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Terrorism

In January 1918, a young girl was arrested coming off a Panhandle train from at Chicago’s Union Station. She was armed with 36 sticks—50 pounds—of dynamite and a loaded automatic pistol, and gave her name as 16-year-old Linda Jose from Youngstown, Ohio. Immediately, the Chicago press latched on to her mysterious story, dubbing her, “Dynamite Girl,” and tracing her connections to the radical IWW labor movement. According to the Tribune, “With the great I.W.W. trial coming up next month, the police saw a possible motive in the efforts to bring contraband explosive to Chicago.”

Dynamite Girl was actually 18-year-old anarchist Ella Antolini, who was later sentced to prison in Jefferson City, Missouri, where her cellmate was famed anarchist Emma Goldman. But, certainly, the notion of a teenaged girl tooling around Chicago stacked with dynamite was enough to put the town on edge.

Indeed, throughout 1918, bombs were a frequent feature of life in Chicago. Very often, they were tied to labor disputes. In November, for example, the Tribune reported that, “One of the loudest and most powerful bombs set off in factional strife in Chicago in some time damaged the backer of L. Becker, 1502 South St. Louis avenue at 11:10 o’clock last night. Mr. Becker blamed the Hebrew Master Bakers’ association.” The cause, Mr. Becker said, was that he was selling 30-cent loaves of bread at 25 cents and 15-cent loaves for 12 cents.

There was a long line of bombs and bomb threats throughout the year. In March a bombing campaign that was part of the strike against the Lyon & Healy music company led to murder indictments for union officials. Also in March, a bomb had been found in the Federal Building office of attorneys Frank Nebeker and Claude Porter, who would be prosecuting the IWW trial. It was the second bomb found in the building in the previous two months. The Chicago Federal Building The Federal Building in Chicago. In April a man believed to be an anarchist or a Wobbly was arrested for making bombs in his South Side home. In July, as part of an internal dispute in the Cobblers Union, a bomb on the North Side exploded at 1:00 A.M., driving hundreds of locals into the street.

Chicago was an angst-ridden town in 1918, and with good reason—the angst was rooted in the daily headlines.

The peak of the bombing fears, though, came just before the start of that year’s World Series, on September 4 at just after 3 p.m. at the bustling Federal Building. The clock at the building read 3:10 when, according to witnesses, an agitated man in a tan raincoat holding a cigar box with a string dangling from the side began pacing inside the rotunda. He slid over to the radiator near the Adams Street entry. He dropped the cigar box with a thud and, looking around, kicked it under the radiator. Then he hurried out.

Moments later, the cigar box exploded, filling the building with flames and thick black smoke, ripping an enormous hole in the Federal Building wall. The blast was so powerful that, across the street, workers in the Marquette Building and the Edison Building were thrown from their chairs. The windows of both buildings shattered, and chunks of plate glass rained onto the street below. In all, four people were killed, plus a horse that had been hitched to a post across the street.

Outside, broken glass from surrounding buildings continued to fall. Piles of debris and pools of blood littered Adams Street. The wail of fire engines echoed off the buildings. One pedestrian looked at the damage and said flatly, “Someone did a good job.” The crowd outside the building grabbed the man and beat him.

In that moment, many of the terrorist fears that permeated Chicago—fueled by seemingly nonstop bombings and bomb threats—were realized. Members of the IWW were suspected of the crime, but it was never solved.

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