CHAPTER XIV

JUDGE FURY

I

Four times each day the prisoners made their march down the middle of

the street, accompanied by military escort. Four times each day the

jury made a march, from their hotel to the court-house, at noon to a

restaurant and back, then to the hotel in the evening: twelve “good

men and true,” with court officers preceding and following, the aged

foreman toddling at their head--he was to die within three months.

It was a heavy strain upon old men, to sit for six hours a day in a

crowded court-room, in suffocating midsummer heat. The judge mercifully

said they might take off their coats, but their Puritan consciences

required most of them to be uncomfortable!

Seven weeks their semi-imprisonment lasted; the bored victims got to

know one another too well, and when they were tired of playing cards

they sought refuge in the daily newspaper. They were not allowed to

read, about their own case--the sheriff cut it all out of the papers;

but they read about a court up in Boston, where Charles Ponzi was being

punished for having made five million dollars without permission of

the Federal Reserve Board. The financial wizard’s digestion had been

wrecked by the ordeal of law, so the papers explained, and he had to

be taken out to a restaurant each day, to get his diet of little neck

clams and cream of tomato soup.

And then the story of Mishawum Manor, where the emperors of the moving

picture world had been entertained by naked young ladies dancing the

highland fling! Who could have invented more delicious material for

the beguiling of bored jurymen? The Hearst newspaper put it on the

front page each day: the romantic life story of “Brownie” Kennedy, the

“madame” of this roadhouse; the number of husbands she had deserted,

the millionaires she had plundered and ruined; details about the

“champagne and chicken supper,” the hugging and the dancing, and how

the guests had disappeared to the rooms upstairs, so that at one time

there was nobody to eat the chicken or drink the champagne. Later they

were reassembled, much in déshabille, and the young ladies--names,

addresses and prices all given--were flinging their very highlandest,

when a flashlight went off and a photograph was taken of the scene.

Most of the guests were too drunk to know what this meant; when they

woke up next afternoon, they paid a thousand dollars for “entertainment

and breakage,” and thought that would be the end of it--just as if they

had been at home in Hollywood.

But no, this was a pious Puritan community; and presently the emperors

of moving pictures were receiving letters informing them that several

of the young ladies who had been hired for the party had husbands, and

these husbands were threatening suits for the desecration of their

wives; furthermore, some indignant moralist had carried the story

to the district attorney of Middlesex County, and that official was

greatly shocked. Middlesex is sacred territory, because it contains the

city of Cambridge, home of Harvard, the center of the center and hub of

the hub. It would take no less than half a million dollars to wipe out

the stain which these Hebrew and Babylonian emperors had put upon New

England culture.

After much dickering, and threats and counterthreats, the dispute was

settled by the payment of a hundred and five thousand dollars, which,

according to the newspapers, had been divided among the chiefs of

the political “ring,” including the Middlesex district attorney--no

Irish-Catholic “mick,” but a blue-blood of registered pedigree, a

gentleman with two hobbies, Red-baiting and college athletics. Only a

year ago he had led a spectacular raid against “Red headquarters” in

Cambridge, with a patrol wagon, cops, reporters and camera men, and

had confiscated a load of literature. He was engaged in umpiring the

Yale-Princeton football game, when the newspaper reporters came to

inform him that the Supreme Judicial Court had removed him from office.

Being a good sport, he went on with the game.

Middlesex County lies immediately to the north of Norfolk, and at its

nearest point is only four or five miles from Dedham; so it might

occur to some jurymen to wonder, could this corruption have crossed

the border, and affected those in charge of the present trial? The

authorities deemed it wise to provide automobiles, with bailiffs for

chauffeurs, to keep the jury entertained. On holidays the twelve good

men and true were escorted to the beach to picnic, and Sundays they

went to church in the morning, and in the afternoon they motored to

witness some of the patriotism rampant in the community.

On Sunday, twelve days after the trial started, the bodies of three

dead soldiers, dug out of the ground in France, were buried in the city

of Brockton, in Plymouth County, and the whole town turned out for

the ceremonies. On the same day at Whitman, in the same county, two

bodies were buried. On the following Sunday another one at Hingham, in

Norfolk County. The day before that was the anniversary of the Battle

of Belleau Wood, celebrated by veterans all over both counties; the

day before that was a great New England holiday, Bunker Hill Day,

celebrated in every town. On June 25th, just as the defense was getting

under way, the sacred Plymouth Rock was restored to place with a new

shrine over it, and there was a great celebration in Vanzetti’s old

home, reported in all newspapers and read about by all jurors. A week

later five thousand veterans of the “Yankee Division” assembled in

Plymouth, and held their exercises over the Fourth of July, the great

American patriotic holiday. On that day the town of Quincy, in Norfolk

County, witnessed the greatest parade of veterans in its history; the

whole countryside echoed with the sounds of firecrackers and bells and

military exhortations. “Never shall America forget the brave boys who

died for her!”--so said the orators.

II

And then the college commencements! There are a score of colleges

and universities in Massachusetts, to say nothing of two hundred and

forty-nine high schools; and all of them celebrated their exercises

while the Sacco-Vanzetti trial was in progress. All had eminent

persons to deliver orations, and few were the orators who did not

refer to the enemy within our midst, and the need for good citizens to

stand together. These exhortations would be quoted in the next day’s

newspapers, and read by the twelve good men and true in their legal

quarantine.

Cornelia took a day off and went up to the Harvard exercises.

Impossible to refuse, for it was the crisis of the effort to hold

Alice in line, and this was an occasion that would never come again,

the graduation of her only son; the public appearance of Alice with

Henry, and with all the family about her, would set forth their

solidarity to the world, and repudiate malicious gossip. Such was the

requirement of propriety. The three sisters might quarrel ever so

bitterly among themselves, but the world must see them side by side,

going through the formalities with dignity.

So now Clara spent the night in the Winters home in Boston, to keep

Alice from taking poison or running away. Deborah came early in the

morning, and the two of them worked with moral exhortations, and cups

of strong coffee, and an expert hairdresser, to get their distracted

sister into shape for exhibition. Clara rode in the car with Alice and

Henry, to relieve them of the necessity of talking--Clara could always

tell a thousand stories about the progress of her brood.

Deborah sent her car early in the morning to bring her mother; and

there they were, three middle-aged ladies and one old one, dressed with

the restrained and dignified but none the less expensive elegance of

the Brahmins; Henry in tall silk hat and frock coat, braided trousers

and spats; Quincy Thornwell, gentleman of leisure, escorting Priscilla

Alvin Shaw, returned from her honeymoon in Florida. They took their

appointed places in Sander’s Theater, bowing right and left, greeting

their friends, exchanging compliments with the nearest. All the

conventions were satisfied.

The academic procession moved through the “Yard”; all the dignitaries

in their gorgeous-colored silk hoods and gowns, led by the university

marshal, and followed by thirteen hundred graduates-to-be, all in

caps and gowns. It was a special occasion, because Harvard was making

an innovation; for the first time in its two hundred and eighty-five

years, women were to be awarded regular Harvard degrees--not just

Radcliffe degrees signed by President Lowell. There were thirty-six

of these intruding females, but they were not permitted to leave the

sacred yard with the men, they had to join the procession near Lawrence

Hall.

In Sander’s Theater the sheriff of the county called the meeting

to order; the dean of the divinity school offered a prayer, three

graduates delivered orations, and the Governor of the Commonwealth made

a speech. A curious moment for Cornelia Thornwell, with ghosts walking

upon the platform, in costumes much out of style. How many years since

she had sat up there, and heard Josiah’s stern dry voice? The fashion

in speeches had not changed a particle; they still talked about the

responsibility of educated men for citizenship; they still rebuked

disturbers of the public thought. Said Governor Cox: “We ought to stop

complaining about the wrongs other men are doing until we are sure each

one of us is doing his part honorably and well.”

President Lowell arose to confer the degrees; an old gentleman with a

brown mustache and full red cheeks and proper coldness of manner. He

belonged to the inner circle of the sacred caste, enjoying an income

of not far from a million dollars a year from the family cotton mills

and real estate. He had been a lawyer on a small scale, when the great

financial interests of Boston had selected him to take charge of their

university. Under his direction there had been established a Graduate

School of Business Administration, to put a gloss of culture upon the

crudities of commercialism; the institution had grown with such speed

that it was turning matters about, and taking a lot of the gloss off

Harvard.

There was a slow procession of thirteen hundred young men in black

gowns and mortar-boards, walking across a stage, putting out a hand

and taking a roll of sheepskin; listening to a little speech, if it

happened to be a “cum laude,” with an extra sentence if it happened to

be a “magna cum laude,” and several sentences if it happened to be a

“summa cum laude.” It seemed symbolical of New England hypocrisy that

these were not real diplomas, but merely blanks; next day the graduates

had to go rooting in tubs, in the basement of the theater, to get their

own!

The only thrill in the ceremony is when one of the young men happens to

be known to you; then you make a decorous little noise with the palms

of your hands--the relic of enthusiasm among the blue-bloods. Cornelia

looked at the young faces, grave and pale, mostly, but still clean

and alive. She looked at the sheriffs and mayors and politicians and

lawyers and bankers--masks of cynicism, hardness and dullness. What

evil power presided over the lives of men, to work this transformation

from youth to age?

