DAGO RED
I
Snow in the air, whirled here and there by unpurposed winds; snow on
the ground, thrown back from sidewalks and turning them into trenches.
Guards and policemen, pacing in front of the cordage company gates,
making long puffs of steam as they breathed; and workers, huddled on
the other side of the road, stamping their feet and dancing about,
blowing on their fingers or tucking them under their arms. Sky lowering
and light dim--it seemed a good time to be indoors, yet nobody went.
In leather arm-chairs in the Union Club of Boston were comfortable old
gentlemen who had agreed to pay the guards five dollars a day and board
at the hotel, to stand in the cold and drive strikers back from the
gates; while the strikers had the hope that by standing in sufficient
numbers and with sufficient menace they might get a dollar more in
their pay envelopes every Thursday; also the certainty that if they
gave up and went away, some yet hungrier wretches would sneak in and
take their jobs. So the two groups confronted each other, the living
presence of the class struggle. “Get back there! Move along now!”
“What’s the matter? Ain’t I got a right to walk on the street?” So it
went, the ceaseless wrangling of the picket-line; the most perfect of
all civilizations engaged in dividing the product of its industry.
Two thousand had gone out, men and women, a huddled mass, speaking a
dozen different languages, and without guidance. Whoever had an impulse
towards leadership, a theory as to how labor might be aided, now found
his chance; the unorganized mass began to grow organs--a miracle of
mutation while you watched. The socialists had a meeting-place in North
Plymouth, Rispicci Hall, and this was thrown open, and was swarming
with strikers. Impromptu meetings were held, and committees named, and
speeches made. In the evening came the sympathizers and propagandists,
summoned hastily from Boston; Felice Guadagni, a journalist, orator of
the socialists, and Paul Blanshard, a very young assistant clergyman
from a Congregational church. There was a bigger meeting-place,
Humberto Ferrari Hall, and this was packed to the doors, and the eager
audience learned in several languages the meaning of solidarity, and
the details of how to conduct a strike.
First of all they must get up a circular and mail it out to lists of
names, and raise funds for support. The greater number of these workers
lived close to the border-line of want, and their money would soon be
gone. Those who had savings would contribute, and more would come from
the labor movement outside. On the first day a hundred strikers put up
five dollars each; which would pay for rent and telephone calls and
telegrams, stamps and typewriters. The socialists and anarchists and
I. W. W. brought their mailing-lists, and a feeble little machine of
working-class publicity began to function.
Next day there was a parade; eighteen hundred workers marching the
whole length of the main street of Plymouth, passing the cordage
company’s plant, despite all the guards and the “cops.” Three days
later came another parade, twice as big, with women and children
carrying poles from which dangled clams and mussels, with the sign, “We
are tired of living on these all the time!” That amused the newspaper
reporters, and brought good publicity.
Organizers came: one representing the American Federation of Labor,
the conservative union, which was ready to help them get shorter hours
and higher wages; also one from the Industrial Workers of the World,
which would help them to take over the cordage industry. The strikers
listened to both, and were pulled and hauled between them; their minds
being still further confused by the anarchists, who clamored that both
organizations were traps for the workers, contrived by shrewd officials
who wanted to live without working. Let the workers run their own
strike, and let those who sympathized be content to raise funds and
feed the children.
So thought and spoke Bartolomeo Vanzetti. In this crisis he forgot his
timidity and humility, and developed into a full-fledged orator. So did
many another worker, who found himself making a speech before he knew
it. You would get into an argument with some one, and others would
gather to listen, and soon there would be a crowd. When the cops drove
you off the picket-line, you would stop at the next street-corner and
voice your indignation, and when they moved you on, you would stop at
the corner beyond that. There were always plenty willing to listen;
it was the process by which the workers got their education, and
developed their solidarity. You would learn more in one day of idleness
than in a month of labor. In this crisis realities were unveiled, and
you saw them in their nakedness. If there was anything you could not
understand, there were others willing to explain. In the day by day
consulting among the workers, it was surprising how clear everything
became.
II
Not so many years ago, though it now seemed ages to Cornelia Thornwell,
there had been a strike in the Thornwell Mills, and it had been broken
in the usual way. But Cornelia’s husband had sent her away to the
country-place of their daughter Deborah on the North Shore; so she
had not heard the shouts of the mob and the crack of revolvers, nor
seen the guards patrolling the family mansion on the hilltop. All she
knew were newspaper accounts, and the pictures, drawn by Josiah and
his son-in-law James Scatterbridge, of the desperate unreason of the
strikers. One cause of her evolving into a runaway grandmother had been
a lurking suspicion that their way of breaking a strike had not been
entirely ethical.
And now here she was, in position to see with her own eyes; if she
needed theories, here were A. F. of L. and I. W. W., socialists,
anarchists, syndicalists, right and left wingers, even a few
single-taxers and vegetarians. In the strike headquarters she met
the young clergyman, Paul Blanshard; a new kind of clergyman, with a
religion meant to work here and now. He was barely out of his teens,
yet he saw the whole struggle so clearly that Cornelia felt herself his
junior. He had got his training through the Intercollegiate Socialist
Society; and as she watched the effect of his leadership upon the inert
mass, a new vision dawned upon her. The idea of the workers taking over
industry and running it for themselves had seemed a fanatic’s dream;
but now she began to wonder, might it not after all be possible--some
day in the far-off future?
