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The year 1911 saw a number of memorable events in U.S. history. Revolution broke out in Mexico and President Taft responded by sending troops to the Mexican border. The Supreme Court ruled that the Standard Oil Company was guilty of unreasonable restraint of trade. General Motors began using the "self-starter," saving hundreds of Americans each year broken arms from use of the starter crank. And a Socialist was nearly elected mayor of Los Angeles.
Job Harriman was a well-known Socialist leader. In 1900 a faction of socialists nominated him for President; he later stepped down and agreed to serve as Eugene Debs' running mate. In 1911 he was most noted for agreeing to serve as a defense attorney for the two McNamara brothers, accused of dynamiting the Los Angeles Times building. (The dynamiting had caused a freak fire when barrels of ink ignited, and twenty-one people had died in the blaze.) Harriman declared the men were innocent, and that they stood accused of the bombing only because they were noted labor leaders trying to open the city of Los Angeles to unions.
From all over the nation working men and women contributed nickels and dimes and dollars to aid in the McNamara's defense. Harriman was joined by several other attorneys including Clarence Darrow and Joseph Scott. Samuel Gompers of the American Federation of Labor declared the case constituted one of the worst "frame-ups" in history.
Meanwhile Harriman began to pull ahead in the mayoral race. Under Los Angeles' city charter, there would be two elections for mayor, a sort of non-partisan primary and a run-off election. Businessmen, horrified at the idea of a Socialist mayor, began to unite behind one of Harriman's opponents, the incumbent mayor, George Alexander. Alexander was a Republican, but in 1911 he was using on the "Good Government" label in hopes of attracting Democratic votes.
On October 31, the day of the first election, conservative Los Angelinos were horrified when Harriman won a clear victory over Alexander. The preliminary vote totals showed 8,125 for the Socialist and 7,875 for the Good Government candidate, with a number of other candidates trailing. Harriman did not win a majority, and the run-off election was scheduled for December 5. Most observers attributed Harriman's first-place finish to public sympathy for the McNamara brothers, the innocent victims of a corporate frame-up.
Four days before the run-off, Harriman got the surprise of his life. The two McNamara brothers confessed to the bombing. While his fellow attorney Clarence Darrow had been aware of the impending confession, he had kept Harriman out of it since Harriman had long made an issue of the brothers' innocence. Harriman must have wished Darrow and the brothers could only have waited a few days before announcing the confession!
As it turned out on the day of the run-off, Alexander decisively beat the Socialist Harriman. Alexander won about 62 percent of the vote. The way the story is usually told, Harriman lost the election because of the badly-timed confession of his clients, after the Socialists had run so well only a month earlier.
The Times of London, however, argued that analyzing the story this way was misleading, and it probably was. The Times pointed out, first of all, that in the multi-candidate, non-partisan primary Harriman had won only a plurality, not a majority, and that all the other candidates then agreed to throw their support to Alexander. Also, California women were enfranchised between the primary and the run-off, and the evidence suggests the Socialists (like Bob Dole decades later!) were weaker with women candidates than with men. Besides, if Harriman's advocacy of the McNamaras hurt him so badly, why was his fellow defense attorney Joseph Scott re-elected president of the Board of Education, on the Good Government ticket?
The Socialists could take heart from one factor. One reason Alexander won was that he began to sound very much like a Socialist speaker on the platform. He promised city-owned electric and gas companies, city-owned telephone companies, and even city-owned laundries, ice plants, and bakeries. Down with profits, up with co-operation!
The Alexander-Harriman race was an important one in many ways. The Socialist Party, which just the previous year had elected a congressman and mayor in Milwaukee, was denied the incredible boost of winning control of a second large metropolis. The Socialists never would, in fact, win control of another city as large as Milwaukee or Los Angeles. After putting so much faith in Socialists like Job Harriman, organized labor headed off in a more conservative direction. Samuel Gompers, after cooperating grudgingly with Socialists on the McNamara case, now led the A.F. of L. off in a new direction: Democratic politics. The AFL's support of Woodrow Wilson in 1912 was the beginning of a long friendship between the AF of L and the party of Jefferson.
For the collector, there are a number of items supporting the McNamara brothers. These were issued by a variety of labor and socialist groups from across the country. Some are common, some are quite rare. The one pictured here was auctioned by Dick Oestreicher in 1995, and featured a guide price of $150. This pin is 1.25 inches in diameter, a black and white cello illustrated here with the auction catalog photo. The more common McNamara pins often sell in the $50 and under range.
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Job Harriman items continue to generate widespread interest. The newspapers of the time tell us that the L.A. Socialist Party leaders said they had distributed 800,000 pieces of literature, as well as a large number of buttons. Unfortunately for collectors, just after the McNamara confession many Los Angeles citizens threw down their Harriman buttons in disgust. "So great was the number of Harriman buttons swept up in the streets last night," reported the New York Times, "that official mention was made of the fact to the Police Department." Apparently the pins posed a hazard to autoists.
Job Harriman pins come in three size varieties, 1.25 inch , 1 inch, and 7/8 inches. Backpaper is of a Los Angeles firm, William H. Hoegee. Scarcest of the size varieties by far is the 7/8 inch pin. Note that although the pins almost match, the largest one lacks the name of Harriman's party.
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One of the surprises within the button hobby in 1995 was the sale of the little button pictured below. The text reads "Los Angeles for the Workers. Socialist Party, 1911." Size was 7/8 inch. Here was a button from local politics, that does not mention a candidate, that does not have a picture or any decorative elements, and that mentions the Socialist Party in letters so small it is hard to see. Auctioneer David Frent put a guide price of $150 on the item, which some collectors thought was excessive. The bidding on this item was still going on at 3:00 a.m. with three interested collectors pursuing the pin. The item finally sold for $445!
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Sources: Biographical Dictionary of the American Left; Encyclopedia of the American Left; New York Times issues from November and December 1911.
Illustration sources: McNamara button from American Social History and Social Movements auction catalog #4; others from the autho