about American society at the beginning of the 20th century. To fully immerse in the book, a reader should be at least partially familiar with the labor/class struggle and anarchism in America. The bombing serves as a pretext to paint a much broader picture.

(As with all audiobooks, I struggled with the spelling of characters' names. I could google the most prominent ones like Most or Goldman, while the minor figures like William Lindt (?) couldn't be traced. I wish the lists of characters were included along with audiobooks.)

[Joseph Stieb · Rating 4 out of 5]

An important work in the historiography of terrorism that maps out labor/anarchist/left-wing terrorism from the 1880s to the 1920s. While actual terrorists were on the fringes of these movements/ideologies, Gage shows that they were intimately linked to the struggles of labor and capital in this time period and also fully international. Some of the early prominent anarchists in the US were immigrants/refugees (Berkman and Goldman, for instance), but eventually you got home-grown anarchists who flirted with terrorism, like Big Bill Haywood. There were a surprising number of bombings and assassinations in this time period, culminating in the unsolved Wall Street Bombing of 1920 that killed about 40 people and is the subject of this book.

2 interesting things this book made me think about: the first is the idea of consensus history. Gage argues that the political spectrum was much wider before the early 1920s. Terrorists were the far, far edge of a labor and socialist movement(s) that surged before WWI and offered much more radical critiques of capitalism and its alliance with the state than what came later, especially with the mainstreaming of labor in the 1930s. Anarchism and socialism may never have had potential for majority appeal, but they did have significant momentum that was crushed by the nationalistic mood of WWI and government crackdowns during and after the war. Gage shows that consensus around liberal capitalism is something shaped as much by power as anything else; the power to exclude and delegitimize (and just arrest and deport) those way outside the boundaries of accepted thought. Second, she also shows that for a while anarchists and other radicals defended terrorism (by name) as a legitimate response to the violence inherent in labor-capitalist disputes, in which capitalists and the state rarely hesitated to use force to crush strikes and ensure the continuation of business. That was interesting to me because of how terrorism became a pure pejorative in the later 20th century, even among terrorist groups who claimed that larger injustices justified their attacks on civilians.

I really enjoyed the first half of this book, with its focus on radical movements in the US and their relationship to terrorism. While it was interesting to learn about this massive bombing (which has faded from public memory), I thought the second half went too in depth on the various agencies investigating the case. Clearly Gage had awesome sources here, but I kind of found myself skimming this material, especially because pretty much everything they looked into was a false lead. Still, this is an important book for the history of terrorism and radicalism in the US and it should be read by students of those topics.

[Christopher Saunders · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beverly Gage's The Day Wall Street Exploded examines the 1920 bombing of the J.P. Morgan Building in New York, the last gasp of the post-WWI Red Scare. Gage's book provides grimly detailed accounts of the bombing and its aftermath, though she's more interested in using it as a prism into the era's Red-baiting hysteria: the role Morgan, and other corporation heads played in stirring anticommunism; A. Mitchell Palmer's egregious abuses of civil liberties; the early stirrings of the Federal Bureau of Investigation as anticommunist monolith; the hapless but violent campaigns of the Galleanists and other anarchists in that era (whom Gage labels the most likely suspects for the bombing). The book's worst sin is that it occasionally rambles, but Gage is an engaging and insightful enough writer that most readers won't mind.

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

Less about the actual bombing on Wall Street (which was never solved), but really about the history of anarchism in America. Fascinating to read just how many random public bombings happened in the U.S. between 1890 and 1925.

[Joe Collins · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a very entertaining book in keeping your interest. The author does a very good job at interweaving the known details of the Wall Street bombing on September 16, 1920, and the following investigations to find the individuals responsible for the attack. The author also shows the various key players that were effected by the attack, the Morgan’s of Morgan’s Bank, or might have influence the terrorist attack like, Emma Goldman, Alexander Berkman, and the Sacco & Vanzetti court case.

