THE WHISPERING GALLERY
I
Sacco and Vanzetti were back in their cells: the former in jail
in Dedham while his appeals were heard, the latter in Charlestown
State Prison, working at his old sentence of fifteen years for the
Bridgewater crime. Nick, as usual, had nothing to do all day--a cruel
form of punishment; it required tact and sympathy on the part of
visitors to persuade him that it was worthwhile to stand on his head
and walk on his hands, as a means of not going mad. Bart was now making
license plates for automobiles: the one industry which the Commonwealth
had been able to save from the grasp of private capital, and which
therefore could be used to keep state convicts from wholesale madness.
It was not happy work, for it involved the touch and smell of acids,
which gradually undermined Vanzetti’s health, and made more difficulty
for those who lived with him in sympathy.
A black hour for the world, testing the souls of idealists. Famine in
Russia; the notorious inefficiency of communist bureaucracy had caused
the rains to stop falling--so it was reported by correspondents and
explained by editorial writers of capitalist newspapers. Throughout
Europe the White Terror enthroned; in Italy banded assassins in the
pay of banks and industrialists, murdering the leaders and rooting
out every trace of social protest, turning the country over to that
ultimate product of natural selection, the beast with the brains of
an engineer. Sacco and Vanzetti sat in their cells, and read of these
events, and stretched out their hands to the future, whose children
they were.
Each in his own way, they would learn to make their appeal to
that future. Bartolomeo Vanzetti, dish-washer, ditch-digger and
fish-peddler, would learn to write; he would labor all day at a
stubborn and hostile language, and conquer it, and shape it to his
ends. He, whose schooling had ceased at the age of thirteen, would
make himself a master of letters; he who had never seen the inside of
a college building, would write such prose as no living graduate of
Harvard had ever achieved; he who was to die as a common criminal,
would defend his faith in words of elemental eloquence, outranking
anything produced by an American since Lincoln’s second inaugural.
It would take long practice. Locked up alone in his cell, Bart would
write letters: letters to his lawyers, to members of the committee and
friends of the defense; letters to strangers who wrote to him, letters
to his anarchist comrades of Mexico, France, Russia. The rules of the
institution allowed only two letters a month, but they did not prevent
Bart’s handing a packet of manuscript to his lawyer.
At first his efforts would be crude; he would be looking up long
words in the dictionary, and stringing them together, a kind of Babu
English. He would use Italian words literally translated, producing
novel effects. He would concoct strange polysyllables, apparently of
his own imagining; you would start to smile, until it occurred to you
that it might be a new kind of poetry. To Cornelia he wrote: “Even
if we will be killed at once by the carnefice, or little by little
by the confinement, you remain to hold light the banner of the human
vindications, and to accomplished redemption.”
And again: “Do not desperate, comrade, of the cruelty of the human
events. Out of every little doctrine all too small and inadequate, out
of every party, petty and inefficient for the great problems of the
human justice and freedom--will ripen the historical nemesy and the
inevitable palingenesy.”
He began translating passages from Italian books into English, things
which interested him, and which he wanted Cornelia to understand;
he would take her criticisms and study them, and then try again--a
correspondence course in composition, having the added excitement of a
race with the executioner. He wrote:
“I was very beneficiated by your last visit and English-lesson. In
a letter received to-night, one Friend tells me that my English is
not perfect. I am still laughing for such a pious euphension. Why
do not say horrible? Nevertheless, I can made a better translation
than the one in argument. I did it as I did for an experiment, to
prove if an almost letterally translation is intelligible. I show
it to some friends, asking them if they understand it. The answer
was ‘yes,’ while it should have been ‘no,’ that I might have remade
the work with much profit and better result.
“Of course, as the writing is beautiful in its original, and as
I labored very much at the dictionary, so I was thinking to have
accomplished something worth, and the disillution was, as almost
all disillatin, rather cruel. But when a poor one is surrounded
by many great difficulties, the small ones appear always a joke
to him, and after your visit I found myself in the best of the
mood--that is, I was decided to do in the future as much more good
than the much bad I did in the past. I analized attentively the
original--it is almost impossible intellectual pleasure--which for
hours has made me forget myself, the cell, and the other sorrowy
things.”
II
Cornelia’s contribution to the defense was to be a pamphlet telling the
story of the case, and summarizing the evidence of the two trials. The
procedures that she had watched with horror in Plymouth and Dedham she
would now set down in black and white, so that her friends could take
them home and study them. In the apartment on the north side of Beacon
Hill sat the little old lady all day, her shoulders stooped over a
volume of typewritten testimony, and sheafs of pencil-notes scattered
over the vacant places in the room.
Betty and Joe came to help, and they sorted and classified and
compared, and argued over this detail and that: identification
testimony relating to Sacco, relating to Vanzetti, relating to both and
to neither; alibi testimony, and refutation thereof; testimony relating
to Sacco’s cap and to Vanzetti’s pistol--where was it Bart had said he
had never fired the gun with which he had been arrested? Where was it
that Katzmann asked him his reason for concealing the price he had paid
for the gun? Betty would search, and Joe would search, and they filled
note-books with lists of cross-references. The half-dozen thick volumes
of typewritten testimony began to show signs of wear, and had to be
bound more tightly. Precious objects they were, having cost the defense
two or three thousand dollars of hard-begged money.
Cornelia was finding that as she grew older she wanted less and less
sleep. Life was becoming more precious as its supply ran out, and
nature was trying to save every moment. She would awaken at three or
four o’clock in the morning, and the details of the pamphlet would come
swarming into her mind, she would wonder about this point and that,
and presently decide she might as well get up and go to work. So Betty
would find her working by electric light, having failed to notice the
coming of day. Betty would scold, and try to put her to bed again.
Betty would threaten to get up early too, and Cornelia would have to
scold. The pamphlet grew to the size of a book, and would have become
an encyclopedia if they had let it. Then began the painful process of
cutting down and summarizing; and every time they left out a point, it
seemed that the life of Bart and Nick hung upon the decision.
Lee Swenson was retiring from the case: he had done his best, he said,
and failed, now let some one else have a try. There were tears in the
eyes of both when he said good-by to Cornelia. They promised they would
never forget each other--little danger of the promise being broken!
“Don’t worry about the past, Nonna,” said Lee; “you did your best.”
She didn’t know what to answer; she didn’t know what to think about
the questions that haunted her. What would have happened if she had
done what Lee wanted? Would she have done it, if she had foreseen the
present situation? And what was going to become of a country in which
the law was a cheat, and dreamers of justice its predestined victims?
Fred Moore was taking over the case; a lawyer less hated by the
authorities, it was hoped--though this proved a delusion. He was
younger than Swenson, an Irishman and a fighter, wrapped up in the
labor cause; a strange combination of emotional temperament and keen
analytical brain; a man who suffered deeply--as all men did who took up
the cause of the underdog in America. He, like Swenson, had witnessed
dreadful things, and told Cornelia stories of savagery and corruption
that made her shudder.
It was Moore’s task to prepare the appeal to the Supreme Judicial
Court from the various rulings of Judge Thayer at the Dedham trial.
To this end there must be drawn up what was known as a “bill of
exceptions” in the case: that is to say, a list of the objections
which the defense had made to the judge’s rulings, together with the
testimony concerned. It amounted to a summary of the case, giving the
essentials which the higher court would need; and it was necessary
that the defense, the prosecution and the judge should agree to every
word. The three parties had to sit day by day at a table, with a copy
of the testimony before them, marking the passages to be recopied,
and phrasing summaries of the rest. A long, slow job, for which Judge
Thayer had allowed from the middle of July to the first of November.
