THE LEGAL SYSTEM
I
On the 11th of September, 1920, the grand jury of Norfolk County
brought indictments against Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti,
charging them with the murder of the paymaster and guard at South
Braintree in the previous April. This county shared with Plymouth the
same district attorney; and Nick and Bart were brought before the
same Judge Thayer. They pleaded not guilty, and the trial was set for
February. Meantime Bart went back to the tailor-shop at Charlestown,
serving his sentence for the Bridgewater crime; while Nick returned to
the county jail at Dedham--a very unhappy man, because they gave him
nothing whatever to do in this prison, and he nearly went out of his
mind.
Meantime a little group in Boston set about organizing what they
called the Sacco-Vanzetti Defense Committee. In the beginning it
consisted entirely of Italians, the foremost among them being Aldino
Felicani, anarchist printer, a tall, ascetic-looking young man,
soft-voiced and reserved. He would set up type for the circulars, and
translate them into Italian. Others would address envelopes, and visit
the meeting-places of radicals in neighboring towns, and circulate
subscription lists. So would come a few dollars here and a few dollars
there. At the outset there was no office, no secretary, only the
volunteer labors of a few comrades.
Joe Randall had finished his book on the “White Terror”; he had lost
hope of bringing it up to date, since events happened faster than pen
could move. Now he became a volunteer press agent for the committee;
he wrote news stories, and made carbon copies, and went about trying
to cajole this editor and that into giving a little publicity. With
him came another young journalist, Art Shields, a tireless worker;
you would see lights burning and hear typewriters clicking in the
office until two or three o’clock in the morning. Betty learned to
make speeches, and put her youth and beauty and social prestige to
work; she would visit labor headquarters and “vamp” the officials,
seeking to overcome the bitter prejudice of Irish-Catholic and Yankee
labor leaders against a pair of wops who were admitted to be infidels,
anarchists and draft-dodgers. Cornelia and Betty would go together to
places where they encountered ladies with blue blood ever so slightly
tinged with pink. The services the pair had rendered to the suffrage
cause--now victorious--gave them prestige, and they could get small
checks.
The Sacco-Vanzetti Defense Committee was from the outset a peculiar
organization. It consisted largely of a name, and nobody could say just
who were its members, or what was their authority. Those Americans who
later joined and helped to build it up did so from sympathy with an
oppressed group, and they served as a “front”; they were featured in
the newspapers, they made speeches, and conferred respectability. But
they did not know so much about the case, and naturally they had to
defer to the Italians in a crisis.
Among these latter, also, appeared a division; there was an Italian
“front”: such men as Felicani, the printer, and Felice Guadagni, the
journalist whom Cornelia had met when he came down to help in the
Plymouth cordage strike; also Rosina Sacco, wife of the prisoner, an
alert and intelligent woman, devoted to her husband’s cause. These
were known; but there were others who stayed in the background, and
in a time of crisis would reach out a hand, as it were from behind a
curtain, and influence a decision. These were anarchists, intimates
of Sacco and Vanzetti, and it was easy enough to understand why they
kept hidden; they stood in danger of deportation, and perhaps of being
accused of crimes, along with the two in jail. But it made committee
functioning difficult, when you never knew what decision would be
changed, or by whom, or for what reason. Public statements would be
prepared and issued in English, and then translated into Italian,
and the discovery would be made that the Italian version was quite
different, and even contradictory; yet it would not be known just how
this had happened.
There was the element of fear, and of course, the element of
suspicion. It was inevitable that the enemy should send spies among
the committee--and that these would be persons sufficiently cunning
to pose as “good radicals.” From first to last the prosecution was
fully informed as to everything that went on among the committee, the
decisions that were taken as well as the arguments and the quarrels.
These spies came and went; and after they were gone, they would joke
about how they had collected money for the cause and spent it having a
good time in their own fashion. Then you would hear the great ones of
Massachusetts, who had employed these spies, solemnly charging that the
funds of the committee had been stolen!
II
Among both English and Italian groups there were sharp divisions
according to political beliefs. Some insisted that this was a criminal
case, and should be handled as such; others thought it was a case of
labor persecution, to be featured as an episode in the class struggle.
Strange as it might seem, the anarchists for the most part took the
former view; they saw clearly that efforts to make anarchist propaganda
might not merely bring about a conviction of the two men, but might
get their defenders into trouble. But a socialist like Joe Randall
was free from such fear, and to him the case was an effort of big
business to put two of its dangerous enemies out of the way; he could
never write anything about the case that was not disguised propaganda
for socialism, and of course he did not like to have his propaganda
cut out by non-socialist members of the committee. Young persons like
Betty Alvin, who at this stage of her life insisted that she was a
communist--such young persons wanted to put in a different kind of
propaganda, and their persistence increased as the case grew more
conspicuous.
It was a controversy that would never cease, up to the very last hour,
and even beyond it--when men and women fought with deadly bitterness
over the question of what should be done with the ashes of the victims.
You saw the germs of it at the first meeting, when eight or ten
ill-assorted enthusiasts fell to discussing what kind of lawyer should
be employed for the trial. Should they get a labor man, who would make
an appeal to the movement throughout the country? Or should they get a
respectable lawyer, who would confer dignity upon the case, and impress
the public and the jury in the good old Boston way? Still another
possibility, should they look for a criminal expert, with knowledge of
the trickeries of a highly technical game? Joe and Betty united for
the first plan, Cornelia urged the second, while the Italians divided
between the first and third.
A powerful factor in the decision was, of course, the two prisoners,
who never wavered for a moment; to them it was a class-war case,
they were being persecuted because of their threat to the rich of
Massachusetts. To Vanzetti the very idea of respectability was an
insult, the idea of legal trickery nearly as bad. All such hopes would
prove delusive, and only the labor movement could save them. “Unless a
million men can be mobilized for our defense, we are lost!”--so he said
in the first days, and so he said in the last.
As for Sacco, he was even more extreme; shut up in his half-dark cell
in Dedham jail, he was like a rat in a trap, a creature all of steel
springs and fury. He brooded incessantly, and ate his heart out, and
never let himself be fooled by a hope. “They have got us, they will
kill us,” he would say; and whenever his enemies came near him, he
would throw his revolutionary convictions into their faces. “Viva
l’anarchia!” were his last words, and this summed up his attitude at
every stage of the seven years’ struggle.
III
Cornelia went downtown to have lunch with Henry Cabot Winters, who
knew all the lawyers in town. First he would make the protest which
family proprieties required; and then he would betray his secret
amusement--being in truth rather proud of his runaway mother-in-law,
who was telling the world to go to the devil in the very best “old
Boston” manner.
But this time Cornelia missed the usual twinkle in Henry’s fine dark
eyes. In the first place, the great lawyer was worried by some of the
things he had learned that Jerry Walker had learned about him. And
in the second place, Henry had been shocked by the Wall Street “bomb
explosion.” Five days after the indictment of Sacco and Vanzetti a
wagonload of explosives had gone off in front of the building of J.
P. Morgan and Company in New York, and thirty-three persons had been
blown to fragments. The newspapers were certain that this was the work
of anarchists, and the Boston _Traveler_ had come out with a full-page
article, to the effect that the crime had been traced to the Galleani
group, a vengeance for the arrest of the bandits, Sacco and Vanzetti.