It came the turn of Josiah Thornwell Winters; and Cornelia hoped

that not many of these graduates were hiding a tragedy like his. She

had heard from Quincy Thornwell the end of the story: the woman from

“Larry Shay’s stable,” who had succeeded in making Young Josiah think

she was only nineteen, and innocent, was in reality twenty-five, a

victim of drugs, and also of a disease. This latter she had passed on

to her victim, so now he was paying several visits a week to leading

specialists, and his pale set face as he walked across the platform was

due to the fact that walking hurt him. But all over Sander’s Theater,

members of the audience nudged one another, whispering, “The grandson

of Governor Thornwell--the tall one.” They thought about his blue

blood, and mothers with marriageable daughters pondered ways to meet

him.

There was an elaborate banquet at the close of these ceremonies; and

also a series of class banquets, at which the “old boys” got together

and listened to patriotism and jokes. At one of these revelries the

orator was that courageous patriot, District Attorney Frederick G.

Katzmann, of Norfolk and Plymouth counties. The chairman introduced him

as one who had set out to rid Massachusetts of the Reds, and the orator

accepted the stern duty, and talked about the Sacco-Vanzetti case, and

what he was going to do to those anarchists. Tumultuous applause from

the assembled banqueters, and toasts from their hip-pocket flasks, and

singing of “Fair Harvard” and “He’s a Jolly Good Fellow!”

III

Back to Dedham courthouse with its high white dome, with a ring of

port-holes like an ocean liner; the jury making its daily marches, and

the foreman saluting the flag; the manacled prisoners parading down the

middle of the street with their military escort; the guards keeping

watch, searching the spectators, even the handbags of the ladies; the

newspapers reporting sensations.

The defense was having its innings. Frank Burke, a man in his fifties,

formerly sealer of weights and measures for the city of Brockton, and

now giving demonstrations of glass-blowing, had been on the street in

South Braintree, where the bandit car crossed the railroad tracks. The

car had passed within ten feet of him, and the bandit in the right

front seat had leaned out and snapped a gun at him--it had failed to

explode. The man supposed to be Sacco had been in the right rear seat,

and Burke got a good look at him and described him, a flat, full face,

with broad heavy jowl--no resemblance to Sacco. There had been so much

patriotism in the trial that Burke thought a little would be welcome

from him, so he tried it, and there resulted a curious dialogue between

him and the district attorney:

“What was the color of the gun you saw?”

“Blue.”

“You have seen them, haven’t you?”

“Yes, my boy brought one home from the war.”

“Did you think I asked about your boy bringing one home?”

“No, but you were asking me about automatics, and I told you when I

seen one.”

“You thought you would tuck that in, did you?”

“I am not attempting to tuck anything in, Mr. Katzmann.”

“Did you do it inadvertently?”

“Yes, sir, I am trying--”

“And have all your answers made heretofore that have not been called

for been done inadvertently? I want you to tell the truth.”

Five laborers took the stand, men who had been digging an excavation,

and had witnessed the murder. These men all swore that neither Sacco

nor Vanzetti were in the bandit car; but they were Italians and

Spaniards, having to talk through interpreters, and it was easy for

Katzmann to discredit them. One laborer estimated that he was forty or

fifty feet from the shooting; Katzmann very cunningly got him to answer

a complicated question--that he was as sure of the distance as he was

that the bandits had not been Sacco and Vanzetti. Then he measured

the distance on the map, and said it was ninety-five feet; and that

finished Pedro Iscorla. In his closing speech Katzmann attacked all

these laborers as cowards, because they had stood by with picks and

shovels and failed to attack bandits who were shooting guns.

Two gun experts testified for the defense. Experts always balance

one another--if you have as much money as the other side. One was

a champion pistol shot and department head in a cartridge company;

the other was superintendent of the testing department of the Colt

Automatic Pistol Company, which had made Sacco’s gun, and he should

have known more about it than Captain Proctor, who had found himself

on the witness stand vainly trying to take the weapon apart. Both the

defense experts testified that the “mortal bullet” could not have come

from Sacco’s gun; nor did they, like Proctor, take back their testimony

later on.

Witnesses appeared to counter the testimony of the gateman Levangie,

and say how he had told them he did not see the bandits. The same for

Goodridge, the ex-convict; four men swore that he had made statements

contradicting his present testimony. Too bad these poolroom gentlemen

were not named Jones, Smith, Brown and Robinson, instead of Magazu,

Arrigoni, Manganio and D’Amato!

And then the witnesses to answer “Fainting Lola”: her friend, Mrs.

Campbell, a white-haired old woman who broke down and wept because she

did not like to call Lola such a liar; the policeman and the reporter

to whom Lola had admitted that she could not identify the bandits; and

then Kurlansky, the storekeeper, who got his rebuke from Judge Thayer

for having failed to tackle the police and prosecuting authorities of

Norfolk County, all by his valiant self!

And then poor Joseph Rosen, the Jewish peddler of cloth, who had sold

Vanzetti a piece of suiting at a great bargain because it had a hole

in it. He had gone with Vanzetti to show the goods to Mrs. Brini, and

they had had a long talk. Three weeks later he had read of Vanzetti’s

arrest for banditry, and had seen his picture and recognized him, and

realized that it was the day he had sold the cloth. He told his story

to the jury, and Katzmann provided a four-hour circus for bored jurymen

by kidding Rosen’s Yiddisher dialect, and asking where he had been on

a certain day a year ago, and where he had been three weeks ago. Poor

Rosen tried to protest that if he had a little time he could remember

some of that; which of course Katzmann and the jury took to mean that

he could have the lawyers’ help in remembering it.

As a matter of fact it would have been easy for the prosecution

to have verified Rosen’s story if it had cared to, for he said he

had sold cloth to many persons in Plymouth that day, including the

wife of the chief of police. But it was as Lee Swenson had told

Cornelia--hardly any use at all to put on foreign witnesses; the jury

took it for granted that their stories were “built,” and whether they

were all “built,” or only a few of them “built,” made no difference

in the result. Of course no jury would ever dream that the cultured

gentlemen who represented the Commonwealth would do such a thing as

tell a witness what to say! Never in a thousand years could they be

made to realize that of the five identification witnesses upon whom

the case against Sacco rested, one was a many times convicted crook,

one a hysterical prostitute, one a halfwit, one a disordered fantast,

and one a feeble victim of police pressure; all five of them persons

who had made statements identifying other men as the bandits, or else

saying that they could not identify any one. And all this known to the

prosecution, and some of it to the judge on the bench--so that the

procedure represented a conspiracy between the district attorney and

the judge, to deceive the jury, to hide the essential facts from them,

and persuade them that white was black.

IV

The great day of the trial: Bartolomeo Vanzetti taking the stand in his

own defense! He looked neat and proper in his new black suit, clean

white collar and little black silk tie. He had grown bald about the

temples during his long confinement, but he still had his heavy droopy

mustache; his earnest, deeply lined face was that of a student and

thinker.

They took him out of the “cage” to give his testimony, and stood him in

the prisoner’s dock, with a little low railing before him, where for

hours he answered the questions of his lawyers. His manner was quiet

and courteous, and his command of English remarkable; he had profited

by his year of study to drop most of his Italian peculiarities, and the

newspapers commented upon his education, so that Cornelia was proud of

her pupil. Only once did he let himself be goaded by Katzmann into a

flash of “redness”; when he had occasion to refer to the place where

some of his friends lived, working on the railroad near Springfield:

“Yes, in a shanty, you know, the little house where the Italian live

and work like a beast, the Italian workingman in this country.”

He told the jury the story of his life: his childhood in Italy, his

slavery to a pastry cook, the breakdown of his health, the death of his

mother. He told about coming to America, his work in the great rich

club in New York City--he no longer called it a “clooba”--and then in

the smart restaurant; his work in the brickyard, the stone quarry, on

the railroad, the Worcester reservoir--near the home of Judge Thayer;

then in a wire mill, then for the Plymouth Cordage Company. He told

about his going to Mexico, because he did not believe in war; he

had learned by now that he had not been liable to the draft, and he

mentioned it, but apparently without result.

He told about his fish-selling business--and the defense counsel

showed his license to dig clams, and the receipts for his fish. All

the morning of the South Braintree crime he had been selling fish in

Plymouth--in Cherry Street, Standish Avenue, Cherry Court, Suosso’s

Lane, Castle Street. A little after the noon hour he had met Rosen,

and bought from him the piece of suiting with a hole in it; Vanzetti

still had the cloth, and it was introduced in evidence. He had taken

Rosen to Mrs. Brini, because she worked in a woolen mill, and was a

judge of cloth. In the afternoon he had left his cart in the yard of

Melvin Corl, the fisherman, and had gone down to the shore, where Corl

was painting a boat, and at the actual moment of the South Braintree

murders he had been chatting with Corl. The owner of the boat-yard,

Gessi, had come along during the talk, and another man, Holmes. Later

Bart had dug clams and bait, and had gone home and had his supper at

six o’clock, and had spent the evening in Plymouth.

He told about his doings from that April fifteenth to the day of his

arrest three weeks later. He had gone to the club in East Boston, and

had been asked to go to New York to see about Salsedo and Elia. But

there Katzmann and Thayer stopped him; it was the intention of the

district attorney to argue that the defendants had no reason to be

afraid on the night of their arrest, and to tell lies to the police.

Katzmann wanted to argue that the worst that anarchists had to fear

was getting a free trip to Italy; that as Sacco was going anyhow,

the claim of fear was obviously silly. The entire ruling class of

Massachusetts was going to maintain that argument for six years; so

the jury must be kept from realizing that sixty-seven hours prior to

the arrest of Sacco and Vanzetti, their friend and comrade Salsedo had

jumped, or had been thrown to his death from the fourteenth story of

the Park Row Building in New York! The defense came back to it, again

and again, but they were blocked here and blocked there, and the real

meaning of the matter was never made clear to the jury.