Thayer, Moore and an assistant district attorney did the work. Thayer
disliked Moore, but in the course of time he came to hate the assistant
district attorney, and to like Moore by comparison, so he chose Moore
to talk to about the case. A curious episode: one hot summer afternoon,
the assistant district attorney had left the room, and the old judge
looked up over the piles of papers and wiped the perspiration from his
forehead, and shook his head sorrowfully. “Moore, there are mountains
of perjury on both sides of this case!”
“Maybe so, Judge,” said the lawyer. “But your side has the most.”
The old man did not bother to resent this way of putting it. “I know,”
he said, “you think those fellows are innocent!”
“I do, Judge.”
“Well, I _know_ they are guilty.”
“How do you know it?”
“Never mind how--but I know.” It was the formula of ruling-class
Massachusetts, which for six years they would repeat; not in print,
not for the public, but in the smoking-rooms of the clubs, in homes or
offices, wherever one tried to pin them down and get the facts. “Never
mind how--but I know!”
III
It was going to cost eighteen thousand dollars to print the “bill of
exceptions”--two elaborate volumes; to say nothing of lawyers’ fees,
and office expenses, and the cost of raising the money. You got lists
of names--members of radical organizations, subscribers to liberal
papers, contributors to charity organizations, members of women’s
clubs--anybody who might have either a heart or a conscience; you got
typists and had envelopes addressed, and prepared a begging circular
and mailed it, and then with the money that came in you got more lists
and more typists and more circulars--it was the wheel of life.
But the returns did not come fast enough. The case was lagging,
threatening to die. The men were in jail, and they stayed there, and
the public wanted to go to sleep and forget them--the usual way.
Look at Mooney and Billings out in California, exclaimed the young
radicals--men whom everybody knew to be innocent, yet they stayed in
prison, forgotten--several years already, and it would be many, many
more. The friends of the defense were not content to have lawyers
pore over the testimony and appeal to a court without a heart; they
wanted to dramatize the case, to find new evidence, to break down the
witnesses of the government, above all to catch the real criminals,
who had done the murders. They wanted to have mass-meetings in the
cities, to have the story of this Massachusetts “frame-up” told to
labor audiences. Naturally, it occurred to them, what an impression
if a lady of Mrs. Thornwell’s respectability and prestige would take
the platform! They wanted Cornelia to go to New York and address a
meeting; and when she realized that there was no other way to get the
indispensable money, she consented.
So then, more distress among the Thornwell clan. They had thought the
limit was reached when the head of their family defended “anarchy” at
home; but to go outside the Commonwealth, and attack its courts among
strangers--that was really treason. Deborah came and protested with all
her dignity; when that was in vain, Alice quit her “rest-cure,” and
threatened to go completely insane; when this too failed, there was a
family conference, fully as agitated as those of war-time. Great-uncle
Abner insisted upon being brought. Because it was no longer possible to
make him hear a word, they had to write out the proceedings for him;
and every now and then he would punctuate the debate with his booming
formula: “Lock her up!”
They turned the matter over to Henry Cabot Winters, because of his
sense of humor, which they did not understand or like, but which they
knew was the only hope. Rupert would put the information department of
the Pilgrim National Bank at Henry’s service, and would himself call
upon the representative of the Federal secret service in Boston. Henry
would see the district attorney, and all together they would make a
real effort, and pull the poor distracted old soul out of this mess.
Henry went to the telephone and called up Cornelia, who was not
supposed to know about this conspiracy, but could guess. When she heard
that her son-in-law wanted to be invited to dinner about a week from
now, she laughed. “Are you going to bring that information you have
been promising?”
“If it isn’t too late, Mother. I know, I have neglected you--but I’ve
been so frightfully busy! Now we’ve got another extension on the Jerry
Walker case, so I have a little breathing space. If it’s not too late,
I really would like to take a week off and see what I can find out
about your friends and their problem.”
“That’s very good of you, Henry; but you know we have no way to pay for
such distinguished legal services.”
“You pay with your company, Mother. We are growing some dewberries on
our place that are as long as your thumb, and I will send you a supply
in the morning, and you can have them made into a short cake or a
cobbler or whatever you fancy; and I’ll bring a bottle of Madeira--the
real thing, because I am the only person that knows the combination to
the vault!”
IV
Cornelia did her own shopping. She got a live and lively lobster,
done up in a strong paper bag, with two holes in it so that he might
breathe; like a condemned man, he must be kept alive till the moment of
his execution. She got a small chicken, and some green peas, and a head
of lettuce, and climbed the hill with them in a little basket, smiling
to herself--it was old, _old_ “Boston”! The Negro maid was a-flutter,
and Cornelia was a-flutter--treating Henry as if he were royalty. The
remarkable dewberries had been brought by the chauffeur, each wrapped
separately in tissue paper, to keep it from a bruise; they now reposed
in whipped cream and sugar, on top of a thin flaky cake.
Exactly at the moment of seven-thirty came the great lawyer, dressed as
if he were the principal orator at a banquet of the bar association.
Treating Cornelia as if she were royalty; and yet smiling at himself,
and at her--it was a game you played, and you did not take it too
seriously, yet you must take it seriously enough; it was a way to make
life worth living, to save yourself from beastliness, cruelty, and
despair--the latter, especially, always reaching after you. Cornelia
did everything a perfect hostess must do, and thinking to herself, “I
have not escaped from the family! I never will escape from the family!”
Henry liked a good dinner, just enough to make it worth while to fix it
for him, yet not enough to be gross. He praised everything, purposely
while the maid was in the room, so that she stood, transfigured into
a double row of shining white teeth. It was picturesque to have a
mother-in-law who lived in a tenement; it was elegant to know that
she was just as completely a lady, and served just as good a dinner,
as if she were on the other side of Beacon Hill. All this stayed in
the background of your thoughts, and upheld you in the hours when
you thought about your hysterical wife, and your son who had the
constitution and structure of a marshmallow, and your money-making,
which brought you law-suits and scandals.
They sipped the real Madeira, and gossiped about amusing aspects of
family life. Quincy Thornwell, incorrigible bachelor, had been smitten
by the widow of a banker, killed in the war; would she have him, and
what would they do with her three children, and what about the family,
the new cousins and “in-laws” that would be added to the Thornwell
clan? Andrew Alvin had been thrown from his polo-pony and got a broken
shoulder; a man in his forties, Andrew’s one idea of happiness was to
ride a horse as crazy as himself; they had made him master of the hunt
in one of the suburban towns, where the smart set dressed themselves
in pink coats and shiny leather boots, and rode at daybreak on autumn
mornings to the music of horns, and paid enormous bills for damages to
farmers’ crops. A certain fast-riding young lady was “setting her cap”
at Andrew; her father had made many millions out of war-contracts, and
now they were trying to “break in” upon the blue-bloods. Would Andrew
condescend or wouldn’t he? It was typical blue-blood conversation.
V
With Madeira warming his stomach and the smoke of a cigar warming his
head, Henry Cabot Winters sat by the open window, the sound of children
shouting in the street below helping to make privacy for conversation.
“Well, Mother, I have been making a few inquiries about those adopted
sons of yours. I’ve brought some documents.” He pointed to a leather
brief-case, stuffed to capacity, which lay upon the sofa.
“Well, Henry, what did you find?”
“They had a cache of dynamite, and on the night of the arrest they were
getting Boda’s car to move the stuff to a safer place.”
“How did you learn that, Henry?” Cornelia tried to keep her tone
playful.
“Needless to say, men who make and plant bombs to destroy their enemies
do not invite me to their meetings. I have no first-hand knowledge of
the fact--”
“Let’s cut short the preliminaries, Henry. You have been talking to the
police, and that is what their under-cover agents have brought them.
