Planned To Blow Los Angeles Off Map.

New York Times 100 years ago today, November 26, 1912:
J. B. McNamara's Arrest Prevented Destruction of the City's Water Works.
WANTED PANAMA DYNAMITED
So McManigal Testifies — Union Paid His Wife $25 a Week, Says Another Witness.
    INDIANAPOLIS, Nov. 25.— When McManigal resumed his confession on the witness stand to-day, the District Attorney said to him:
    "Tell what, if anything, you and the McNamaras said about blowing up work on the Panama Canal."
    "In April, 1911, shortly before we were arrested, J. J. and J. B. McNamara and myself had a talk at the ironworkers' headquarters in Indianapolis as to the campaign after blowing up four jobs planned for Detroit," said McManigal. "J. J. said the McClintic-Marshall Construction Company, a non-union concern, had two years' work on the Panama Canal, and he wanted me to go there. He said I should go to Panama and promptly enlist as a soldier, as I had already served in the Spanish-American war. I asked him if he expected me to take nitro-glycerine to Panama. He said: 'No, the McClintic-Marshall people have great stores of dynamite down there. You can watch your chance to steal it. Put a wagonload in each lock.'
    "I didn't take much to the Panama idea, and told J. J. so, but he insisted he would take it up later. J. B. said at that time he had more work on the Pacific Coast. He said he was going back there with an arrangement to set off bombs by touching off an electrical current miles away. He said: 'I'll go out to Los Angeles and undermine the aqueduct and the water works. Then I'll put bombs at various places in the city and blow the whole town off the map. The people will think there has been another earthquake similar to the one at San Francisco.' "

Wholesale Explosions Prevented.
    McManigal then described his going to Detroit with James B. McNamara to blow up four jobs, and their arrest there, which prevented the "wholesale explosions," which, be said, were soon to have been carried out.
    "After we were arrested in Detroit, and while we were on the train going to Chicago, James B. began to yell about being kidnapped," said McManigal. "Guy Biddinger, a Chicago detective, had us handcuffed. J. B. offered Biddinger $5,000 to let us escape. Biddinger refused. Then J. B. raised the amount to $30,000, saying he would get the amount from J. J. McNamara. He said if Biddinger didn't let us off the train there would be a gang waiting for him at Chicago, and they would get him.
    "Then J. B. said to Biddinger: 'If you don't take the $30,000 Clarence Darrow will get it, for we will have Darrow.'
    "J. B. begged Biddinger to allow me to go or to allow my wife to go to Indianapolis to arrange to procure the money. I said I didn't want my wife mixed up in it.
    "William J. Burns came to see me, and I made a clean breast of it to him. Later in Los Angeles I told the authorities my whole story."
    Senator John W. Kern, for the defense, cross-examined McManigal.
    "Was the pay you received from the McNamaras your motive in causing so many explosions?" asked Senator Kern.
    "No; it was not money. Herbert S. Hockin, when he first started me in the dynamiting business, terrorized me, saying that if I didn't do it he would prevent me from getting work. Then I was prompted by a foolish notion that it was for the good of the Ironworkers' Union. My mind was inflamed with the idea it would build up the union."
    McManigal admitted that he had been arrested three times, twice for larceny and once for disorderly conduct.

Contemplated $150,000 Robbery.
    "Now," said Senator Kern, "you say McNamara, in order to get more money, proposed to steal $150,000 by killing the Treasurer of the automobile races at the Speedway in Indianapolis, and yet you still kept company with these men who planned the murder?"
    Mrs. Sadie Maguire testified that she was a neighbor of the McManigal family in Chicago. She said that in November, 1910, the month after The Los Angeles Times explosion, at the request of Mrs. McManigal, she arranged with her uncle, Marion Sharp of Kenosha, Wis., for McManigal to go on a hunting trip. When the hunters returned to Chicago in January she said she went to a theatre party, one of the party being a man who answered James B. McNamara's description. She accompanied Mrs. McManigal and the latter's children to California after McManigal was taken there, and on her return to Chicago, she said, she placed the McManigal children in the care of "Ed" Nockels, a labor union official. Later, she said, she collected from R. H. Houlihan, Financial Secretary of a Chicago ironworkers' union, $25 a week to be paid to Mrs. McManigal, having heard Houlihan on one occasion say to Mrs. McManigal: "I'll give you $25 while this is going on."
    Lindsey L. Jewell testified that Herbert S. Hockin had told him James B. McNamara planned to cause the explosions in Eastern cities after the agitation over The Los Angeles Times disaster had blown over. Jewell previously had testified that Hockin had described the Los Angeles dynamiters to William J. Burns soon after the explosion in California.
    "When was it Hockin first disclosed to you information about explosives?" Jewell was asked by Senator J. W. Kern for the defense.
    "He told me he was opposed to the wholesale murder that was being planned, and got me to promise him I would never reveal the source of my information. He told me President Ryan of the Ironworkers' Union knew nothing of the plots to murder. That was McNamara's scheme. After Hockin told me who blew up the Times Building I promised him if he ever got into trouble I would see that after he got out he would get a position paying $2,500 a year for two years. When Hockin began to report to Burns, Burns assumed that obligation to Hockin."

Ready to Blow Up Sleeping Car.
    "Did Hockin tell you J. B. McNamara was planning to blow up a whole sleeping car full of persons in order to kill Miss Dye because she knew too much?" asked District Attorney Miller.
    "Yes, Hockin told me there were plots for wholesale murder, and that the Frick Building was to be blown up with other buildings in the East in which were offices of non-union labor employers."
    Before court adjourned Judge Anderson announced he would not increase the bonds of other defendants and would pass the motion to do so for the present.