the case. He told Steffens to assure “your people,” as he liked to call the business leaders, that the defense still wanted a deal. Nockels arrived in Los Angeles and was briefed. Steffens convinced a roomful of civic leaders to accept the settlement. And Fredericks, after consulting his political advisers, agreed on the final terms. The state would accept James McNamara’s plea and ask the judge for clemency, said Fredericks, if John pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of ordering the Christmas, 1910, bombing of the Llewellyn Iron Works.
Now the brothers had to give their consent. On Thursday, which was Thanksgiving Day, their supporters treated the McNamaras to a fine turkey dinner, with dessert and cigars, in the city jail. The brothers spent the rest of the day listening to Darrow and the other lawyers.
“I am thinking of you, J.B.,” said Darrow.
“Yes,” said James, “and I am thinking of you, Darrow.” Both of them knew the plea would injure labor, and that labor would look for, as Older had put it, “a goat.”
James held out for most of the day, knowing how John’s confession would hurt the union cause. Davis warned him that unless he pled guilty, the state would hang John too. And Darrow promised him that if the brothers pled guilty, the state would not prosecute Tvietmoe and the other California labor leaders. Joseph Scott had a priest summoned, who spoke quietly to James. Ultimately, John McNamara threatened to plead guilty on his own, if need be, to save his brother’s life. “I was overwhelmed by a two hundred thousand dollar defense, with a constant nightmarish fear, that there was great danger of taking the San Francisco ‘labor leaders’ with me,” James recalled. On Thanksgiving night, Davis went to see Fredericks at home. The district attorney brought out cigars, and they confirmed the deal.23
SOMEHOW, THE SECRET kept. Reporters were puzzled when the next morning’s session was postponed until the afternoon and then convened with two notable features: the grim expressions of the defense attorneys and the unusual presence of John McNamara, who had not been attending his brother’s trial.
James and John chewed gum. Darrow sat at the end of the long defense table, looking anxious and gnawing on a pencil. First James and then John withdrew their pleas of not guilty and, when asked by Bordwell, declared themselves guilty.
The judge ended the short session, and Darrow tried, without much success, to put himself between the reporters and the McNamaras. Darrow looked stricken, like a hunted animal, the Times reported. “I did the best I could,” he said. “I am very tired, worn and sorrowful … I hope I saved a human life out of the wreckage.”
Darrow made his way through the crowd of sullen socialists and laborites, out to where, the Times chortled, the gutters of Los Angeles were littered with discarded Harriman campaign buttons. Darrow had done a lawyer’s duty. With time running out and the defense staggering from reversals, he took advantage of the opportunity created by Harriman’s campaign to save James McNamara’s life, and perhaps John’s as well. “All this evidence is against them, and I didn’t know it when I undertook the case, and now … I must save these men,” Darrow told Sara, who had clung to Larry Sullivan, weeping, when the brothers pled guilty.
Harriman had not been warned. Later that day, he and his campaign manager, Alexander Irvine, met with Darrow at their offices. Why was he not informed? Harriman asked. They didn’t have the heart to tell him, Darrow said.
“Was it part of the bargain that this plea should be made before the election?” Irvine asked.
“It was to be made at once,” Darrow acknowledged.
Friends of labor—even tough men like Gompers and Johannsen—were staggered by the news.24 Martyrs were useful, and some union leaders, like Johannsen, blamed Darrow and the brothers for not taking the battle to the limit, even at the cost of a life or two. “That’s the way they are, you fight for them and they turn on you,” Johannsen told Hapgood. “But I love them, the poor slaves.”25
Gompers was dozing on a train when a reporter came aboard at a New Jersey station and told him. “I am astonished at this,” Gompers sputtered. “We have had the gravest assurances given to us by everyone connected with the trial, either directly or indirectly, that these men were innocent … The cause of labor has been imposed upon by both supposed friends and enemies.”26
Darrow and Nockels sent wires to Gompers,