THE MILLS OF THE LAW
I
Betty Alvin was now twenty-six years of age; old enough to know better,
as her family and friends insisted, but she continued to give her time
to the stirring up of social discontent. She and Joe had taken up
the task of founding a labor college in Boston, to teach the workers
to think for themselves, instead of for the stockholders and the
bankers. Joe was teaching a class, two evenings a week, the history of
European labor movements, and writing a book on the subject. Betty,
learned young lady, was expounding “labor theory”; trying to adhere
to a policy of working-class solidarity, and being perpetually pulled
and hauled between socialists and communists. However, they would
all excuse her, on the basis of her “bourgeois upbringing.” In the
daytime she inspected accounts and paid bills; or, when this was not
possible, sallied forth to raise money. She would visit the offices of
Irish-Catholic labor leaders, and do her best to persuade them that it
was really in the interest of unions for idle-rich girls to meddle in
their affairs, and teach them complicated theories with long foreign
names.
Hard-fisted individuals these, having fought their way in a world of
realities--which included Democratic and Republican politicians seeking
votes and promising favors; also agents of employers making presents
of boxes of cigars, and willing to lose unlimited sums at poker.
“Parlor pinks,” who mixed in the affairs of such gentry would learn a
lot of things not in the Radcliffe curriculum; they would have a hard
time deciding which leaders to educate and which to kill off. For the
sake of Sacco and Vanzetti in the shadow of the electric chair it was
necessary to be patient and tactful; to appeal to class solidarity, and
to human feelings not entirely atrophied. Thus you might get a chance
to present your case before some labor body, and have anywhere from
twenty-five to a hundred dollars voted to the defense.
Betty had now been for more than three years the lawful and duly
certified wife of Joseph Jefferson Randall--even though she insisted
upon belonging to the “Lucy Stoners,” and remaining “Betty Alvin,” not
even “Mrs.” Was it a part of the same eccentricity, that she refused to
do her duty by her family, and pass on to the ages those excellences
of which the family was so conscious? Did these modern young wives
repudiate babies altogether, and, if so, what substitute had they to
propose? Deborah never failed to make such inquiries when she met her
daughter.
Now Betty came to Cornelia: “Grannie, I guess it’s my turn.”
“How do you mean, dear?”
“Well, there’s a saying that accidents will happen in the best
regulated families, and it seems that the Lord is on the side of the
Thornwell clan.” Such was the fashion of speech of these modern,
hard-boiled young women; they would not permit themselves any of the
traditional thrills of their sex, which they called being “soppy.”
When they referred to matters ordinarily considered “delicate,” they
seemingly went out of their way to find the most offensive language,
with which the ears of their chaste grandmothers had never in a
whole lifetime been assailed. In Betty this reaction was especially
violent, as a result of having been brought up in Boston, and hearing
somebody say “Hush!” several times every day. She persisted in going
about telling all her friends, both men and women, the medical facts
about herself; refusing to put on garments ingeniously contrived for
the hiding of her shameful condition, going to her labor college and
teaching classes at a time when she was a scandal on the street.
She even told two “wops” about it, when she went to see them in jail.
They, being peasants, took it as a matter of course; they were used
to babies, as to all other kinds of young animals. Betty would even
permit Vanzetti to be “soppy”--he being in jail, and having a hard time
to keep his sanity. Poor devil, he needed something young and new and
sweet and healthy and happy to occupy his thoughts, so when Betty went
to see him, she told him how it felt when the unborn baby kicked. It
might have been one old “nonna” gossiping with another old “nonna,”
scrubbing clothes on the banks of the River Magra.
In due course the infant phenomenon arrived. It was a boy, and his name
had been determined several months before he was born--Rupert Alvin
Thornwell Randall; it would be worth millions to him some day, in spite
of his mother’s protests. The war that was to last all his lifetime
began in the first weeks; for of course his name wouldn’t be his name,
until it had been conferred upon him in Trinity Church; and here were
his mother and father declaring that he wasn’t going to be baptized!
The family brought Betty to admit that it wouldn’t do any harm; if they
chose to dress him up in an old linen robe two yards long and sprinkle
cold water on his head, she would not interfere, but certainly they
must not expect her or Joe to waste time on such foolishness. Neither
must they get the idea that this particular grandchild was going to be
permitted to visit them, and be waited upon by servants and demoralized
by the uses of luxury. Rupert Alvin Thornwell Randall was going to live
among working people, and grow up to be of some use in the world. The
grandparents did not argue that; they would have the baptism first, and
save the little one’s soul. The other issues could be fought out later!
