degree. Salsedo said “I do not want to die. We have done nothing, but
we are in a trap. What are we to do? I will admit that I printed_
PLAIN WORDS, _because I cannot stand any more, and maybe I will help
myself.”..._
_On the next day we were questioned by Mr. Flynn. Salsedo said that
he had printed the leaflet in May 1919; that I had nothing to do with
it; that it had been ordered by one Recchi. I stated that I had seen
Salsedo printing it, but had nothing to do with it...._
_After that we were not formally questioned any more and we were very
well treated. A room was fitted up for us with two beds. We had good
meals; we were taken out for walks; once we were taken to the movies.
When any one asked me if I was content or if I was willing to stay at
the Department of Justice I always said “Yes,” because I did not want
to go to prison and I thought that all depended upon the good will of
the agents...._
_Mr. Donato came to see us frequently. So did Salsedo’s wife, who
sought to tranquillize him. But Salsedo was always despondent and in
fear. He would say, “We who are innocent, are in jail. Maybe those
who are guilty are out there in freedom.” I would tell him that we
would be free, but he did not believe it. He would lie groaning and
lamenting all the night. He complained continually of pains in his
stomach and head. He was always nervous. He refused absolutely to
eat. He showed clear signs of an unbalancing mind...._
_On the evening of Sunday, May 2nd, Salsedo walked a little with me
in the corridor as was our custom. He went to bed about nine o’clock.
Then I sat with the Department of Justice agents who were smoking
and telling stories. About eleven o’clock I came into our room with
Palmera the interpreter. Salsedo begged me to turn off the light; he
said “I have a terrible headache. That cigarette you gave me hurt
me.”_
_I went to bed. For a long time I heard Salsedo groaning and
lamenting. Then I fell asleep. I know nothing more until I was
awakened by the watchman who came to call us every morning between
five and six o’clock so that we should be up before the cleaning
women came to the offices. I said “Is it not early?” He answered,
“Your comrade is dead. He has jumped from the window.”_
To the anarchist groups of New York, New Jersey, and New England the
detention of Elia and Salsedo was ominous. Tresca, who had succeeded
the deported Galleani as leader, consulted with Donato, but was
unable to see the men. He suspected the lawyer of back-hand dealings
with the Department of Justice.
On Sunday afternoon, April 25, fifteen or twenty of the East Boston
anarchists, meeting in their hall overlooking the docks, discussed
what they could do for Elia and Salsedo. Sacco, Vanzetti, and
Orciani were present. Ever since they had learned of their comrades’
mysterious detention these men had been raising money and sending it
on without, however, knowing just where it was going. Somebody from
Boston, they now decided, must go to New York and find out what
was happening. Vanzetti, being self-employed and having no family
responsibilities, was chosen. He left that evening on the train.
In New York he found that Tresca could give him little new
information. Luigi Quintiliano, the chairman of a committee to defend
Palmer raid victims, warned Vanzetti that there would soon be more
raids and urged him to tell his Massachusetts friends to get rid of
any anarchist literature they might possess.
Vanzetti passed on this warning when he returned to Boston, but about
Salsedo and Elia he had no more to tell than was known before.
In spite of the Attorney General’s prediction that a gigantic bomb
plot and general strike would erupt on May Day, the day was for the
most part a quiet one all over the country. Palmer’s zeal produced
only a few victims, among them members of the Association of Harvard
Clubs who, marching in Washington behind their crimson banners, found
themselves mistaken for a Red parade. Public opinion began to turn
against the Attorney General, even as his shadow still loomed large
over the alien radicals.
At their Sunday meeting on May 2, the East Boston Anarchists were
not aware of any change in the public temper. To them the times
seemed desperate, with the possibility of a police ambush at the next
corner. Most of their talk was about getting rid of their anarchist
literature. Orciani, who had recently seen Boda, reported that the
latter still owned a car; he thought they might use it for rounding
up the literature. Sacco suggested that he and Vanzetti and Orciani
should meet with Boda some time early in the week. Vanzetti reminded
everyone that there would be a meeting in Brockton on May 9 to raise
money for Salsedo and Elia.
After the meeting Sacco told Vanzetti that on the ninth he and his
family would be on their way to Italy. He suggested that Vanzetti
come back to Stoughton with him for a last visit. Vanzetti promised
to come down the following afternoon.