“Mother, that is a horrible thing!” said Henry; and Cornelia said, yes,
it was indeed horrible for a newspaper to prejudge the case of two
accused men, and make it impossible for them to get a fair jury in the
community. Henry, as a lawyer, must know that such an article would
have that effect, and under the very strict laws of Massachusetts was
contempt of court.
But Henry did not discuss that aspect of the matter. “I am told,” said
he, “that the Boston anarchists made no attempt to conceal their glee
when they learned of that explosion.”
“Why should they?” said Cornelia. “If they had learned that an
earthquake had destroyed every building in Wall Street, they would
have been still more pleased; but that would not mean they control
earthquakes. Their glee expressed their conviction that the practices
of Wall Street cause boundless suffering to the workers of America; and
in that they are right.”
“Now, Mother,” said Henry, “let’s look at the menu. We don’t want to
get off on politics.”
Cornelia laughed. “I am always entertained to discover the identity of
attitude of my Back Bay and my anarchist friends. The anarchists don’t
want to get off on politics either, they share your faith in direct
action.”
Henry ordered the lunch; and Cornelia repeated what she had learned
from the radical papers, that the explosion had been caused by a
load of blasting gelatine, being illegally taken through the city in
the daytime; while Henry repeated what he had read in the capitalist
papers, that it was an anarchist bomb. He wanted to know, with some
irritation, “Do you think that anarchists never use bombs?”
“I have been told they sometimes do.”
“Yet you can be certain these two friends of yours never did any such
thing?”
“They aren’t accused of having done that, Henry.”
“I know. But people say--”
“What people, Henry?”
“Well, friends of mine who are in position to know the inside.”
“Will you tell me their names?”
“I can’t do that.”
“Did you ask who gave them the information?”
“No, but--”
“I am interested to watch the process of rumor. People say this and
people say that, and always when you try to get something definite,
there is nothing. Can you bring me a single fact, Henry--one that you
as a first-class lawyer would respect? I am ready to deal with it
honestly; and surely it’s worth the family’s while to keep me from
being led into a trap.” Cornelia looked her son-in-law in his dark fine
eyes, gravely and steadily; and he said all right, he would try to help
her.
IV
The waiter brought oysters, since there was an “r” in the month. And
after he had set down the crackers and the lemons and the paprika, and
made all the necessary flourishes, he went his way, and Henry returned
to the dangerous subject of bombs, which haunted the thoughts of all
leisure-class Boston in those desperate days. Despite his pretenses
of omniscience, Cornelia represented his only direct contact with the
anarchist movement.
“You know, Mother, somebody did make bombs--the ones that went through
the mail. You can’t dispute that.”
“No, of course not.”
“What do your friends say about those?”
“Vanzetti is quite certain it was a frame-up.”
“By whom?”
“Some one of the big detective agencies, which are making millions out
of this anti-red agitation.”
Henry smiled pityingly. “You accept that?”
“I don’t accept it as a fact, because I don’t know. I certainly accept
it as a possibility.”
“Believe me, Mother, you’ll have to look for a better alibi. Frame-ups
don’t happen.”
Henry saw the pair of brown eyes fixed upon his dark ones. They
were soft, and always kind, but they were persistent, and he had
learned that they saw deep. “Be careful, and don’t commit yourself
too completely. You may need an alibi yourself, my son.” And that was
hardly fair at the beginning of a luncheon; a poor appetizer for a
great lawyer who was going to be a defendant, and get large daily doses
of his own medicine. His look clouded, and for a while he was less
quick to interrupt.
“Five or six years ago, Henry, I’d have agreed with you about the
frame-up; I’d have said it was a device of criminals in trouble, and
a sign they were hard-pressed. But now I know that the frame-up is a
regular weapon in the class-struggle, just as well understood as, for
example, jury-fixing, or the buying of labor leaders. Did you ever have
William M. Wood for a client?”
“No, Mother, I have never been that fortunate.”
“How rich is he?”
“I don’t know; pretty rich--ten or fifteen million, maybe.”
“Enough to be one of our leading industrialists, the president of our
great woolen corporation. You’d think he was big enough not to frame
up conspiracies against his workers, wouldn’t you? Do you happen to
remember what he did in the Lawrence strike, seven or eight years ago?
He couldn’t see any other way to break the union, so he had dynamite
planted, to be blamed upon the union leaders. He was indicted and tried
for it--”
“And acquitted, if I remember correctly.”
“Yes, you know what it means for a great mill-owner to be acquitted in
his own bailiwick. It is a fact that the men he hired to do the job
were convicted; and I leave it for you to suggest that he didn’t know
what they were doing for him. This much is certain, the story was given
out to the newspapers that dynamite had been found by the police in a
shoe-box in the union headquarters. The box had been brought there by
a detective, and somebody slipped up on the time, and the story was in
the Boston _American_ before the raid took place and the dynamite was
found! That was bad management, at least.”
The great lawyer could not help smiling. “I will say that if I had had
the matter in charge, it wouldn’t have happened that way.”
“Well, don’t forget that it is a part of American labor history, and
graven into the consciousness of all those people you call ‘Reds.’ So
when the great gossip machine starts to grinding, and we hear that
‘people say’ our friends are guilty, that ‘everybody knows it,’ and
that ‘frame-ups don’t happen,’--well, Henry, we fall back on the good
old tradition of English and American law, that every man is innocent
until he is proved guilty. And in the effort to get him a fair trial we
go to a lot of trouble--such as inviting ourselves to lunch with our
rich and famous sons-in-law, and asking for the names of lawyers who
might possibly care about justice!”
V
Henry supplied the names of respectable lawyers, and Cornelia went to
interview them, but in vain. Later on, after years of struggle had
made a world issue of the case, it would be possible to interest great
lawyers in it; but at present there was no man who would burden himself
with the defense of two anarchist infidel draft-dodgers accused of
murder.
Also Henry named some of the legal tricksters, and Cornelia had curious
experiences interviewing these. There was one uniform objection to
all these powerful ones, the amount of money necessary to start their
powers into action. Some said fifty thousand, some said seventy-five;
and this was a stage in the life of the Sacco-Vanzetti Defense
Committee when there were discussions as to whether they could afford
to rent a post-office box, and whether it would be the part of wisdom
to buy a second-hand typewriter.
Later on there would be ladies of wealth and fashion interested in the
case, and money would be pouring in from labor groups all over the
world; but at this stage, when money would really have counted, the
only large sum in sight was what Cornelia could raise on her income
and lend to the committee. She had discovered by talking to bankers
that she could not raise very much, because her life expectancy at
sixty-five was limited. If she had wanted fifty thousand dollars for
an orphan asylum, or for a house to live in, or even for a string of
pearls to hang about her withered neck, she had three daughters and
three sons-in-law, any one of whom would have written her a check, and
been glad to get such a hold upon her. But when it was a question of
imperiling the Commonwealth by aiding and abetting anarchism, Cornelia
did not have to ask for the money, she could hear in advance the polite
but firm rebuke.