II
Cornelia was continuing to devote her life to the Sacco-Vanzetti case.
She would get herself invited to gatherings of ladies, and tell them
the cruel story, and when they said they were “so sorry,” she would
ask just how sorry, and explain that sorrow was measured in figures
on a bank-check. She would help the defense committee to organize
entertainments and benefit performances--which, alas, sometimes
cost more than they brought in. She would visit headquarters, and
try to keep things moving, to reconcile the endless clashings of
personalities. Always there was something needing to be done, and one
could not do it, or even urge it, without antagonizing somebody. What
Vanzetti called “umane beings” had not yet evolved to a stage where
they could merge their personalities and coöperate; they had to waste
the greater part of their energies in friction. Cornelia would be so
discouraged that she would give up, and tell them to do what they
pleased; but then they would do nothing--and meantime there were Bart
and Nick on the way to execution!
The antagonism between Fred Moore and some members of the committee
had waxed with the years. It was impossible for anarchists to get
along with any lawyer; it was especially hard with this one, who was
hell-bent upon discovering the real criminals, and insisted upon
spending defense funds in tracing clews, chasing off to Atlanta
penitentiary or to Texas, sending some one to Italy or to South America
to run down a story. Moore would either have his way or quit; and in
the end his enemies made his position impossible, by undermining the
faith of his clients in him. He received a letter from Sacco, signed,
“Your implacable enemy, now and forever”; so the lawyer realized that
the days of his usefulness were over. “I have failed,” he said to
Cornelia; “and it’s a game where nothing succeeds but success.”
There was an interregnum, with no lawyer, no anything else--except two
prisoners on the way to the electric chair. Finally the committee was
reorganized; some Italians withdrew, some Americans were taken on,
and overtures were made to William G. Thompson to take charge of the
new motions and appeals. He knew how much trouble it would mean, and
set his fee at a figure which he meant to be prohibitive, twenty-five
thousand dollars. There was a problem for Cornelia and Betty and Joe!
It was solved by a curious turn of events, hardly possible in any part
of the world except Boston. A young man by the name of Charles Garland,
while a student at Harvard, had known Jack Reed, and become troubled in
his conscience. Now Reed had given his life to the Russian revolution,
and was buried under the Kremlin walls; while his friend Garland fell
heir to a million dollars. His conscience not permitting him to accept
it, he turned it over to a committee, to be expended for the benefit
of labor. So there was the “Garland fund”; and in this emergency it
was persuaded to lend twenty thousand dollars to the Sacco-Vanzetti
defense, and William G. Thompson was put in charge of the case.
A man in his early sixties, with iron-gray hair and ruddy skin, six
feet tall and broad shouldered, dry and humorous, smoking a pipe and
looking like a Yankee farmer, Thompson proved to be the boss of which
the case had been in need. He became convinced that the machinery of
justice was being used for persecution, and turned into a crusader in
defense of his clients. Before he got through, the fee he had charged
did not cover his office overhead; yet his enemies accused him of
having profited unduly, and tried to have the Bar Association proceed
against him for the offense of defending anarchists.
He had his strict ideas of propriety. This was a law-case, and was to
be tried in the courts, and everything which savored of “propaganda”
must be rigidly avoided. Which brought him, of course, into conflict
with active friends of the cause. To Joe and Betty, propaganda was the
essence of the defense; it was propaganda which had made possible the
appeals and kept the two men alive; it was propaganda which brought
in money to pay lawyers. Vanzetti’s opinion was summed up in his
formula, “Unless a million men can be mobilized in our defense, we are
lost.” He wanted the money spent, not for legal proceedings, but for
speakers among the labor unions. But Thompson forced the canceling of a
mass-meeting in Boston, by threatening to withdraw from the case if it
was held.
Mary Donovan was now recording secretary of the committee without
pay: an Irish-Catholic girl who had gone to college and joined the
Socialist party, and been formally excommunicated by her bishop. She
had a position as state factory inspector--but did not retain it very
long after she took up the Sacco-Vanzetti defense. It was supposed
to be a civil service position, but the politicians did not let that
trouble them. They brought charges against her and proved that she had
worked for the defense during several hours when she was supposed to be
working for the Commonwealth. She offered to show that others in her
department had done private work on public pay for weeks at a time; but
that kind of evidence was not wanted.