To her friend Vanzetti it was a cause of grief that she was seen to
be talking with this young clergyman. Vanzetti had taken her for his
pupil and favorite, this unusual Yankee lady who was willing to learn
from an Italian; and here she was falling into the snares of the
“riformistas”! Again and again he explained to her what a waste of time
it was to deal with “politeesh.” He struggled with long polysyllables,
half way between Italian and English. “Twenty year, t’irty year,
worker go politica, elect deputati for parliament--get elect’, do
notting, traditor’, sell out! Sama t’ing wit’ union, worka hard, maka
bigga union, grande, potente--never do notting--joosta graft! All
rispettabilità, onorevole--you onderstanda me? Worker, he work joosta
same--all time. Politeesh, he no work, liva good, dressa genteelman!
He is like--I no can say Eengleesh, it is somet’ing in ocean, he get
on ship, on shell of crab--” and Vanzetti resorted to his dictionary
for the word “barnacool,” so that he might apply it to the rosy-cheeked
young Congregational clergyman. Yes, the Reverend Blanshard would find
a place on the backs of the workers, and stay there like the rest! “You
see, Nonna, he joosta sama priest--new kinda talk, but all sama for
worker. Riformista is--what you call it--trait’!”
“Traitor,” said Cornelia.
“Shoore, trait’,” replied Vanzetti.
The State Board of Arbitration and Conciliation took up the grievances
of the cordage workers, proposing to adjust them. And here was the
trap in action--to lure the workers into the hands of “politeesh”
and “offeesh.” The more conservative strike leaders insisted upon
presenting their case before this board, and Vanzetti opposed them
with all his energies. He rushed about from one gathering to another,
arguing, protesting; when he saw that the proposition was going to
carry, he became frantic, and there was another row between him and
Compagno Culla.
The socialist was trying to explain the wishes of the Italians to the
English-speaking workers, when Vanzetti climbed onto the platform and
thrust the speaker away. “Worker, have notting do wit’ commish! It is
trap! It is for breaka strike! It is for maka slave! It is for bringa
you, for bringa wife, bambini, for be slave for cordage companee! Why
musta worker get politeesh for settle strike? Why musta get go-vérnment
for settle strike? Why musta have owtoritee? Always owtoritee for
worker! But let worker settle strika for self. Soocha man lika dis--”
and Vanzetti pointed an enraged finger at Culla--“soocha man is trait’
for worker--he is more bad as capitalista--”
There was a storm of controversy, some shouting on one side, some
on the other. But the majority did not want to listen to anarchist
propaganda just then; they called for Compagno Culla, and he got the
floor again, and shook his fist at his rival and demanded: “Why for he
talk owtoritee? Anarchista no like owtoritee, he tella you; but I tella
you anarchista is heemself owtoritee! He taka da platform, he maka da
speech, he musta have hisa way or he maka da vee-ólence! Is it not so,
comradda?”
III
The great rich company, the biggest cordage company in the world, which
now in the second year of the great war was doing more business and
making more money than ever in its history before, sent its officials
before the state board to argue that wages of six dollars a week for
unskilled women and nine dollars for unskilled men were abundant and
generous. It proved that this meant an average wage of twenty-five
dollars a week per family, by the simple device of having fathers and
mothers and half-grown children all at work--which was the best thing
for them, because it kept them from idleness and dissipation. The
strikers countered by putting on the witness-stand the head of one of
these families, John Corsini, who had a wife and nine children, the
oldest fourteen years of age; John was paid nine dollars a week, and
the interpreter quoted: “He says they sometimes make a meal that would
not be fit for a pig to eat. He is heavily in debt. Goes in debt about
five dollars a week. Friends bring in food and stockings now and then
to help out, otherwise the children couldn’t go out in the street.”
It was shown that in nineteen years past, the company had raised wages
three times, each time only five per cent; while in ten years the
cost of living had gone up more than fifty per cent. This moved the
company, out of the generosity of its corporate heart, to risk another
five per cent increase; more than this would mean inevitable ruin. Its
highly paid lawyers argued, and their eloquence was reproduced in the
newspapers; smooth-tongued agents came among the workers repeating the
arguments, and promising many sorts of favors to leaders who would be
tractable. The most expensive secret-service agency in the world was at
work. Dissension and doubt and fear spread among the pitiful bewildered
masses. The company gave out the announcement that unless its terms
were accepted at once, strike-breakers would be brought in. At the same
time there appeared a number of head-breakers, the state police, who
rode ruthlessly into the crowds.
Also there came autobuses from Boston and other places, with loads
of ordinary policemen; they stood three ranks deep in front of the
gates, and could have joined hands along the three-quarter mile of
steel fence. Any time they saw a crowd gather, they would come at
double-quick. “Move along there now--step lively!” If you tried to
argue as to the rights of people to the use of the streets, they would
not argue back, but jab their clubs into your stomachs or your backs
and run you along. If you failed to run fast enough, you would get a
thump; and next day in the police-court you would be sentenced as a
rioter, and newspapers would tell how the mob was getting out of hand,
and the company was requesting the governor to call out the militia.
But the strikers stood firm; they would not accept five per cent
advance, and, urged on by the radicals, they requested the state
board to withdraw its intervention. The company was worried, because
the agents of other cordage concerns were in Plymouth, hiring away
their best workers. Something must be done; so one or two hundred
“scabs” were got into the plant, around the fence by the seashore,
and an effort was made to start one department. The struggle became
more tense; the picket-lines drew closer, and the rate of Cornelia
Thornwell’s education was speeded up.