Did they tell you that Rosina Sacco once had her husband in court for
failure to support her?”
“No.”
“That’s another of the stories they are circulating; I can tell you a
dozen, if you’re interested. They say the fifty dollars poor Bart sent
to Tresca to help pay Salsedo’s lawyer was part of the loot of the
South Braintree crime. But I happened to know that Bart had saved up
about four hundred dollars out of his fish business. Tell me, do your
police friends know what became of the sixteen or seventeen thousand
dollars those bandits got?”
“They tell me it went to Italy, Mother.”
“I see! When they started out, they were sure it was in Coacci’s trunk.
When they didn’t find it there, they decided it was buried in Sacco’s
garden. Now, they say it went to Italy. Have they given you any real
evidence about it?”
“No, Mother.”
“Well, then, the situation is this: all the resources of state and
Federal secret service have been used, and they have never been able
to find that the group or any individual connected with the group has
had any unusual amount of money, or has spent much money for anything;
they have not one trace of a clew. Poor little Boda, whom they call a
payroll bandit, had a car that was in hospital all winter--”
“That wasn’t the car he drove, Mother.”
“Can you prove that he drove any other car?”
“There is reason for believing it.”
“Well, it wasn’t a good enough reason to be put before a jury. Web
Thayer threw Boda out of the case--but now you bring him back! I knew
him well, a friendly little fellow, a salesman of macaroni--”
“Is that what he told you, Mother? He was a salesman of whisky.”
“Really? Well, that explains one mystery in the case--why Mike
Stewart couldn’t find any of Boda’s macaroni customers! That was
why Mike became suspicious. But now we have a perfectly respectable
explanation--surely you, Henry, cannot blame Boda, since you buy
whisky!”
“Not Boda’s kind, Mother!”
“Well, you haven’t come to argue about prohibition, so let me see what
you’ve got in your brief-case.”
VI
There was a reading lamp on the table beside Henry Cabot Winters, and
it threw strong shadows on his fine dark features and thin, sensitive
hands. Cornelia noticed that the hands trembled as they drew out the
documents. Was it the toll the competitive game was taking from the
great lawyer? Or was it that he cared so especially about rescuing his
mother-in-law from a career of crime? Cornelia watched with curiosity
what came out of the brief-case: quantities of typewritten stuff bound
together, reports and correspondence. Henry would no doubt be able to
get access to secret service records; or Rupert would get them for him.
Would it be ethical to ask him for answers to some of the problems
which had been tormenting the defense?
Cornelia saw some red-bound pamphlets, then a red-bound book. “Is that
some of the literature Vanzetti had? Or some they got at Sacco’s house?”
“They didn’t get much at Sacco’s, Mother; somebody had burned most of
it. I am told the defense lawyers wanted some, and all they could find
was a four-volume technical work on the chemistry of explosives. Is
that so?”
“You have come to bring me things, Henry, not to get them.”
“Yes, but you ought to meet me half way. You don’t really _want_ to be
fooled, do you?”
“Not in the least, Henry. I want all the real knowledge I can get.”
“Let me ask you, did you ever sit down and think seriously and honestly
whether it might be possible that these men had connections with the
fighting crowd?”
“Are you talking about bombs now--or about banditry?”
“Let us begin with bombs.”
“I have lain awake many a night debating it with myself. About Sacco
I have to say that I don’t know; I never knew him well enough--and of
course I can’t find out now; one does not talk about such things to him
or to his friends. But I really knew Bart, and I try to imagine him
committing an action that would destroy human life. He would have done
it in a moment of rage against social injustice; he talked violently,
and he would have fought the police on the picket-line, I am sure,
and killed them. But to prepare in cold blood to blow a man up with a
bomb--I try to imagine it, and it simply cannot be done--it is not my
Bart any longer. I never knew a man who had more tenderness and pity.”
Said Henry, searching among the papers, “I have a curious document, a
letter from Vera Figner, the Russian terrorist, in her own handwriting;
I can’t read it, of course, but there’s a translation attached. She is
telling about her days in the Schlues-selburg Fortress, and how she
walked with another girl prisoner in the courtyard, and noticed that
this girl would turn aside now and then from the path. When Vera Figner
asked her why, the answer was that she could not bear to step on the
bugs and other creatures in the path. Is that your Bart?”
“It might be.” Cornelia smiled.
“Yet this girl had blown up human beings with bombs, and had done
other acts of desperate cruelty. She did them for the cause.”
“Yes--and I have to remember that Bart had seen just as dreadful
evidence of class tyranny in America as that girl had seen in Russia.
So I say: ‘It might have been. I cannot be sure.’ But you know, Henry,
I lived in a crowded little place with him for over a year, and I never
heard--”
“Your hearing was handicapped by the fact that you didn’t understand
his language, Mother.”
“That is true. I learned to understand simple things, but not political
discussions, of course.”
“Did you read his literature?”
“No, only what he translated to me.”
“In other words, what he considered proper for you to know--the
sentimental and idealistic part. Did you ever see a book called ‘Faccia
à Faccia col Nemico’--that is to say, ‘Face to Face with the Enemy’?”
And Henry held up a thick book, bound in red paper covers.
VII
The little room in the apartment on the north side of Beacon Hill
vanished, taking with it two years and a half of tragic history. Bart
was a free man, selling fish in Plymouth, and Cornelia and Betty were
paying him a visit, a few days before Betty’s sailing for Europe. There
came two Italians with a motorcycle and a side-car, Coacci and Orciani,
bringing a heavy package which Bart showed to Cornelia, with a twinkle
in his dark eyes, saying that it was a bomb. He opened it, and showed
her what he called “mental dinnameet.” “I take heem queek, I get him
distriboot, never let polissman get heem, giammai!”
“Yes, Henry,” said Cornelia, “I have seen that book.”
“Bart’s group were the publishers of it, were they not?”
“Yes.”
“But you never read it?”
“No, Mr. Katzmann!”
“Mr. Katzmann is relieved to hear you say so. It is a dreadful book,
Mother.”
“I know that it contains the life-stories of various anarchist martyrs.
They were fighting for liberty in Europe, Henry--”
“Yes, if you insist--for liberty of a sort. But the point to get clear
is, they were fighting with bombs and the assassin’s dagger. Without
exception, they were men who did such terrorist acts; and all of
them were idealists--many of them men of fine personal morality--who
wouldn’t eat meat, or would step aside to avoid killing a bug. They
correspond in every way to your boys--with the single exception that
they admitted their guilt, and boasted of it.”
“A considerable difference, Henry.”
“Not when you consider the special circumstances. There is no hope for
a revolution in America, but there is hope in Italy--or there was two
years ago; so America is the place where money is collected, and Italy
the place where it is spent.”
“You are talking about banditry again, now?”
“I am talking about both; for they are mixed up together in this book.
I felt sure you hadn’t read it, so I had some translating done; a few
passages that are crucial I took the trouble to verify myself, looking
up word after word in the dictionary, so that I could assure you I
wasn’t being fooled by the police.”
“That was very patient of you, Henry.” She saw the deep anxiety on the
face of her son-in-law, and understood that he had come to wrestle with
the powers of darkness for her soul.
“Here, for example, is a passage from the introduction. It tells us
that these martyrs are worthy of emulation, and that we must not let
the world’s disapproval influence or frighten us. Listen:
“‘To the latest critics of anarchism Ravachol appears a detestable
degenerate; Caserio an epileptic or a paranoiac; Bresci a desperate
self-destroyer.... But to the modern free people the enormous
importance of individual acts of revolt remains unchallenged as a
promise and a symptom.... Such acts are the thousand year stones of the
great revolution; the first abrupt, short-lived sparks which the ashes
of indifference easily cover and preserve, to be revived stronger than
ever by, and added to, the great fire of freedom.’