The problem of a lawyer was settled by the Italians. It happened that
Lee Swenson was in New York, recuperating from the labor of saving a
bunch of I.W.W. from jail in Kansas, and swearing to himself by all the
gods he disbelieved in that never again. But Carlo Tresca came to see
him, and Swenson knew Carlo from the Ettor-Giovannitti case. Carlo told
the pitiful story of two anarchists in jail in Massachusetts, who had
the skids under them, all ready to be slid into the electric chair; he
told what a fine fellow Bart was, and how he had all but had tears in
his eyes because he missed seeing the Statue of Liberty, and now maybe
he would never see it; and about Nick’s wife and little boy, and the
new baby expected in a month or two. Carlo came again and again, and
appealed to Lee Swenson’s friendship, until finally he said he would go
up to Boston and look things over.
Lee Swenson was of Swedish descent, and came originally from Minnesota.
He had been in practically every big criminal case which involved
labor during the past fifteen or twenty years. As a cub lawyer he had
helped to get evidence for Moyer and Haywood in Idaho; he had helped to
defend the McNamaras in Los Angeles and Tom Mooney in San Francisco,
and several groups of the I.W.W. in Chicago and the middle west. He
stood six feet and a couple of unnecessary inches, and was badly put
together; he did not know what to do with his big hands and feet, nor
in fact with any part of himself; he liked to sit on his neck, and his
feet liked to get up off the floor. He had a thick shock of yellow
hair, and when it was not arranged it looked as if one of those western
windstorms had hit it, and when it was arranged it appeared to be done
with vaseline.
Lee Swenson was too intelligent a man not to know the disturbing
effect he produced upon the respectable citizens of New England. Was
he really rattled by them, as he pretended, or did he enjoy the effect
he produced, somewhere back in the deeps where he kept his laughter
until it came rumbling forth like thunder from the mountains? After
he had been nosing into the case for a couple of weeks, he asked
for a conference with Cornelia, and she invited him to her little
apartment to dinner, on an evening when Joe and Betty were scheduled
for a hearing before the carpenters’ union. Before they went into the
dining-room, Lee Swenson sank into Cornelia’s one Morris-chair, and
then slid most of the way out of it, and said, “Will you be shocked if
I cross my legs?”--and did it without waiting for an answer.
“Not at all,” said Cornelia, hastily.
“Not even when you discover that I wear woolen socks?”
“I know you are making fun of Boston, Mr. Swenson.”
“My God,” said he--“I beg your pardon, Mrs. Thornwell, but this is a
terrible place for a man that grew up in a sod hut. I realized when we
were defending Ettor and Giovannitti in Salem that I didn’t fit, but I
never had time to go into details, and never happened to meet the right
person. But I believe you are it.”
“Is that why you wanted to talk with me?”
“No, but you can do it on the side. Tell me how to avoid shocking
judges and juries who talk through their noses.”
“Do you really want me to tell?”
“I said it.”
“Well, why do you wear a broad-brimmed black felt hat such as nobody
ever saw in Boston?”
“But it’s what I had when I came to town, and I can’t afford another.”
“Are you really that hard up?”
“Maybe you don’t know how it is with a radical lawyer. Imagine a score
or two of cases, each like this one. There is two dollars and fourteen
cents in the treasury to-night. They offer to pay me a hundred and
fifty a week while the case lasts, but you know how it will be, they’ll
be seventeen weeks behind in their payments at the end of eighteen
weeks, and when I get a check, there’ll be some emergency next day that
I’ll pay out of my own pocket. You see, I’m not really going to be a
lawyer--that will be merely incidental; I’m going to be organizer,
propagandist, press agent and promoter; any money I get, I’ve first got
to raise, and understanding that the committee will begrudge me every
cent I take.”
“Surely it won’t be as bad as that, Mr. Swenson!”
“You are a newcomer, Mrs. Thornwell; but this is my twentieth
committee, and believe me, I know them. It won’t be their fault, they
will be sincere and devoted, most of them; but they will be poor, and
narrow-minded--not used to spending money with the magnificent abandon
of us privileged persons. They won’t see what I need with so much, and
when the newspapers and the outside public begin to tell how I have got
away with one or two hundred thousand on the sly, they will think maybe
it’s the truth. I tell you this in advance, because, when it’s over, my
one chance of getting arrears of salary will be by vamping some of the
rich ladies, your friends who will be interested in the case. And then
I’ll get my new hat.”
“Meantime,” said Cornelia, hastily, “you can at least get a haircut.”
But the other replied, “If I did, the hat would be bigger than ever,
with nothing to hold it but my ears.”
VI
After they had dined, and were back in the little living-room, in
front of the coal grate-fire, the lawyer asked if he might close the
door. He drew his chair close to Cornelia, and slid down into it and
began: “Mrs. Thornwell, I have been digging into this case, and I am
completely baffled, and don’t know what to do. The last time I talked
with Vanzetti, he told me that you were the one American he would
trust. He admires your granddaughter, but he’s afraid she would be
shocked if I talked straight to her.”
“He is mistaken,” said Cornelia, smiling in spite of herself. “I am far
more easily shocked than Betty. The younger generation is taking life
into its own hands.”
“Well, if you don’t mind, I prefer the old ones. You and I have
suffered, and we have a deeper foundation under us. Do you mind if I
ask for your confidence?”
“Not at all, Mr. Swenson. I will tell you anything I can. But I fear it
won’t be much.”
“First, all you know about these two boys--everything that will help me
to judge them.”
“Sacco I hardly know at all. I only met him two or three times prior
to the arrest. I have been to see him three times in Dedham, partly
because I wanted to make up my mind about him.”
“And what are your conclusions?”
“He is a difficult man to know, under the circumstances. He has a
primitive mind, I judge. He does very little thinking; he is satisfied
with a formula, that the rich exploit the poor, and are the enemies
of the poor, and always have a self-seeking motive in relation to
them. And of course I don’t fit into that formula. Why should a rich
woman, who might have everything she wants, burn up gasoline and
tires traveling down to Dedham to visit an anarchist in prison? He is
instinctively polite, and affectionate to his friends, I am told. He
hasn’t given me any hint of a suspicion, but he probably fears that I
may be another trap the enemy has set for him. You know, of course,
they put a spy in the cell next to him soon after his arrest?”
“Yes, he told me that.”
“Also they wanted to get one into his home, to try to board with his
wife. I’m told the district attorney had that bright idea. I suppose
it is too much to expect those gentry to have delicate sensibilities,
but you’d think they might have guessed that a woman who was deprived
of her husband, and was expecting another baby in two or three months,
would rather have a woman-boarder than a man. Anyhow, somebody found
out about it, and naturally the Saccos are very suspicious. So I
haven’t tried to talk about the case with either of them. When I have
seen Nick, I have talked about his garden, and the wonderful tomatoes
he used to have--those tomatoes were like so many babies to him. I take
him a bunch of chrysanthemums--they let him have flowers, though they
won’t let Bart have any.”
“Oh, surely not!”
“It’s a regulation at Charlestown, I suppose that a saw or a knife
might be hidden in them; or maybe drugs. I get round it by wearing
one flower, and when I ask the guard if I may leave it with Bart,
he is ashamed to say no. I am trying to win the hearts of all of
them, because it seems to me the jailers are in jail as much as the
prisoners.”
“We are all in jail, Mrs. Thornwell. Take it from one who has been
playing the game twenty years--we are prisoners of the system. I walk
about with a chain on my wrist, and at the other end are fastened so
many lies that it seems like the population of all seven of Dante’s
hells. That is a part of what I want to talk to you about.”