It was the aim of the prosecution, not so much to refute the testimony

of Vanzetti, as to rouse the prejudices of the jurors against him;

to fill them with emotions of hatred and fear, so that they would be

incapable of thinking; to make them see an anarchist infidel draft

dodger as a depraved wretch, deserving to die many deaths. When the

time came for cross-examination, Mr. Katzmann’s first question had

nothing to do with the problem whether Vanzetti had sat in a bandit car

and pointed a shot-gun out of the rear window; it had to do with the

problem whether the jury was going to find him guilty, regardless of

whether he had sat in the bandit car or not. Said Mr. Katzmann: “So you

left Plymouth, Mr. Vanzetti, in May, 1917, to dodge the draft, did you?”

Mr. Katzmann of course knew perfectly well that Vanzetti had not been

liable to the draft; but he went on to rub in the sneer, with that

mock indignation acquired in the course of eleven years’ service for

the Commonwealth: “When this country was at war, you ran away, so

you would not have to fight as a soldier?” The district attorney was

not interested to question Vanzetti about the South Braintree crime,

and try to prove that he was there; the district attorney was not

interested in trying to break Vanzetti’s alibi; he was only interested

to prove that Vanzetti had lied to the police, and that he was

unpatriotic.

He took up the prisoner’s effort to organize a meeting, and the pitiful

circular he had drafted: “You were going to advise in a public meeting

men who had gone to war? Are you that man?” “Yes, sir,” answered Bart,

quietly, “I am that man, not the man you want me, but I am that man.”

The newspapers made much of this scene; it was what their readers were

hungry for. “A tensely dramatic moment,” said the Boston _Traveler_,

and described how the prosecutor “thundered.” Said the _American_,

“The district attorney’s voice was vibrant with emotion. It thrilled

the spectators.”

V

But it was during the cross-examination of Sacco that the great

official’s vibrations did their heaviest thundering, and the

spectators, and readers of newspapers, got their choicest thrills.

Nicola Sacco had a poor command of English, and had to call for the aid

of the interpreter-crook; also he had poor command of his emotions, and

could be jeered at and goaded, provoked into saying things that would

ruin him. The district attorney asked him seventeen hundred questions;

and more about patriotism than about anything else. Said Mr. Katzmann:

“Did you leave this country in May, 1917?”

Said Sacco: “I can’t answer in one word.”

“Please answer my questions, Mr. Sacco”--“in thundering voice,” the

newspapers said. “One week before the day of the first draft in May,

1917, did you leave this country?” There followed a long dialogue,

a scene which made Cornelia think of a deer in the forest, when a

wolverine or lynx or other fierce creature drops upon him from a tree,

and chews into his neck as he runs. That is a common event in nature;

but in this case appeared a phenomenon unknown to zoology--another

animal running alongside the fleeing deer, to keep any one from

interfering with the neck-chewing process. This creature went by the

name of a webthayer.

“Did you say yesterday you love a free country?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Did you love this country in the month of May, 1917?”

“I did not say,--I don’t want to say I did not love this country.”

“Did you love this country in that month of 1917?”

“If you can, Mr. Katzmann, if you give me that,--I could explain--”

“Do you understand that question?”

“Yes.”

“Then will you please answer it?”

“I can’t answer in one word.”

“You can’t say whether you loved the United States of America one week

before the day you enlisted for the first draft?”

“I can’t say in one word, Mr. Katzmann.”

“Did you love this country in the last week of May, 1917?”

“That is pretty hard for me to say in one word, Mr. Katzmann.”

“There are two words you can use, Mr. Sacco, yes or no. Which one is

it?”

“Yes.”

“And in order to show your love for this United States of America when

she was about to call upon you to become a soldier you ran away to

Mexico.”

That question was, obviously enough, not intended to elicit any

information of use to the jury; that question was, purely and simply,

a sneer. And Katzmann hammered and hammered upon it; eleven separate

times he repeated the word “love.” First, did Sacco run away for love

of his country? Then, did he run away for love of his wife? “Would it

be your idea of showing your love for your wife that when she needed

you, you ran away from her?”

Said Sacco: “I did not run away from her.”

Said Sacco’s lawyer: “I object.”

But the webthayer said: “He may answer,”--and added, with his usual

cunning: “Simply on the question of credibility, that is all.”

So the wolverine or lynx went on with the neck-chewing. “Would it be

your idea of love for your wife that you were to run from her when she

needed you?”

Said Mr. McAnarney: “Pardon me. I ask for an exception on that.”

The webthayer excluded the question; but obligingly indicated to the

neck-chewer how he might go on. “He had not admitted he ran away.”

So, of course, the torture was resumed. “Then I will ask you, didn’t

you run away from Milford so as to avoid being a soldier for the United

States?”

“I did not run away.”

“You mean you walked away?”

“Yes.”

“You don’t understand me when I say ‘run away,’ do you?”

“That is vulgar.”

“That is vulgar?”

“You can say a little intelligent, Mr. Katzmann.”

“Don’t you think going away from your country is a vulgar thing to do

when she needs you?”

“I don’t believe in war.”

“You don’t believe in war?”

“No, sir.”

“Do you think it is a cowardly thing to do what you did?”

“No, sir.”

“Do you think it is a brave thing to do what you did?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Do you think it would be a brave thing to go away from your own wife?”

“No.”

“When she needed you?”

“No.”

VI

The prosecutor kept at the wife question until he had got all the hate

out of it he could, and then he took up the sneer that “wops” come to

America to make money. “Is it because,--is your love for the United

States of America commensurate with the amount of money you can get in

this country per week?”

“Better conditions, yes.”

“Better country to make money, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“Is your love for this country measured by the amount of money you can

earn here?”

“I never loved money.”

This went on, until the defense broke in again. Said Mr. Jeremiah

McAnarney: “No, if your Honor please. And I might state now I want my

objection to go to this whole line of interrogation.”

Said the webthayer: “I think you opened it up.”

Said the lawyer, very humbly: “No, if your Honor please, I think I have

not.”

Said the webthayer: “I think you have,”--and went on to give an

argument which for prejudice-carrying capacity exceeded anything the

fertile mind of the district attorney had been able to conceive. It was

the contention of the defendants that on the night of their arrest they

had been going with Boda and Orciani to visit some of the anarchist

comrades, and collect the dangerous literature from their homes, and

hide it until the storm of persecution had blown over. And now here was

the webthayer, elaborating an even more complicated sneer than the one

about love of country and of wife. Said he: “It seems to me you have.

Are you going to claim much of all the collection of the literature

and the books was really in the interest of the United States as well

as these people and therefore it has opened up the credibility of the

defendant when he claims that all that work was done really for the

interest of the United States in getting his literature out of the way?”

Said Mr. McAnarney: “That claim is not presented in anything tantamount

to the language just used by the Court, and in view of the record as it

stands at this time I object to this line of inquiry.”

There followed upon this a phenomenon never observed in any forest;

the wolverine or lynx desisting from his neck-chewing, and letting the

webthayer take his place on the victim’s back! The webthayer liked his

mockery so well that he repeated it five separate times, in detail, and

several other times by implication. “Are you going to claim that what

the defendant did was in the interest of the United States?” And each

time with a broader wink at the jury, a broader grin from the jury in

response. When the defense lawyer objected, “Your Honor please, I now

object to your Honor’s statement as prejudicial to the rights of the

defendants and ask that the statement be withdrawn from the jury”--then

instantly the webthayer was on the alert to protect the record and make

everything look all right. “There is no prejudicial remark made that I

know of, and none were intended. I simply asked you, sir, as to whether

you propose to offer evidence as to what you said to me.”

After which he went on to repeat the sneer and rub it in; and closed,

as usual, by telling the wolverine or lynx how to get back to the

neck-chewing: “I will let you inquire further as to what he meant by

the expression.” So, of course, Katzmann took the hint, and went on,

exactly as if there had been no interruption: “What did you mean when

you said yesterday you loved a free country?”

VII

Poor Nick! He was a talkative, eager young fellow, a propagandist;

and for fourteen months and two days they had had him behind steel

bars. He had boiled, he had seethed, he had all but exploded. And now

suddenly he saw a hope! “Give me a chance to explain,” he pleaded;

and the cunning prosecutor said: “I am asking you to explain now.”

Actually, the great Mr. Katzmann asked him to explain! The great

Judge Thayer said it would be all right for him to explain! The jury,

the spectators, everybody was ready to listen--while he told what he

thought about America, about Italy, about liberty, about the workers

and their rights, the rich and the poor, good food and vegetables,

schools, free speech, Debs, the capitalist class, Harvard College, D.

Rockefeller, Morgan, working people, war, socialism, Abraham Lincoln,

Abe Jefferson, the Irish, the Germans, the French, governments,

devilment and robbery--everything! Perhaps he could not convert them,

but at least he could make them understand him!

Forgive him if his stump-speech is long--he has all the conclusions

of a lifetime to state! Forgive him if it is jumbled--he has no time

to arrange it, he does not know at what moment they may shut him off

again and lock him up for another fourteen months! Forgive him if it is

incoherent--he is groping desperately for words in a strange tongue,

stammering, halting, starting again, tripping himself up with his

excitement, the intensity of his convictions. And meantime the bland

prosecutor stands silent, smiling--why should he trouble to work,

when his victim will hang himself with his own rope? The judge is

content, for he knows it will look well in the record--the defendant

has had a chance to express himself, no possible claim that he was

misrepresented. Most content of all are the jury-men--because they have

power to punish a wop who is insulting and defiling all their most

sacred Yankee prejudices.