“Now, Mother, why do men write and print and circulate words like that,
unless they mean what they say? Read the book, and you discover that
Ravachol was a bandit-anarchist; he made a business of robbing the rich
and giving the money to the poor. He was scrupulous about it, never
keeping a penny for himself.”
“I never knew Ravachol, Henry, but I do know Bart and Nick, and the
idea does not fit them--it is unthinkable.” And she added: “I am
arguing against violence on both sides, Henry; and neither will pay
attention to me. Which side do you think ought to begin--those who have
everything they want in life, or those who suffer misery and outrage?”
VIII
Henry Cabot Winters was not interested in pacifism; he was turning over
the pages of the red-bound book. He got up and came over and laid it on
the arm of the Morris chair in which his mother-in-law sat. “Look at
that!” he said. “A diagram of one of the bombs used by the assassins.
Is that strictly historical information? Or is it literary? Don’t you
think it possible that the men who printed that picture might have had
in mind that bombs could still be made that way? There are nearly five
hundred pages of such stuff, Mother.”
“My guess about the matter would be this, Henry: that Vanzetti was the
despair of his group--he could not follow along. He would have been
torn between rage and pity--just as I am.”
“Here is ‘Fight for Your Lives.’ Here is the leaflet, ‘Plain Words’--an
outrageous thing, widely circulated. I am told, Mother, that when
Swenson and Moore went over Vanzetti’s anarchist books to get some
exhibits for the jury, they had to reject many because they were too
violent. They ventured to use others, only because the jury couldn’t
read them. Maybe you know if that is true.”
“Maybe I do, and maybe I don’t, Henry.”
“Don’t worry, Mother. This is a family matter.”
“Go ahead and tell me what you know.”
“I know that those fellows were up to some devilment the night they
were arrested. They told a tangle of lies to the police--”
“You must know what had happened to Salsedo and Elia, Henry.”
“Yes, and it was a good reason for lying that night. But why go on
lying for a year afterwards, when they knew what they were arrested
for, and knew their lies had all been nailed down? Why go on lying to
their own lawyers? I am told that Swenson and Moore couldn’t get the
truth out of them at any time--and we don’t have to rely on police
spies for that, Mother, it is in the record. Were you there the day Tom
McAnarney cross-examined the couple--what were their names?-- Sacco and
Vanzetti came to their house the night of the arrest.”
“The Johnsons. Yes, I heard that.”
“Well, the cross-examination aimed to show that the Johnsons weren’t
sure about recognizing the men. In other words, Sacco and Vanzetti were
going to deny they were there, and only after the trial started did
they decide on the other story--that they had been hiding anarchist
literature. I am told that the men’s own lawyers know they were hiding
dynamite--the men have admitted it.”
“All I can tell you, Henry, is this--if it’s true, the lawyers haven’t
told me.”
“They wouldn’t. But here’s another story--that Lee Swenson tried every
way he knew to get you to make an alibi for Vanzetti; he didn’t give up
until the very last day of the trial. Is that true?”
“I told you I wasn’t going to answer questions, Henry.”
The other smiled. “That is answer enough, Mother. But don’t
worry--nobody is going to get anything out of me. And don’t imagine I
am being shocked--I know the game of criminal law.”
Said Cornelia, “I have heard that some of our blue-blood lawyers have
been known to frame testimony.”
“Yes, Mother, I have done it, more than once--when I was good and sure
the other fellow was doing it. I am not after Lee Swenson--I am just
trying to convince you that those two adopted sons of yours are not
sentimental pacifists and saints.”
“I never thought that of them, Henry.”
“Well, it’s what your literature is telling the public. You are
collecting money on that basis, from persons who wouldn’t give it on
any other.”
“I am telling the public I believe the men to be innocent of the crime
of which they have been convicted; that I attended both trials, and
consider them travesties of justice. That is all I can tell, because it
is all I know.”
“Not quite all, Mother--if you will pardon me for reminding you. Will
you tell the public what doctrine these men taught? Will you say they
circulated books calling for bombings, and giving diagrams of bombs?”
IX
There was a long silence. At last Cornelia said: “The public is
ignorant. It believes that men who had anything to do with dynamiting
would be apt to engage in banditry, and ought to be executed anyhow.
To admit the possibility of dynamite means death. But surely, Henry, a
lawyer can distinguish. Also you can see that it is impossible for me
to establish a negative--to prove the men’s innocence. It is not enough
for you to show a possibility--even of dynamite! You must bring real
proof.”
Henry smiled. But then, noting a tear on the old woman’s cheek, his
tone became gentler. “You don’t like to hear that your anarchist friend
may have deceived you, Mother?”
“No, my son, not that at all. I know Vanzetti so much better than you
could imagine--it is as if he were sitting in this room, listening to
the conversation, and explaining matters to me. When I face the idea
that he may have associated with terrorists, then I think, not that
he deceived me--of course he would have had to deceive me, for his
friends’ sake, if not for his own. What I think is, how he must have
suffered--more even than I guessed!”
“The persons who were blown up with bombs also suffered, Mother.”
“Yes, I know, and that is what the world thinks of, inevitably.
The bombs were aimed at members of our class, and they were highly
inconvenient. But you see, I have been trying to understand both sides;
to find out, not merely how bombs are made, but how bomb-makers are
made. While you hear dynamite exploding, I hear policemen’s clubs
falling on strikers’ heads. Don’t forget, I was on the picket-line,
and heard that sound, I saw such crimes committed, I said to myself:
‘Never again will I blame these workers for anything they do!’ I said
‘anything,’ Henry--and now I don’t forget that I said it.”
“I know, Mother--”
“You don’t know! You haven’t the remotest idea! You cannot dream what
it feels like to be down there in the social pit, stamped upon by the
hob-nailed boots of policemen, and the iron-shod hoofs of horses!
To have clubs splitting your skull, or beating your flesh black and
blue! Remember, I saw Vanzetti carry a half-conscious man off the
picket-line, I sat by while he bathed the broken head, I saw him
weeping, I heard him babbling like a child, incoherent, hysterical,
with mingled grief and rage. He has that temperament, he suffers more
than either you or I do--he cares--that is the difference, he really
cares! You and I care whether we have our dinner in proper style,
whether the Madeira is real or not, whether the lobster was alive
or not, whether the chicken is the right age and the salad dressing
sufficiently solid, whether we have got on the right costume and the
right tie, whether we hold our knives and forks the right way, whether
we make a sufficient display of worldly cynicism, whether we are
sufficiently skeptical about all enthusiasms, sufficiently dead to
faith, hope and charity--”
“Now, Mother!”
“I know, you bring me facts, Henry--take a few in return! I could
go over our conversation point by point, every remark we made about
other people and about life, and that would be it. Last week it was
Quincy sitting there, and he told me all the latest from Mrs. Jack’s
sickroom; they came to ask for a contribution to the Charitable Eye
and Ear Infirmary of Boston, and she said, ‘I didn’t know there was a
charitable eye or ear in Boston.’ That is our wit, Henry, the tone of
our world. We are raising our young people on it--and then wonder why
they are going to the devil!”
“You are setting me a large problem now, Mother.”
“No problem at all! We are living off the labor of these wops whom
we despise, and hold in order with clubs and bayonets. Think of it,
Henry--that man whose head I saw split open was getting nine dollars a
week to keep a family on, and his crime was that he was asking twelve.