A picket-line was no place for an old lady--so her Italian friends
argued and pleaded; but she had come in search of experience, and
insisted upon getting it. The first time she saw an unarmed worker
struck down by a policeman’s club, she gave voice to her indignation:
“Oh, you brute! How dare you!” And when he turned and came at her,
there was a moment before she realized that she was no longer a lady,
able to give orders to a policeman. Only when he thrust his club into
the abdomen of a woman in front of her, and sent the woman reeling
into a snow-bank, did Cornelia realize her danger, and turn and run.
Yes, she, the widow of an ex-governor of the Commonwealth--she who had
lived for forty years in a palace, and been waited upon by servants and
honored by all the world--she ran! And in good earnest, as fast as she
knew how, because the “brute” had heard her cry, and meant to get her
if he could. That she escaped was only because her friend Brini and
others crowded in and took the blows. Incidentally they took the club
from the policeman, and got away with it, and were very proud of the
souvenir!
But that did not comfort Cornelia. The ignominy of her experience had
brought tears of rage into her eyes; she would never forget it, and
for the rest of her life she would be an illustration of the fact,
well-known in the labor movement, that members of the leisure class
who take an interest in the cause are apt to become more radical than
the workers themselves. Of two thousand participants in the Plymouth
cordage strike, only one had ever thought of a policeman as a servant
to whom she might give orders.
Cornelia had been born in Massachusetts, and had lived all her life
there. She had really believed about her state, or commonwealth, as
it prefers to call itself, all the fine things its leaders and rulers
had told her. She had listened to orations about Pilgrim fathers and
New England town-meetings, the cradle of liberty and the hub of the
universe and all the rest. Here she was only forty miles from Boston,
for practical purposes in its suburbs; within sight of Plymouth rock, a
shrine so sacred that it had a miniature temple built over it; and to
her consternation she found herself with no rights that any policeman
or private detective was bound to respect. Unless, of course, she chose
to declare herself, to cease to be a cordage worker on strike, and
become a member of the ruling caste! She went to a police-court, and
heard workers testify as to unprovoked assaults, and heard a judge give
the police a mild rebuke for their conduct; and then she went back to
the picket-line, and saw the same thing going on, precisely as if no
judges or courts existed.
And here was the significant thing--out of several thousand people, she
was the only one who was surprised! The rest, no matter how angry and
excited they became, always mentioned that much worse had happened at
Lawrence and Lowell and Fall River and Milford and a string of other
places! “My gosh, what you t’ink?” said Alfonsina Brini. “You t’ink dey
let worker win strike if can help?” And when Cornelia wanted to know
if the police belonged to the cordage company, her landlady’s response
was, “Who else is it for belong?”
IV
Cornelia, of course, had been on the inside of her city’s affairs, and
she knew the history of the Boston police force. The Irish-Catholics
had carried an election and captured the city; whereupon the old New
England element had passed a state law, taking control of the police
away from Boston, and vesting it in the governor of the Commonwealth,
who was still an Anglo-Saxon gentleman. It was the practice to
rent out this force to neighboring towns; and they had developed a
strike-breaking department, subject to call by all manufacturers and
mill-owners. The force worked hand in glove with the private detective
agencies, exchanging records and information. So had been evolved
a complete technique of labor-smashing; and all in darkness--the
newspapers proceeding upon the principle that what the public didn’t
know wouldn’t hurt it.
Cornelia Thornwell, watching this system in operation, found herself
crying out in bewilderment. How could the rich, her kind of people,
be so blind? How could they overlook the consequences of teaching
the workers such contempt for law? What was the use of talking about
Americanization, when, in a time of crisis, you denied every right of
citizens, and even of human beings? You herded them like cattle, you
beat them like dogs--and then you were surprised and shocked if they
turned and bit you in the back of the leg! Before this month’s strike
was over, Cornelia had come to feel that she would never blame these
working people for anything they might do.
The case of Vanzetti was before her day by day. This dreamer-idealist
was so built that he suffered more with other people’s pains than with
his own. When he half-carried a shuddering body off the picket-line,
and washed a torn and bloody scalp with a basin of water and a rag,
the tears ran down his cheeks, and his hands shook. And then, that
evening, he turned up at the Brini home with a gun! He, the apostle
of brotherhood--the tender-hearted one who had refused to let a sick
kitten be killed--he was getting ready to kill policemen! To be sure
it was not a very efficient weapon, a five-chambered revolver of an
old type, much rusted; and Cornelia could see from the way her friend
handled it that he hardly knew which end was which. When she tried
to dissuade him from his course, Mrs. Brini laughed and told her not
to worry, Bart would not shoot anybody; he had once gone hunting
with another young fellow, who had shot a bird, and Bart had been so
affected by the sight of the dying creature that he had been unhappy
for days, and had never gone hunting again.
“But if he’s not going to use it, why carry it?” protested Cornelia.
“If they catch him with it, they’ll send him to jail surely.”
To which Vanzetti made answer, “When I go jail for worker, I helpa
cause.” Which seemed to Cornelia a dark and obscure saying. How could
it help the cause of the workers, for a poor Italian ditch-digger, whom
nobody had ever heard of, to be sent to jail?
V
The real meaning of the gun was the coming of Galleani. The anarchists
were determined that the fallacious arguments of the “riformistas”
must be answered, and they had summoned their great leader and teacher
to state their side. There was opposition to this among the other
strike-leaders, and at first they refused to have the Galleani meeting
in their hall; they were trying to avoid provocation, not wanting the
newspapers to portray them as extremists. It was only after Galleani
had promised to tone down his utterances and to avoid incitement to
violence that they agreed to let him be heard.
