“We recommend most earnestly that if you wish to engage in this line of work, you procure, before all else, a sufficient amount of money, otherwise you risk being put out in the middle of the street, only to find your long work and trouble all in vain. We recommend at the same time that you do not omit any precaution necessary to avoid attracting the attention of the police, and avoid mixing with the public, nor be seen with known companions. And do not work at it in the house except when necessary....
“The work should be done in a well ventilated room provided with a good chimney place and furnished in such a way that you can hide things if anyone enters, and this room ought to be on the top floor of the house on account of the odors that are always being produced....
“Above all we recommend that you never make explosives for the mere pleasure of making them. All you do beyond enough is useless and stupid—especially so when you have neither the practice nor the proper means for making them. As to the place to keep the dynamite, why make it until it is needed? Take heed that among the various kinds of explosives, bombs, etc., always choose the one that will be most easily used and most practical, remembering always that it is better to do a little thing well than to leave a big thing half done....”
The little booklet contained a list of the necessary tools with their estimated costs, and said of the chemicals to be used, “The materials to be employed should be sufficiently pure. They may be had of dealers in chemical and pharmaceutical products, and it is well not to buy all the stuff from the same merchant, in order that he may not know what you wish to make....” It explained the relative forces of explosives in this way: “The relative force which the various explosives have is as follows: Shot-gun powder has a force of 1; an equal amount of ‘Panclastite’ has the force of 6; of dynamite 7; of dry gun-cotton 9 (if with 50% of salts of nitre, 5); of nitroglycerine 9; of fulminate of mercury 10 or 3½; of nitromannite 11.... All the other explosives of which we speak, such as melenite, etc., have nitroglycerine for their bases, therefore have no greater force than that of nitroglycerine.”
After an exposition of the method of making nitroglycerine—the mere reading of which would make your hair bristle—the compilers conclude “... it is not very dangerous to use when cold, notwithstanding all that has been said. It would be a great work if some American manufacturer would devise some means of congealing it so that it would be less sensitive to shock, so that it might safely be carried on the railways.” Of fulminating cotton they remark, “As it ignites with instantaneous rapidity it is best to use a fuse that burns the most quickly; for example, when for use in bombs made to throw at a person, it will be enough to twist the cord, etc., etc.” Minute directions are given for the home-laboratory manufacture of the explosives listed, and the experimenter who cared to attempt their manufacture was warned in the simplest and most emphatic terms of the caprices of the different materials. He was told how to make cord-fuses that would burn at the rate of 8 hours to the yard, and of 6 hours to the yard; paper fuses which would reach the explosive two hours after a spark had touched the corner of a sheet of prepared paper; thread fuses which would sparkle fifteen seconds to the metre, or three minutes to the metre; and, finally, an instantaneous fuse which “Because it will burn with all the speed of electricity ... may be made to serve many important purposes: to fire a mine under a passing train, under gatherings, or troops of cavalry.”
If the bomber wished to blow up a wall, he was told how to compute by simple mathematics the quantity of explosive required. A bridge “will require twice the charge needed for a wall”—and the vulnerable points of the bridge were indicated. Telephone and telegraph poles and wires, street gratings, street railways, locomotives, steam-boilers, all came in for their share of attention. “It is very easy to find suitable receptacles for bombs,” the writer went on. “For example, large inkwells, brass handles such as are used on letter-presses.... For certain purposes a bottle may be made to serve as a bomb—they are suitable for throwing from a window.... Fragile glass bottles when filled with this solution (an incendiary mixture) make handy incendiary bombs to hurl among troops, official gatherings, etc.; also to pour from windows upon troops, or to throw from a drinking glass or pail....” I have wondered whether Gavrio Prinzip of Sarajevo ever saw this book, and whether it may not have been translated into Italian from the original German.
Mere possession of this wicked treatise would suggest that the owner was up to no good, especially if the owner, as in this case, was known to be a volatile member of an anarchistic circle who had already declared his intentions of wrecking something. It was reasonable to assume that there must be such a book of instruction in existence, that the bombers had not been handling delicate explosives with no better knowledge than word-of-mouth, hearsay chemistry, but I am free to confess that my first sight of the pamphlet brought the plots of the men we were watching very close to grim reality. I never knew just when we would get an ambulance call and have to go and pick Polignani out of the wreck of a premature explosion, and I never heard him report in on the telephone that I didn’t experience a momentary apprehension of his latest news. The detective himself was calm enough, and enthusiastic over the fact that the trail was growing hotter all the time. The question of evidence of the previous explosions was in the background now, and the activities of the Brescia Circle as a political unit did not concern us nearly as much as the activities of three of its members with their “andimonio, collorate di potase” and their pamphlet, and their hatred of the Catholic Church.
Polignani had seen this hatred demonstrated many times by Carbone. They passed two Sisters of Charity one chilly evening near the Harlem station, and the anarchist spat, and cursed them. So the detective was not surprised by Abarno’s proposal on the night of St. Valentine’s Day that the three conspirators plant their bombs in St. Patrick’s Cathedral. “We’ll go over there some day soon and look for a good place to set them. And then we’ll plant the bomb on some good holiday—say on March 21, eh?”
“What’s that day?” Polignani inquired.
“The Commune!” Abarno answered.
Polignani bought the antimony and the chlorate of potash, and at a subsequent meeting watched uneasily while Carbone tried to pulverize the antimony with a hammer. It was too hard work, however, and “Baldo” was directed to buy a small quantity of the pulverized substance. This he did. The three had meanwhile been trying to pick out a good room in an English-speaking lodging house in 29th Street, but finally gave it up and hired a furnished room at 1341 Third Avenue. There they brought their materials, consisting of twelve yards of copper wire, a trunk full of odds and ends, tools, fuse cord, and various ingredients. To this supply they wanted to add some hollow iron balls, but the hollow iron ball market was sparse, and they finally substituted three tin hand-soap cans. On February 27 Polignani and Abarno made a tour of inspection of St. Patrick’s, and as they were descending the steps Abarno remarked that when he had destroyed the Cathedral they would turn their attention first to the Carnegie residence at 90th Street and Fifth Avenue, and then to the Rockefeller home. “We won’t wait till March 21,” he observed impatiently. “Let’s get this job done soon. Say Tuesday morning.”
