The Day Wall Street Exploded A Story of America in its First Age of Terror

The Day Wall Street Exploded A Story of America in its First Age of Terror

Just after noon on September 16, 1920, as hundreds of workers poured onto Wall Street for their lunchtime break, a horse-drawn cart packed with dynamite exploded in a spray of metal and fire, turning the busiest corner of the financial center into a war zone. Thirty-nine people died and hundreds more lay wounded, making the Wall Street explosion the worst terrorist attack to that point in U.S. history. In The Day Wall Street Exploded, Beverly Gage tells the story of that once infamous but now largely forgotten event.

Take a Look at Wall Street Political Cartoons

Political cartoons in 1920 reflected public perceptions of the attack on Wall Street and its aftermath. Cartoonists directed their satire towards the villains of the age: communists, anarchists, and–according to one cartoonist–greedy employers. These images are featured in the decorative endpapers of The Day Wall Street Exploded. (Click on any image to enlarge).

Solidarity December 17, 1921

New York Daily News September 17, 1920

Chicago Tribune Date Unknown

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User Ratings and Reviews

4 Stars Great Historical Read
Read this book just to get yourself back into the habit of looking into true history. You will see parallels between what happened back in 1920 and today. The attack on America by socialist, communists, and anarchist still rages today, except it is within our own government.

5 Stars fascinating and most excellent!
Wow! If you read my reviews, you know that I tend to give perhaps somewhat lower scores and reviews, certainly whenever I feel it’s warranted. Well, I am pleased to say that this book is certainly one of the most outstanding books that I have read. It discusses an event, the 1920 bombing of Wall Street, that I’d not before heard of. It discusses bombings / terrorism in a limited way leading up to that event. It also discusses the manhunt following the event. This book was something, in my opinion, between a scholarly book and an enthralling masterpiece of fiction, although it was no fiction. This just means that the author wrote in a most captivating manner. I recommend this reading for unemployed Wall Street tycoons, anyone interested in terrorism, violent uprising against capitalism, and, as in my case, somebody who just wants an enthralling read over the weekend. I give this book a solid “A” and it comes highly recommended.

4 Stars Conversational Historical, Yet Antiquarian, Discourse on America’s Early Age of Terror
With terrorism as a seemingly contemporary issue and therefore recent, it is difficult to find any genuine analysis written on the subject beyond haphazard commentaries from political candidates, pundits, and news anchor blowhards. However, many in the American public, and even in academe, seem to forget that terrorism is not a recent concept in American history; the media and generational gap just make it seem as such.

Enter Beverly Gage’s new book, “The Day Wall Street Exploded” (”The Day” for short).

Gage, a professor from Yale, painstakingly researched (or had her graduate students do it for credit) and analyzed multiple primary sources to bring forth a comprehensive history of terrorism in the early 20th century using the 1920 Wall Street Bombing as a lynchpin. Granted the main emphasis is the bombing itself, however, Gage spends quite an amount of space analyzing terrorism at that time.

I was impressed at Gage’s bibliography, which was almost 50 pages long, as she utilized good primary sources such as public speeches, newspaper articles at the time, investigative notes, etc. etc. and did not fall into the trap of intellectual laziness and rely on secondary sources. Many historians have fallen into this trap as popular history outlets such as the History Channel have made it more demanding for historians to make good products faster and flashier, placing academic discipline on the backburner. Kudos to Gage there.

Gage also masterfully places the topics in a comprehensive chronological order. However, most chronological histories fall under the academic category of just another history or an antiquarian text. While such texts are fascinating reads, they fail to address any historical questions beyond who, what, where, when, and why to a certain extent, but do not address “so what?” In her introduction, Gage says one purpose of The Day was to “rediscover the genuine drama of class conflict in the United States,” which is fine by a Marxist historical (NOT POLITICAL) standard but still fails to address why we need to know about this event.

Now, before you all turn on me, lemme say where Gage redeems herself. Gage also mentions that this has been an ongoing project since before 9/11 and the modern context of the War on Terror and placing it in a modern context become much more complicated after 2001. Amidst the country feigning fear of terrorism as many of us thought terrorism in the US was a new thing, Gage begged to prove otherwise. Fair enough. It is true that public memory is as fresh as a day old soda and we do need to be reminded that certain things, that freak us out, are not new concept such as high gas prices. However, by doing this, Gage then opens up a new can of worms.