He came to the Brini home the afternoon of the meeting, so Cornelia
got a good look at him: a benevolent and paternal figure, who might
have been dressed up for Santa Claus; broad-shouldered and stout,
dressed in a long frock coat like a clergyman, with an “alderman” in
front, and bushy white whiskers spread above it. He was at once hero
and granddaddy to the Italian workers; they would gaze at him in awe
and call him “Maestro,” and then they would feed him on cakes and wine,
and pat him on the sleeve, and call him “Nonno.” He was their thinker,
their great student, who read everything and knew everything, and told
them about it once a week in their paper, “La Cronaca Sovversiva,” the
“Revolutionary Chronicle,” which had a circulation of ten thousand, the
fighting organ of the Italians of New England. Its elderly editor lived
in honorable poverty, supporting a wife and four children upon a salary
of eight dollars a week, eked out by gifts from those who had more. His
overcoat was frayed, and fastened at the neck with a large safety-pin,
but that did not keep him from being a very dignified gentleman.
In his train came a bodyguard of a score or so of Italian workers, some
of them not yet out of their teens, but all in grim earnest. There were
rumors that the police meant to break up the meeting and arrest the
orator, and these young fellows were here to see about it--every one
with a gun in his overcoat pocket, and some with two, and a dirk for
good measure. Among them was a Jewish lad out of the slums of New York,
at that time employed on a Boston newspaper, and later to be known as
Michael Gold. He saw a dingy New England town, with dirty snow trodden
underfoot and gray clouds overhead turning soon to night, and--so
it seemed to the visitor--not less than a million of policemen. The
little band of rebels came like Daniel into the lion’s den; they were
determined to fight, rather than let their leader be taken. Fortunately
no trouble occurred--else America might have exchanged a proletarian
playwright, a very scarce article, for a revolutionary martyr, of whom
it has had far too many.
Cornelia went with her Italian friends to the meeting. She could not
understand what the orator was saying, but she enjoyed the powerful
vibrant voice, and shared the thrill of the audience; afterwards her
friends would tell her what had been said, for as long as she cared to
listen. Luigi Galleani advised them to build up their moral forces,
opposing to the brutality of the police their iron will to brotherhood
and solidarity. He told them that they were the sole creators of
wealth, and that some day, not so far away, they would take possession
of their own. He told them to beware of self-styled leaders, persons
who set themselves over the masses and presumed to control them. He
told them to free their minds from superstition, reverence for gods
and priests and judges and policemen; for they themselves were their
own gods, their own judges, and the enforcers of their law; that was
right which their conscience and sense of brotherhood justified to
them. Once as a girl in Boston Cornelia had attended a lecture by
a certain well-known Mr. Emerson; she had heard about a queer New
England recluse, Mr. Thoreau, author of a pamphlet entitled, “On the
Duty of Civil Disobedience.” So there was nothing strange to her in
these high-sounding ideas; the only trouble was, that the higher they
sounded, the more difficult it was to bring them down to earth. One
and all, the leaders in this strike preached solidarity, but they were
not able to achieve it among themselves, and so their followers were
scattered and their energies wasted.
VI
The state board was pleading with the workers to accept a ten per cent
raise; and some wanted to say yes, and others no, and some said it was
a trap, because the company had not offered ten and surely the offer
should come before the acceptance! There was more wrangling in the
meetings, and Vanzetti would leap upon the table and shout, “Traditore!
Trait’!” and others would outshout him and drag him down. He would come
home, heartsick, declaring that the spokesman for the Portuguese had
sold out to the companee, and all the sufferings of the strikers were
going for nought.
The strike had lasted a full month, and the workers’ money was
exhausted, and some were sneaking back to work, and the rest were
desperate with fear. The police had come and broken up their meetings
and closed their hall, and what more could they do? The Italians met
secretly, here and there, to decide whether they should trust the
board. All but a few extremists wanted to give up, and it was plain
that these few could never get jobs with the cordage company anyhow.
Cornelia, exhausted by the long ordeal, went home and crept into bed,
and was just falling asleep, when she was disturbed by loud voices
in the house. It was Vanzetti and Culla, with Brini trying to pacify
them. Cornelia was going to sleep in spite of the noise; but suddenly
she heard Vanzetti shout, “Spee-a! Spee-a!” Culla yelled something in
reply, and there was a scuffle and a crash, and Cornelia leaped out of
bed and rushed into the little parlor, to see Vanzetti lying on the
floor, making desperate efforts to get up, but in vain, because the
mighty Brini was on top of him, holding him down. All that could be
seen of Compagno Culla was a pair of coattails disappearing speedily
through a doorway.
Vanzetti promised to behave, and was let up. He was too angry this
time to make apologies to Cornelia. But he told her volubly what
that abbominevole Culla had done; after voting to deliver the
workers back into slavery, he had had the insolence to come here
to the house, to ask for some fifty dollars of relief money, which
Vanzetti had collected from the anarchistas of a neighboring town,
and which Culla, as a member of the strike committee, was supposed
to take over. Vanzetti had refused to give the money up; never would
he trust anything to gialli socialistas, riformistas and traditori
of the working class! He would take the money back to those who had
contributed it, or he would turn it over for the use of some other
strikers. Culla, very angry, had threatened to brand Vanzetti for
malversazione, embezzlement of the workers’ funds; and thereupon
Vanzetti shouted, “Spee-a! Spee-a!”--which is to say, “Spy,” the most
dreadful of all accusations.