Another recruit, Gardner Jackson, Amherst man, a newspaper reporter,
very conscientious--the “Y.M.C.A. type,” as an enemy described him;
passionately convinced of the innocence of the prisoners, and being
drawn in more and more deeply, until finally he was giving all his
time without pay. But he was not a “radical,” and did not want any
movement to use the case for its own ends; therefore socialists, and
more especially communists, quarreled with him. These disputes went on
until the very end--and afterwards, when the different groups fought
over the corpses of the victims. Said Mary Donovan, white-faced with
anguish, “These bodies belong to us! Can’t they even go to their graves
in peace?” But the communists thought that the bodies belonged to the
international revolutionary movement, and should be used to waken the
masses to class-consciousness.
III
But those horrors lay in the future, and the Master of Events led men
to them blindfolded. Neither radicals nor conservatives might lift a
corner of the veil, to see what lay beyond it. They could imagine, and
fear--and shrink back, unable to face what they feared. They would
clench their hands and set their teeth and redouble their efforts to
stave off the inevitable.
The mills of the law were grinding. One by one they ground up the
motions for a new trial: the Ripley motion, the Daley, the Pelzer,
the Andrews, the Gould, the Goodridge, the Hamilton, the Proctor
motions. Judge Webster Thayer denied them one by one, and they became
the basis of appeals to the Supreme Judicial Court, and to the public
for funds to defray the bills of official printers. Defendants’ Bill
of Exceptions, Defendants’ Amended Bill of Exceptions, Defendants’
Consolidated Bill of Exceptions; and the various Defendants’ Briefs
and Defendants’ Supplementary Briefs--legal arguments addressed to the
higher powers, pointing out the innumerable ways in which Judge Thayer
had broken or overlooked the rules of the game.
When you read these, you could not see how “Web” had a leg to stand on;
how any court could sustain the mass of evasions and falsehoods which
he called his decisions. But apparently he had no worries about this;
he was proclaiming his security to all and sundry. “Let them take it
to the Supreme Court and see how far they’ll get!” He knew that if the
court reversed him on grounds of prejudice, it would be equivalent to
declaring him unfit for office. The chief justice came from Thayer’s
home town of Worcester, where they are very clannish, being looked down
upon by Boston. Long before the trial, at a public dinner to Thayer,
this chief justice, Rugg, had made a speech paying tribute to Thayer,
and telling how helpful Thayer had been to Rugg when Rugg was beginning
law practice.
In January of 1926, three days were set for hearings before this august
tribunal, and Cornelia visited the Court House in Boston, a dingy gray
old building crowded into Pemberton Square--which in her girlhood had
been a lovely little park, surrounded by fine old red brick mansions
of the best families. The Supreme Court room was upstairs, simple,
bare and gloomy as a tomb; Cornelia sat and watched a row of seven
elderly gentlemen in black silk robes at their work of adjudging life
or death. William G. Thompson was called upon to argue, and the little
group of friends thrilled and exulted. But, alas, such thrills were not
contagious, they did not affect the elderly gentlemen behind the high
raised desks. They sat, like black-clad mummies; and in the course of
the long argument, Cornelia observed one of them with head sunk forward
and shoulders collapsed, perfectly peaceful. Poor old man, he was
nearly eighty, but still needed the job.
The average age of these ultimate arbiters was sixty-eight, and
increasing every year; several were ill a good part of the time, so
that it was a rare event to see a full bench in session. That threw a
double labor on the few who were capable. But there was no way to get
rid of the old ones, for the greater their age, the less chance that
they would think of a new idea; and what the owners of property wanted
was to have all things legal and governmental stay as they were. If
owners of property wanted anything, they could buy it; they did not
have to call elderly black-clad mummies to their aid.
The Chief Justice, Rugg, sat in the center; oddly enough, he was the
only young one, being fifty-four, handsome, alert, bland and smiling
while he crushed counsel with his rulings. He had been an efficient
county prosecutor, and an ardent reactionary, and this was his reward.
As a trustee of Clark University, in his home town of Worcester, he was
the ardent supporter of an academic clown who was turning a really
distinguished graduate school into a laughing-stock of all scholars.
Also he was a trustee of Amherst, and there had helped to oust one of
the half dozen liberal college presidents in America.
Cornelia sat, her eyes roaming from one to another of the faces. She
knew the names, she knew the family gossip, and would put this bit
and that together. This one had been appointed by the governor who,
after his term, became a vice-president of a great Boston bank; that
other one the same. The family was venturing to hope that they were
“safe” for a reversal of the Jerry Walker verdict. One was a Catholic,
a former city solicitor; in matters concerning anarchism he would
be tempted to stand by God and Cardinal O’Connell. One mumbled when
he spoke, but Cornelia hoped his mind was still alert; also that
he had not been affected by his acquaintance with Senator Crane,
the respectable corruptionist who had collected the campaign funds
of the rich. William Murray Crane, first governor and then United
States Senator, had run Massachusetts politics in the interest of
his own property and that of his friends. Had he made the mistake of
overlooking the highest and most powerful of the courts?
