Beverly Gage. The Day Wall Street Exploded: A Story of Wall Street in Its First Age of Terror. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. 416 pages.
There are many parallels between the terrorist attacks of September 16, 1920, and September 11, 2001. Both were aimed at New York’s financial center, came as the culmination of a series of similar attacks, and triggered mass reprisals against the suspected culprits. Though the earlier attack is interesting on its own merits, the similarities between it and the more recent one give it added emotional and intellectual heft.
Gage has done exhaustive research, and it shows. The book is meticulously detailed, drawing extensively on newspaper accounts and private sources. She opens with the 1920 blast at Wall and Broad Streets in New York City, then traces the “story of dynamite” back to the Haymarket blast of 1886. Along the way, we meet a cast of characters that includes anarchists Emma Goldman and Bill Haywood, investigators William J. Flynn and William J. Burns, and the bankers of the House of Morgan.
The Day Wall Street Exploded is good scholarly writing–Gage does her sources justice and definitely leaves no stone unturned. She faces many challenges: there is no sympathetic, or even riveting character around whom the narrative can turn. Outside of sympathy for the victims of the blast, it’s difficult to connect with anyone. The anarchists don’t seem to have much of a plan except for murder and mob rule, while the investigators come off as mostly incompetent or misguided. Given that the investigation itself didn’t follow a single linear, logical path and didn’t lead to a dramatic trial, the process itself doesn’t inspire much suspense or tension.
All in all, this will be a good read for students of the period and of labor history. It’s probably not going to be accessible to lay readers in the same was as, say, Howard Blum’s American Lightning, but it’s a valuable contribution to the literature.