Monday morning Vanzetti visited the Boston piers but found that fish
was still scarce and too expensive for his pushcart customers. He had
lunch with some Italian friends near Haymarket Square and heard the
news of Salsedo’s death. Late in the afternoon he took the train for
Stoughton.
Only Rosina and the child were at the bungalow when he arrived. Sacco
had quit his job on Saturday, but had gone back to the factory to
help break in a new man. He returned just after five o’clock.
Tuesday morning Sacco had to go in to Boston to the Italian
Consulate for his passport. Vanzetti spent the day reading. After
Sacco had picked up the passport he rode out to Hyde Park on the el
to meet Orciani, who had come down from Readville on his motorcycle.
They talked again about the books and pamphlets that had to be
collected, and Orciani said they could arrange with Boda to get the
car the next evening. He gave Sacco a ride back to Stoughton. As they
chugged into the yard of the bungalow they saw young George Kelley,
the factory superintendent, who lived next door. Sacco introduced him
to Orciani. They stood there a few minutes talking about motorcycles
and the weather. Orciani said he would be over again next afternoon.
On Wednesday Sacco stayed home all day. He and Vanzetti chopped
wood in the morning, had lunch, took a walk, and then sat down in
the kitchen while Rosina went on with the packing. Vanzetti said
afterward that he happened to notice several shotgun shells on top of
the kitchen cabinet. Rather than see them thrown out he put them in
his pocket, thinking he might sell them to some comrade in Plymouth
and perhaps make a quarter for the cause.
Orciani arrived on his motorcycle about half past four, the elusive
Boda in the sidecar. Boda told them he had telephoned the garage man
about his car; they could pick it up that evening. After the four ate
supper, Orciani and Boda left on the motorcycle, having agreed to
meet Sacco and Vanzetti at Elm Square in West Bridgewater.
Sacco and Vanzetti caught the 7:20 streetcar for Brockton. There they
found they had to wait for the Bridgewater car. It was growing dark.
Vanzetti went into a store on Main Street and bought several cigars.
Then the two men had a cup of coffee in a lunchroom. While they drank
it Vanzetti took out a paper and pencil and began to write the notice
for the Sunday meeting in Brockton.
He continued to work on it after they boarded the Bridgewater car.
Just before they reached West Bridgewater he gave the notice to
Sacco and told him it was ready for the printer. At the Elm Square
they waited a while under the street light by the Johnson brothers’
garage, which was shut. Then, after starting toward Bridgewater, they
turned back, recrossed the square, and walked in the direction of
Brockton. As they reached the railroad bridge they saw the solitary
beam of a motorcycle headlight snaking toward them.
FOOTNOTES:
[2] According to his teacher, no one in Milford ever believed Sacco
was guilty of murder. After his arrest the Italian community ran
benefits to raise money for his defense. It also contributed to his
funeral expenses.
[3] The most sensational of the anarchist criminal groups in this
century was the Bonnot Gang of Paris. In December 1911, the members
attacked two bank messengers on the street, shot one, grabbed their
bags, and made off in a waiting car in what was apparently the
world’s first motorized holdup.
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE PLYMOUTH TRIAL
The first of the East Boston comrades to visit the Brockton police
station was Professor Felice Guadagni, a graduate of the Institute
of Naples and editor of the _Gazzetta del Massachusetts_. He was
proud of being an educated man and in spite of his anarchism liked to
call himself and have others call him Professor. He found that his
two friends did not seem to understand the reason for their arrest.
Vanzetti told him with a shrug that even if they were going to be
deported now, they would at least go to Italy at Uncle Sam’s expense.
The point of Katzmann’s opaque questioning was suddenly clear when
Guadagni explained that they were being held, not because they were
anarchists, not for running away to Mexico during the war, but
because they were accused of murder.
When the news of Vanzetti’s predicament reached Plymouth, Vincenzo
Brini gathered his friends together to decide what to do. Like most
aliens they felt confused when faced with governmental authority.