Their enemies had not overlooked them; the men who answered corruption
and class-arrogance with hate and blind destruction. During the days
of the bomb-scares, somebody had planted a large one in a toilet in
the court-house, close to the chambers where the august justices met.
That was not merely a crime, it was an impropriety; and these old men
would have been superhuman if they had not wanted to get hold of an
anarchist, and teach a lesson to the others. The actual makers and
planters of the bombs they could not punish, for these had changed
their names and got away to Italy or South America--so the Department
of Justice agents declared; but in Sacco and Vanzetti they had two who
were at least friends and sympathizers.
On May 12th, 1926, the justices handed down their voluminous decision,
in which they passed upon the Dedham trial and the exceptions thereto,
and all the earlier motions for a new trial. Twenty-two thousand words
of legal technicalities--fifty-six separate propositions which amounted
to this: that Judge Thayer had been right in everything he had done,
and that none of his discretionary rulings betrayed irrationality or
corruption--something the defense had never claimed. To admit what
the defense really claimed--that the judge had revealed a thoroughly
prejudiced mind--would have meant to declare him unfit to hold his
position; and that they would not do. From now on it would be the
law of Massachusetts that a judge who desired to use his enormous
discretionary power against accused persons might do so without fear of
being reversed.
The plain truth was this: in other cases, where it seemed to the
Supreme Judicial Court that prejudice had been displayed in a trial,
they found a way to spare the feelings of the erring judge--finding
some technical ground on which to order a new trial. Never had there
been more prejudice, never more errors, than in this case; but for some
reason known only to them, the elderly justices declined to employ
their usual device.
IV
A frightful blow for the defense; wiping out all the concealments of
Katzmann, the bitter prejudice of Thayer, the confession of Proctor,
the criminal career of Goodridge, the wobblings of Pelzer and Lola
Andrews, the testimony of Gould--all legally dead forever! Shocking
were the things which you might hear about the Supreme Judicial Court
of Massachusetts from anarchists, and the aiders and abettors of
anarchism, and their dupes like Cornelia Thornwell! She even got into a
violent fuss with her son-in-law, Rupert Alvin--at least it was violent
on Rupert’s part; Cornelia could not help laughing--it seemed to her
the funniest thing that had yet come out of the case. Actually, the
president of the Pilgrim National Bank declared his admiration for the
great integrity of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts! And
after all his efforts to tempt the court from virtue! “Really, my son,”
said Cornelia, “there ought to be certain allowance for a sense of
humor, even between a man and his mother-in-law! How long can you look
at me with a straight face, knowing what you know that I know about our
judges?”
Rupert tried to be sarcastic. “How can I tell what you think you know,
since you have been associating exclusively with Reds?”
“No, my son, that won’t help you! What I know is not from Reds but
from bankers. You forget that for many years I was privileged to
sit in a room while a great leader of Boston finance discussed his
private affairs with his father-in-law. I never paid attention to
the details--I wish now that I had--but I assure you I noted the
atmosphere, and sometimes I left the room because it was so unpleasant.”
“I defy you, Mother, ever to say that I have hinted at corruption in
our judges!”
“If by corruption you mean selling their decisions for cash, as has
happened in California and other states not so far away, I will grant
that I have no evidence; but if you mean favoring our wealthy and
powerful, if you mean protecting our ruling group in everything they
do, then I say that the judges of our virtuous Commonwealth were
appointed for that purpose and none other, and that their lives and
records were gone over with a fine-tooth comb, before any one of them
ever got started toward appointment. I have heard you scold a hundred
times about the low quality of our political life, and the character of
men who rise to high office in it.”
“Yes, Mother, but never the courts!”
“There is an old question which you hear asked in church, Rupert:
do men gather figs from thistles? You know how many times we have
heard of judges going with cap in hand to beg favor from some
political boss--either Murray Crane, or the Democrat in charge.
How many of our judges can you name who are really legal scholars,
publicists, economists or statesmen? They are products of the
spoils system--retired politicians, ex-district attorneys or city
solicitors--tools of the big corporations, put there as reward for
services. Most of them have spent a life-time protecting public service
and accident insurance companies, upholding laws against labor,
upholding vested privilege in every form. How many of them have been in
your pay, Rupert, before they went on the bench?”