We women were getting six dollars a week, and our crime was that we
were asking eight--and Vanzetti’s crime was helping us! There was the
greatest and richest cordage concern in the country--their net profits
that year were nearly three million dollars! Think of the families we
know who are living off those profits, doing nothing else, unless they
choose! Think of the imbecilities--one collecting butterflies and
one collecting pottery, several getting drunk, one doing charity--God
save his soul, he is running a mission for newsboys just down the
street here, and keeps it in a place over a pool-room, a hangout for
pickpockets and pimps, where every now and then they hold a prizefight!
But if you talk to cordage stockholders about going among their
working-people and living with them, becoming real leaders and guides
and friends, spending the surplus product upon a system of training
in self-government, so that industry may become democratic without
revolution and violence--if you should talk about that, they would say
you had very bad taste, and stop inviting you to their dinner-parties!”
X
The little white-haired old lady had got up from her chair during this
stump-speech. She was walking about, and had made several gestures--a
consequence of having been so much among the wops. The poor soul was
bound to be humiliated, having the truth pointed out to her; she would
have to excuse herself, and blame somebody else--it was human nature.
Henry Cabot Winters understood psychology, and sat patiently, waiting
for the storm to blow over.
Cornelia began telling the story of Sacco, as Sacco had told it to
her. He had been in the Milford foundry strike, and had been knocked
down on the picket-line, and then thrown into jail. The police had
followed their usual tactics of knocking down wholesale, for the
purpose of breaking the courage of the workers; it was all that anybody
in New England knew or thought about industry, it was the “American
plan”--so said the widow of the late Governor Thornwell, pouring out
her bitterness. “And remember, Henry, while you are bringing your
indictment against these wops, they learned their anarchism right here
in New England. Nick was a perfectly ignorant working-boy when he came,
and Bart was a religious dreamer, slightly touched with utopianism. If
they became militants and terrorists, we taught it to them!”
“They learned it in a foreign language, Mother; and certainly they
followed foreign models.”
“That is true enough. But men don’t act upon what they read in books,
they act upon the realities of their daily lives. The principal fact
in Bart’s life for the past few years has been the war. The capitalist
system was trying to put him into a uniform and send him out to kill
his fellow-workers; and he was resisting with all his power. To abolish
the slaughter of workingmen for the profit of masters--that has been
his leading thought, ever since I have been his friend.”
“Does he expect to stop war by blowing people up with bombs?”
“Militant anarchists do; they think that if enough workers would
resist, forcibly, to the death--if enough of them were willing to be
martyrs--the capitalist class would lose its pleasure in exploitation.
Whether that is right or wrong is another question--but that is what
the militant anarchist thinks. And watching the thing as I have done,
it seems that you men who are running our country want to prove him
right, because you shut off every avenue of redress and hope. You
corrupt politics, so that it is a piece of rusty junk instead of a
running machine. You make the law into a net of red tape, in which
the worker is tied hand and foot. You make the newspapers a mess of
falsehood and sensation. Your colleges are busy turning young men into
quick climbers. Your churches have no time for social justice--they are
turning prayer-wheels and saying magic words--”
“In short, Mother, there is nothing left but dynamite!” There was a
touch of acid in the great lawyer’s tone; it was getting to be a very
long stump-speech.
“There are two things for the rebel, Henry; one is to die suffering,
and the other is to die fighting. I try to persuade them that the
former is more effective in the long run, but I can’t always get them
to see it. Sometimes I imagine there is a pleading look in Bart’s eyes,
as if he would like to tell me that he wishes he had taken my advice.”
“Yes, I know,” said Henry, “we are familiar with the fact that men are
militants until they get caught, and pacifists afterwards. It is the
purpose of jails to effect that transformation.”
XI
This duel of moral forces continued until the arrival of Betty and
Joe, who had been to a theater, and then walked home. Betty had been
told that her uncle was coming, and she had had no trouble in guessing
what for. When she and Joe entered the living-room, and saw the little
white-haired old lady in the Morris chair, looking so anxious and
strained, and the great lawyer completely surrounded by an array of
documents, it seemed to Betty that the combat was one-sided. “Well,
Grannie dear, has he succeeded in convincing you that our boys are
bandits? Or is it dynamiters they are, Uncle Henry?”
“Henry,” said Cornelia, “these young persons are so clever I cannot
keep anything to myself.”
Said Betty, “The efforts of my family to keep me in the nursery at the
age of twenty-three are mysteriously unsuccessful! I suppose Father and
Uncle Henry have been interviewing the police, and getting all the dirt
on Bart and Nick. Let me tell you some, Uncle Henry--I understand that
Captain Proctor interviewed all the witnesses, and told Mike Stewart he
had got the wrong men, and wouldn’t have any more to do with the case.
Is that true?”
“I haven’t talked with Proctor,” said the lawyer.
“Well, you could help us so much, if you only would, Uncle Henry.
I’m told that Chief Gallivan of South Braintree says the whole thing
was a frame-up. Make him talk! Make Katzmann give us the address of
Roy Gould, the man who got a bullet through his overcoat. And those
witnesses that Mike Stewart had at the Brockton police station--surely
our good uncle who loves us ought to get their names!”
The “good uncle” continued to wear the genial smile which was part
of his stock in trade as man of the world. He was interested in the
phenomenon known as the “new generation.” He looked at this vision in
pale blue chiffon, with a little basket of blue straw turned upside
down on her hair cut like a boy’s; her cheeks shining from a long walk,
apparently without the artificial aids which were coming to be the
fashion, even among the blue-bloods. An amazing thing that a girl with
such charms, who might have gone anywhere, should be devoting herself
exclusively to Bolsheviks!
Said Betty, as fast as her thoughts: “Grannie, you look tired; you have
been worrying! Is it because the police say the money went to Italy, to
make an anarchist revolution? Or have they found out how Bart and Nick
were hiding dynamite the night they were arrested?”
“You seem to be well informed, my dear niece,” said the lawyer.
“Some day, Uncle Henry, after our boys are on the street--or in
their graves, whichever it is--I’ll tell you what I know about the
Sacco-Vanzetti case, and you’ll think you are listening to the memoirs
of Mata Hari, the international spy. Your dear niece has become the
super-sleuth of the social revolution--if the movie people knew what I
have, Hollywood would be a deserted village, and studios would rise on
the shores of the Back Bay. It is my job, when the police send a new
spy, to get him alone and remind him that he is an Italian, and get him
to tell me what he has told the police. Do you know how they found the
maps of Sacco’s buried treasure in Lee Swenson’s trash-basket, and had
three men digging in Mr. Kelly’s garden one whole night?”
Henry Cabot Winters still wore his smile; but it was not in his voice
as he said, “My niece does not seem to be much horrified at the idea of
blowing people up with bombs.”
“Uncle Henry, to be blown up with a bomb seems to me a nice clean
experience, compared with things I saw in Europe, caused by the greed
of elderly statesmen whose shirt-fronts were entirely covered with
ribbons and decorations.”
“So then, because statesmen blundered--”
“Blundering had no part in it, Uncle Henry--they knew exactly what they
wanted, and they took it. It is the organized greed called patriotism
that I’m talking about. And while I’m sick of all kinds of killing,
it is the men who kill for greed that I am out to get. Those who kill
for a cause, no matter how mistaken--those who risk their lives for
the good of the workers--seem to me to shine with a bright light in
comparison.”
“That halo extends to bandits, my dear niece?”
“I will answer you, Uncle Henry, that small bandits break the law and
are punished, while big bandits make the law and go free.”