Said Nicola Sacco, in defense of his life:

“When I was in Italy, a boy, I was a Republican, so I always thinking

Republican has more chance to manage education, develop, to build some

day his family, to raise the child and education, if you could. But

that was my opinion; so when I came to this country I saw there was not

what I was thinking before, but there was all the difference, because

I been working in Italy not so hard as I been work in this country. I

could live free there just as well. Work in the same condition but not

so hard, about seven or eight hours a day, better food. I mean genuine.

Of course, over here is good food, because it is bigger country, to any

those who got money to spend, not for the working and laboring class,

and in Italy is more opportunity to laborer to eat vegetable, more

fresh, and I came in this country. When I been started work here very

hard and been work thirteen years, hard worker, I could not been afford

much a family the way I did have the idea before. I could not put any

money in the bank; I could no push my boy some to go to school and

other things. I teach over here men who is with me. The free idea gives

any man a chance to profess his own idea, not the supreme idea, not to

give any person, not to be like Spain in position, yes, about twenty

centuries ago, but to give a chance to print and education, literature,

free speech, that I see it was all wrong. I could see the best men,

intelligent, education, they been arrested and sent to prison and died

in prison for years and years without getting them out, and Debs, one

of the great men in his country, he is in prison, still away in prison,

because he is a Socialist. He wanted the laboring class to have better

conditions and better living, more education, give a push his son if he

could have a chance some day, but they put him in prison. Why? Because

the capitalist class, they know, they are against that, because the

capitalist class, they don’t want our child to go to high school or

college or Harvard College. There would be no chance, there would not

be no,--they don’t want the working class educationed; they want the

working class to be a low all the times, be underfoot, and not to be

up with the head. So, sometimes, you see, the Rockefellers, Morgans,

they give fifty,--I mean they give five hundred thousand dollars to

Harvard College, they give a million dollars for another school. Every

day say, ‘Well, D. Rockefeller is a great man, the best man in the

country.’ I want to ask him who is going to Harvard College? What

benefit the working class they will get by those million dollars they

give by Rockefeller, D. Rockefellers. They won’t get, the poor class,

they won’t have no chance to go to Harvard College because men who is

getting $21 a week or $30 a week, I don’t care if he gets $80 a week,

if he gets a family of five children he can’t live and send his child

and go to Harvard College if he wants to eat everything nature will

give him. If he wants to eat like a cow, and that is the best thing

but I want men to live like men. I like men to get everything that

nature will give best, because they belong,--we are not the friend of

any other place, but we are belong to nations. So that is why my idea

has been changed. So that is why I love people who labor and work and

see better conditions every day develop, makes no more war. We no want

fight by the gun, and we don’t want to destroy young men. The mother

been suffering for building the young man. Some day need a little more

bread, so when the time the mother get some bread or profit out of that

boy, the Rockefellers, Morgans, and some of the peoples, high class,

they send to war. Why? What is war? The war is not shoots like Abraham

Lincoln’s and Abe Jefferson, to fight for the free country, for the

better education to give chance to any other peoples, not the white

people but the black and the others, because they believe and know they

are mens like the rest, but they are war for the great millionaire. No

war for the civilization of men. They are war for business, million

dollars come on the side. What right we have to kill each other? I

been work for the Irish. I have been working with the German fellow,

with the French, many other peoples. I love them people just as I

could love my wife, and my people for that did receive me. Why should

I go kill them men? What he done to me? He never done anything, so I

don’t believe in no war. I want to destroy those guns. All I can say,

the Government put the literature, give us educations. I remember in

Italy, a long time ago, about sixty years ago, I should say, yes,

about sixty years ago, the Government they could not control very much

those two,--devilment went on, and robbery, so one of the government

in the cabinet he says, ‘If you want to destroy those devilments, if

you want to take off all those criminals, you ought to give a chance to

Socialist literature, education of people, emancipation. That is why I

destroy governments, boys.’ That is why my idea I love Socialists. That

is why I like people who want education and living, building, who is

good, just as much as they could. That is all.”

VIII

July 7th was the date of this oration. Three days previously all

patriots had celebrated the Declaration of Independence, with its

opening assertion that “all men are created equal.” If the author

of that document, “Abe Jefferson,” could have been present in the

Dedham court-house, he would have been able to understand the

blundering protest of an uneducated foreigner, chained for life to an

edge-trimming machine in a shoe-factory. But not so this jury, not this

judge nor this prosecuting attorney! To them it was treason; and the

moment the orator ceased, the wolverine or lynx was on his neck again.

“And that is why you love the United States of America? She is back

more than twenty centuries like Spain, is she?”

Worse yet, the presumptuous wop had dared to insult Harvard College!

The district attorney waited until after lunch, to refresh himself

and gather his energies to deal with such insolence. “Did you say

in substance you could not send your boy to Harvard? Don’t you

know Harvard educates more boys of poor people free than any other

university in the United States of America?”

The defense lawyers objected, but were overruled, and poor Sacco had

to answer. If he had been an authority on educational statistics, his

answer would have been that Harvard was educating free something over

one hundred students, while the University of Wisconsin had educated

free in that year five thousand, eight hundred and ninety-five, and

the University of California had educated free eleven thousand, three

hundred and forty.

But alas, poor Nick was not an authority on educational statistics,

and could only say that he didn’t know; thereby confessing to a more

serious crime than first degree murder. Said the outraged Mr. Katzmann:

“So without the light of knowledge on that subject, you are condemning

even Harvard University, are you, as being a place for rich men?”

More argument, more interruptions; the defense lawyers protesting,

Judge Thayer overruling them--he and Katzmann like two skillful

basket-ball players, keeping the ball in play between them and working

it down the field to the goal. “Did you intend to condemn Harvard

College?” (Objection overruled.) “Were you ready to say none but the

rich could go there without knowing about offering scholarships?”

(Objection overruled.) “Does your boy go to the public schools? Are

there any schools in the town you come from in Italy that compare with

the school your boy goes to?” (Objection.) And then, free nursing in

the town of Stoughton! The number of children in the schools of Boston,

and what did Sacco know about it! Said Mr. McAnarney: “I object to that

answer. I object to the question and the answer.” Said Judge Thayer:

“The question may stand, and the answer also.”

To Cornelia Thornwell, watching this scene, listening to these

interminable wrangles, this was not a real procedure in a court; this

was some kind of crazy dream, a world of cross-questions and crooked

answers, another Alice in Wonderland. Yes, that was it--Cornelia was

in the home of the White Rabbit and the March Hare, the Mock Turtle

and the Queen of Hearts! “He’s murdering the time! Off with his head!”

A world where things changed their form suddenly, where they grew

enormously big and terrifying and then shrunk to littleness, so that

you had to laugh at them! A world in which a blond and genial gentleman

with bursting red pulpy face turned suddenly into a wolverine or lynx,

chewing a deer’s neck--and then into a basketball player, romping down

a field with a judge! Anything but a responsible public official,

conducting a judicial procedure involving human life!

I’ll be judge, I’ll be jury,

Said cunning old Fury;

I’ll try the whole cause and condemn you to death!

They got onto the question of the literature which Sacco and Vanzetti

claimed they had been intending to gather up. “Books relating to

anarchy, were they not?” “Not all of them.” “How many of them?” “Well

all together. We are Socialists, democratic, any other socialistic

information, Socialists, Syndicalists, Anarchists, any paper.” They

discussed for a while what had been intended with the literature,

whether it was to be destroyed or only hidden for a while. Sacco

admitted it was to be hidden. “Certainly, because they are educational

for book, educational.” Said the prosecutor: “An education in anarchy,

wasn’t it?” Said the witness: “Why, certainly. Anarchistic is not

criminals.” This greatly incensed the district attorney. “I did not

ask you if they are criminals or not. Nor are you to pass upon that,

sir.” What a light this threw upon his purpose! And upon the argument

which Cornelia was to hear in future years from the whole of official

Massachusetts--that the purpose of this cross-examination had been to

prove that Sacco and Vanzetti had not been genuine “Reds,” but were

merely making a pretense at it!

On and on, with no end in sight. Presently the wolverine or lynx was

back at his neck-chewing--though you would think his victim must by

now be bled to death. “And you are a man who tells this jury that

the United States of America is a disappointment to you?” Again an

objection of the defense, and the webthayer telling the wolverine or

lynx how to proceed. The judge pointed out that Katzmann had made the

mistake of “assuming” that Sacco was the man. So of course Katzmann

took the hint, and framed it as a question; _was_ Sacco the man? The

lawyers again objected, and the judge overruled, and the lawyers asked

an exception, and then the victim couldn’t understand the phrase,

“passed judgment upon the United States of America,” and it had to

be explained to him: “Well, tell us about how disappointed you were,

and what you did not find and what you expected to find. Are you that

man?” Yes, Sacco admitted, he was the man; and the jury was greatly

enlightened.

IX

The ordeal was over at last, and a court official came to Cornelia

Thornwell, saying that His Honor would like to see her in his chambers.

Another interview with the judge--the third during the trial! It

was intolerable to him that members of the aristocracy which he

reverenced should be sitting there in court day by day disapproving

of the procedure; he must argue with them, he must explain and defend

himself, he must bring the great ones to appreciate his services. He

meant it for a compliment to them; but unfortunately he paid the same

compliment to newspaper reporters and photographers, and other persons

whom the aristocracy does not recognize.