She waited; and then remarked with a smile, “You could count faster if
you wanted to. I know of a judge who was counsel for a great banker
fearing indictment for perjury--and I know that he got that banker
off through a district attorney who was afterwards disbarred for
malfeasance in office.”
Rupert showed a desire to withdraw from this unprofitable discussion;
and his mother-in-law smiled.
“It was only in the most high-minded way, Rupert, I know! Our bankers
name men who have been in their pay, and then it is the fiction that
they forget gratitude! The public is expected to believe that men who
have been truckling and time-serving politicians become spotless and
noble-minded the moment they put on a black silk robe! But you know,
and I know, that you are hoping for the Supreme Judicial Court to hand
you Jerry Walker’s money. And you know that they are killing my two
boys for threatening property rights in New England.”
V
The old evidence was wiped out, but new appeared to take its place and
keep the case alive. First, the defense discovered Mrs. Kelly and Mrs.
Kennedy, the two women who had looked out of a window on the bandit
car, and had a perfect view of the one supposed to be Sacco. They had
made to Fred Katzmann statements to the effect that Sacco was not the
man, and Katzmann had kept this evidence from the defense for five
years. Thompson now demanded the reports, but Katzmann’s successor,
Ranney, was mysteriously unable to find them. This was the time for
Ranney to appear before Thayer and deliver his cynical pronouncement:
“I wonder if Mr. Thompson has not an exaggerated and too ethical notion
of the functions of a district attorney!”
Then the Madeiros confession. Celestino F. Madeiros was a young
Portuguese, member of a gang which had robbed a bank in Wrentham and
killed the cashier. He was in Dedham jail while his appeal was being
heard, and his conscience troubled him, he said, when Sacco’s wife came
to the prison with the baby. On November 18th, 1925, he scribbled on a
piece of paper: “I hear by confess to being in the South Braintree shoe
company crime, and Sacco and Vanzetti was not in said crime.” He handed
the paper to a trusty, who gave it to Nick.
A long investigation began. Madeiros told a detailed story of the South
Braintree crime, but refusing to name any of his associates. However,
a skilled lawyer knows how to get the facts out of a man, and the
job was attributed to a group of freight-car thieves and hold-up men
of Providence, known as the “Morelli gang.” Several of them were in
jail, and their records were traced; Cornelia now studied the career
of such persons as Bibba Barone, Steve the Pole, Gyp the Blood. Also
she listened to more wrangling in the committee, because the anarchists
resisted the efforts to pin the crime on the Morellis or anybody else.
“What for we play polissman for state Massachusetts?”
But Thompson went ahead, and collected a mass of affidavits to be
submitted in a motion for a new trial: which went the usual round, and
served the purpose of keeping Sacco and Vanzetti alive for another
year. Motion filed May, 1926; hearing before Judge Thayer, September;
decision and appeal, October; argument before the Supreme Judicial
Court, February, 1927; decision April, 1927; all very solemn and
very expensive, with ancient legal phrases and complicated rules,
making certain that no layman could be his own lawyer. Bart would
watch the game, and joke with Cornelia; he was glad to be kept alive,
of course--he could speak more words for the cause; but at the same
time he begrudged the money, which might better have been spent for
literature. Bartolomeo Vanzetti, the anarchist wop, had become fond
of William G. Thompson, the blue-blood lawyer, who was a learned and
a great-hearted man. “But he is very naïve,” said Bart, gently; “he
believe in the Supreme Court.”
The prisoner went on to explain. “It must be that way with a lawyer;
he think he have to get his what you call them, precedents, right. He
think if he can show how it was done before, then he has won. It is
like chess--you ever play chess, Nonna?”
“My brother-in-law used to be a champion.”
“Well, you make move, you say ‘check’ and you have won. It is a game.
But this is not a game, this is war. You say ‘check,’ and your enemy
he knock the figures off the board, he throw them in your face.” As
time passed, and the courts did this to the great lawyer, over and over
again, Bart would remind Cornelia, and add, patiently, “I think some
time they foolish Mr. Thompson.”
VI
Then came the confessions of Letherman and Weyand--two agents of the
Department of Justice, whose consciences had begun to trouble them.
They had got out of the secret service now, the war upon the Reds being
less active. They made affidavits, telling of the part which Federal
agents had played in getting the conviction of Sacco and Vanzetti.