Cornelia thought that conversation had gone far enough. She knew
exactly what Betty had in her mind--the Jerry Walker case. In a minute
more, the child would be referring to it! “Betty dear, if you love me--”
“Love you, Grannie? I love you enough to let you think your own
thoughts and live your own life, which is more than anybody else will
do for you. I love you so much that I will suppress my combative
impulses, and show respect to my elders. Uncle Henry, you want to know
if I think Sacco and Vanzetti ever did a job of banditry. If I knew,
I would tell you; but of course, nobody really knows, except the men
who did the job. The spies who bring tales to the police are earning
their livings by pretending to know what they only guess, and the
evidence they bring is not fit to hang a dog on. I can only estimate
the chances. I have tried with all my might to picture Bart and Nick
committing such a crime, and I cannot do it--the idea is preposterous
and unthinkable. And this much I really do know--this I would die
for--they never were proved guilty, and their trials were a shameful
and wicked farce. Now, is that a respectful answer, Grannie?”
“Yes, dear--”
“All right; and if it won’t be presuming, you look very tired, and I
think we ought to adjourn and talk about something cheerful. May I tell
them the news, Joe?”
Joe Randall, who realized that he did not have even the status of
an “in-law” in this family, had retired to a corner of the room and
lighted a cigarette. “It’s all right with me,” he said.
“Well, Joe has a telegram advising him that the divorce decree has been
made final, so to-morrow we are going to be married, and the shadow
of the great scandal will be lifted from the family, and we shall no
longer get poison-pen letters in our mail, and Joe won’t have to go off
to his own place when he brings me home from the theater, for fear one
of my relatives will be shocked by the sight of him staying here.”
Henry Cabot Winters rose with his most courtly manner. “Permit me to be
excused, and not inconvenience you!”
“No, no, Uncle Henry, it’s an old story to us, we have been a
scandal for so long that we shall miss it. At least I shall--Joe
will be relieved, because at heart he is an old-fashioned Virginia
gentleman--look at him blushing!”
Yes, Joe was blushing! It made him cross as the devil that Betty
insisted upon placarding their love affairs before the family.
He knew why she did it, of course--she was determined not to be
ashamed of what she was doing--she would not let them put her on the
defensive--her love was just as true as if it had been blessed by a
clergyman. But all the same, no man likes to be made to blush!
Henry Cabot Winters behaved with the extreme of gallantry. “Permit me
to offer my congratulations,” he said, and held out his hand to the
bridegroom. The family solidarity was going to be preserved, in spite
of everything!
Cornelia had her Bolshevik granddaughter in her arms, and was weeping
on her shoulder in orthodox family fashion. Betty too had tears
shining in her eyes--a reaction from the strain they had just been
under. Women, who have been but a short time emancipated, do not defy
and insult the mighty males of their clan without terrific inner
disturbances. They wouldn’t admit it, of course; they would pretend
they were crying over the end of a trial marriage! “There, there,
Grannie!” said the trial bride. “Our scandal is over, and it wasn’t
half as bad as you imagined. Joe and I have had all our domestic
quarrels in advance, so we can have the fun of a wedding without any of
the grief.”
XII
The marriage of Elizabeth Thornwell Alvin to Joseph Jefferson Randall
did not take place in Trinity Church in the City of Boston, and
there were no little flower-girls strewing roses in the aisles, nor
bridesmaids with large drooping hats, companioned by stern-faced ushers
from Harvard. Not all the influence of the Thornwells could have
persuaded the rector of Trinity to marry a man who had allowed his
former wife to divorce him without that scandal which Episcopal Church
ordinances require; neither would the rebel Betty have consented to be
made into what she called a “holy show.”
The event took place in what was known as the “Community Church,”
a gathering place of eccentric persons who worshiped the ideal of
brotherhood embodied in the personality of “Comrade Jesus.” As this
ancient Hebrew agitator had been born in a stable, his followers had
purchased an old garage on Beacon Hill, and made it over with whitewash
and lively red and blue paint, with stairs going up the side, and
a gallery running all the way round, leading to offices from which
spiritual dynamite was mailed out to the indignant respectability of
the Back Bay. The pastor was a new style Christian with a sense of
humor, willing to marry a young couple whose scandals did not conform
to canon law.
So, on a warm afternoon of early autumn there appeared several
automobiles in front of Number 6 Byron Street, and there entered Betty
and Joe and Cornelia, with half a dozen other rebels old and young, and
as many wide-awake and observant young men, who came to make certain
that a member of their profession did not marry the daughter of the
most powerful banker in town without a proper front page send-off.
Some of them carried black boxes, and the “Red” bride and groom were
lined up with the “Pink” pastor in the center, and there was a clicking
of shutters, and a cry of “Once more, please!” A distressing scene
to relatives of the bride, who had come in a vain effort to confer
respectability upon the occasion.
An extraordinary moment for the Community Church: the president of the
Pilgrim National Bank and his wife in attendance, dressed exactly as
if for a real wedding, and holding themselves sternly erect, unaware
of the existence of newspaper photographers. Also the older sister of
the bride, Mrs. Priscilla Alvin Shaw, descending carefully from her
motor car, clad in the voluminous garment known as a “maternity gown.”
Also Aunt Clara Scatterbridge--without even having been invited, but
determined to do her part to maintain family solidarity, and hush
the voice of scandal. This wedding, while unorthodox and unesthetic,
was legal; so the horrible black shadow would be lifted from the
Thornwells! No more poison-pen letters, no more whispers in Back Bay
drawing-rooms! The escutcheon would be wiped clean--and the family was
so relieved, it would accept any kind of performance, in any kind of
made-over garage.
The bridegroom being a newspaper man, his colleagues would be loyal to
him; those who happened to know that he had had a former wife, would
not mention it. They would “play up” the note of social drama--the
press agent of the Sacco-Vanzetti Defense marrying into the sacred
Brahmin caste! The young couple were going to spend their honeymoon
in a factory, getting first-hand information as to the lives of
the workers; the daughter of the most powerful banker in Boston had
actually got a job in a paper-box factory, at a little less than two
dollars a day, and promised to live on it for a year!
When the reporters actually got upon the scene, and witnessed the big
shiny limousine of the Alvins, with a chauffeur in uniform, and an
equipage equally costly for the bride’s sister, and yet another for an
aunt--only then did they realize the explosive power of the story. This
wasn’t merely a local story, this was an “A.P. story”! The reporter for
the Hearst paper had an inspiration: it was a “sociological marriage”!
A Hearst reporter would not hesitate to tackle Jehovah himself, if he
could get into heaven; so he walked up to the great banker and asked
him for a comment upon his daughter’s honeymoon. The haughty Rupert
looked straight over the young ruffian’s head--he was tall enough to
do that. But alas, the mother of the bride, being less trained in the
wiles of “Hearst men,” committed the mistake of opening her mouth. “Mr.
Alvin makes it a rule not to be quoted in newspapers.” The reporter,
seizing his golden opportunity, explained, “I just wanted to know,
Mrs. Alvin, if your husband agrees with his daughter’s ideas on social
questions.” The great lady replied, haughtily, “My husband does not
agree with _any_ of his daughter’s ideas!” So, of course, the whole
town had a hilarious laugh next morning.
In fact, the story “took” so well that the word went forth to follow it
up. The reporters tracked the bride to the paper-box factory, and took
pictures of her at work. They tracked her to the little apartment where
the “sociological honeymoon” was to be passed, and published her in a
fifty-cent apron, frying her first supper of bacon and eggs; they gave
the price of all the ingredients, and a schedule of the “sociological
budget.” They interviewed the ardent young lady propagandist on every
subject with which her father could fail to agree: trial marriages,
love and freedom, birth control, social justice, the banking system,
capital and labor, the Lucy Stone League. Nor did they fail to call up
the palace on the North Shore, and ask if Mrs. Alvin would come to the
phone, and hear a summary of her daughter’s opinions, and say whether
her husband would agree with them!