It was interesting to see how the different Directors of the future FBI focused on the different likely groups to commit the terrorist attack and how their lack to getting any solid evidence lead to their replacements, until it finally landed on the shoulders of the man who made the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover.

Don’t think that the author will tell you did the bombing, because she openly admits that the case will probably never be solved. She does states that the case for Italian anarchists in response to the conviction of the their two equally militant members, Sacco & Vanzetti, is probably the most realistic explanation.

[Cam's Corner · Rating 4 out of 5]

On September 16, 1920, a bomb detonated in Manhattan’s Financial District, causing a death-toll of 38. But how and why has this incident faded out of collective memory? Beverly Gage’s The Day Wall Street Exploded offers an explanation. Gage’s book “rediscover[s] the genuine drama of class conflict in the United States” (8) as she places the bombing on Wall Street in September 1920 within the broader context of the country’s earliest experience with terrorism. After introducing the reader to the incident, Gage explores the history of violent labor politics from the 1880s to 1920 before deep diving into the (disappointing) investigation that followed the attack. Despite the hard work various agencies had put in, the culprit's identity remains elusive to this day.

It is evident by Gage’s 46-paged, 9-pt font bibliographic notes that she had spent a great amount of time and research on this book. However, I find her statement on page 326 “In the end, it was the Sacco-Vanzetti case, rather than the Wall Street bombing that emerged as the greatest political controversy of the 1920s” problematic on a few levels. For starters, it is a very subjective statement that requires specificity. “The'' establishes an undeserved definitiveness that can be indeed challenged, especially with other significant events in the 1920s. What lens specifically is the author conducting her study through? A political history? A social history? An economic history? If the author intended to use a political lens one can mention many controversial political events that happened or began in the 1920s, which complicates her claims. The most notable ones are: Prohibition, The Immigration Act of 1924, The Scopes Trial, and the Great Depression.

The statement is exclusive and indicates a sharp focus on white/ Western European individuals. Immigration was a controversial topic at this time. For example, the Immigration Act of 1924 strategically placed a quota on Southern and Eastern European countries. Most importantly, the legislation openly proclaims that “It shall also be unlawful for any such person to bring to any port of the United States any alien… as a native of that portion of the Continent of Asia.” Jewish people also faced scrutiny at this time. Anti-semitism spread throughout America in the early 1920s. Henry Ford, for example, published in his weekly newspaper Dearborn Independent a series of articles entitled “The International Jew”. In these articles, Ford accused Jewish individuals of undermining the moral values of the United States, threatening the capitalist system, and ultimately he held them responsible for World War I.

Lastly, Gage’s statement largely neglects the African-American experience during this time. Race riots definitely count under the category of political controversy. For example, the Tulsa Massacre of 1921 and the Rosewood Massacre on New Year's Day in 1923 are examples of racial and class violence. What about the 225 recorded lynchings that occurred from 1920-1925? The two mentions that she makes on Black Americans (on ages 28 and 318) are pitful. It is disappointing that Gage’s history lacks further conversations on African Americans. One can point out that the author omits a broader study, for the fact that she wrote whole book about an incident in Manhattan in the 1920s without even a brief mention of what was going on in a neighborhood called Harlem.

To better establish her argument, it would’ve been responsible of the scholar to instead state that “In the end, it was the Sacco-Vanzetti case that captured the American audience and in turn overshadowed the Wall Street bombing.”

[Donald Crane · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don't recall exactly where I heard about this book, but I put it in my shopping cart at Amazon and left it there awhile, waiting for additional choices to get to a free-shipping critical mass. Finally, I placed the order, and was very excited to get this book because I thought it would be an inside look at how the New York Stock Exchange endured and responded to the 9|11 attacks. Not sure where I got that idea, but it has nothing to do with 9|11.