They said, in substance, that the Department had felt sure that Sacco
and Vanzetti were not guilty of the South Braintree crime, but that,
since they were dangerous anarchists, it was desired to get them out
of the way. The Department had turned over to the district attorney’s
office a mass of evidence, in return for an agreement on the part of
the district attorney to help the Department get information. There
was much correspondence in the files of the Department in Boston which
would show what had been done.
So the energies of the defense were turned to getting hold of these
files. Thompson made application to the United States Attorney
General, Cal Coolidge’s village lawyer from Vermont; a strong, silent
protégé of a strong, silent statesman--and never more silent than now!
Thompson did not get the files, and neither did anybody else get them.
The attorney-general made no affidavit, and neither did any of his
subordinates, and there was not a squeak from Fred Katzmann or Harold
Williams, now a judge!
The motion for a new trial was argued before Judge Thayer in September
of 1926. A great sight was William G. Thompson that day, for his moral
sense was stirred, and he talked like an old-style prophet. He paid his
regards to Fred Katzmann:
“Just think of what it means, if your Honor please! Think of what it
means!
“Mr. Katzmann knew and knows to-day whether Fred Weyand and Lawrence
Letherman told the truth. That truth is a truth of vital importance.
Think what they say! The files of the Boston office are full of
correspondence with Mr. Katzmann and of documents showing the closest
coöperation between the Federal Agents and the District Attorney--not
Stewart--the District Attorney in the preparation of this case.
Every Federal agent who knew anything about it believed these men
to be innocent of murder. ‘Every one of us believed they ought to be
deported. They were anarchists, they did not believe in organized
government or private property.’
“Oh, how those words will ring around this world, ‘private property’!
Think what is going to be said about it! The man who does not believe
in private property in America may be killed whether he is guilty or
not. That is going to be said from one end of the world to the other if
this thing is allowed to go through. Can we afford it? I do not care
how high an opinion your Honor has of Mr. Katzmann. It may be he was
misled. Far be it from me to make any further or other attack on Mr.
Katzmann than simply what the facts warrant. He has remained silent in
the face of those accusations. Nothing that I can say is more eloquent
than that silence. I desire to say nothing in addition to that silence.”
VII
So much for the district attorney; and then Thompson turned his
attention to the village lawyer from Vermont, the strong, silent
protégé of a strong, silent statesman. Said he:
“And what do you say of the refusal to produce those papers? Take all
the circumstances, sir.... We have got a telegram from New York, but
we cannot get the papers in those Boston files. What inference does
your Honor tell the jury may fairly be drawn against a man if he is an
humble man who is in the possession of relevant evidence and refuses to
produce it? Do you tell them that it is going to help him or that it is
going to hurt him?
“Is there anything so exalted in the office of the Attorney General of
the United States that the inference that you draw against any other
men who hold back documentary evidence should not be drawn in this
case? I am not talking about him personally, of course; I am talking
about him in his official capacity. Personally, I have no doubt he is
an admirable citizen. But there is some reason of strong policy why
those papers are not produced here. What can that reason be? What can
it be? Are you going to say because Sacco and Vanzetti are Italians,
because they are poor folks, because they are aliens, because they
have no constitutional rights we will let Mr. Sargent hold back what
might set them free?”
And then Thompson turned upon Katzmann’s successor, Ranney, who had
argued that the “secrets” of the Department of Justice were sacred and
must be protected! Said Thompson:
“What are these secrets which they admit? They have then admitted
secrets, have they? There are secrets, are there? I thought there were
from the fact that it was not denied or contradicted. And I will say to
your Honor that a government which has come to value its own secrets
more than it does the lives of its citizens has become a tyranny,
whether you call it a republic, a monarchy, or anything else. Secrets!
Secrets! And he says you should abstain from touching this verdict of
your jury because it is so sacred. Would they not have liked to know
something about the secrets? The case is admitted by that inadvertent
concession. There are then secrets to be admitted....
“Mr. Ranney says that I have argued that all these Federal agents
ought to be in jail. I was not so bold as to make that suggestion, if
your Honor please. All I ventured to call your Honor’s attention to
was the fact that one of them already was in jail, namely, our friend,
Shaughnessey, sentenced for twelve years for highway robbery, a man
who was then investigating Sacco and Vanzetti, and going around with a
badge of the United States on him as his authority so to do. I do not
suggest what ought to be done to these agents. I do say, as a citizen,
that it is a shame that Weiss, a man capable of making the suggestions
that he made, and doing the things that he did in this case, should
still be wearing the uniform of the United States and boldly operating
around this town, and not even taking the trouble to come in here and
deny these charges.”