XIII
One of the McAnarney brothers, attorneys for the defense, got into
conversation with old Mr. Ripley, the flag-saluting foreman of the
jury, and was told, quite casually, how this foreman had had revolver
cartridges, similar to the ones which had been found upon Sacco, and
how Ripley had marked them, and taken them into the jury room and shown
them to some of the jurors, comparing them with the exhibits of the
prosecution. A thrill of excitement ran through the Sacco-Vanzetti
defense; here, as in the Plymouth trial, was evidence improperly
introduced, never seen by the defense. As fate willed it, Ripley died
before his testimony could be taken. But the jurors were interviewed,
and several swore that they had seen the cartridges; also Ripley’s
widow had seen them.
It was the first of a series of motions for a new trial, which were to
entertain the friends of the defense for a period of six years. The
“Ripley motion,” and then the “Daley motion”--Daley being the friend of
Ripley’s, who told of the conversation at the railroad station, when
Ripley said that he was on the way to report for jury duty in the case
of a couple of “guinneys” accused of banditry, and, “Damn them, they
ought to hang anyhow.”
And then a letter from Frank Burke, the exhibitor of glass-blowing,
telling how he had run into Roy Gould, the salesman of shaving-paste.
The mystery of the man with the bullet-hole through his overcoat solved
at last! Gould had been up in Nova Scotia all this time; now he was in
Portland, Maine; and Fred Moore jumped onto a train, and the friends of
the defense got the greatest thrill yet. For it was just as they had
been told--Gould had been within five or ten feet of the bandit who was
supposed to be Sacco, and this bandit had fired at him and pierced his
overcoat. Gould came to Dedham jail and looked at Sacco, and said that
he had never seen him before, and that he bore no resemblance to the
bandit.
So the Boston papers broke into headlines, “New Evidence in Sacco
Case,” and hope sprang to life in every heart. Surely there would be a
new trial now! Surely it would not be possible to execute a man, when
it was known that evidence of such importance had been deliberately
withheld from the jury! For that was what had happened--the salesman
of shaving-paste had given his name to a police officer, and this
officer made affidavit that he had turned it in to both the local and
the state police. Captain Proctor had had it!
To ardent young radicals that seemed a scandal of major proportions,
and they proceeded to send out press items and to print leaflets and
mail circulars--only to discover that nobody was interested except
ardent young radicals. The great Commonwealth was content to leave the
matter to what it called “the orderly processes of law”--which meant
precisely this and nothing else: that affidavits would be typed out and
sworn to, and submitted in a motion to Judge Thayer, who would take
a year to study over them, and would then produce one of his famous
decisions, in which the defense position would be misrepresented, and
arguments of the defense would be met by answers to other arguments
which the defense had never thought of!
In this case the old judge’s decision was such as to cause people
to wonder whether his hatred had not driven him insane. He gave his
reason for denying the motion in the following words: “The affiant
(Gould) never saw Sacco, according to his affidavit, from April 15th,
1920, the day of the murder, until November 10, 1921, when he went to
Dedham jail at the request of Mr. Moore. In other words, the affiant
must have carried a correct mental photograph in his mind of Sacco for
practically eighteen months, when he only had a glance in which to
take this photograph on the day of the murder.” “Web” Thayer actually
wrote those words, and read them from the bench, and caused them to
be printed in the law-books--along with the affidavit of Gould, which
stated in the plainest possible words, not merely that Gould had not
seen Sacco on April 15th, 1920, but that Gould had never seen Sacco in
his life until the occasion when he saw him in Dedham jail, eighteen
months after the crime, and three months after the conviction!
XIV
And then the “Pelzer motion.” Louis Pelzer was the bewildered
Jewish shoe-worker, who had made such a spectacle of himself on the
witness-stand, claiming to identify Sacco upon seeing him many months
after the crime, and at the same time admitting under cross-examination
that he had lied to an investigator for the defense. Now Pelzer made
an affidavit to the effect that his identification of Sacco was false,
and that the words, “his dead image,” had been put into his mouth by
the assistant district attorney, Mr. Harold Williams, whom the august
Commonwealth was soon to make into a superior court judge.
And then the “Goodridge motion.” Here was the star witness of the
prosecution, whose criminal record had been kept from the jury by
the perfect team-work of those expert basketball players, Messrs.
Katzmann and Thayer. Now the defense got onto the trail of the
several-times-convicted crook, and obtained all his record, the jail
sentences, the numerous wives, and the warrant for horse-stealing in
New York State, which would have meant a long sentence, as a third
conviction. Fred Moore and another man ran their quarry down in the
little town of Vassalboro, Maine, and saw his wrists held out for the
handcuffs. Moore was naïve enough to be surprised that the authorities
did not want this crook any more--neither in Maine, nor in New York,
nor in Massachusetts could the machinery of exact and impartial justice
be prodded into action. Moore, being an Irishman, and emotional, was
emphatic with his victim, and brought down upon his head a stern
rebuke from the just and upright Mr. Justice Thayer for his method of
procedure. Which was all that came of the “Goodridge motion”!
And then the “Andrews motion.” The son of “Fainting Lola” was
discovered, also living among the “Mainiacs.” He consented to come
to meet his mother, who was working as a waitress. He reminded her
of various emotional dramas in which she had played a rôle; with the
result that Lola had more hysterics, and broke down and admitted that
her testimony against Sacco had been “framed.” In the presence of two
well-known labor leaders she signed an affidavit, declaring that her
reason for swearing Sacco’s life away was that “the Commonwealth was
in possession of facts relative to the private life of the affiant
which the affiant was not desirous of having brought out on the witness
stand,” and that by threats based on that knowledge she was “coerced
and intimidated.” She named the four men who had done this; one was
Mike Stewart, inventor of the “theory,” another was Brouillard, a
police officer, the third was Mr. Harold Williams, soon to be a judge,
and the fourth was District Attorney Frederick G. Katzmann.
Another thrill ran through the little band of defenders. For Lola
Andrews had been the other star witness of the prosecution--it was she
of whom Katzmann had said with such intense solemnity to the jury,
“I cannot recall that ever before I have laid eye or given ear to so
convincing a witness as Lola Andrews.” Even the capitalist newspapers
were moved to protest now; the Boston _American_ declared that either
Lola was crazy, “or else some one in the district attorney’s office at
that time ought to be arrested and tried for attempted murder.” Upon
reading that, the police authorities of the august Commonwealth got
busy--not to arrest themselves for attempted murder, but to compel
Lola and Louis to sign new affidavits, declaring that their previous
affidavits were false, and had been obtained by threats from the
defense lawyers.
XV
The Great Novelist who makes up history was desirous of making a
perfect melodrama, and also a perfect demonstration of class justice,
out of the Sacco-Vanzetti case. To that end it was necessary to
provide an answer to the question: what would happen in the pious
Puritan Commonwealth of Massachusetts if a rich man were to commit a
murder? While Sacco and Vanzetti were in jail, awaiting trial, a poor
devil of a Swede by the name of Johnson, having a wife and two young
children, but no job, and no food in the house, and no coal in the
month of January, went into some woods on a private estate, with a saw
and wheelbarrow, for the purpose of gathering dead wood, which was
lying in profusion on the ground. The aged owner of this estate was a
Cunningham, a name of great honor in the fashionable town of Milton;
and in the pride of his name and great possessions he took a rifle and
shot the unarmed Swede. He fired without aiming; the victim had just
got over a fence, escaping. The killer was arrested and brought to
Dedham jail, and spent eight days in a cell near Sacco, and then was
politely bailed out.