Whenever such difficulties came up in North Plymouth—troubles with
police or courts or town officials—the Italian community turned to
Doviglio Govoni. Govoni, the Plymouth court interpreter, was also the
local fixer. He knew English, he knew the judges and the district
attorney and the sheriff, he knew the routine of the town hall and
the heads of the various departments, most of whom he called by their
first names. Whether it was a tax abatement, a couple of boys caught
robbing a fruit store, a matter of filing first papers, or getting a
runaway son out of the Navy, Govoni was the man to go to.
After Govoni had listened to Brini and the others, he told them
straight off that they must get rid of their lawyer, Callahan. What
they needed was a good smart lawyer, like Judge John Vahey of the
district court. Not only did Vahey know his way around Plymouth, but
his brother was a big Boston attorney who might come in handy in case
things didn’t turn out right.
Vanzetti’s friends agreed. They and Govoni went down to the Brockton
station the following evening with a declaration of discharge. They
explained to Vanzetti that they would do everything they could for
him, but that they needed a lawyer they had confidence in. Vanzetti,
though he had come to like Callahan, signed the declaration.
Meanwhile Sacco’s comrades had engaged a Boston lawyer, James
Graham. An Irish Catholic, Graham had built up a large practice in
the Italian North End, where he was noted for his ability to get on
with politicians and to get his clients off. The latters’ guilt or
innocence did not concern him. He assumed that most of the Italians
who came to him in trouble were troublemakers.
Harding’s positive identification of Vanzetti as the Bridgewater
shotgun bandit had been enough to convince Chief Stewart, and on May
11 he filed a complaint in the Brockton police court charging that
Vanzetti “being armed with a dangerous weapon did assault Alfred
E. Cox with intent to rob him.” That same afternoon, to Stewart’s
disgust, Orciani had to be released, since his time card showed that
he had been at work in Norwood on the date of both crimes.
The preliminary hearing on the Bridgewater charge against Vanzetti
was held in the Brockton police court before Judge Herbert Thorndike
on May 18, 1920.[4] Graves, the truck driver, who had thought the
bandit car a Hudson, had died in the interim, but Cox the paymaster,
Bowles the guard, and Slip Harding appeared as witnesses for the
Commonwealth. The three still described the man with the shotgun as
having a cropped mustache but picked out the droop-mustached Vanzetti
as the man. Bowles and Cox, who had been vague when they first saw
Vanzetti in the police station, had by this time become much more
positive. “I think he looks enough like the man to be the man,” Cox
told the court, although under cross-examination he admitted that he
was still not completely sure. Bowles was sure. “That is the man who
had the shotgun that morning,” he said.
Harding remained as certain about Vanzetti as he had been at the
station, but the car he had originally described as a Hudson Six had
now firmly become a Buick. In addition to the three repeaters the
Commonwealth had a new witness, a Mrs. Georgina Brooks, who a few
minutes before the Bridgewater attempt had been walking down Broad
Street with her five-year-old son. She had crossed just in front of
the bandit car and had noticed the four men inside. The driver had
followed her with his eyes as she passed. Now she picked Vanzetti as
the man she had seen behind the wheel of the car. “I am positive,”
she said.
Vahey having not bothered to produce any defense witnesses, Judge
Thorndike held Vanzetti for action by the grand jury, and on June
11 two indictments were found against him: for assault with intent
to rob, and assault with intent to murder. At the conclusion of the
May preliminary hearing Assistant District Attorney Kane told the
court that he had witnesses who would positively identify Vanzetti in
connection with the South Braintree murders. On learning this, Judge
Thorndike refused to admit Vanzetti to bail and remanded him to the
Plymouth county jail. His trial was scheduled for June 22.
In the intervening weeks Vanzetti continued to insist that he had
spent December 24, the day of the Bridgewater attempt, delivering
eels to his customers in North Plymouth. Among Catholics the day
before Christmas is a fast day, and among Italians it ends in a feast
that always includes eels. Even the poorest or the most free-thinking
of Italian families manages to have eels on that traditional day.
Brini rounded up several dozen witnesses to testify that they had
bought eels from Vanzetti or seen him with his pushcart the day
before Christmas.
Sacco’s lawyer, Graham, became associated with Vahey in Vanzetti’s
defense. Six years afterward, while in Charlestown State Prison,
Vanzetti wrote a pamphlet, “Background of the Plymouth Trial,”
denouncing both his Plymouth lawyers. One of his chief complaints was
that Vahey had refused to allow him to testify in his own behalf.