In fact, the title refers to a September 16, 1920, explosion outside the J.P. Morgan building on Wall and Broad at 12:01 p.m., the height of the lunch hour, killing 34, injuring many more, and causing significant property damage. The book is largely about the investigations that followed to try to identify the perps. I say "investigations" because there were at least two private detective agencies on the case, plus the NYPD, plus the nascent Bureau of Investigation (subsequently renamed the Federal Bureau of Investigation), and all were out for the glory of finding the responsible party or parties, so they were working at times at cross purposes and not sharing information. More importantly, all of these investigators brought their own prejudices to the table - it was Italian anarchists, or it was the U.S. Communist party, or the Wobblies or other union groups, or this person or that person.

It's amazing - though it probably shouldn't be - how authorities ran roughshod over civil liberties, arresting people pretty much on a whim or with evidence consisting purely of another person's accusation. This was at a time when there were mass deportations to Italy and to Russia, again based on affiliation with an organization rather than for specific criminal activities.

The end result is that, despite numerous arrests and subsequent releases of suspects, nobody was ever prosecuted for the bombing, and it's still not clear whether it was, in fact, an intentional act or an accident. (Though it seems odd to think of huge amounts of dynamite loaded onto a horse-drawn cart on Wall Street at mid-day, it was apparently not uncommon, as there was lots of construction under way in Manhattan that required blasting.) The Wikipedia entry for the bombing fingers Mario Buda as the culprit, but at least this book hardly considers his culpability as an established fact. Buda was never pursued in any of the investigations.

Also interesting in the book was learning about the very early career of J. Edgar Hoover, who managed to escape any criticism that was leveled against his superiors during the long period of investigation of this explosion. In the mid-twenties, he was in the right position to step into the leadership of the B of I after two chiefs were successively discredited by their ineptness in this investigation. Hoover went on to spend 46 (?) years as FBI chief.

Lots of interesting history here, but the book itself seemed often like a bit of a slog. All I know is that it was an excellent way to get myself ready to fall asleep at night. Not that it wasn't an intriguing and little known part of U.S. history, but the number of characters involved sometimes seemed overwhelming, especially bit characters whose name was floated once much earlier in the book, and then simply alluded to without a reintroduction (sometimes, not always).

Glad I read it; glad I'm done!

[Chase Parsley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Having loved Beverly Gage’s “G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century”, I decided to read another one from the same author, Yale professor Beverly Gage. Gage is a top-notch historian and writer!

Although not as good as “G-Man”, “The Day Wall Street Exploded” was very worthwhile. My favorite part was when Gage explained the history of radicalism (anarchists, communists, socialists in the late 1800s/early 1900s). The part I liked least was about the manhunt that resulted after the 1920 Wall Street bombing that killed 38 people and wounded hundreds more. Spoiler alert: unfortunately, despite the government and several top detectives trying for years, the bombers were never identified for certain (likely it was an Italian anarchist group) or captured.

Here are some highlights:
- 1800s anarchists often believed in the “propaganda of the deed”: using violence/terrorism to bring attention to an issue. The idea is that it would produce a domino effect until revolution happened. Their justification was that the working class was already under attack (in the US, roughly 100 workers died each day in industrial accidents, possibly thousands died in strike violence). US President McKinley was assassinated by an anarchist in 1901.

- Some of the people from this era were fascinating! Johann Most was a German immigrant who believed in the propaganda of the deed (lots of the US public hated European immigrants (i.e. Italians, Jewish, etc.) by the 1900s because they were said to have brought radical views to America); Mitchell Palmer was a tough government man who led the infamous Palmer Raids on US citizens in the First Red Scare (1919-1920); Emma Goldman was the most famous anarchist who later became disillusioned with the USSR experiment (many anarchists and socialists were immediately drawn to the Russian Revolution); “Big” Bill Haywood was the gruff leader of the IWW (Wobblies; the far-left labor union centered in the US) who also wound up in the USSR.

- A key question during this time was: to what extent is “direct action” necessary for change? Is it possible to achieve change within the current boundaries of our government? If direct action is required, to what extent is violence necessary? Interestingly, the Bolsheviks (Lenin’s communists in the USSR) would reject the propaganda of the deed and favored coordinated actions. The people from this time did not have the failure of the communist world to look back on; for them these were enormous questions all justified to help the struggling working class.