Such was the ending of Cornelia’s career as a striker. Next morning she
got up at a quarter to six, and was duly pinned up in her shawl, and
stumbled through the darkness to her place in the wrapping-room of the
cordage plant. The bosses were very polite--good morning, glad to see
you--it was almost like a social function, an extraordinary change.
The workers had shown that they had some power after all, and the
lesson would not be soon forgotten. And the State Board of Arbitration
and Conciliation set to work, and after two months of deliberation it
succeeded in finding a formula which would save the face of the company
officials, enabling them to do what they had declared was impossible.
Cornelia would find more money in her pay-envelope thereafter, and it
seemed quite wonderful--until she stopped and figured that it would
take nearly half a year for the increase to make up what she had lost
during her weeks of idleness. It was the most perfect of social systems.
VII
There was no more work for Vanzetti in or near the cordage plant; his
reckless agitation had cost the company a couple of hundred thousand
dollars a year in extra wages, and so he was stopped when he tried to
pass the gates. Some one set detectives to follow him everywhere he
went. He managed to find himself a job cutting ice: a safe, outdoor
activity, where he was in plain sight, and there was no harm he could
do. So he remarked to Cornelia, with a twinkle in his eye, “I putta
bombe da dinnameet under da ice, he freeze again nexta night queek!”
Ten hours a day he pushed a long saw on an ice-pond, and slid heavy
blocks onto wagons. He liked the work because it was picturesque
and lively, and gave him a chance to look about. He would come home
exhausted, but with adventures to tell. He got himself a pair of
rubber boots; they were expensive, and he was proud of them, and so
was Trando, who could almost get into one of them, and was a comical
spectacle staggering about the room in two. But three days later
Vanzetti came back without these treasures, and at supper-table he
said, “I must get nodder two boot.”
“What’s the matter?” Everybody asked at once. “You lost them?”
“No losta,” said Vanzetti, “butta no got. I take heem off for go wit’
wagon. I come back, see feller, Pietro, you know heem--Guasti, I t’ink
he name.”
“I know heem,” said Brini. “No gooda feller.”
“He poor feller. He got wife, four bambini. No can live soocha familee
for what you get cutta da ice. I see he got my boota, putta heem on for
work. I t’ink I go heem say, ‘You giva me boot, you worka no boot.’ But
I senta shame for do it. I t’ink, Vanzett’, you lonely man, no gotta
bambini for buy suppa, you worka little bit more, get nodder boot.”
Later on, towards spring, came another incident that Cornelia never
forgot. The ice was gone now, and Vanzetti was back at “picka shov’,”
and one day he reported that he had lost his purse on the street.
How much did he have in it? Not sure, but he thought maybe thirteen
dollars. That was a whole week of hard labor, and everybody was
concerned. The family discussed it all through supper. Vanzetti said
that he was sure there was plenty honest people in Plymouth, maybe one
of them had picked up the purse; he would put up signs, the way they
did in Italy. So Cornelia helped him to phrase a notice, “Lost, small
purse,” with his name and address; he went out that evening with a
hammer and some tacks, and put up the notices on telegraph poles along
his route.
This was while he was still being watched by detectives--in fact they
did not entirely let up until eighteen months after the strike. So
everybody was startled when, next evening after supper, there came a
blue-uniformed policeman. “You advertised a purse?”
“Shoore,” said Vanzetti; a little uneasy, as the poor always are in the
presence of the law. Might this method of advertising be illegal among
these strange Yankees?
“What kind of purse?”
“He is rounda blacka purse, not very moocha beeg.”
“What did you have in it?”
“I t’ink I got t’irteen dollar, notta more.”
“Is this your purse?” The policeman held it out.
“I t’ink it is heem, looka like heem.”
“But it’s got eighteen dollars in it.”
Vanzetti hesitated. “No t’ink had eighteen dollars. Shoore no got so
moocha mon’. Musta be odder purse.”
The members of the Brini family had crowded to the door to listen, and
now broke into protest. “What you say, Bart?” cried Alfonsina. “You no
can tella ah mooch you got?” And to the policeman, “He no can tella
ah mooch mon’ he got! He giva da mon’ all time. He giva da mon’ to
little one, children all time--he buy somet’ing, giva present all time,
never t’ink for keepa da mon’. My osband here, he tella you, Mister
Polissman. Tella heem, Vincenzo!”
“Shoore,” said Brini, “He bigga fool for money. He giva me for keep,
forgetta, never know ah mooch he got.”
“Me know his purse,” persisted the woman. “Me see alla time in room, me
fixa room. Could taka half his mon’ all da time, he not know it. It is
hee’s purse, Mr. Polissman.”
They discussed the time and place where the purse had been found, and
everything fitted. So the policeman said, “I guess you better take
it. Nobody else has claimed it.” But Vanzetti was stubborn, he was
quite sure he couldn’t have had so much as eighteen dollars in his
possession. He would not take it, and the policeman went off, much
puzzled at this singular kind of “wop.”
Also there were further developments of the affair Culla, curious and
touching to the Yankee observer. Compagno Culla had been blacklisted by
the cordage company--despite the fact that he was one of the moderates.
He was doing some kind of sedentary work, and complained that he was
suffering from indigestion. Vanzetti, enthusiast for the back-to-nature
way of life, advised him that it was because of sitting still all day.