He had taken off his black silk robe and hung it on a hook, and was now

a quite ordinary little old man, small, narrow-shouldered, with white

hair and a feeble chin and bloodless complexion. He rose from his chair

and bowed her to a seat, and she saw that his hands were trembling, and

his blinking worse than usual--he was a tired old man, who had been

through a severe ordeal and was wrought up and suffering. He was fussy

in his manner, over-cordial and lacking in repose; he repeated himself,

saying the same words several times: “Now, Mrs. Thornwell, you see, you

see! You see what I told you about those men!”

“How do you mean, Judge Thayer?”

“You heard the testimony that fellow Sacco gave? You see he admits

it, he admits the worst--they are arnychists, of the most desperate

character--they say it, defiantly--they defy the court and all society!”

“But, Judge Thayer, I have always known they were anarchists. I don’t

understand they are on trial for anarchism.”

“No, but it shows their character, their ideas. They have no respect

for the law--they are men who would commit crimes.”

“But I heard Sacco’s employer testify that he was a good workman,

that he had not been absent from his machine but one day in a long

time--he was trusted with the keys to the factory--he had been a

night-watchman--”

“Oh, but Mrs. Thornwell, you should hear what Kelley says outside!”

“What do you mean, what Kelley says?”

“I cannot tell you his words, they are not fit for a lady’s ears; the

substance of it is that Kelley is afraid to tell the truth about what

he thinks of Sacco.”

“Judge Thayer, you appal me!”

“How do you mean, madame?”

“You are going outside the testimony of the case, considering gossip

that people bring you, things that the witnesses are unwilling to say

under oath!”

“I am dealing with people who are terrorized. You cannot imagine

the condition in this community, the time we have had getting men

to come forward and testify at all. Think of the situation, Mrs.

Thornwell--what it means, where it was necessary to summon nearly seven

hundred veniremen in order to get a jury!”

“And so you think that our legal system has broken down, and you throw

it overboard! I have read that men were executed upon the gossip of

spies in Turkey under the sultans, and in Russia under the tsars, but I

did not know we had come to that in Massachusetts.”

The old man’s face showed that he had blood in him after all. He

held up a shaking hand to stop her. “Mrs. Thornwell, it is a grave

impropriety for you to address such words to a judge who is presiding

over a trial!”

Cornelia rose. “You well know that I did not seek this meeting, Judge

Thayer. If it is your idea that you are free to say what you please in

condemnation of these men, and that impropriety begins when you hear

what you do not wish to hear, then I would advise you to confine your

talks to your social inferiors, for I have not been brought up to carry

on conversation on that basis.”

The pitiful old man had risen, trembling so that he had to hold onto

the back of the chair to sustain himself. His voice became shrill--it

was like a thin strip of steel. “Mrs. Thornwell, I deeply regret having

to say such a thing to you, but it amounts to contempt of court, what

you have said to a judge while he is sitting upon a case.”

“I will leave your chambers,” said Cornelia, haughtily, “and trust

that you will refrain from troubling me with further invitations. But

I will not fail to tell you what is the opinion of every disinterested

person in the court-room--that the scenes witnessed to-day constitute a

travesty upon justice, the worst I have ever heard of in my life!”

She started to the door. But even then the old man could not give up.

He came hurrying behind her, stretching out a hand that seemed to be

palsied. “Mrs. Thornwell! I warn you! You are letting yourself be

deceived! You are being used by unscrupulous persons! We are surrounded

by criminals, by desperate and embittered enemies of our institutions!

You owe it to your ancestry and your heritage to stand behind us--we

are trying to protect the community--a public service--patriotic

duty--a desperate danger--arnychists--assassination--conspiracy--”

they were snatches of words that Cornelia heard, while she was going

down the corridor, not yet out of sound of the shrill metallic voice.

X

Frank P. Sibley was a star reporter of the Boston _Globe_, covering

this trial in a special effort to be fair. The _Globe_ aims to be what

is known as a “family newspaper,” and has become one of the wealthiest

in America upon a policy of publishing the name of everybody in Eastern

Massachusetts not less than twice every year. It gives pages of local

gossip from every town and village: “For the Friday evening meeting of

the Ladies’ Aid Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church a delicious

walnut cake was provided by Mrs. Amanda Lubb, who is visiting her

niece, Mrs. Peter Bobbs of Scrugham Corners,” and so on. Sibley, who

contributed to a column of sentimental comment signed “Uncle Dudley,”

was an old-fashioned Bostonian, having notions of honor and dignity now

going out of fashion. He was covering this murder trial as a high civic

duty, signing his daily articles, and taking them very seriously.

And here he saw the judge on the bench, forcing himself upon

newspapermen, insisting upon talking about the case with them, such an

impropriety as had never been heard of. Judge Thayer joining reporters

walking back to the court-house from lunch, asking them what they

thought of his conduct of the case; telling them of other murder trials

he had conducted, and of compliments he had received from justices

of the Supreme Judicial Court of the Commonwealth for his skillful

handling and exact rulings! Sibley could not tell such things in his

paper, for that was not what several hundred thousand families of

Eastern Massachusetts wanted to read with their morning cod-fish balls.

But he thought it his duty to write a letter to the attorney-general

of the Commonwealth--to which that blue-blood gentleman thought it his

duty to make no reply!

Did a rumor come to Judge Thayer? Or was there something in the

attitude of the newspapermen which conveyed, even to his obtuse mind,

that he was not “making a hit”? Anyhow, he was anxious; and now in that

private dining-room of the Dedham Inn where the reporters lunched

and discussed their stories, comparing notes so as to protect one

another from error, they were surprised to have the judge come up to

them without warning and announce: “I think I am entitled to have a

statement published in the Boston papers that this trial is being

conducted in a fair and impartial manner.”

Naturally, the group of men at the table were taken aback. Even a

newspaper reporter must respect somebody, and who should it be if not

the learned judge of the Superior Court, presiding at a trial which

involved the attendance of some two hundred persons, and was costing

the county of Norfolk some two thousand dollars per day?

Thayer turned to the star reporter of the _Globe_. “Sibley, you’re the

oldest. What do you think? Is this trial being fairly and impartially

conducted?” And Sibley had to think in a hurry. “Your Honor, I have

never seen anything like it.” His Honor stood and pondered that

compliment. Some little bird must have whispered to him that it would

be better to take it at face value; he turned on his heel and walked

out of the room.

And now came the cross-questioning of Sacco, with the judge on the

bench delivering his elaborate sneer at the defense: “Are you going

to claim that your client, in collecting this literature, was acting

in the interest of the United States?” The question revealed such

an obvious effort to distort Sacco’s meaning, and expose him to the

prejudice and hatred of the jury, that Sibley quoted the sentence in

his story; with the result that during the recess he found himself

summoned into the judge’s chambers. His Honor took him to task for

having quoted such a sentence; no such question had been asked, and

the judge had verified it by getting the transcript of his remarks. He

presented to Sibley a typewritten record, upon which the question did

not appear.

Sibley, of course, was embarrassed, and said that he had written the

sentence down as he heard it; he could only assume that his hearing

had played him false. He was about to ask if the judge wished him to

publish a retraction, when the bailiff entered, announcing that the

jury had arrived. The judge entered court, and so did Sibley. Next

day, when the actual record of the case was available, the reporter

consulted it, and found that it showed Judge Thayer’s question, in the

exact words quoted in the _Globe_! Five times the old man had asked

that question explicitly, and several times more by implication; but

now he had got frightened, and in an effort to cheat the public and

hide the truth, he had gone to the extreme of preparing a doctored

version of the record, and trying to palm it off on a reporter!

XI

The funds of the defense had run out. A collection was taken among the

sympathizers at the trial, and six hundred dollars raised; but that was

not enough. Cornelia wrote letters and sent telegrams; then, in one of

those moods of mischief which had always been incomprehensible to the

Thornwells, she called up her daughter, Deborah, at the North Shore

place. “Deborah, there is some trouble, very serious--something I must

see you about at once. No, I can’t talk about it over the telephone,

you must come here to Dedham.” She used, as nearly as she could

remember, the words by which Deborah had summoned her to Boston. The

daughter, of course, thought instantly of Betty and Joe, having always

this scandal hanging over her head.

It was a drive of two or three hours, and she arrived about lunch-time.

Her mother was waiting at the Dedham Inn, and there was Betty, looking

very lovely, though pale and tired--no visible trace of a scandal. But

there was a trace of tears in the child’s eyes--one does not so easily

sever family ties--even during the class struggle! “What is it?” asked

Deborah, of her mother.

Cornelia replied that they couldn’t talk about it here. “Wait until the

afternoon session is over.”

“You mean of the court?”

“Yes, my child, I cannot miss this afternoon, there is to be some

important testimony. You come with me.”

“To a murder-trial, Mother!”

“Surely, if I can stand a murder-trial, my daughter can!”

Mrs. Rupert Alvin had never done such a thing in her life. She

regarded courts as vulgar places, and attending them as evidence of

sensation-seeking. She might get her name into the papers; she looked

around for reporters, in the same spirit as her ancestors in this

neighborhood had looked for wild Indians with tomahawks. She met some

of the ladies, old and young, who were aiding the defense, and managed

to find something wrong, either socially or sartorially, with every one

of them--though she kept her thoughts to herself. “Mother, is there

anything wrong about Betty?” she whispered. Cornelia said no, it wasn’t

that.