Cornelia, in her thinking about Massachusetts justice, had imagined
a rich person committing murder, and had guessed that such a person
would be declared insane. But the case of Commonwealth _vs._ Cunningham
showed her that she had expected too much from the law. The blue-blood
families keep their insane members hidden away in remote wings of
old mansions, and do not permit the stigma to be put upon them in
public proceedings. For thirteen months the killer of John Johnson
did not even have to make a plea. At last he was brought to trial
in Dedham Court House, where Sacco and Vanzetti had faced the jury.
Public feeling had cooled off; and no evidence was produced to prove
that he was either an anarchist, an infidel, or a draft dodger. So
the stern Mr. Katzmann became gracious and mild; the crime was called
“justifiable homicide,” and the killer was acquitted.
Also it was necessary to the perfection of the Sacco-Vanzetti melodrama
that the victims should have continual evidence of the venality of
their persecutors. The Great Novelist arranged it that three more
times during the next six years emissaries should come to the defense,
pointing out the folly of spending so much money upon lawyers’ fees and
circulars, when the small sum of fifty thousand dollars, slipped to the
right lawyers, would set their two friends “on the street.” And lest
the young radicals should be unable to believe that these emissaries
really possessed the power they claimed, the Great Novelist caused what
was known as the “Coakley-Pelletier scandal” to break into continuous
explosion, after the fashion of Chinese firecrackers strung on a line
all the way along a city street. For months the newspapers were filled
with picturesque details about the crimes and sexual misadventures of
Boston millionaires, and the prices they had paid to politicians and
officials.
Dan Coakley was a Democratic lawyer, who had run the city of
Cambridge for some twenty years: a lively personality who had begun
life as a street-car conductor and had given up his job when the
company installed machines to register fares. He had his license as
a conductor, signed by the superintendent of the company, with the
words scrawled across it: “Discharged for neglect of duty.” It had
amused Dan to frame this document, and hang it in his law office,
while he was preparing damage suits which cost the company hundreds of
thousands of dollars. Needless to say, he was an ardent patriot; he had
paid the expenses of the Massachusetts delegation to the Democratic
convention in San Francisco, so that they might vote for the Quaker
attorney-general, who was so heroically smashing the Reds. For years,
if you wanted to get out of trouble in either Middlesex or Suffolk
County, the password was, “See Coakley.”
The district attorney of Suffolk County, which includes the city of
Boston, was “Joe” Pelletier. (All Massachusetts statesmen go by their
pet names, unless they have a great deal of money.) “Joe” likewise was
an ardent patriot, and never lost a chance to deliver an oration for
God, country, and the pope. He was National Advocate for the Knights
of Columbus, which is the political auxiliary of the Catholic Church;
he had been knighted by the pope; and it was his job to drop charges
against wealthy criminals, after they had paid proper retaining fees to
the proper lawyers.
This had been going on for so many years, under the protection of
the flag and the crucifix, that the ring had got bold, and had taken
to “framing” cases against victims. That was all right when it was a
couple of anarchist “wops,” but it was a different matter when it meant
sending women to lure rich blue-bloods into bed, and have detectives
smash in the doors and take photographs of them. The “ring” had a
regularly paid staff of women, and three apartments in the Back Bay. In
one case they had gone so far as to have the woman hidden in a closet,
unknown to the victim, and in this way they had got an enormous sum
from a terrified old railroad president--an Adams, and a “right” one!
In another case they had collected forty thousand dollars from a man on
his deathbed.
XVI
It was after the trapping of Josiah Thornwell Winters that the
blue-bloods decided to smash this “ring.” Councils were held in the
Union Club, and a citizen who had no scandals was found--the head of
the Watch and Ward Society--and persuaded to the dangerous job. Godfrey
L. Cabot was his name, and before he got through, it was a well-known
name to the readers of Boston newspapers. For of course the ring knew
what he was doing before he knew it himself, and was setting traps for
him after a fashion too fantastic for anything but reality. Mr. Cabot
got a dictaphone in Coakley’s office, and hired a spy to hire himself
to Coakley and arrange to bribe Pelletier. But presently the spy was
arrested, and Godfrey L. Cabot was indicted for hiring a man to offer
bribes. The climax of hilarity came when it was revealed that it was
Dan who had hired the spy, to get himself hired by Godfrey to come and
hire Dan to bribe Joe!
Impossible to imagine more melodrama than this scandal provided
for the readers of Boston newspapers through the better part of a
year! Underworld ladies trapped into telling their stories, with
stenographers hidden behind screens; elderly blue-bloods “railroaded”
into lunatic asylums for their money; hotel proprietors forced to part
with their property for a small part of its value; the “badger game”
and the “shakedown,” the “girl with the dimpled nose,” a “visiting
actress,” “the Egyptian mystic, Omar Kaldah”! Hardly a day without a
new millionaire in the pillory, or a “scion of wealth” relieved of his
patrimony! A series of sensational trials, with witnesses “grilled” and
“broken” by great lawyers who “thundered” and “stormed.” United States
Senator “Jim” Reed, endowed with the voice of a bull, defending his
Democratic colleague, “Joe”:
“Does this diabolical persecution spring from religious prejudice?
Is that the thing which inspires Cabot and his crew; that makes them
gather witnesses from the four quarters of the earth; that gives
protection to the criminal and the near-criminal? I do not know, but
this I boldly say, that I have never seen such digging in the catacombs
of the past, such raking of the dust of time, such malicious ingenuity,
such fixed determination as we have witnessed.”
And then the attorney-general, answering the bull-voiced senator,
and describing the “national advocate” of the Knights of Columbus in
metaphors taken from classical oratory:
“The sword of justice was placed in his hands and he made of it a
highwayman’s club. He used the scales of justice to weigh the price of
corrupt favors. He has bartered the powers of his great office to the
highest bidder. For personal ends he has protected the criminal and
oppressed the innocent. He has so far forgotten his honor and his oath
that he has brought reproach upon the fair name of the Commonwealth,
has allowed her mantle to be dragged in the mire, has debauched his
high office for his own selfish ends, and like Esau of old, has sold
his birthright for a mess of pottage.” No wonder the life of the
attorney-general was threatened, and guards had to protect his home!
Also Dan Coakley was indicted and tried. The blue-bloods employed
no less than thirty-six detectives to guard the jury; when Dan was
acquitted, the blue-bloods wished they had hired more of them. However,
Dan was disbarred from practice; and “Joe” Pelletier, National Advocate
for the Knights of Columbus and hero of all Catholic patriots, was
removed from office and disbarred. But not until he had gone up and
down the county telling what he knew about his enemies. He announced
himself as candidate for mayor--Democratic Catholic “Joe,” friend of
the common man, persecuted by holier-than-thou exploiters and wholesale
bribe-givers. The common man thought that sounded very good; to him the
victims of the blackmail ring were millionaire degenerates, preying
upon his daughters; and since the law could not get them, let Joe take
their money, and give part of it to the church, to be expended for
orphan asylums and altar cloths!
But what a shudder in blue-blood circles, when this man who knew all
secrets got up on the stump and started reciting names, places and
dates. Stopping not at the most exalted offices! When he discussed
the Supreme Judicial Court, he said things of interest to the friends
of Sacco and Vanzetti, who were making such expensive appeals to the
supreme judicial virtue of that great tribunal:
“Go up some day and watch the justices of the Supreme Judicial Court
file down to the Union Club. Whom do they eat with? The capital
interests, the corporation lawyers for the street railway cases, the
gas cases, the light cases. These are the men that break bread with
them. That may not mean anything to you. If so, bless you for your
innocence! I confess to being more suspicious by nature.”
Thus people’s friend “Joe,” soon to be tried by that same tribunal!