Said Bart, telling Cornelia about it, “Come wit’ me, worka picka shov’,
you maka you self new man.” And sure enough, Compagno Culla gave up his
indoor work, and went to digging ditches, and after he had got used to
it, he found that his indigestion was better. He mentioned it once at
the Brinis, and Bart patted him on the shoulder, proud and benevolent.
After the visitor had gone, Cornelia said, “You don’t want to kill
him any more!” And Vanzetti grinned, as he had learned to do when
“Nonna” was teasing him. “Wanta kill so long he try for be offeesh’,
maka union, be secretary da union, maka jobba for self. When he come
lika me, worka picka shov’, maka fight capitalista, padrone, den he is
compagno, comradda, gooda feller, I lika heem.” So, little by little,
Cornelia came to understand the type of idealist-fanatic, which could
be gentle as a child in all personal relationships, but fierce and
dangerous when roused by social wrong.
VIII
Springtime! You dressed by the light of dawn, and the good old sun was
shining over the sea as you went to your day’s work. As if ashamed for
the suffering his absence had caused you, he gave double measure, and
the snows melted, and little rivers ran from every hillside, and in
sheltered corners you saw green things sticking their timid heads from
the ground. Brini hurried home from the factory and tore off his coat
and seized his spade and went to work, a man possessed by the common
or garden variety of frenzy. Even Vanzetti, after ten hours “picka
shov’,” could not escape the disease, and joined in with the rake. So
must the Pilgrim fathers have behaved after that first long winter,
when so many had perished upon inadequate rations, and they dreamed the
miracle of green things growing from this strange new soil.
One lovely brown bed after another was leveled and raked smooth, and
laid out with strings by the eager children. They could hardly wait
for their father to get home in the afternoon to start planting. They
set up labels on little stakes--it was a miniature graveyard of seeds,
and everybody cherishing the religious hope--“Resurgam!” The children
would come hurrying home from school, and there were the tiny green
threads of onions, and little green points that would be radishes, and
pink-tinged ones that would be beets! When, a couple of weeks later,
there were some big enough to be pulled and washed and made into a baby
salad, that was a regular religious ceremony, a Dago thanksgiving.
Out in the woods you could find tiny flowers of fragile and unearthly
beauty, such as ravish the souls of children, and of prophets and
dreamers and fanatics. On Sunday mornings Vanzetti and Cornelia and
Fay and Trando would set out, and if it had been left to the man they
would never have stopped wandering the whole day long, and by night
time they would have been lost. The woods were his temple, full of
infinite mysteries. He would point out signs of nature’s cunning; he
would speculate about things he did not understand, and ask Cornelia
if she knew; if nobody knew, perhaps they could watch and find out. He
would get down on his knees over an ant’s nest, and be happy for an
hour with the frenzied labors of these tiny bundles of energy. Then he
would spring up and start walking again; come on, it was almost time
for mayflowers, perhaps they would find some in the next little valley.
And the seashore! So many strange things that you had never seen
before! The children would scramble about on slippery rocks at low
tide, and gather more treasures than their hands could hold. Better
leave them where they were, said Bart, and carry off knowledge about
them. They would sit on the high rocks to rest, and watch the sailboats
and the ships, and speculate about where they came from and what they
brought. Bart was curious as to other parts of the world, and how men
lived there. When he discovered that Cornelia had read books about such
things, he would ask her questions, pretending that it was for the
education of the children--but it was like the father who enjoys the
circus more than the children do!
The mayflowers came, and you could gather bunches of them, and turn the
humblest worker’s home into a bower. The vegetable rows were shining
now, and the salads on the supper-table were explosions of green, and
the soups were steaming symphonies in red and green and white and
yellow. The rising sun ran you a race in the morning, and the evenings
were so bright and lovely that you hated to go to bed. It was what you
had been waiting for, through the black and bitter winter; Cornelia
quoted the one-eyed Kalandar of the Arabian Nights: “This indeed is
life! Pity ’tis ’tis fleeting!”
In the house across the street lived Signor Prezzolini, who earned his
living by teaching the violin. When he gave lessons to his young pupils
it was not so pleasant, but sometimes he practiced for himself, and in
warm weather he would have his windows open, and what could be more
wonderful than to sit on your front porch in the twilight, and gaze up
at far-off mysterious stars, and listen to strains of ravishing beauty?
In those hours the little Brini boy’s life-destiny was determined;
he was only eight and a half years old, but he made up his mind one
evening, and announced it gravely, “I am going to be a violinist.”
Cornelia was moved to tell him something out of her own childhood. She
had lived next to the home of rich people, who gave many balls and
parties, and would have an orchestra to play. Cornelia’s mother would
put her to bed, and the child would creep to the window and listen.
Then a bold idea occurred to her, and she took a blanket and stole
downstairs, and into the neighbor’s garden, and crawled under a bush,
where she was safe from discovery; there she lay for hours, wrapped in
the blanket, listening in such ecstasy that even now she would shiver
as she remembered it.
Little Trando nestled closer to her, and put his sensitive hand into
hers. In between the playing, he begged for more stories about her
girlhood. She told him how she had believed in fairies, and would run
out into the garden in the early dawn, and hunt under the prettiest
flowers, trembling with the delicious hope that a fairy might be
hiding there, and what would she say if she met one. But here Bart,
the serious one, intervened; he did not approve of fairy-stories. “No
should tella children what is not true, Nonna. It plenty lovely t’ing
what is real, plenty miraculosa--how you say it, wonderfool. When you
teach somet’ing true, is usefool too, but fairy is lika diavolo, like
angioli, superstizione, no gooda for teach.”