- Interestingly, Gage gives some credit to the Palmer Raids for dealing a fatal blow towards the radical left (anarchists, communists, to a lesser extent the socialists (led by Eugene Debs)). Gage says that we often only focus on the illegal nature of the raids – people were arrested, harshly rounded up, and even deported without honoring their legal rights. Infamously, the “Soviet Ark” in 1919 shipped 249 “radicals” to Russia! This is a fascinating episode of US history.

- When labor won more legal rights, starting in the 1930s with FDR’s New Deal, much of the far-left dissolved.

[Rhuff · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beverly Gage has reworked an old story with a post-9/11 twist. But as even she admits in her narrative this is not - to quote the subtitle - "a story of America in its first age of terror." That properly belonged to the Haymarket "riot era" of 1886-87. The 1919 Red Scare and its aftermath is a link between that age and the cold war witch hunts to come. Some of the McCarthy period's star actors were speaking their first on-stage lines here, with J. Edgar Hoover foremost.

And we see the same mounting pattern as in the cold war: real acts of sabotage, followed by grandstanding prosecutions begun by Democrats, seized in turn by ambitious conservatives clawing back into power, and the reactionary clampdowns on civil liberties and due process. The real perpetrators of the Wall Street bombing at the House of Morgan were never clearly identified, though Miss Gage is doubtless right in seeing the Italian Galleanist-anarchists as the most probable culprits. Like American Moslems and the Middle-Eastern born following 9/11, Italian-Americans spent decades recovering from the racist stereotypes of this period.

But history is an ever-shifting kaleidoscope. The story took an ironic new focus following the Wall Street implosion of 2008. We've seen that its houses of commerce and power do not need anarchists nor al-Qaeda to bring them down. The rage over the Street's malfeasance has breathed new life into a story of retribution; and though - thanks to the NYPD's post-9/11 surveillance state - a repetition of this event is unlikely, the hard feelings of a century ago live on.

[Jeremy Jones · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great, comprehensive book on an interesting, little-known slice of history.
The funny thing is that I'd run into a few of the characters and stories in this book before, i.e. the Dynamite Express in Northern Idaho and the exploits of Emma Goldman but I'd never thought about these as a unified phenomenon and certainly not around an event that even the book remarks has been purposely scrubbed from history as much as possible.
The only criticism I have is that the book just kinda ends without a good way to tie it up. Though I don't think that this is the author's fault. As the crime itself remained unsolved, and the anarchist threat just sort of dematerialized. Though, the last chapter does a pretty good job tying the end of this era to the Red Scare that would dominate post-WWII America.
Great read for anyone interested in odd bits of history.

[Steve C · Rating 4 out of 5]

On September 16, 1920, a terrorist bomb exploded outside the J. P. Morgan bank building near the Wall Street Stock Exchange. To date there is no definitive answer as to who did it and why, although there are theories. To an extent, the ineptitude of the investigators of the time is at fault, as well as the paranoia of the time. The book is very good at defining those theories. The book is also very good at showing why investigations took the courses they took and why their results were less than satisfactory. There is a great deal of detail in the book and some might find it difficult to keep up. Still, it is a very well written documentary of the 1920 Wall Street bombing, and one history buffs of the era would enjoy.

[Tim · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not a bad book; there are many interesting facts. Although there is no particular thesis binding it all together, it is a reasonable summary of radical and labor strife from the late 19th to early 20th centuries. Some the explanations of the past events may be colored by contemporary events, but a useful book to read.

[MaureenMcBooks · Rating 3 out of 5]

A trip back to a time when the political left was on the rise and multifaceted. With socialists, communists, anarchists and syndicalists all agitating to unhinge US capitalism, there was plenty of fuel for the explosion. Gage presents a wide-ranging account of the radicals, investigators and politicians who faced off.

