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IBEW1245

The power is in our hands

PAY YOUR DUES ONLINE
PART-1

Chapter 18: Dynamiters and Snitches

Hot on trail reduced

There were 770 “depredations” against PG&E during the strike. Some of the saboteurs were PG&E employees. Others were simply freelance crusaders for the cause.

Walter Thomas, a “youth of giant build” and a newcomer to the Bay Area, led a nighttime expedition down the San Francisco peninsula. His gang used dynamite to incapacitate PG&E structures at five locations. Their driver, Herman Ebenritter, was soon picked up and—willingly or unwillingly—assisted a posse in a two-day manhunt for the other saboteurs.

Thomas was arrested in Redwood City with six sticks of dynamite in his possession. Also arrested was a man named Joseph Giovanni.

It appears that Ebenritter, jailed in San Francisco, may have been trying to play on both sides of the fence–wherever the money was best. A scribbled note to strike leader W. S. Junkin identified Ebenritter as a “non-union man” suspected of dynamiting. Several months later, Junkin received a cryptic note from a mysterious “C” that Ebenritter was making “considerable trouble” and that Junkin should “quiet him” with money.

Joseph Giovanni was put in the clear by a young woman, Miss A. Valencia, who said they’d taken “the late theater train” from San Francisco to Redwood City on the night in question. Valencia’s occupation was given as telephone operator at PT&T’s Bush Street station in San Francisco. Giovanni’s savior was a “hello girl” and possibly a veteran of the 1907 telephone strike.

Next: Chapter 19

  • Introduction to the History of IBEW Local 1245
    • Skip to Part II
    • Skip to Part III
  • Chapter 1: Because Somebody Needed Their Help
  • Chapter 2: Gas Workers Organize
  • Chapter 3: The Earthquake
  • Chapter 4: The United Railroads Strike of 1906
  • Chapter 5: The Industrial Union Prophet
  • Chapter 6: The Street Carmen and the Slave Owner’s Son
  • Chapter 7: Bloody Tuesday
  • Chapter 8: Linemen Refuse to Back Down
  • Chapter 9: The “Hello Girls” Make a Stand
  • Chapter 10: The Strike Against Naphtaly
  • Chapter 11: The Split
  • Chapter 12: The Reid IBEW in the West
  • Chapter 13: PG&E Strike – An Exuberant Spectacle
  • Chapter 14: Contest of Wills
  • Chapter 15: No Neutral Position
  • Chapter 16: Brotherhood and Betrayal
  • Chapter 17: Thugs and Gunmen
  • Chapter 18: Dynamiters and Snitches
  • Chapter 19: Appetite for Direct Action
  • Chapter 20: Coup de Grâce
  • Chapter 21: The 1917 Telephone Strike
  • Chapter 22: The Big Frame-Up
  • Chapter 23: The 1919 Telephone Strike
  • Chapter 24: The American Plan
  • Quick Link: Organizing Sacramento Municipal Utility District
  • Quick Link: Organizing Sierra Pacific Power
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