They sat in the court-room: Deborah straight as a ramrod, motionless

for three hours. Her manner said, Do not assume that I have any

interest in this, or that I give it my sanction. She heard Guadagni,

journalist and lecturer, telling the story of his lunch with Sacco

in Boston on the day of the South Braintree crime. The murders had

been committed at a little after three; and from one to two, or

later, Guadagni had been chatting with Sacco, discussing the banquet

being given by a group of Italians, in honor of the editor of the

Boston _Transcript_, who had been decorated by the King of Italy in

recognition of his services in getting America into the war. The affair

took place that same day--which was how Guadagni fixed the date; Fred

Katzmann strove in vain to make him admit that it might have been some

other day.

“You know, Mother,” said Deborah, when it was over, “those Italians

don’t think anything at all of telling lies to help one another out of

trouble.”

“Yes, my dear, I know,” said Cornelia. “It’s just like the men of our

own family, sitting up nights fixing their stories for the Jerry Walker

case.”

And when they were outside again, apart from the crowd, and the danger

of reporters, “Well, what do you think of our boys, Deborah?”

“You mean those two prisoners? Mother, I don’t see how you can force

yourself to tolerate such people! Dark, sinister-looking--”

“Most Italians are dark; but that doesn’t make them murderers.”

Deborah shuddered. “I feel the hate in them--something frightful! Those

set, intent faces--”

“My child, they are intent upon the question of whether they are going

to the electric chair. It seems really important to them.”

XII

They went to Cornelia’s room in the hotel, and she lay down to rest.

Deborah sat up straight. “Now, Mother, what is it?”

So Cornelia told her: “My dear, I have to pain you, I must sell my

jewels.”

“Mother! What do you mean?”

“The defense has run out of funds, and I am not going to let those boys

lose the chance for their lives. I must have some cash, and there is

nothing I can think of but to sell my jewels.”

“But Mother, how dreadful!” Deborah was shocked into incoherence.

The family heirlooms--they were priceless--treasures with spiritual

associations--surely the children had some rights!

“You miss the point, my child,” interrupted Cornelia. “I want to sell

them to _you_.”

Deborah said, “Oh!” She looked at her mother--no trace of a smile on

the little round face, no twinkle in the soft brown eyes! Deborah said,

“Oh!” again, and began to realize that this was another manifestation

of that sense of humor which her father had found so untimely. A bit

of maternal whimsy had brought a big limousine rolling its stately way

from the North Shore to Dedham!

Cornelia proceeded with entire gravity. “Of course I know that some

day you will have these jewels, you and Clara and Alice. But meantime,

I have to have money for this case. You know Queen Isabella sold her

jewels to finance Christopher Columbus--at least, the legend says so.

I want to sell mine in a still worthier cause, and I offer you a third

share.”

“How much money do you have to have, Mother?”

“Five thousand dollars. I have no idea what those jewels are worth--it

must be thirty or forty thousand--”

“We are not going to give up our family jewels, Mother, you know

that, so don’t be foolish. If the money was for you, none of us would

hesitate a moment; but it seems so dreadful to us to have you throwing

everything away on these anarchists--men who hate our country--”

“Now, my daughter, let us not go into that. I am making you a strictly

business proposition. I offer to sell you one-third of my jewels for

five thousand dollars. I will give you a formal receipt, and go to the

bank and get them the first day I am in town.”

“You know I don’t care about that, Mother.” Deborah sat, gazing in

front of her for a minute. It was clear that she was in a trap, no

way out. So with no more ado she went to her handbag, took out her

checkbook and fountain-pen, sat at the desk, and created five thousand

dollars.

She possessed the power to do that magical thing; she did it

frequently--at the board-meetings of orphan-asylums, in homes for the

halt and the deaf and the blind, in vestry-rooms and parish-houses

of Episcopal churches. The fact that she had such power, and was

willing to exercise it, caused a kind of halo of glory to exist about

her; it affected the souls of charity workers and superintendents of

institutions, of curates and clergymen, so that a trembling seized

them when the great Mrs. Alvin swept into the room, their knees went

weak under them and almost gave way. Deborah knew of this, and while

she pretended to be unaware of it, the pretense was highly artificial;

in reality this sense of power was what she lived for and by, and she

watched the persons with whom she dealt, and expected them to pay her

exactly the right tribute of deference and excitement, and if any one

of them failed, then Deborah was incensed against that person--though

she always found some other reason for it, the person was too

talkative, self-assertive, overdressed or underdressed, anything that

wasn’t “Boston.”

Betty, shrewd little minx, had learned to analyze these manifestations:

a fascinating study in psychology, a mingling of worldly glory with

Christian humility, a checker-board pattern, black and white, in a

woman’s soul. To be proud of your money and what you did with your

money was the very acme of vulgarity, it was the thing which marked you

as the wife of a “lumberman,” or a “Pittsburgh millionaire.” So you

were never proud of your money, you were proud of your lack of pride,

of the distance which an assured breeding put between you and your

money. You associated yourself with the poor and lowly, because that

was your Christian duty; and if the poor and lowly looked up to you, it

was because of your Christian virtue, and not because you had the power

to turn them out to starve and freeze. If they were really refined and

worthy poor, they understood this, and so everything was upon a high

plane; it was God who had appointed all things, and assigned to each

his station and form of conduct, and each did what God wished, and

felt the emotions which God inspired. Such was the collective soul of

Trinity Church in the City of Boston.

XIII

Other witnesses testified to the alibi of Sacco, supporting Guadagni.

Dentamore, a bank department manager, had joined them in Boni’s

restaurant, and taken part in the talk about the banquet which the

Italians were giving to the editor of the Boston _Transcript_. A Boston

grocer testified that Sacco had paid him a bill on that day; he had

his notebook, with the payment entered. Also there was a deposition of

a clerk in the consulate, now in Italy, telling how Sacco had applied

for a passport on that day; Eugene Lyons had gone to Italy to get that

evidence.

There was more alibi testimony for Vanzetti. His friend Alfonsina Brini

took the stand and told how he had sold her fish that morning, and

brought Rosen to sell her cloth that afternoon. The district attorney

was so angry in his cross-questioning that he made her cry; it seemed

to him unpardonable that she should have made an alibi for Bart on

two separate days, for two separate crimes; he would not realize that

Bart had been practically a member of the Brini family, ever since his

coming to Plymouth nine years back, and that all the Brinis saw him

every day. The district attorney made Mrs. Brini stand up while he read

into the record a stipulation to the effect that she had testified to

an alibi for Vanzetti on another occasion. The jury was not supposed to

know anything about the Plymouth trial and conviction, but of course

they did know all about it, and smiled to one another while this

statement was read. The lawyer fellows were trying to tie red tape over

their eyes, but they would not be blinded!

Another legal hocus-pocus: in order to avoid having the Plymouth

conviction brought into evidence, the defense had had to agree not to

introduce character witnesses for either defendant. Now the prosecution

came forward with a demand that the jury be instructed to disregard

all evidence as to the good character of either defendant. So Cornelia

Thornwell heard one of those voices which had cried to her in vain in

Plymouth county-jail: not the voice of a ghost, but of the far-seeing

Vanzetti! The very trick he had explained to her--his enemies had made

a convict of him, and now were using his conviction to cast a cloud

over both him and Nick, to send them to their deaths. Mr. Katzmann put

on his sternest manner and read to the jury the stipulation:

“The Commonwealth assents to the request of both the defendants

that all evidence heretofore offered in the course of this trial to

the effect that one or both of said defendants bore the reputation

of being peaceful and law-abiding citizens, be stricken from the

record of this trial, and that such evidence heretofore offered be

entirely disregarded by the jury so that the result of striking

same from the record there is no evidence before the jury that

either or both of said defendants bore the reputation of being a

peaceful and law-abiding citizen.”

All in vain the years that Nicola Sacco had worked for the Three-K

Shoe Company, earning from forty to sixty dollars a week as expert

edge-trimmer, with extra pay as night-watchman for long periods! All in

vain those annual gardens full of ripe red tomatoes, and the surplus

given to Mr. Kelley, the boss! All in vain the ten dollars a week

Rosina had put by, till they had fifteen hundred in the savings-bank,

with the record of deposits to show that it had been got by labor,

not by holdups! All in vain the hard toil which Bartolomeo Vanzetti

had performed for the owning class of New England, in stone-quarries

and brickyards, on railroads and reservoirs! In vain his years as

fish-peddler, the friendship of hundreds of Italian housewives, of

little Italian children, so that when they heard of his dreadful fate,

they wept and wrung their hands, and would never cease to talk about

him all the days of their lives! In vain his plea, “Save Nick, he got

the wife and kids!” Again the lawyers made their demands for separate

trials, but Judge Thayer stood firm to save the funds of Norfolk

County. Ten thousand dollars a week for seven weeks was all two wops

were worth!

XIV

A bell rang in the soul of Cornelia Thornwell: last call for witnesses!

She knew what was coming, and was not surprised when Lee Swenson asked

her to have lunch with him; nor when he got a table apart from others,

and looked about to make sure there was no listener. “Well, Nonna, what

do you think of our chances?”

“I don’t know what to think, Lee. I have no experience. You must tell

me.”

“Well, I think that speech of Sacco’s finished us.”

“Oh, Lee!” Something went weak inside Cornelia, and she lost interest

in lunch. She sat, staring before her, while the lawyer went on,

lowering his voice.