VII
It took Cornelia a good hour to tell the story of how she had come into
the Brini home and what she had seen there. She told about Bart’s ideas
and dreams, his work and his play and his personal habits. She told
about the sick kitten he had refused to have killed, and the rabbits he
had brought home in a sack, and kept in pens for several months--until
the sorrowful realization was forced upon him that there was no earthly
way to keep those creatures from getting out and gnawing the vegetables
of his Catholic neighbor, Mrs. O’Dowd. She told about the lost purse
he had refused to take from the policeman, and the boots he had let
the poor laborer keep, and the lessons in hygiene he had given to the
“riformista,” Compagno Culla--all those incidents which were destined
to become Vanzetti legends, and be repeated whenever his Italian
friends mentioned his name.
Also, because a lawyer had a right to the whole truth, she told him
about the fights; and how the anarchist youths had come armed to the
Galleani meeting, vowing to defend their hero to the death; and how
Bart had got a gun and declared that he would never let himself be
taken and put through the third degree.
“Now you are getting to what I want,” said Swenson. “Do you know
whether that gun is the same one that he had on when he was arrested?”
“I believe he gave it away,” said Cornelia. “From what I know of him,
he wouldn’t keep any piece of property as long as four years.”
“Well, I can’t get them to tell me where they got those guns; at least,
I can’t get them to tell me the truth. That’s why I’m so up against it.
They are afraid of me, afraid of everybody.”
“They have reason to be cautious. But won’t they take Tresca’s word for
your reliability?”
“I suppose if I could get them both together with Carlo, we could come
to an understanding; but as it is, they go on repeating the stories
they told to the police; and their friends outside do the same.
Orciani has been driving me about, looking for evidence, and I’ve been
appealing to him. Do you know him?”
“Only slightly.”
“He has the courage of a man with the mind of a child: a simple Italian
peasant, picked up off the countryside and dumped into the maelstrom of
America. I have managed to win his affection, and he will talk to me
frankly about everything in the world but this case. I point out his
contradictions, but it doesn’t make any difference. It is a peculiarity
of Italian anarchists that I have observed, they can go on insisting
that black is white longer than any other human beings I have ever
seen. But somehow it has got to be put across to them that they can’t
go before a Yankee jury with those stories--it will be throwing away
their lives.”
“What stories, Mr. Swenson?”
“Well, the one about what they did on the night they were arrested. I
can’t get a single one of those fellows to admit to me that they were
in front of the Johnson place that night; yet it’s a physical fact that
any jury will see--there’s a swampy meadow on both sides of the road,
and no other way for Sacco and Vanzetti to have got from the place
where they admit they got off the street-car to the place where they
got on again. If we’re going to save them, we’ve simply got to make a
story that a jury will believe.”
There was a pause; Lee Swenson got up and went to the door that led
into the dining-room, and opened it, to make sure the Negro maid was
not listening. Then he came back, and when he spoke again, it was in a
lower voice. “Mrs. Thornwell, I know enough about Boston to understand
that you will be startled to hear me discuss the ‘making’ of stories to
be presented to a jury.”
“You use what I might call an optimistic phrase, Mr. Swenson.”
“Every professional man does that when he deals with the shady parts of
his job. You may know that when the fashionable ladies go to a surgeon
for an abortion, he refers to it as a ‘curettage’.”
“I have three daughters,” said Cornelia, placidly. “But I thought that
in this case, if we are dealing with men who are innocent--”
“You thought we might trust to the truth?”
“I admit I was that naïve.”
“Well, Mrs. Thornwell, I can only tell you--in my experience with labor
frame-ups in a dozen states, I have always found it necessary to fight
the devil with his own fire.”
VIII
Cornelia’s little round face wore an anxious look, and her soft brown
eyes were wide open, staring at the man in front of her. She saw a big,
rough-hewn face, marked by small-pox; with a lower jaw which had a way
of thrusting itself up, making a deep crease on each side of the mouth.
The eyes were set under shaggy yellow brows--in short it was the face
of a fighting man, no product of a Back Bay drawing-room.
But somehow Lee Swenson had learned how people felt in
drawing-rooms--possibly from Henry James, whom he read incessantly.
“You are saying to yourself that I grew up in the wild and woolly west,
Mrs. Thornwell, and things are different in Massachusetts. But I assure
you it is one system, from Maine to California, when some radical is
accused of violence in the class struggle. The authorities are sure the
man is guilty, if not of this crime, then of others just as bad, and so
to ‘make’ a case against him is a worthy work. When a class-war trial
begins, you will see on the stand police officers who know that it is
part of their job to swear to whatever the chief tells them; and maybe
an ex-convict, who knows that the prosecution has something on him, and
testifies as a condition of getting off; and a prostitute, who carries
on her ancient profession at the discretion of the police. In this case
there will be workers from that shoe factory, semi-morons, incapable
of knowing the difference between right and wrong, but knowing what
a reward is, and having rehearsed a lesson until they can say it in
their sleep. It will be simple and easy--‘Yes, I saw the bandits, I saw
them shoot, I am positive these are the men.’ These witnesses will sit
with Sacco and Vanzetti in front of them, and when they are asked to
describe the bandits, they will describe the men in front of them, and
what could be more convincing?”
“I attended the Plymouth trial,” said Cornelia. “I was shocked by its
unfairness, but I hated to believe it was a deliberate frame-up.”
Said Lee Swenson: “My knowledge of your Massachusetts procedure was got
at the Ettor-Giovannitti trial, seven years ago, as perfect a frame-up
as ever came under my eyes. The men were no more guilty of murder than
I was; every particle of the testimony was ‘made,’ and the whole case
prepared and the indictments drawn up by lawyers of great corporations.
The victims were Italians, I.W.W. leaders, efficient and dangerous--the
more so because one of them was a fine poet. And how did we save their
lives, Mrs. Thornwell? Was it by trusting to the truth? As a matter of
fact, we had seventeen eye-witnesses to the shooting of Anna Lo Pizzo,
and they absolutely insisted that it was done by a police officer, and
they identified the officer; but because they were all Italians, and
there were so many of them, we didn’t dare use their story, for fear
the jury would think it was a frame-up! That’s how far the truth gets
you in Massachusetts!”
Lee Swenson waited for Cornelia’s comment; but what could she say?
“Some day,” continued the lawyer, “I’ll tell you the inside of that
story--as weird a tangle of plot and counterplot as you could want for
a crime-romance. The district attorney was carrying on a political
fight against William M. Wood, the head of the woolen trust, and so
we were able to get hold of the checks which Wood had paid to have
dynamite planted, in a frame-up against the union leaders. With that
evidence in hand we practically blackmailed the executives of the
woolen mills, and made them take the stand, one after another, and
testify that the speeches of the strike leaders had been opposed to
violence. I could name several laws of your great Commonwealth we broke
in putting that job across--and if we hadn’t done it, the world would
never have read ‘Arrows in the Gale,’ by Arturo Giovannitti.”
Cornelia sat staring before her, pondering this strange moral dilemma.
At last she said, “I have always been taught, Mr. Swenson, that one
gets a certain moral backing from telling the truth.”
