On 1 October 1910 a dynamite blast destroyed the Los Angeles Times building. Fifteen men died, and half a million dollars in damage resulted. The brothers, John and James McNamara, officers in the Structural Iron Workers' Union, had been fighting against Times owner Gen. Harrison Gray Otis and his open-shop policy. They advocated "direct action" against repressive capitalists but at first claimed their innocence. The city of Los Angeles seemed ready to square off in a class war.

Just when the famous muckraker Lincoln Steffens had persuaded many of Los Angeles's most powerful politicians that to put the McNamara brothers to death would only intensify the bitter division in the city, their defense lawyer, Clarence Darrow, was accused of trying to bribe a member of the jury. Then, before their trial concluded and before election day, when many socialist candidates expected to win...