Vanzetti wrote that when they discussed the matter,
_He asked me how I would explain from the stand the meaning of
Socialism, or Communism, or Bolshevism, if I was requested by the
district attorney to do so. At such a query, I would begin an
explanation on those subjects, and Mr. Vahey would cut it off at its
very beginning._
“_Hush, if you will tell such things to the ignorant, conservative
jurors, they will send you to State prison right away._”
Graham set down his version thirty years later. According to it he
and Vahey went to the Plymouth jail one evening and spent hours
discussing whether or not Vanzetti should take the stand. Graham
said he told Vanzetti that when a defendant failed to testify in
Massachusetts he was usually found guilty.
_Vanzetti [Graham wrote] was carefully advised as to the evidence
that had gone in as to what inference the Jury might draw if he
failed to take the stand despite what the Judge would tell them in
his charge, and as to what information might be elicited from him if
he did take the stand. “But you,” Vahey told him, “are the one who
has got to make the decision as to whether you will testify or not.”_
Sacco had been moved to the Dedham jail and Vahey, at Vanzetti’s
request, went there to discuss the matter with him. When he returned,
Vanzetti, according to Graham, said in substance: “I don’t think I
can improve upon the alibi which has been established. I had better
not take the stand.”
Vanzetti was sure afterward that he had been betrayed, and attacked
Vahey in the bitter language of his pamphlet. Part of his bitterness
was undoubtedly caused by the fact that in 1924 Vahey became
Katzmann’s law partner.
* * * * *
May passed into June. Except among the Italians of North Plymouth and
the small anarchist circle in East Boston, Vanzetti’s forthcoming
trial caused little interest. There was a flurry in June when the
Boston _Sunday Advertiser_ reported—it later turned out to be a
newspaperman’s hoax—that a letter, signed the “Red X Society,” had
been found near Plymouth Rock demanding Vanzetti’s release “or
take the consequences.” But for most people the trial was just a
routine affair coming at the end of the spring criminal session.
The newspapers and public were much more interested in the trial of
Jennie Zimmerman in Springfield, accused of murdering her cousin and
lover, Dr. Henry Zimmerman.
Although Chief Stewart had received a setback with Orciani’s release,
he still stuck to his theory that the deported Coacci and the missing
Boda had been mixed up in both crimes. Boda, he was convinced, was
the man who had appeared at Hassam’s garage in Needham looking for
license plates. But Boda had successfully vanished. Actually, during
all the time the police were looking for him, he was living quietly
with friends in East Boston. In August he moved on to Portsmouth, New
Hampshire, where he stayed for two months, then went to Providence
where—under his old name of Buda—he received a passport from the
Italian vice-consul and returned to Italy. Several attempts were made
later to induce him to come back to Massachusetts and testify for
Sacco and Vanzetti, but each time he refused, maintaining that his
life would be in danger.
When Stewart went to North Plymouth and searched Vanzetti’s room
at 35 Cherry Street, he discovered nothing except odds and ends
of clothing. He took away a black coat, a shirt, a sweater, and a
brown cloth cap. An earlier search of Sacco’s bungalow in Stoughton
had produced a gray cap and a rifle, along with a few books and
a few anarchist pamphlets that Rosina had neglected to burn. In
Joseph Ventola’s garage in Hyde Park the police turned up a box that
had belonged to Coacci. It contained forty dollars’ worth of shoe
material stolen from Slater & Morrill. Of the missing South Braintree
payroll there was no trace anywhere.
* * * * *
Vanzetti’s trial began in the second-floor courtroom of the
brick-pilastered Plymouth courthouse on Tuesday, June 22, with the
selection of the jury. This ran off quickly. There were no challenges
by either side, even though one of the jurymen, Arthur Nickerson,
a foreman at the Cordage, might well have been challenged by the
defense. Vahey and Graham were opposed by District Attorney Katzmann
and Assistant District Attorney Kane. Judge Webster Thayer presided.
At the opening of the trial Judge Thayer was within two weeks of
being sixty-three, although the leathery texture of his face made him
seem a decade older. He was about five feet two inches tall, with
the edgy vanity of many short men, and a voice that easily turned
petulant. On the bench he looked the part of a judge. He had a high
forehead, a sudden little hawk nose bridged by pince-nez, thin gray
hair and mustache, dark-circled eyes, and a narrow Yankee line of
mouth. Governor Samuel McCall, a fellow graduate of Dartmouth, had
appointed him to the bench in 1917.