[Aishuu · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really would have liked to get more into the "day Wall Street exploded." Instead, it's a meandering account of anarchism that goes all over the place, with little about the actual impact of the event on people. I'd've preferred more personal accounts, information about the lives touched than the history of anarchism.

[Julian M · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the best books about New York history I've ever read. Gage provides a fascinating glimpse into one of America's first deadly terrorist attacks and the political unrest of New York at the time. It is a story of politics, espionage, mystery, death, and anarchy that really happened in the greatest city in the world. I wouldn't pass this one up.

[Geo Forman · Rating 2 out of 5]

A bit of a struggle to get through. I certainly know more about the Wall Street bombing. I was surprised to learn the case was never solved. Some still think it was done by Italian anarchists, some by communists and some still think it was a genuine accident and not a planned bombing. As far as I'm concerned, the Communist theory seems to be the most likely

[Edward C. Gardetto · Rating 4 out of 5]

history of social conflict that includes Wide spread use of dynamite in the U.S. History not taught in school but raises questions of whether this is the era the country should return to with ultrawealthy running everything.

[AnnieM · Rating 2 out of 5]

It had such promise. It got kinda boring and way too long.

[Bill Greer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read this awhile ago and have fond memories.

[Rachael · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF

[Wade · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very well-told story of banks, politics, power, anarchists, terrorism, etc.

[Beth · Rating 3 out of 5]

About midway through, the book seemed to lose its way. It meandered along for so many pages that I frankly lost interest. It was boring.

[Fraser Sherman · Rating 4 out of 5]

The 1920 bombing of JP Morgan's financial firm was the deadliest act of American terrorism (38 people) until Oklahoma City in 1995. It was also, as Gage shows, the last truly significant terrorist act in the decades since radical labor and anarchist revolutionaries had begun using dynamite to fight capitalism by "the propaganda of the deed" (and I do love that phrase). While digging deep into the unsolved case, Gage also uses it to look at the personalities and politics of the previous decades of terrorism. Depressingly familiar in elements such as the government's enthusiasm to lock up first, determine guilt after.

[Bob H · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's a scenario that resonates after 9/11: a vehicle, parked at the corner of Broad and Wall Streets on a busy September day, explodes. 39 people die; news media and Federal investigators point to radical groups with long and recent histories of terrorist violence. Indeed, this 1920 bombing would be the worst such incident until Oklahoma City.

Or was it an accident?

One of the surprises of this book, which tells a long-forgotten story anew, is that author Beverly Gage manages to create an element of suspense. Who did it is a mystery to the reader as well as to the detectives of the day, and she explores all the various (and often dubious) leads into the explosion - including the possibility that it was an accident, after all. She must have had a daunting task of sorting through and describing, in succinct prose, each clue, each murky suspect, each doubtful tip, each sensational news story.

She also provides context: that an explosion on Wall Street was seen as a likely terrorist attack was itself a likely leap of the day's logic. She devotes much of the book to a fascinating account of the labor and anarchist strife - punctuated by bombing and assassinations - beginning with the Haymarket Square bombing in 1886, and running through the Homestead strike, the miners' struggles in the West, and the rise of anarchist and syndicalist movements up through World War I. She introduces us to the vivid personalities spanning the period up to 1920 and beyond: anarchists Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman, the firebrand "Big Bill" Haywood, lawyers Clarence Darrow and Frank Walsh.

More importantly, Ms. Gage shows how the case would make and break careers. It was a crucial early test for the newly-formed ACLU, an early break for a young J. Edgar Hoover, and an impetus for new labor organizations like the AFL. It was also nemesis: embarrassment for Attorney-General A. Mitchell Palmer and for famous detective William J. Burns. The bombing case's hysteria would contribute much to the trial-by-press, conviction and execution of anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti, and to the suppression of the Socialist Party and the IWW. All of this she puts in clear context.