VIII
All that got under “Web” Thayer’s skin most frightfully; you had only
to watch his gray withered face and trembling hands while he listened.
It made him so furious that he took only five weeks to write his
decision--instead of the year he had been requiring hitherto! There
were persons who believed that the reason for the Sacco-Vanzetti
conviction had been ill-mannered I.W.W. lawyers from the wild and
woolly west; but here was a respectable lawyer, one of the leaders
of the Boston bar; and here was “Web” raging at him, with elaborate
and complicated sneers such as “Web” loved, and which exhibited his
learning, not merely in the legal field, but in the medical. Said “Web”:
“Since the trial before the jury of these cases, a new type of disease
would seem to have developed. It might be called ‘lego-psychic
neurosis’ or ‘hysteria’ which means: ‘a belief in the existence of
something which in fact and truth has no such existence.’ ... This
disease would seem to have reached a very dangerous condition, from
the argument of counsel, upon the present motion, when he charges Mr.
Sargent, Attorney-General of the United States and his subordinates,
and subordinates of Former-Attorney-General of the United States Mr.
Palmer and Mr. Katzmann and the District Attorney of Norfolk County,
with being in a conspiracy to send these two defendants to the electric
chair, not because they are murderers but because they are radicals....
This would seem to be a very low estimate of the District Attorney and
his assistants. The physician, ordinarily, in diagnosing a disease,
seeks to ascertain the length of time the symptoms have existed, with a
view of ascertaining how deep-seated the disease is and whether it is
curable or not. In these cases, from all the developed symptoms, the
Court is rather of the opinion that the disease is absolutely without
cure.”
But the most amazing thing in that amazing decision was what the
learned judge had to say about the issue of “radicalism,” and the
part it had played in the trial. Defending himself, with his back to
the wall, “Web” cited some dialogue which he said had passed between
Katzmann and Sacco. But you searched in the transcript of the testimony
for that passage, and couldn’t find it. You would go back and search
some more--you must have skipped a page, it must be there somewhere.
You would get others to search--until finally it had become certain
that “Web’s” citation was invented! So much progress “Judge Fury” had
made since the days of the Dedham trial, when his utmost daring had
been to present Frank Sibley with a page from the transcript with a
passage cut out. But now he concocted passages, and inserted them in
his decisions, in quotation marks, to be printed in the law-books, and
handed down to the scorn and fury of all future times! Said Mr. Justice
Thayer, in his rôle of fiction-writer:
“Mr. Sacco said that he feared punishment, that he was afraid of
deportation, that he did not want to go back to Italy, that he had
told all these falsehoods because of his fear. Mr. Katzmann, in his
cross-examination, brought out all these facts and then he asked this
question: ‘Mr. Sacco, you say you feared deportation and that is why
you told all these lies and why you did what you did?’ and Mr. Sacco
said ‘Yes.’ Then came the next question: ‘Mr. Sacco, at the very time
when you were telling these lies, you had already secured a passport
for Italy on which you, your wife, and two children were to sail two
days after the night of your arrest?’ and the answer was ‘Yes.’”--Not a
word of that in the record!
IX
Incidents such as this furnished propaganda for the radical and labor
press. No need of comment--they were their own comment. The story
spread, in wider and wider circles. Pierre Leon, in Paris, would
publish in his paper everything that was sent to him, and it would
be taken up by socialist and communist agencies, and translated into
a dozen languages, and made the subject of editorials and protest
meetings all over the world.
The little group in Boston, laboring in obscurity and despair, had
accomplished more than they knew. Their propaganda had influenced many
thousands whose names they would never know. In part it was the natural
drama of the case, the contrasts and thrills supplied by the Great
Novelist; in part it was the personality of Vanzetti. Joe Randall had
been right when he said, at that first meeting in Plymouth Jail: “The
police have given us a good martyr.” For five years Bart had been tried
in the fire, and he had stood the test; it would be hard to say how
any man could have stood it better. Outside, in times of excitement,
he had been fanatical and violent; but now those faults were remedied
by prison bars; now he was of necessity the student and thinker. He
met persons of the cultivated class, and learned that they, too,
were concerned about “joostice.” Without weakening in the cause of
his beloved proletariat, he came to understand that goodness is not a
matter of class, and that love can break down as many barriers as greed
can set up.
