On Saturday last the trial of the forty men charged
with complicity in the Los Angeles dynamite outrages ended in the conviction of thirty-eight of the accused, the sentences ranging from one to seven years' imprisonment. The Los Angeles outrage was an outcome of the dispute between the Inter- national Bridge and Structural Ironworkers and the National Erectors Association over the right of the latter to hire non- -onion labour, and the result of the trial before the Federal Court at Indianapolis has been the conviction of practically the entire executive staff of the Bridge and Structural Ironworkers, including the President of the Association, who was sentenced to seven years' imprisonment. The judge, in passing sentence, observed that all the prisoners were intelligent, educated men. The jury was chosen from the farming, not the business community. The Government counsel proved that in more than a score of cases the prisoners had conspired to transport explosives in violation of the Interstate Commerce Laws, and the evidence adduced completely disposed of the theory that the explosions were contrived by employers, especially the Steel Trust, in order to discredit labour. The verdict is generally hailed in America not only for its justice, but as affording organized labour an opportunity for repudiating the methods of militant trade unionism.
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