As someone who is familiar with U.S. history, particularly the decade of the LA Times bombing of 1910 up to the aftermath of World War I, I highly recommend this work as an important contribution to U.S. history. Indeed, I rarely see a historian who can take an incident like this (see, e.g., Curt Gentry's Frame-Up, about a similar explosion in San Francisco in 1916) and sort through its complexities and come up with a well-told mystery. Those interested in a vital period in labor, news media and civil-liberties matters - or those who simply like a good, well-told whodunit -- will find this well worthwhile.

[Thomas Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very few people recall the event. Even many of those who every day pass the pock marked wall on Wall Street have no idea what happened there on September 16, 1920. That day a horse drawn wagon full of dynamite exploded outside the J.P. Morgan building, killing 39 people and injuring hundreds, many very seriously. Until the Oklahoma City bombing, it was the deadliest terrorist bombing on American soil.

Who committed this terrible deed? Was it an accident, a wagon transporting dynamite where it wasn’t supposed to be? Or was it labor anarchists, protesting the brutal arrest of many of their brothers including Sacco and Vanzetti? Or was it communists trying to stir up anti-labor feeling in the US after their recent success in Russia? Beverly Gage starts by taking us to the Haymarket riot of the 1880′s and leading us through the successes and failures including the violence of the anarchist labor movement. With World War I and Woodrow Wilson’s anti-sedition laws, many in the labor movement found themselves in prison and those on the outside became more inflamed by the anti-union position of the Federal government. Were they the ones who placed the bomb on Wall Street?

Next, Gage takes us through the investigation and describes perhaps the most inept attempt at solving a crime ever attempted by the Federal government. The predecessor to the FBI was assigned the task and two directors found themselves out of jobs, not because of their failure to solve the crime, but because of the embarrassing way they failed to solve it. Only a few short years after the bombing, with the Roaring 20′s in full bloom, the bombing became a thing of the past and the investigation was never concluded.

Gage makes some interesting points about how the government used the fear after the bombing to ignore civil rights and jail suspects secretly and without trials that can perhaps be tied to more recent history. But she avoids the mistake of trying to tie 1920 to 1995 or 2001. Each of these bombings has its own history and its own cause. Gage does a brilliant job of discussing the bombing and the history of the suspects, especially the US labor movement, as well as the investigation that became a wasted effort of forcing the evidence to fit preconceived notions. This is an excellent book about a mostly forgotten piece of American history that is well worth reading.

[J.S. · Rating 1 out of 5]

It's pretty much been forgotten but on September 16, 1920 Wall Street was the site of an explosion that killed 39 and injured hundreds. While it was widely believed to have been a terrorist attack at the time (likely by radicals of some type) no one was ever brought to justice, and some thought it might simply have been an accident.

This book starts out very strong. Ms. Gage briefly paints a picture of the importance of the banking industry and its stabilizing influence in the economy. Then she presents the flip side of that immense creation of wealth, and discusses the working class and their dismal conditions - 12 hour workdays, frequent on-the-job accidents, and harsh crackdowns on striking workers. I once had a Labor Economics professor who said that if a company treated its employees so poorly that they unionized, the company deserved it - a point that was illustrated perfectly in the book. After that brief setting of the stage she moves on to a riveting account of the bombing itself. All this is very promising and happens in about 25 pages. Unfortunately it turns immediately dull as she goes back to the 1880s to discuss in very dry and boring detail the history of labor radicalism in America. This lasts for another hundred pages or so until she returns to the bombing - or rather to the investigation of the bombing, and every wrong turn and dead end made by the many agencies involved.

I felt obligated to finish this book and had to force myself, thinking there would be some sort of conclusion at the end. But there wasn't, and maybe if I'd known that up front I might have appreciated the history better. There's a lot of detailed information but it comes off like a boring and tedious textbook. I usually like this type of history but for me this was a chore to read. Plus, I don't know if it was intentional or not by Ms. Gage, but I couldn't help but feel that comparisons were being drawn with the Sept 11 terrorist attack and the failure to adequately deal with the threat of Al Qaeda. If so, some of the conclusions expressed at the end about just forgetting about it (Sept 11) and moving on were rather calloused.