Gage then focuses on stating how terrorism is not new because Wall Street exploded almost a century ago. This, by itself, is not a bad thing and Gage tries to briefly discuss other acts of terrorism in the US such as the anarchist rampages in the 1880s, but then calls those the first terrorist acts in Part II. This is inaccurate as there had been several acts of terrorism in the US such as Quantrill’s Raid, John Brown, and the Nat Turner Rebellion (which was, by definition, terrorism), all occurred decades earlier. It doesn’t help that Gage does not define terrorism, but portrays it as horrific acts of violence against the masses. However, this part is marginal to the overall narrative. I also have to respectfully disagree with many of Gage’s assertions from the US’ involvement in WWI, but this review is long enough.

My last criticism to Gage is her nearly conversational tone. She tends to use a more lax language compared to most, which almost leads into conversational, but not quite. She seems to have spent more time researching and analyzing than writing, which is understandable.

All in all, The Day is a great read but still fails to prove itself in the greater historical discourse beyond “a great drama.”

3 Stars Interesting, but a tough read
I’m very interested in this period in American history. But I still found this book very difficult to read. As other reviewers have pointed out, it’s a scholarly examination of not only the Wall Street bombing, but the entire Socialist and Anarchist movement in the early part of the 20th century.

There are lots of names, lots of dates, lots of events. Chapters tend to jump back in time to cover a specific topic, which I found to be very confusing at times.

The book is very well written, but is very dry reading at times. I had to force myself through much of the last half of the book.

There was one statement in the book that made me step aside and do some research of my own. The author was describing the way that some communities “handled” the socialist movement, and she said: “In Bisbee, Arizona, mine bosses loaded some twelve hundred Wobblies and their families into rail cars and shipped them out to wither in the desert.”

That sentence shocked me. Would people really have taken thousands of people (assuming “families” included women and children) into the desert and abandoned them to die? So I did a web search on “bisbee arizona wobblies”.

I found a number of articles on the “Bisbee Deportation”, all of which described the incident in much less sensational terms than the author. All of the articles described the people deported as “men” (”The deputies arrested more than 2000 men…”; “The posse rounded up more than 1,200 men…”). None of them mentioned “familes”. The men were not “shipped out to wither in the desert”, they were put on a train to Columbus, New Mexico. You can read the rest of the details in the articles you’ll find. But I could find no account of anyone “withering in the desert”.

This is a pretty major incident (although, like much of the things that are described in the book, not very well known today). The fact that the Author’s brief and somewhat lurid description of the Deportation is so much at odds with the other accounts I read, makes me wonder what other inaccuracies might be in the book.

That aside, if you have a serious interest in this period of history, this would be an excellent reference book. But if you’re looking for lighter historical reading for entertainment or general knowledge, this is probably not a good choice.

2 Stars Dull as dishwater
So, up front you should know that I haven’t finished this book and likely won’t. I’ve gotten two-thirds of the way into it and I give up. It’s completely failing to grip me, and I have no interest in finishing it.

I’d gone into this book expecting a nice non-fiction crime story, talking about the particulars of a very nasty terrorist attack. I’d expected to read all about the case, how it happened, who was behind it, the investigation, etc.

Sadly, what we get instead is a detailed history on the anarchist movement in the United States. That’s a valid and somewhat interesting topic, but it isn’t what I’d expected. It strays from what should be the main focus and winds up all over the map, going from Haymarket up to the titular attack on Wall Street.

I’m very disapointed, cause I’d expected something along the lines of American Lightning: Terror, Mystery, the Birth of Hollywood, and the Crime of the Century, which covered a terrorist attack in Los Angeles and features some of the same real-life figures this book does. What I got instead was a dry, boring little book that seems to be more about build-up than pay-off.

If you want a good book about American terrorism in the early 20th century, check the aforementioned “American Lightning” and, sadly, avoid this book.

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