“I know--I also have read Emerson; but how would it work in our courts
of law? Consider Vanzetti’s trial in Plymouth. There was an alibi,
as good as any one could want. The crime occurred on the day before
Christmas, and everybody had something to remember--the eels. Did you
accept that alibi?”
“I was absolutely convinced by it. I have been all over North Plymouth
with Trando, and he showed me the places; every spot is alive to him
with the memory of Bart, whom he adored. The things jump out of the
child, in a way that couldn’t happen if he had had to learn them. He
will interrupt a talk, ‘There is one of the houses where I took the
eels, and Bart was across the street, and I had to go for change.’ He
will say, ‘Under that tree he dismissed me, and gave me fifty cents for
the work.’ If you knew those simple, kindly people, Mr. Swenson, you
couldn’t doubt their story.”
“All right--but where does that leave your argument? You trusted to
the truth with that Plymouth jury--and it got you nowhere! No, Mrs.
Thornwell, we must fight the prosecution with its own weapons. We have
to do the reverse of what they have done--convince ourselves that the
boys are innocent, and that whatever we do to get them off is a worthy
work. And then take a joy in the performance--learn to build a good
alibi with the same pleasure that a novelist gets from constructing a
detective story, with every detail fitting precisely, and contributing
to the final result--an acquittal, and a booming reputation as a lawyer
who has never lost a client.”
“Is that really what you want me to believe about your profession, Mr.
Swenson?”
“In strict confidence, you understand, Mrs. Thornwell!”
“Oh, of course.”
“I want you to believe there is no other way to be a successful
criminal lawyer in America; I have never heard of any man who has done
it, and I do not believe it can be done. That is the game, and you
either play it, or you play some other game.”
“It sounds as if it would be hard on the nerves.”
“This is America, and you know our motto, ‘It’s a great life if you
don’t weaken.’ You play for high stakes, and every time it is ‘doubles
or quits,’ if you understand the slang of the gambler. Win the big case
and you’re on top of the heap; lose it, and you’re a dead one! That’s
why it’s so foolish of me to take a case like this. There is no way
to win except to make a big public splurge; and then, if I don’t make
good, it is back to the sticks for me. That is the real moral problem
that confronts a radical lawyer, Mrs. Thornwell--can he afford to have
a heart? Can he feel sorry for some hero-soul like your Bart, who has
apparently got into a jam not of his own making? It’s a decision I have
to make, and naturally it depends very largely upon Bart’s friends.”
There was a pause. “Just what is it you want me to say, Mr. Swenson?”
“For the present, nothing in particular. That may come later. What I
want is for you to know the situation--what a murder trial is, and how
it has to be fought--so that later on, when you find out about this
detail and that, you won’t be horrified and disgusted with me, and draw
out and leave me alone with the Italians.”
IX
Lee Swenson had said his say, and it was up to Cornelia. She sat with
her two hands locked together, and her eyes closed, and only the
trembling of the lids to tell what was going on within. When at last
she spoke, her voice was weak, and so were her words. “I never had
anything like that put up to me in my life, Mr. Swenson.”
“I can believe that. Your life has been lived among people who are not
accused of crimes. And you have your strict moral code--which doesn’t
allow for perjury!” Then, seeing a trace of tears in the old lady’s
eyes, he added quickly, “I fear that I misunderstood you in one way,
Mrs. Thornwell--I thought you knew more about your great moral city
than apparently you do. You went to consult Larry Shay about this case,
didn’t you?”
“How did you know that?”
“Well, I have sources of information. How did you come to go to him?”
“My son-in-law, Henry Cabot Winters, named him.”
“Why did he name him?”
“He said he would be the best man to get the boys off.”
“And what happened when you went to see him?”
“He wanted fifty thousand dollars, and I told him we didn’t have it.”
“What did he say?”
“Well, he pointed out that it was a capital case, and would mean a lot
of hard work.”
“What did you understand by that?”
“Wasn’t it obvious? It will take a lot of time to prepare the case, and
it may be a long trial.”
Lee Swenson laughed, one of those polite laughs which he kept inside
him, out of consideration for Boston. “You are much too good, my dear
Nonna! I think I will call you by Bart’s name, if you don’t mind,
because it is friendly, and at the same time respectful.”
“I don’t mind,” said Cornelia.
“Out west,” said the other, “they call me Lee, and they don’t wait a
whole lifetime, as they do in Boston. But now let me explain about
Larry Shay: if he had taken the case, there wasn’t going to be any
trial.”
“How do you mean?”
“I mean that Larry is the official ‘fixer’ for the political ring which
governs Boston and its environs. If you have committed a crime, and got
caught, your friends go to him to find out what it will cost to have
the case dropped.”
“Oh, Mr.--Lee!”
“You, lovely and naïve blue-blood lady, carried to this legal shark a
proposition to bribe some of the prosecuting officials of your state,
and he made you an offer, and you didn’t even know what it was about!”
“Do you really know all that?”
“Everybody knows it that knows about the insides of this town. Worse
than that--they ‘make’ the cases, for the purpose of collecting
blackmail. I could tell you quite a number of stories, only they are
not fit for a lady’s ears--having to do with women and road-houses.”
There was a pause, while Cornelia thought hard. “You mean, Lee Swenson,
that if I raise fifty thousand dollars and pay it to these politicians,
I can have the case against our two boys dropped?”
“I mean exactly that. And there’s another moral problem for a
blue-blood lady who has lived a sheltered life, and listened to
her husband, the governor, make fine speeches about their noble
Commonwealth!”
X
The telephone rang; Betty calling. She and Joe had had a successful
time at the carpenters’ union, had got a twenty-five dollar
contribution. Now Betty was going somewhere else. She could not explain
over the phone, but she would be late, and Grannie was not to wait up
for her. Go to sleep. She hung up, and Lee Swenson took his departure,
saying that he had put enough burdens upon her mind for one evening. He
would not ask anything definite, she would need time to think matters
over. Cornelia thanked him.
She did not go to sleep, but sat in the Morris chair which the lawyer
had vacated, and moral whirlwinds seized her thoughts and flung them
this way and that. She, Cornelia Thornwell, widow of the sternest
governor that Massachusetts had had for a century, the most ruthless
punisher of lawbreakers and corruptionists--she had sat in this room
and listened to a proposition that she should conspire to commit
perjury! Yes, that was it, no use mincing words. She had heard, and
from now on would be accessory before the fact to whatever might be
done! She had not risen and denounced the proposer and ordered him from
her home; no, she had hesitated--which in itself was guilt--and when he
had told her it was confidential, she had assented, which was double
guilt!
Punishment for Cornelia Thornwell, feminist and suffragist! Now she
knew what the wise men had meant when they told her that woman’s place
was the home! Woman’s place was the Sewing Circle, where they made
long flannel petticoats which the poor would not wear! Woman’s place
was the Parish House of Trinity Church in the City of Boston, where
perfect ladies gathered to arrange for visitation of the sick and care
of widows and orphans! If a lady insisted on going out into the harsh
and wicked world, this was what she ran into--perjury, subornation of
perjury, conspiracy to commit perjury! Cornelia saw these awful phrases
in the headlines of all the newspapers of Boston.
The soul of Bartolomeo Vanzetti came to keep watch with her, and share
her worries. Bart did not sleep soundly in his prison cell; he lay
awake and brooded over the case, and thought of letters to write, and
suggestions to make to friends and lawyers. So now he came in spirit,
and Cornelia asked him all those questions she would never ask in the
flesh. What did he want her to do? What would best serve his cause, the
“joostice” for which he lived?