“One last chance, Nonna. Do you really want to save those boys? In two

hours I can fix you a story; you go on the stand and tell it, and it’ll

cinch the case. You can’t imagine how easy it will be--Katzmann won’t

dare be rough with you--if he did, I could rip him to pieces with this

jury. They’ll have no time to investigate; they can’t take more than

a day with their rebuttal witnesses, and that is the end--the case is

closed, and anything that comes out afterwards is a joke.”

“Lee--don’t ask me! Don’t ask me!” That was all she could say; he saw

the pain in her face, and dropped it. “All right, I won’t worry you.”

But she could not drop it; she had to argue with him about the case.

“Lee, how can they convict men on such evidence? I have kept a record:

thirty-one witnesses have said Vanzetti was not the man; twelve others,

put on by the prosecution, ought to have known him for the bandit if

he really was, and they didn’t.” She went on, clamoring her protest.

Not one of the witnesses who identified Bart or Nick had ever known

them before, or claimed to have seen them before; in every case it was

a question of remembering strangers; and to American eyes half the

Italians in the world looked like Sacco!

“Yes, Nonna,” said Lee, patiently.

“And the least time afterwards was three weeks--everybody had three

weeks to forget what the bandits looked like! Some, like Goodridge and

Pelzer, had nearly a year!”

“It’s the jury you have to convince, Nonna--not me!”

“But you must make that clear to them, Lee!”

“I’ll do so, never fear. But I can’t deny that they are anarchists; I

can’t deny that our principal witnesses are Italians. Those are the

fatal facts.”

They sat, with the food on their plates growing cold; something that

had happened to them many times. Life or death was in the balance.

Should Lee Swenson, in his speech to the jury, stress the lack of

evidence against Vanzetti? If he did so, he might get Vanzetti off. But

if Lee knew anything about this Yankee jury, they would “soak” Nick all

the harder; and Bart had positively forbidden it to be done. Once again

he commanded, “Save Nick, he got the wife and kids!”

They groped in the dark, and beat bare hands against stone walls; they

heard in imagination those warning voices which were to haunt the rest

of their lives. If only they had known this, if only they had done

that! They went back to the courtroom, and the case for the defense was

closed. And next day the prosecution put on its rebuttal witnesses--one

of them Henry Hellyer, the Pinkerton operative “H. H.”! He came

to discredit one of the defense witnesses, and the bland Katzmann

questioned him, serenely sure about those secrets, locked in his head,

which would have blown the case of the prosecution higher than a kite.

Actually, Hellyer had in his hand the reports he had turned in on his

investigations; when he was uncertain, he said, “I can find out”--and

he examined his notes, right there before everybody. And the defense

had no idea what was in the notes, no suspicion of the chance they were

losing! The bland Katzmann turned the witness over to Mr. McAnarney,

and that gentleman said, “No questions, if your honor please.” The

voices of all the future, shouting into the ears of the defense, were

heard by no one. Not a single “hunch,” not a dream, not a spirit-voice

or a telepathic message!

XV

Next morning Lee Swenson and Fred Moore pleaded the case of the

defense, and then the bland prosecutor rose to close the arguments.

He had four hours in which to apply those arts he had learned during

eleven years’ service to the Commonwealth; four hours in which the

minds of these twelve good Yankees and true belonged to him, to mold

and shape as he would.

For seven weeks they had listened to testimony, most of it dull and

soporific, obscurely related to the main issue. Lawyers had wrangled,

using long technical terms beyond the grasp of uneducated men. The

total amount of testimony was thirty-five hundred typewritten pages,

more than a million words. To study them, and analyze their meaning

and relationships, to digest them and evaluate them, would occupy a

brilliant legal mind several months; and here were two real estate men,

two machinists, a grocer, a mason, a stock-keeper, a clothing salesman,

a mill-operative, a shoemaker, a last-maker and a farmer. They could

not assimilate the evidence, and they would not have either time or

opportunity to try. They must make some sort of guess; and one who

understood their prejudices could determine what that guess would be.

The wops and most of their lawyers were “furriners”; but the genial and

friendly prosecutor was their county official, whom they had elected.

For purposes of this trial he called himself “the Commonwealth,” and in

that guise he could say pompous and magnificent things without sounding

foolish. He was honest, and he was conscientious--he told them so

himself, in grave and weighty words:

“Gentlemen, there is some responsibility upon the Commonwealth. There

is some responsibility upon a prosecutor who produces witnesses whose

evidence tends to prove murder. He may think well. He should think

long, and he should always have his intelligence and his conscience

with him before he puts the stamp of approval of the Commonwealth of

Massachusetts upon him as a credible witness before he takes the stand

seeking to prove the guilt of men and if proven will result in their

death.”

From the point of view of prosody that statement could have been

improved: but the jurors knew what it meant. This was Fred Katzmann,

the prominent and successful, and he would tell them what to think.

For example, about Lola Andrews--a distracted, hysterical female, who

had stultified herself several times in Mr. Katzmann’s presence. Now

he told the jury what to think about her: “I have been in this office,

gentlemen, for now more than eleven years. I cannot recall in that too

long service for the Commonwealth that ever before I have laid eye

or given ear to so convincing a witness as Lola Andrews.” Concerning

Pelzer he told them that the witness had twice falsified, but was

“big and manly enough now to tell you of his prior falsehoods and his

reasons for them.” (The reasons were cowardice.) Concerning Levangie,

who had identified Vanzetti as driver of the bandit car, he asked the

jury to believe that Levangie had seen Vanzetti in the car, but thought

he had seen him driving when he wasn’t!

And then the amazing incident of the cap. There were two caps in

evidence--one which had been picked up at the scene of the crime, and

the other which had belonged to Sacco, and which the police had taken

from his home, after he had been arrested. This latter cap Nick had not

seen for fourteen months. While he was on the stand it was suddenly

held up, and he was asked if it was his.

Of course the poor fellow did not know what to think; the prosecutor

might be playing some trick upon him, getting him to recognize a cap

which was not his cap, and then accusing him of lying. All he could say

was, “It looks like my cap,” and again, “I think it is my cap, yes.”

Badgered about it, and told to put it on, he finally was brought to

say, “I don’t know. That cap looks too dirty to me.... It look like,

but it is probably dirt--probably dirty after”--meaning that it was

dirty after the police had kept it for a year and shown it about.

That was what Nick said; and now behold the outraged Mr. Katzmann,

storming before the jury: “But that is not all, gentlemen. He has

falsified to you before your very faces ... he would not admit,

gentlemen, that the cap was his!” Fred Moore interrupted, on behalf

of the defense, declaring that this was not a fair account of what

was in the record. But Judge Thayer failed to make the facts clear to

the jury, and Katzmann went right ahead: “Why, gentlemen, deny the

ownership of that cap?”

And then the Proctor incident; a long, detailed argument to the jury,

to the effect that two experts had testified that the “mortal bullet,”

taken from the body of Berardelli, had come from Sacco’s revolver.

Said Katzmann: “You might disregard all the identification testimony,

and base your verdict on the testimony of these experts.” And all

the time Katzmann knowing that he had framed a trick question, to

which Captain Proctor could answer yes, and fool the jury as to what

he really believed. Two years later, when Proctor made affidavit to

this trick, both Katzmann and his assistant, Williams, made answering

affidavits--and they were trick answers, seeming to deny Proctor’s

statements, but in reality not denying the essential one!

From half past two in the afternoon until seven in the evening a

court-room packed solid with human beings listened to the district

attorney deal with witness after witness in that spirit. The Supreme

Judicial Court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts has never

specifically declared that a prosecuting attorney must be fair; and

Katzmann’s successor, five years later, would be cynically flippant on

the subject. When it was pointed out how Katzmann had concealed the

witnesses Kelly and Kennedy from the defense, because they said that

Vanzetti was not in the bandit car, Katzmann’s successor would argue

before Judge Thayer, as one lawyer to another lawyer: “I wonder if Mr.

Thompson has not an exaggerated and too ethical notion of the functions

of a district attorney.”

But nothing like that now! To this jury Mr. Katzmann was the lover of

truth, the noble-minded, upright friend of justice. Also he was the

patriot; when he came to the end of a four-and-a-half-hour tirade,

exhausted, dripping with perspiration in the heat of a crowded

court-room, he remembered that the prisoners were wops, while the

jurymen were Yankees. His final words were a call to local solidarity:

“Gentlemen of the jury, do your duty. Do it like men. _Stand together,

you men of Norfolk!_”

XVI

Next day was Bastille Day in France, and a new Bastille was built in

America. “Web” Thayer mounted his throne and delivered his charge to

the jury. The throne was banked round with flowers, gifts from admirers

of law and order; and “Web’s” discourse began in a lofty and emotional

strain, as if affected by the intoxicating perfumes. “The Commonwealth

of Massachusetts called upon you to render a most important service.

Although you knew that such service would be arduous, painful and

tiresome, yet you, like the true soldier, responded to that call in

the spirit of supreme American loyalty. There is no better word in

the English language than ‘loyalty’.” Thus again he related the trial

with the dead bodies brought back from France, and the patriotic

exercises going on all over the country. In the copy he gave out to

the newspapers he added the sentence: “Keep courage, gentlemen, in your

deliberations, such as was typified by the American soldier boy as he

fought and gave up his life upon the battlefields of France.”