[James Govednik · Rating 3 out of 5]

An engaging recount of an event seemingly forgotten: the deadliest terrorist attack in America until the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. At noon on September 16, 1920, a wagon loaded with dynamite and metal fragments exploded outside J.P. Morgan and Company bank, at the corner of Wall Street and Broad Street in New York, killing 38 people and maiming many more. The nation was beginning to emerge from a frightened post-war era, in which the Palmer raids and “Red hysteria” had law enforcement looking for any reason to deport anyone whom they deemed suspicious. The author gives a thorough accounting of shattering events of the day and the ensuing investigation, which (after many dead-ends and questionable—even self-serving—turns on the part of the lead investigators) failed to conclusively identify the perpetrator. The book also details labors struggles from the late 1800s through the WWI era, from the Haymarket Riot through the Palmer Raids—an era of terrible violence on both sides—in the author’s words: “...an age in which thirty-five thousand American workers died each year in accidents, in which policemen and soldiers routinely fired on strikers and picketers….” I found myself frequently reflecting on how many lessons of history we have forgotten and have to keep learning over and over again, and how many dark chapters are contained in the history of our free society.

[Scott Smith · Rating 3 out of 5]

In The Day Wall Street Exploded, Beverly Gage tells the story of another once infamous but now largely forgotten event. Just after noon on September 16, 1920, as hundreds of workers poured onto Wall Street for their lunchtime break, a horse-drawn cart packed with dynamite exploded turning the busy financial center into a war zone. Thirty-nine people died and hundreds more lay wounded.
Based on thousands of pages of Bureau of Investigation reports, this historical detective saga traces the four-year hunt for the perpetrators, a worldwide effort that spread as far as Italy and the new Soviet nation. It also gives readers the decades-long but little-known history of homegrown terrorism that helped to shape American society a century ago.
The book delves into the lives of victims, suspects and investigators as well as members of the world’s foremost banking powers of the time, anarchist and other political and social figures, even a young J. Edgar Hoover. It grapples as well with some of the most controversial events of its day, including the rise of the Bureau of Investigation, the federal campaign against immigrant "terrorists," the grassroots effort to define and protect civil liberties, and the establishment of anti-communism. The Day Wall Street Exploded is yet another reminder that terror has a long history.

[Karen Miller · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had begun this book quite some time ago and put it aside. I've started again from the beginning and I think I'll get more out of it after having read "Meet You in Hell" (Carnegie and Frick). I've also been doing some ruminating on the current state of affairs in the world and how history tends to repeat itself. The pendulum is starting to head in that direction. I'll update this when I've finished the book.

I've finished. It really is a pretty dry book. I was a bit surprised to find they've never really settled on who or what organization (if it was one) was behind the bombing. I'm more committed than ever to the history repeating itself concept, especially after seeing today that the Occupy Wall Street movement was treated by federal law enforcement similarly to the socialists, communists and anarchists of the 1920's. I watched Eastwood's "J. Edgar" recently, which fits in with this whole theme. I guess things haven't changed much since Hoover.

[Tom Mackay · Rating 3 out of 5]

Gage contextualises this bombing brilliantly, situating it within the history of late 19th and early 20th century class conflict, and the divisions between radicals over the appropriateness of revolutionary violence, and the very meaning of 'propaganda by the deed'. It has a clear sub-theme which exposes parallels to the present, primarily the state's tendency to violate due process and exploit extreme situations to damage or eliminate political enemies and 'undesirables'. It's also an exploration of investigative follies, particularly those of the then young Bureau of Investigation. The Day Wall Street Exploded is well worth reading for all interested in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, the history of the FBI, the history of civil liberties (and the ACLU), and the history of radicalism. Plus anyone that enjoys well crafted histories.