She questioned her own soul. What was right, what was wrong? To stand
by the stern moral code of Puritan Boston--which all of them preached,
and some of them practiced? Say that the law was sacred, and an oath
was binding before God, and it was better for men to die than to break
God’s law? Easy to say that, when it concerned yourself; something in
you would take pleasure in dying for a code. But when it was some other
man’s life, did you have the right to force your code upon him?
Vanzetti had proved that he did not subscribe to that code, because he
had told lies to the police. But then, he faced the same problem as
Cornelia; it wasn’t for himself that he lied, but for others. Sometime
previously Cornelia had put to him a very grave question. There
appeared to be much more evidence against Sacco than against him, so it
might be wise to demand separate trials, and save at least one of them.
But Bart had turned the idea down without a moment’s hesitation. “Save
Nick, he got the wife and kids!” That was his attitude, from first to
last.
Something easy to understand--to lie for a wife and kids! In contrast
with that, Cornelia’s ideal seemed far-off, cold and aloof. In this
world truth was a luxury, denied to all but the fastidious, the
ivory-tower personalities, who had no hearts and no sympathies! Who
were good at shutting their eyes and refusing to know uncomfortable
facts!
Cornelia thought over Lee Swenson’s statement, that her life had been
lived among people who were not accused of crimes. A careful and
lawyer-like phrase! Not those who did not commit crimes, but those who
were not accused! Cornelia searched her memory, and forced herself to
face reality. Did her sort of people really refuse to lie? The case of
Jerry Walker leaped to her mind, because she had just been talking to
her son-in-law about it. Had Rupert and Henry lied to Jerry Walker, in
order to get his property away from him? Of course they had! Henry had
even lied to Cornelia, and treated it as a matter of course. They had
lied to their associates, and their associates were now accusing them
of it--so Cornelia had learned from family gossip.
Sooner or later Rupert and Henry were going upon the witness-stand, to
be cross-questioned as to what they had done. Were they going to admit
their conspiracy to take ten million dollars’ worth of property from
Jerry Walker? Were they going to say that the law was sacred, and that
an oath was binding before God? Of course they were not! What they were
going to do was to follow the Lee Swenson formula--sit down with their
lawyers and frame up an elaborate story, learn every detail of it by
heart, and go upon the witness-stand and lie like troopers--or, in the
modern equivalent, like policemen who know that it is part of their job
to swear to whatever the chief tells them! Rupert and Henry would do
that, and all State Street would know they were doing it, and take it
as a good joke, nothing worse.
XI
A world of lies, a world run on the basis of lies, so that when you
talked about truth-telling you were a Utopian and a dreamer; worse yet,
a traitor to your friends, to your business associates, your family,
your class! A fastidious person, an ivory-tower esthete, preferring
your own peace of mind to the rights of those who had taken you into
their confidence, assuming that you would play the game as everybody
else played it, for your profit and comfort as well as their own!
Lies! Lies! It was the autumn of the year 1920, and a great political
campaign was at its climax; America had ceased to be a republic, it
was an absolute monarchy, its ruler the Prince of Lies! That little
man, “Silent Cal,” whom Cornelia knew so well as governor of the
Commonwealth, was being elected vice-president of the United States by
a lie! He who had run away from the police-strike was being rewarded
for breaking the police-strike! His backers had managed to suppress
the report of the citizens’ committee, which had worked so hard to
avoid a strike, and had told the whole truth; instead, they had made
a nursery-legend, such as the pious Parson Weems had invented about
George Washington and the cherry-tree!
And worse yet, look at the man they were making president! Cornelia’s
mind was a witch’s caldron, with the tales Joe Randall brought home;
for Joe knew the newspaper men, and picked up the gossip which could
not be printed, and used it to spice the meals he ate in the little
apartment. Joe’s mind had turned rancid, after four months’ contact
with American morals and American justice; he found his pleasure
in believing the most shocking things about the great and noble
persons of the land. This Senator Harding, who was to be the next
president, had been picked out by the oil-men, who were planning to
loot the oil-reserves of the nation; he was handsome and dignified,
a magnificent statesman, when you read about him in the capitalist
newspapers--but Joe called him an old booze-fighter, a small-town rake,
whose idea of entertainment was to sit in his shirt-sleeves and chew
tobacco and play poker all night with his cronies, “the Ohio gang.” His
managers had had to get a newspaper man to write his speeches for him,
because, when he was turned loose for himself, he used polysyllables
like a Negro preacher, with no idea what they meant.
And worse yet, he traveled round the country with a young girl who was
his mistress! He stayed in rooms in various cheap hotels with her, and
when the house-detectives ventured to object, he would present them
with his card! It was something entirely new in American history, and
Joe Randall turned his fancy loose to play with the theme; some day, he
said, the American people would build a memorial to this oil-statesman,
and when the radicals came into power they would carve an inscription
across the front of it, and set it with flaming red rubies: “Nan
Britton’s Boy!”
XII
A cruel, cruel world! Impossible to live in a place where such
wickedness was done! A sudden weariness seized Cornelia, a failing of
the heart; it was time for her to quit, to move on and leave the world
to a new generation, which had stronger nerves and could face such
issues. The runaway grandmother would run back to shelter.
The fire in the grate had burned nearly out, and the room was growing
cold, the chill creeping into the bones of the old woman sitting in
the chair. She looked at the clock; it was after two in the morning,
and suddenly she realized that Betty had not come home. What could the
child be doing at that hour?
Lee Swenson had asked her not to tell Betty about these problems. But
that was hardly fair. Betty had come to be her mainstay--she realized
it all of a sudden. Betty was young, Betty was not afraid, Betty could
face any facts there were! To try to hide anything from her would be
one more deception, in a world which seemed to be made of nothing else.
There was a sound in the hall, and Cornelia turned her head. A key in
the latch, and the door opened. There was Betty, rosy, shining from a
walk in the chill night air. “Why, Grannie! You waited up for me! You
shouldn’t have done that!” She closed the door, and came to Cornelia,
brimming over with affection and concern. “You poor dear, you let the
fire die down, you are cold!”
Betty herself was warm; the blood flooded her cheeks and throat, it
came and went, like northern lights in the winter sky, a lovely thing
to watch. Her eyes shone--something must have happened to-night, they
were so much alive. Such an eager face, a smile with two rows of white
teeth, even and smooth, almost translucent. She wore a soft brown
coat, with a neckpiece of fur, matching her hair, her eyes--a picture
that people turned to look at on the street. So delicate, so quick and
sensitive--and she knew about this wickedness, she could face it and
not quail from it, not feel old and chilly, ready to die!
“Grannie dear, what is it? You’re worried about something!” She could
read Cornelia’s mind as if she entered it. “What is bothering you? Has
Lee Swenson been telling you something discouraging?” Then quickly,
“Don’t let him frighten you, my dear! We’re going to get those boys
off! Is he afraid about them?”
“No, dear--”
“Then what did he say? Tell me, what?”
“We talked about many things, this case and others. It is a terrible
world, Betty dear.”