The judge was supposed to be guiding the jury through the mazes of

technicalities, explaining the law, what they were to decide and what

not. He took two hours for his oration, and used more than half of

it in legal generalities and moral exhortations. He talked about God

and country, state and fellowmen, and the highest and noblest type

of true American citizenship “than which there is no grander in the

entire world.” He talked about the pure waters of the government,

“the grandest and noblest in the civilized world,” and he talked

about “the day that little band of Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock.”

He used up so much time in that way that when he came to the mass

of identification testimony, he could deal with it only briefly and

in abstract terms. To the alibi testimony of the two defendants he

gave only a couple of paragraphs, and without mentioning any witness

specifically.

But he found time for an elaborate discussion of “motive” in connection

with crime. In great detail and at great length he explained that

the motive in the South Braintree crime was robbery--something never

disputed by the defense, and therefore needless to mention. The

question was, not if the South Braintree murderers had committed

murder, but whether Sacco and Vanzetti had been at South Braintree.

When the judge proceeded to deal with the wrong issue, it was plain

enough that he was throwing dust into the jury’s eyes.

And then the “consciousness of guilt,” upon which Thayer was to hammer

during the next six years of the case! He had deliberately obscured

this issue, by blocking the testimony about Salsedo and Elia; and now

he proceeded to give more than one-fifth of his time to explaining

to the jury what might have been in the minds of two men who lied to

the police when they were arrested. The judge who had not mentioned a

single alibi witness now found time to deal, point by point, and in

great detail, with the testimony of the arresting police officers, and

of Mr. and Mrs. Johnson, to whose place Boda and Orciani, Sacco and

Vanzetti, had come on the night of the arrest. His charge called up the

most dark and sinister images. “If a person is willing to use a deadly

weapon such as a revolver upon an arresting officer in order to gain

his liberty, what would you naturally expect would be the quality of

the crime of which such person would be consciously guilty?”

And then the testimony about the bullet. Did the judge know about the

catch in Captain Proctor’s testimony? Solemnly and definitely he told

the jury that the captain of the State Police had testified: “It was

his (Sacco’s) pistol that fired the bullet that caused the death of

Berardelli.” Two years later Web Thayer would be twisting and turning

and wriggling like one of Vanzetti’s Christmas eels, to make people

think he was denying that he had said that to the jury; but there

were his words, and they were false, and they sealed the fate of the

two anarchist wops. Had not the great Mr. Katzmann told them, only

the afternoon before: “You might disregard all the identification

testimony, and base your verdict on the testimony of these experts.”

To exhausted and bewildered jurymen, looking for a life-line, this

was something to hang onto; and they grabbed it. Headed by their

flag-saluting foreman, who had said, “Damn them, they ought to hang

anyhow!” the twelve good Yankees and true retired to the jury room to

deliberate.

XVII

A hot summer afternoon; the jury locked in its room upstairs in the

court-house; the prisoners back in their cells in the jail; the judge

in his chambers; the lawyers, the court officials, the reporters

sitting about the grounds, under the heavy shade trees--the two sides,

prosecution and defense, keeping rigidly apart, a miniature war.

Cornelia went to her room in the hotel. She could not sit up; but

then she could not lie down; she would get up and pace about, doing

odd things, aimlessly. Impossible to read, impossible to think

consecutively; if any one spoke, you started; if the telephone rang,

you went faint. No one had eaten; the very thought of food made your

stomach uneasy. Betty would sit by the bedside and try to comfort her

grandmother; she would start to talk about something, and then realize

that she was not being heard; they would look, and discover fear in the

other’s eyes.

How long did juries usually take? Anywhere from an hour to two or three

days, said those who had experience. The longer they took, the better,

from the point of view of the defendants; so you must not be impatient!

But there ought to be some way provided by which the mind could be put

to sleep through such an ordeal. But then, no one could say for how

long the sleep should be!

“Betty, don’t you suppose we ought to see Bart?”

“Nonsense, Grannie dear,” said the girl. “You wouldn’t know what to say

to him, any more than you know what to say to me. Let me teach you the

Russian alphabet.”

At six o’clock they went out, and strolled toward the court-house.

The jury room was dark--Judge Thayer had ordered the twelve taken

to supper. Swenson and Moore were sitting on the grass--in their

shirt sleeves, something shocking to the proprieties of this staid

New England town. Workingmen might do such a thing, but never

gentlemen--unless they came from the wild and woolly west; it was

almost enough to convict their clients. They put on their coats and

stood up when they saw the ladies coming; they discussed the rumors,

which had begun to fly--how the jury looked, what a court officer had

been heard to whisper. Lee held Cornelia’s arm. “Keep a stiff upper

lip, Nonna! There are many legal tricks--this isn’t the end!” “Oh, Lee!

then you think--” “I don’t think--I wait! But prepare for anything.”

The jury was back again from supper. The lights were shining in the

upstairs room, the shades down. Now and then a shadow moved across.

Irresistibly your fancy was drawn to that room; impossible to be in

any other place, to think of any other thing. The twelve good Yankees

and true would be arguing; now and then they would take a ballot; they

would question the ones who disagreed, find out what was troubling

them, argue again, cite this detail and that, seeking to change the

doubters--but which way? Surely in all that group there must be some

who could think--some who could realize the hazardous nature of the

evidence--the almost complete lack of proof concerning Bart! But no,

Mr. Katzmann had told them that the reason the defense had concentrated

its arguments on Sacco was because they considered the case of Vanzetti

hopeless! He had said--

“What were you saying, Lee?” The lawyer had made a remark about the

swallows; they didn’t have that kind in the west. Yes, he was trying

to help her, to distract her mind! It was kind of him; he was one of

the kindest of men. She said: “Do they fly all night, Lee? Or does the

judge order them to bed?” And she did not know that he smiled.

XVIII

It was five minutes to eight o’clock. Suddenly one of the little groups

in front of the court-house began to melt and flow into the building.

One, and then another. People were going inside! Then loungers about

the square began to notice it, people in the corner drug-store;

like magic the word spread--the jury was ready! One of the guards

condescended to tell the lawyers--the sheriff had telephoned to bring

the prisoners over. It took about ten minutes to fetch them; and in

that time the court-room was crowded, and half the town of Dedham

thronged outside. The doors were locked, the armed policemen guarding

them.

The prisoners in their cage; Vanzetti tense, anxious, his brows

knitted; Sacco pale, almost green. A deep silence; then came the jury

filing in. One glance was enough; every man had his eyes fixed on the

floor. Lee Swenson made a gesture of despair. Cornelia saw it; and

caught Betty by the arm.

The jury was polled; they answered faintly to their names. Said the

judge to the clerk, “You will please take the verdict.” Said the clerk,

“Gentlemen of the jury, have you agreed upon a verdict?” Said the

foreman, “We have.”

The jurors rose; the prisoners rose; they stood facing one another.

“Nicola Sacco!” said the clerk, “hold up your right hand. What say you,

Mr. Foreman, is the prisoner at the bar guilty or not guilty?”

“Guilty,” said the flag-saluting foreman. “Damn them, they ought to

hang anyhow,” added a voice from within him; but the clerk did not hear

that.

“Of murder?” said the clerk.

“Yes.”

“Murder in the first degree?”

“Yes.”

“On two indictments?”

“Yes.”

There was a pause.

“Bartolomeo Vanzetti, hold up your right hand. What say you, Mr.

Foreman, is the prisoner at the bar guilty or not guilty?”

“Guilty.”

“Of murder?”

“Yes.”

“Murder in the first degree?”

“Yes.”

“On two indictments?”

“Yes.”

A look of incredulity was on the face of Vanzetti. He could not realize

that this had happened to him. He stood with his hand still in the air,

like a statue. The dead, expressionless face of the old judge was gray.

“Gentlemen of the jury, as I did this morning, I again offer you thanks

for the services you have rendered. You may now go to your homes, from

which you have been absent for nearly seven weeks. We will now adjourn.”

The bailiff began his familiar formula: “Hear ye! Hear ye!” But now

Sacco realized what had been done to him; he shouted above the bailiff:

“Sono innocente!” And then to the jurors, who were filing from the

court-room, “Two innocent men! You kill two innocent men!”

Mrs. Sacco had been close behind the cage. At her husband’s cry she

leaped to her feet and rushed to him, and flung her arms about his

neck. “You bet your life!” she cried--the only way she knew of being

emphatic in this strange tongue. “Oh, Nick! They kill my man!” Her

shrieks rang through the room--a terrible moment; women began to weep.

Sacco stood, caressing his wife, trying to comfort her; Vanzetti still

like a statue--not a sound from him. But Rosina’s shrieks rose louder

and louder; she fought away the lawyers who tried to disengage her

hands; she was a wild thing, possessed of more than human strength;

she thought they were going to take Nick away and electrocute him

that night, and the lawyers tried to explain to her the refinements

of American law--the appeals and technicalities, the infinitudes of

red tape, the millions of words to be printed and the hundreds of

thousands of dollars to be spent. But she only shrieked the louder,

“They kill my man! I got two children--what I do?”

Until at last the stern policemen pulled her hands away, and forced

her back, and formed a ring with Rosina outside. Quickly they locked

the handcuffs upon the prisoners--an old story to the police, American

efficiency. Snappy orders, “All ready! March!” Through the door they

went, guards outside closing about them, twenty-five men in a solid

bunch, guns ready. “Stand back! Out of the way there! Forward, march!”

The sheriff’s men flung a line across the street, holding the curious

onlookers, while down the street into the twilight went prisoners

and escort, tramp, tramp, tramp! Anarchists, who do not believe in

organization, learn a lesson from the grimly efficient Commonwealth!