Thayer was born in Blackstone, Massachusetts, twenty-five miles south
of Worcester, the son of the local slaughterer and provisions dealer.
After going through the local public schools and Worcester Academy,
he entered Dartmouth with the class of 1880. Known there as Bobby,
he was more noted as an athlete than a scholar. While a sophomore
he organized the first college baseball nine and was its captain for
three years. Once he was suspended for a half-year as the result
of a rowdy prank, but he returned to graduate with his class. His
undergraduate pictures show a fair-haired young man with a sprouting
mustache, a quizzical expression, and eyes so deep-set that they seem
almost hooded.
On graduation he briefly considered going in for big-league baseball,
but instead returned to Worcester, where for two years he read law on
his own. He was admitted to the bar in 1882. For the next thirty-five
years he remained in that small city, rising higher in its restricted
social world than might have been expected of a butcher’s son. He
married early and well. He became an Odd Fellow, chairman of the
Worcester Athletic Association, and a member of the Dartmouth Alumni
Council. Indicative of his popularity, he was elected a Democratic
alderman in Republican Worcester, the youngest alderman the city ever
had. Later he conformed more strictly to his social group and became
a Republican. His greatest regret, for which his appointment as
Superior Court Justice was only partial solace, was that he had not
been young enough to join the Army in 1917.
Webster Thayer—the Anglo-Saxon coupling had a bell-like resonance
in which were blended the Mayflower tradition and that of the young
federal republic. Yet there was a hollowness to the ring, as the
butcher’s son well knew. Thayer, even as a justice of the Superior
Court, was haunted by an inner sense of doubt that made him seek the
approbation of other men, constantly, uncritically. In his three
years on the bench he appeared a run-of-the-mill justice, causing no
particular attention adversely or otherwise. The court attendants
noted his irascibility, and his vanity came out in a fondness for
buttonholing lawyers in the corridor to tell them about the charge
he had just written. As an old-line Yankee, he had no great sympathy
with foreigners, but no one had ever questioned his fairness.
Other than Vanzetti’s Italian neighbors and a couple of cub reporters
from the Boston papers, there were scarcely any spectators at the
trial. The routine was the same each morning. Vanzetti was brought in
handcuffed and taken to the prisoner’s box in the center of the room,
where his handcuffs were unfastened. Then Vahey and Graham conferred
with him, and the set melancholy face with the drooping mustache
would take on a momentary animation. Katzmann and Kane always nodded
affably to the defense lawyers as they came in. Then there was a
wait of several minutes until Judge Thayer appeared, consciously
delaying the daily drama of his entry, sweeping over the threshold
in his black robe, inwardly satisfied that the room was standing for
his presence and would remain standing until he took his seat. The
crier intoned: “Hear ye, hear ye. All persons having anything to
do before the Honorable Justices of the Superior Court now sitting
at Plymouth within and for the County of Plymouth, draw near, give
your attendance and you shall be heard. God save the Commonwealth of
Massachusetts!”
With his intoning, the ritual of the court took over. The actuality
of the outside world, the muted summer noises of the town entering
with the sea air through the open oval-topped windows, became less
real than this legal world where all action had been reduced to
verbalizations. Symbolic in more than one sense was the statue of
Justice in a niche of the courthouse, holding up her gilded scales
and covered by a protective layer of chicken-wire.
During none of the trial sessions was there discussion of Vanzetti’s
political beliefs. The prosecution’s case was merely an elaboration
of the preliminary hearing. The district attorney relied chiefly on
the primary identification witnesses—Bowles, Cox, Harding, and Mrs.
Brooks—reinforcing them with corroborative evidence that would in
itself have been insufficient even to indict. Bowles still maintained
that Vanzetti was the man with the shotgun, but the mustache he had
earlier described as close-cropped now became merely trimmed. Cox
denied that he had said, on seeing Vanzetti in Brockton, “I think
there is doubt.” Even now, though he had become much more certain, he
was not wholly sure of his identification, and the best that Katzmann
could get out of him was “I am not positive but I feel certain he is
the man.”