“Yes, they frame people; and then sometimes, people have done
something, too! It’s hard to tell which is which, and your poor dear
head is addled with trying to know it all! Is that it?”
“Mr. Swenson didn’t want me to talk--”
Betty laughed gayly. “The old rascal! He thinks he’s going to keep
secrets from Joe and me! I know, it’s very dangerous, and we mustn’t
whisper. But you tell him, I know what’s in your head before you do,
and he can’t run this case without Joe and me. This is a young folk’s
job, believe me!”
Betty shed her coat, and the little brown bowl of a hat trimmed with
fur, and knelt down and put her warm cheek against her grandmother’s
cold one. “The idea of worrying a nice old Victorian lady with secrets
and mysteries! I suppose he told you that government witnesses don’t
always tell the truth, and defense lawyers sometimes fight the devil
with fire. Is that what you’re worried over?”
“Where were you so late, dear?” countered Cornelia--the only evasion
she could think of in a hurry.
“Never you mind--that’s more secrets and mysteries, I’ll tell you in
the morning. Now you go to bed, before your old bones turn to ice.”
She led Cornelia into her bedroom, and turned down the covers, and
brought her a glass of hot milk, describing her as “seecka kitten,”
from the days when Cornelia had been worn out with the work in the
cordage-plant, and Bart had nursed her so tenderly. When she had drunk
the milk, Betty tucked her in like a baby, and kissed her good-night
and put out the light, and raised the window, and said, “Now be a good
child, and in the morning you shall hear some nice gossip!”
XIII
Bright sunlight, and the Negro maid building the fire, and Cornelia
in her dressing-gown in the big chair before the grate, drinking her
coffee and nibbling her toast. Betty sat by her in a blue silk kimono,
and when she was through eating, took the tray and set it one side,
remarking, “So you won’t upset it or anything in your excitement.”
Then she closed the door, and took a seat close to her grandmother,
and pushed her bobbed hair back from her forehead, and said, “Now,
bless your old dear heart, get yourself together and don’t faint dead
away--Joe and I are married.”
Cornelia’s hands went limp in her lap. “Married!”
“Yes, dear.”
“But Joe has a wife!”
“Yes, that’s an old story.”
“But then--but--you can’t marry a man who is already married.”
“We can, Grannie dear, we arranged it; you see, we married ourselves.”
Something inside Cornelia quit working for a moment--heart, or lungs,
or solar plexus which controlled them both--and her voice failed her
altogether. Betty’s voice was steady, but one of those waves of color
flooded her neck and face, right up to the bobbed brown hair. “You see,
Grannie, since the law won’t be sensible, we took matters into our own
hands. Joe’s wife is in Reno, but it takes a lot of time, one can’t be
sure how long; and it was too silly that we who love each other should
sit around waiting for some politician to give us permission to live
our lives.”
There was a pause. Cornelia’s voice had not yet come back.
“Let me say right away, Grannie, this isn’t any free love foolishness.
You’ll be thinking about Mary Wollstonecraft and all that, but I was
only a child then, I was using a lot of romantic words. But now I’m
twenty-two, and I’m in love, and I want my man, and I want him for
life, and he knows that--I’ve told him that if any other woman tries
to take him away, I’ll scratch her eyes out. So you see it’s perfectly
respectable and conventional.”
“Y-yes,” said Cornelia, feebly.
“I have waited--I’ve been a good six months and more making up my
mind I wasn’t making any mistake. Now that I’m sure, I’d be perfectly
willing for any judge or clergyman to say the magic words that would
change it from immorality to the holy bonds of matrimony; but you
see how it is, the judge won’t do it for an indefinite time, and the
clergyman never will, because Joe’s wife has not committed adultery--at
least, she has, her man is out there with her, but it isn’t going to be
legally proved, so the curiosity of the Episcopalian clergymen will not
be satisfied according to canon law. I have looked all this up in the
library, and I’ll explain it if you don’t know what I mean.”
“No, I understand,” said Cornelia--still feebly.
“Well, Grannie dear, in your marrying time no one did his own thinking,
but now the world is changing, so my dear blessed old chaperon has got
to sit down and ask herself this plain question: Do you think that my
love for Joe, or his for me, would be in any way more sanctified or
purified by any formula that any judge or clergyman could pronounce
over us? Do you really believe that?”
Cornelia had to think.
“Be sure, now.”
“No, I guess I don’t.”
“All right, then. And do you think we’d be apt to be more true to each
other if we had dressed up in party clothes, and spent several thousand
dollars for flowers in Trinity Church, and had four organs play the
Lohengrin wedding march going in and the Mendelssohn wedding march
going out, and had the rector say a formula which seems absolutely
superfluous to both of us? Do you believe that?”
“No, dear, I suppose I really don’t. Only--we always have done it in
our family.”
“Most of the time,” said Betty. “But this is a special case, and Joe
and I talked it out and decided that it is just too silly that our
love-life should be maimed for we can’t tell how long. We decided that
the law is an imposition, and we have taken the liberty of being our
own clergy, that is all.”
“Yes, dear. But--suppose you get into trouble?”
“Well, we’ll do our best to keep it from happening. We have taken
the best advice. But if there should be an accident, we’ll face
the consequences. I promise you I won’t have what they call a
‘curettage’--as you remember Aunt Alice did not so long ago. You
didn’t know I knew about that, I suppose! And neither will I have an
appendicitis operation, like Cousin Julia. I wouldn’t mind a bit having
a baby by the man I love, and telling the world exactly what I had done
and why; only, of course, the family would die, so if the worst comes
to the worst, you and I and Joe will take another trip to Europe, and
stay there till we can marry. And meantime you must be a good sensible
soul, and tell yourself that Joe and I are married before God and you,
and when he comes in you are to kiss him on both cheeks and welcome
him as your grandson-in-law. Because, you see, he’s quite embarrassed
about it, knowing how eminently respectable you are. Indeed, he’s that
way himself, coming from Virginia--he’s almost as bad as Roger Lowell,
and I had to take matters into my own hands, and do all the marrying,
so to speak. But now it’s done, and I want you to feel comfortable
and happy about it, so that we can be comfortable and happy too. The
sensible thing is for you to chaperon us, and let us meet here, because
it’s very disagreeable having to go to third-rate hotels, and besides,
it’s dangerous, because the politicians in this pious Puritan city are
preying on the free lovers--those who happen to be rich and prominent.
Joe says they have a regular blackmail ring, they catch some man in a
hotel room with a woman, and it costs him anywhere from twenty to two
hundred thousand dollars--that is, of course, unless he can show the
card of a United States senator and presidential candidate!”
There was a pause. “That’s all, Grannie.” Then another pause.
“You are putting a heavy responsibility on me, dear.”
“One more secret to keep!” Betty stood up, looking like a new-risen sun
with laughter and joy and health. “Bless her dear old frightened soul!”
She stooped and put a kiss on each of Cornelia’s cheeks, and one on her
forehead; then, laughing again, “You don’t have to carry the burden if
it’s too heavy. I’ll take it all off your blessed shoulders.”
“How, dear?”
“Say the word, and I’ll move into an apartment with Joe, and write a
note to Mother, telling her all about it. What do you say?”
This time there was no pause. Cornelia said instantly, “No! No!”