IX
Cornelia had by now got hardened to her job. Her hands were skinny,
with whipcords standing out on the backs; her fingers were knobby at
the joints, and covered with tough calluses. Her shoulders were bowed
to meet the coils of rope upon which she sewed, and one shoulder
sagged lower than the other. But they did not ache, and she could work
peacefully, and have time for a bit of gossip with her neighbors, and
for long thoughts about the life she was living, and the people she had
come to know.
The circle of her acquaintance had been greatly widened by the strike,
which had the effect of bringing the workers together and breaking down
barriers of language and creed. Mrs. O’Dowd, Cornelia’s pious neighbor,
had been on strike, with her husband and several relatives, and they
had learned that the “wops” next door were also capable of loyalty, and
that their jabber of sounds might mean something of importance to Irish
aristocrats. Cornelia served as go-between, and got so well acquainted
that she ventured to hint perhaps the heavenly powers might find some
way to accept good works as a partial substitute for good doctrine.
That was contrary to Father O’Brien, of course, but even so, one might
think about it, and one might pray for the lost souls.
That was actually being done, Cornelia learned; it was Mrs. Lavatelli,
the neighbor on the other side, who was so much distressed by the
sight of three bambini who had never been baptized, that she made it a
practice to burn a candle before the image of the virgin every night
before she went to bed. And Cornelia said, surely that ought to be
enough. God was being properly reminded, and it must be assumed that
He, in His infinite wisdom, would take whatever steps were necessary.
There was naturally a great deal of curiosity among the neighbors as
to this mysterious Yankee lady who had lost her husband and home under
circumstances to which she never referred. They would come and call,
or avail themselves of opportunities to gossip over the back fence
while hanging out clothes or working at the vegetables. And Cornelia
would make use of her social training to divert the conversation, so
that presently the neighbors would be talking about their affairs, and
Cornelia would be learning something of the things for which she had
come here.
What struck her most frequently--and always on the funny-bone--was the
complete identity of spirit between these ladies of the back fence and
those of the “Back Bay.” If Cornelia had imagined that by evolving into
a runaway grandmother she was going to find freedom from conventions,
from the petty restrictions of collective femininity, then she had made
a great mistake, and wasted the sixty-first year of her life. For these
working women and wives of working men had their very strict notions of
what was proper, and they had the same system of government by gossip.
The only difference which Cornelia noticed between them and the “Sewing
Circle,” the body which had ruled the social destiny of Boston for two
generations, was that the ladies of the back fence did not lower their
voices when they came to the worst part of their stories; they had not
cultivated the use of the shoulders and the eyebrows as substitutes for
words in the circulation of slander.
The ladies of the back fence did not have so much money as the ladies
of the Back Bay, but they made up for it by having more children, and
they used these for conversational purposes in the same way. They would
tell the charming things the little ones had said, and just as in
Boston, it never occurred to them that this might bore the listener.
Also they would tell about the children’s ailments, and what the doctor
said, and whether or not the doctor knew what he was talking about.
Apparently the unsatisfactoriness of doctors, at the present stage of
their development, had been discovered by the poor as by the rich.
There was the same experimenting with unorthodox remedies, and the
same talk about results--Cornelia might as well have been back in the
nursery with her daughter Clara Scatterbridge.
And then clothes. There were fashion magazines passed from hand to
hand, and when Mrs. O’Dowd’s younger sister made herself a party dress,
she cut it upon a pattern you would have seen at the Friday evening
dances of the socially elect. The material here was sleazy, but that
did not enter into the conversation, because nobody knew it was so.
And then ancestors! Strange as it might seem, the ladies of the back
fence talked about family, and who was who, and why. To be sure, they
could not go so far back; they had no family-trees and colleges of
heraldry, no pages of genealogy in the _Evening Transcript_ every
Wednesday. But there were so many more families, that it made an equal
supply of conversational material. Strange as it might seem, there was
the same amount of hostility and the same amount of pride in the family
talk. Cornelia never met any woman so low that she could not find some
other women to look down on; she never found any woman so high that she
was not eager to know a Yankee lady, and to repeat to her neighbors
what the Yankee lady had said.
X
Also Cornelia got to know Vanzetti, with the intimacy inevitable in the
crowded homes of the poor. She knew him standing in front of a little
cracked mirror, tying his cravat and singing songs of his old home.
She knew him teaching songs to the children, and learning American
songs they brought home from school. She knew him keeping watch in
the kitchen, to make sure that Alfonsina did not have to carry coal
or wood. She knew him sitting up long after the rest had gone to bed,
reading by the light of an oil lamp, his brow furrowed in thought. At
such times he would be lost to her and to all the world; she, who had
always taken comfort for granted, was awed by the spectacle of a man
who robbed himself of sleep to get knowledge.
He taught her some Italian, and she taught him English. She explained
that mystery, so difficult of comprehension to an Italian, that it
is possible for certain consonants to follow each other without a
vowel between. One said “a great big house”; one did not have to say
“a greata bigga house.” She explained the simple idioms, one after
another. One did not say, “I no can”; one said, “I cannot.” Vanzetti
wrote this down, and presently had made such progress that he would
stop in the middle: “I no--cannot.” She labored to teach him the
mystery of the sound “th”; showing him how the tongue was placed, stuck
out a little, and pressed against the lower part of the upper teeth.
