ABSTRACT
The events and emerging organizations of the 1890s clearly indicated that, at times, the nation began taking a radical turn, and acts of labor violence and anarchist terrorism grew increasingly common. Emerging out of labor and the left's discontent with Gilded Age and Progressive Era disparities were explicit organizations and approaches on the left that more regularly and openly advocated violence, sabotage, and "direct action". Certainly, the Socialist Labor Party, Socialist Party of America, and later the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) formed a complex network of organizations, radicals, organizers, and agitators that rank-and-file Americans may have feared, and the events during the decade before the San Francisco bombing seemed to only confirm a growing discontent. Caldwell's socialist local formally denounced "the attempt of the Capitalist press of the country to pre-judge the case by calling our comrades 'assassins', 'murders', 'conspirators', and so on.