XIV
“Bring me good choosing book,” wrote Bart. “I will get the fundament
which I have so long needing.” So whenever Cornelia went for a visit,
she would take two or three volumes from her little library: Benjamin
Franklin’s autobiography and Paine’s “Rights of Man,” the letters and
speeches of Jefferson, Thoreau’s “Walden” and Emerson’s essays, a life
of Garrison and one of John Brown. She thought he ought to know that
New England in which he was to fight for his life, and he agreed with
her in this. He had the most intense interest in history, and the lives
of men who had played a part in it, especially in the cause of liberty
and “joostice.” He identified himself with these great characters, he
lived their lives, finding comments on his case in their words, and
vindication in history’s verdict upon them. He read every minute that
the prison regulations permitted, and at Cornelia’s request he would
write comments on the margins of the books, and many pages of pencil
notes. It was a regular college course in New England culture, and each
time they met there was progress to report.
The old Charlestown prison is built in the form of a cross, and in the
center is a large airy room, in which the prisoners are permitted to
see visitors. Cornelia would come, with her books and her one flower.
She would have to wait while he washed his hands and face--because he
was shoveling coal now, and wheeling it in a barrow for the prison
furnaces; he would apologize for the condition of his clothes, which
he could not help. Cornelia had interceded with the warden and got him
this job, instead of the work in the tailor shop, which fitted him ill.
Outdoor labor was what he had been used to during his ten years in
America, and it kept him in physical condition.
He was a model prisoner, except that he would not stand indignities
from his keepers. Once when Cornelia came she was told that she could
not see him, he was in “solitary” upon bread and water, because he had
refused to do his work. There followed sessions with the warden, and it
transpired that Bart considered that the guard had addressed him in a
way injurious to his dignity. It took tact on Cornelia’s part to patch
up this situation; for the American prison system does not allow for
dignity, and it is not easy to persuade authorities that an anarchist
has a soul. But they could understand that it was unwise to exasperate
a man who received visits from ladies of high social station, and who
might cause a fuss in the newspapers.
Also Cornelia visited Mrs. Sacco, in the village of South Stoughton.
The new baby had arrived, a lovely little girl, and Cornelia and
Betty took this news to the prisoner in the county jail at Dedham, and
received a warm welcome. Poor Nick required a great deal of cheering,
because he was a man who had lived by physical activity, and could not
read and study and think like Bart. He had to learn to spend about
twenty-two hours a day in a cell, with nothing whatever to do, and he
did not want to wait for a trial, he did not want lawyers to fool with
his case and waste the money of the anarchist movement--he wanted to be
killed and have it over with. Cornelia and Betty would argue with him,
in patient half-English and half-Italian, finding ways to appeal to his
pride, reminding him of revolutionary heroes who had managed to endure
prison. Why not work out a régime for himself--do gymnastics, of both
body and soul? Why not study English, so as to do better work for the
cause if he got out, and to write his message to the world if he failed?
The next time they came, they would find that he had shaved himself
meticulously, and wore one of the flowers they had brought him. He
was practicing walking about the cell on his hands, and counting the
number of times he could “chin” himself on his cell-door--he had got
up to forty-something, which was remarkable for any man. He was proud
of that, and when they told him about the lovely eyes of the baby,
his spirit bounded as high as previously it had sunk low. Two races
comprise the Italian nation: those of the north who are descended from
Teutons and Gauls, and are capable of reflection, like Vanzetti; and
those of the south, descendants of Greeks and Carthaginians and Moors,
brown and excitable people, who live their lives outside, and utter
extremes of emotion with many words and gestures. An odd turn of fate
that so many of these should have come to Massachusetts, to annoy the
stern and forbidding ghosts of Puritans!
XV
Lee Swenson had decided that he would take the case. He said no more
to Cornelia, but evidently there had been some understanding with
Betty and Joe, for the young couple sat in at long conferences, and
covered half the state in Betty’s runabout, interviewing witnesses and
tracing clews. Cornelia succeeded in raising five thousand dollars
by pledging one-half her income--which meant that a money-lender was
willing to gamble that she would live more than two years, in spite
of all her worries and labors. She brought in this money, after which
the Sacco-Vanzetti Defense Committee had an office, and a post-office
box, and no less than two second-hand typewriters clicking away on
envelopes. There was a pamphlet telling about the case, mailed out to
lists of radicals all over the country. Articles appeared in socialist
and labor papers, both in America and Europe; for Joe and Betty
wrote long letters to Pierre Leon, and he would translate them into
French and publish them in his paper. So the readers of anarchist and
communist and socialist papers all over Europe began to hear about two
Italians who had fallen victims to the White Terror, in what had once
been the sweet land of liberty, but was now the banking-headquarters of
reaction for the whole world.
Also Cornelia’s labors among the blue-bloods were not without fruit.
Many of these people knew the corruption of their political parties,
and the alliance between the politicians and the exploiting interests.
They had heard of the Ettor-Giovannitti frame-up, and had watched
another strike in Lawrence, a little more than a year ago, with several
near-murders committed by thugs in the mill-owners’ employ. They had
seen the “Reds” paraded down State Street in chains, and had seen
the government forced to turn most of them loose, having not even a
pretense of evidence against them. So a few well-to-do persons began
to take an interest in the Sacco-Vanzetti case. This gave an air of
prosperity--and brought a new development, highly characteristic of the
great Puritan city. One afternoon Lee Swenson called Cornelia on the
phone. “How are you to-day? Nerves fairly strong?”
“What has happened?”--for Cornelia knew his way of teasing her.
“Do you remember the talk we had in your apartment, when I told you
there might be a way to put our boys on the street?”
“I remember.”
“Well, can I drop in for tea and tell you about it? Send the maid out
if you can--it’s a time for being alone!”
The lawyer came, and this is what he had to report. Felice Guadagni,
journalist, who was one of the mainstays of the committee, had had
several visits from an Italian woman named De Falco, an interpreter
for the district court at Dedham, in Norfolk County. She claimed to
come from the district attorney’s office, and offered to have the
men released at the price of sixty thousand dollars. There had been
several conferences, and Felicani, the printer, had met the woman,
and when he pleaded poverty, she had offered to get the price reduced
to fifty thousand. The sum was to be disguised as a retaining fee for
the brother of an official, who was to be hired by the defense. The
Commonwealth would then decide that there was not enough evidence
against the pair, and they would be turned loose. “So there’s your
righteous and law-abiding Boston!” said Lee Swenson--and looked at
Cornelia with a twinkle in his wild western blue eyes.
“You think it’s really genuine, Lee?”
“Lawyers tell me it’s a common procedure in other counties. The woman
undertakes to give us satisfactory assurances.”
“What would they be?”
“She has already given Felicani the names of other cases she claims to
have settled in the same way, and we can investigate them. But first we
have to decide the question--do we want to buy the boys off, or do we
want to trap the rascal politicians and get something on them?”
Said Cornelia: “It seems to me it all depends on whether we are sure
our boys are innocent. I believe they are. Do you, Lee?”
He answered:
“Yes, I do. But that is not the only point. Even though innocent, they
may be convicted; and the problem is, do they want to risk their lives
for some propaganda?”
The lawyer would be allowed to see his clients in the evening, so he
said that he would run out to Charlestown and ask Bart about it. “I’ll
make my guess,” he added, “if no ladies are present, he’ll say, tell
them to go to hell.”