The children were fascinated by that; they had learned to make the
sound, but without knowing how they did it. They would watch Bart’s
efforts; he got so that he would stick his tongue out, but alas, he
could not always time it right, and he would stick it out and then pull
it in and make the wrong sound! The children laughed merrily--such
pleasure it gave them, to find themselves superior to the grown-ups!
But that was all right with Bart--it was his dream that the children
would be superior in all things.
Once or twice a month he would disappear for a day or two. The
irregular character of his work made this possible--and anyhow, there
was no job that could hold him when it was announced in “La Cronaca
Sovversiva” that Galleani was going to lecture on the effects of the
war upon the revolutionary movement in Italy, or Carlo Tresca upon
syndicalist versus individualist anarchism. Vanzetti would come back
brimming over with arguments, and news from the “Gruppo Autonomo di
East Boston,” as the Galleani followers called themselves. He and Brini
would have vociferous arguments, and later Vanzetti would explain to
Cornelia what it was about. Or perhaps there would be a “picanic” in
a neighboring town, and Vanzetti would get a bundle of literature to
“distriboot.” Or there would be a strike in the shoe factories of
Lynn, and he would compose an appeal, and take it round among the
anarchistas, and collect fifty cents from one and a quarter from the
next, and in a couple of days would have twenty dollars to be forwarded
by postal order.
Little by little Cornelia was coming to understand his doctrine.
He would pick out passages from the paper and explain them to her,
and answer her questions and objections. It was one of those high
perfectionist doctrines, which assume in human beings a quantity of
virtue which few as yet possess. Those who succeed in living up to
this doctrine are sublime; but those who fail may break their necks.
Might there not be persons using Vanzetti’s lofty phrases as a pretext
for evading duties, or as a means of preying upon their fellows? So
Cornelia asked, and the other answered that this might happen, but
there could be no progress without some risk, and neither men nor women
could learn to swim unless they entered the water.
He was determined to read English, and from one of his trips he brought
back a book called “The Conquest of Bread,” by P. Kropotkin. Cornelia,
with her woman’s wit, did not fail to divine that there were two
people going to be educated out of that book! Curiously enough, it
was not until later that she connected its author with a very famous
scientist from Russia, whose visit to Boston had made a great stir in
intellectual circles some eight years previously. A high-up nobleman
escaped from exile in Siberia, Kropotkin had been a social lion. A
Harvard professor who was in the next year to become president of the
university--than which there is no higher station in the world--had
introduced him for a course of lectures at the Lowell Institute. How
could it have occurred to Cornelia that this learned foreigner with
the bushy gray whiskers whom she had met among the most exalted of the
Brahmins, could be the author of a tract recommending the overthrow of
government by mass insurrection of the proletariat? How could she have
imagined that Mr. Lowell would have consented to further the propaganda
of anarcho-syndicalism? How could she have imagined it--or, for that
matter, how could he?
XI
There was a good-sized grape-arbor behind the house, and it came slowly
into leaf, and then into blossom, and spread upon the air a marvelous
sweet perfume; you could stand and drink it, almost as if it were the
reality of autumn instead of the promise of spring. “Divino da vino!”
said Vincenzo Brini; it was in the days before prohibition, of course.
“Gooda redda wine,” he said, pointing to the blossoms. “You calla heem
‘Dago Red.’” And then with his good-natured grin he pointed to himself.
“Nodder kind Dago Red!” He pointed to Vanzetti. “More Dago Red!”
It was a joke to which they were much accustomed. The children would
hear it called after them when they went to school: “Dago Red! Dago
Red!” Even Father O’Brien had taken it up, and in one of his sermons
had advised his flock to avoid any and all kinds of “Dago Reds.” “What
you t’ink of dat?” said Alfonsina, outraged; and Cornelia answered.
“Tell him what they did to Jesus. He too had a nickname, ‘King of the
Jews.’ They wrote it on the cross--‘I.N.R.I.’--Jesus of Nazareth, King
of the Jews.”
“I know,” said Vanzetti. “I read heem. He was not what priest say, he
was worker, same like me and you, ribello, rivoluzionario! Da priest
in his time want him kill-èd--say he make trouble. I no--cannot say it
Eengleesh--”
“‘And they were the more fierce, saying, he stirreth up the people.’”
“Joosta so! He was gooda man, povero. I sorry when he die. I make tears
for heem. I say compagno--Comradda Gesu, die for make joostice for
worker.”
So it was when you were talking with Bart. You would begin by smelling
the grape blossoms and making jokes about the wine you were going to
drink; and you would end by making tears for Comradda Gesu.
“Summer is y-comen in!” sang the pair of wrens on top of the
grape-arbor; putting in an extra vowel, just as if they had been
Dagoes! It was a time for coming outdoors, a time for beauty and joy.
But alas, the hideous slaughter in Europe was mounting to frenzy,
becoming an extermination of the human race. The exploiters and
imperialists whose greed had dragged Italy into the conflict were
sending propagandists over here, to lure the Italian youth back into
the slaughter-pit.
And so there was a bugle call in the soul of Bartolomeo Vanzetti. He
heard it all the time, he could never cease talking about it. He must
not spend the warm summer days lying on Castle Hill, reading Dante and
Manzoni; he must help to organize meetings in one town or another; he
must go the day before and distribute handbills from house to house,
and beg the people to come; he must be on hand to take up a collection
and forward it to Galleani, so that more papers might be printed, to
hold the demon of militarism at bay, and expose the lies of piety and
patriotism. That was his duty, his martyrdom--his way of following the
example of Comradda Gesu!