Walker for Mooney

During San Francisco's 1916 Preparedness Day Parade, a bomb exploded on Market Street, killed ten people, wounded 40 others. Thomas Mooney and Warren K. Billings, labor agitators, were convicted of the crime, went to jail for life. Their trials were later shown to have been honeycombed with perjured evidence against them. Judge & jury recommended their pardon. The case became interwoven with State politics. Governor after California Governor was implored by large sections of organized Labor, the Press and the Pulpit to set justice to rights by releasing Mooney & Billings. Though 15 years of prison life have greyed them to pathetic, broken figureheads, their Cause looms as large as ever across the land. Last week almost the last person in the world who might be supposed to have any interest in the matter suddenly sprang to the defense of Mooney & Billings.

In his Manhattan office, dapper, flippant, fun-loving Mayor James John ("Jimmy") Walker, around whose sleek head the shot & shell of Investigation have whistled and cracked for 16 months, called in the City Hall reporters. He picked up a telegram from San Francisco, began reading:

I AM SO YEARS OLD AFRAID AM BREAKING DOWN AT LAST THEY WANT TO TAKE ME TO A HOSPITAL TOMORROW IN THE NAME OF GOD AND HIS BLESSED MOTHER WON'T YOU COME OUT TO HELP MY BOY IT IS MY LAST CHANCE.

Here Mayor Walker broke down. Turning the yellow blank over to the newshawks, he left the room, his hand to his face. The reporters read on:

... TO PUT MY ARMS AROUND HIM BEFORE I MEET MY GOD HE HAS BEEN A GOOD SON TO ME IF YOU DO THIS FOR TOM YOU WILL HAVE MY PRAYERS AS LONG AS YOU LIVE

MOTHER MOONEY

Next day Mayor Walker announced that he would go to California not as the Biggest City's chief executive, but as a private citizen and lawyer to defend aged Mary Mooney's son Thomas, at a hearing before Governor James ("Sunny Jim") Rolph Jr. in San Francisco. Jovial Sunny Jim, instead of taking offense at what might have seemed an unwarranted intrusion upon California's affairs, said he would be glad to see his wisecracking little friend once more. He telephoned the Adjutant General's office to have the militia fire a salute as Mayor Walker passed through Sacramento.

From both coasts came hostile editorial comment on the Mayoral junket. "In the country as a whole," observed the New York Herald Tribune, "there will be many to hope that His Honor will succeed in his mission; but it is a sad commentary on American justice that the freedom of anyone should hinge on a 'stunt'."

''It is essentially," snapped the New York Evening Post, "the most impudent of all the impudent ideas that our impudent Mayor has conceived." This feeling was shared in San Francisco by the Chronicle which resented "a hippodrome performance," declared: "Californians, of course, do not care how much publicity Mr. Walker seeks or gets in ordinary ways. But it is another matter when he seeks to satisfy his thirst for public notice by mixing up his public office with private meddling. . . ."

Lawyer Walker boarded a New York Central office car. clutching a fat envelope. ''This is something that can't be lost." he gravely explained. "It's Mooney's record, and I always stand by the record. Let's hope that justice is waiting." In lighter vein he deplored missing the Kid Chocolate-Tony Canzoneri fight, an inconvenience which he palliated by going to the Southern California-Notre Dame football game at South Bend, Ind. (see p. 23). His brief for Prisoner Mooney, he prepared aboard the Overland Limited between Chicago and San Francisco.

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