He was gentle, he was wise, and he was dignified. The humiliations of
prison life had failed to affect him; he had conquered his jailers. A
few days after his arrest, Mike Stewart, bluff and burly, had patted
him on the back and called him “Bertie”; but now the guards understood
that he was a superior man, and before his death the life of the
prison had come to revolve about him. He sat for many hours a day in
his cell, writing letters; and the least of these bore the stamp of
his personality. He had a style now--both in English and Italian. To a
friend he wrote:
“I have been told that the Italian is one of the most beautiful
of languages: to me it is: it is my mother’s language: it is the
angelic language to me. Yet all languages are beautiful when
they voice the beautiful, the good and the true. Your words are
harmonious and sweet to me as friendship’s voice is--they are
music, the vibration of life.”
Always thinking of others; with that natural courtesy which springs
from a kind heart. To a rancher’s wife on the Pacific coast he wrote:
“By the solidarity of the workers, friends, and comrades I always
have money to enable me to buy some food and fruits, cheese, etc.,
when the institution food does not agree with me. I am satisfied
with what I have. Very often I think while eating of some starved
human creatures and I feel a little ashamed though I have always
done my part to assure a piece of bread to each mouth. So please do
not be excessively troubled for me. Good sentiments and friendly
words are most necessary to me--and you are very most prodigal.”
So he said; but in truth he needed more than sentiments and words; he
needed the bosom of that Mother Nature whom he loved with a passion
both filial and romantic. When he heard that Cornelia was visiting
Plymouth, he wrote to her: “Oh! that sea, that sky, those freed and
full of life winds of Cape Cod! Maybe I will never see, never breathe,
never be at one with them again!” He poured out the anguish of his
effort to know and to achieve--in spite of terrifying handicaps:
“Exactly talking, I am not busy in writing but in trying to write.
For, the prison’s spell is telling its story also on me, and how so!
It seems to be increasing my understanding and diminishing my power
of expression. In fact ... it is ... an experience all right! but
an experience that undermines the life, straight to its sources and
centers so that as long as consciousness and memory are not yet weaken,
you can realized something ... but, as to express oneself at one’s best
one has to be at one’s best while after such experience one is not any
longer at his best! he can not any longer express himself at the best
of his power. These are the reasons why I am busy in trying to write
and writting very little at all. Oftentimes I manouvired hard to write
down what I wish; then, reaching it I perceive that it does not says
what I mean and I torn the writting in many little pieces.
“The crux of this inner drama is not only about expression ... it is
that I doubt my own thoughts, my opinions, my feeling, my sentiments,
believes and ideas. I am sure of nothing, I know nothing. When I think
of a thing and try to understand it, I see that in the time in the
space and in the matter that thing is, both before and after, related
to so many other things that I, following its relations, both backward
and forward, see it disappear in the ocean of the unknown and myself
lost in it. It is easy to create a universal sistem, to human minds;
that is why we are blessed by so many of universal sistems while no one
know what a bed-buck is.”
X
Cornelia would visit Charlestown and discuss these high metaphysical
problems with Bart, and then she would go to tea-parties and dinners in
the Back Bay, and tell her blue-blood friends about this philosophical
fish-peddler, and now and then persuade one to call upon him. So
gradually the class-lines were broken down in Boston, and strange
things happened--things which could not have been duplicated anywhere
else in the world. For example, the Madeiros reprieve, and the way it
was engineered!
The Madeiros motion for a new trial, turned down by Thayer, was in
process of appeal to the Supreme Court. But meantime, the mills of the
law were threatening to grind up the principal witness! Madeiros was
scheduled to be executed for the Wrentham bank murder, and if he were
to die, what would be left of the “Madeiros motion”? The Governor of
the Commonwealth was asked to postpone the execution, and he refused to
act. By what means could his hard heart be moved?
Cornelia went to call upon a certain venerable lady, one of the oldest
inhabitants of Beacon Hill, tremendously looked up to, even though
she took no part in politics or practical affairs. Hardly anything in
her home less than a hundred years old--except the occupant, who was
ninety-something, and regarded Cornelia Thornwell as one of the young
matrons. A shrine of respectability, with a little wizened female deity
in a faded black silk dress, to whom Cornelia told her troubles--the
losing struggle she was waging with politicians and bankers and
business men who thought they were protecting society and upholding
order when they took a chance on killing innocent men. See what was
happening to a fine, upright lawyer like William G. Thompson, who was
being abused up and down for daring to defend two anarchists!
The old, old lady listened, and then said, “My dear, the trouble is,
these persons don’t know Boston history. Tell them what John Adams and
the first Josiah Quincy did.”
“What is that?”
“You don’t know history either! When the British soldiers were indicted
for murder after the Boston massacre, John Adams and Josiah Quincy
defended them, to be sure they had a fair trial.”
“Did that really happen?” exclaimed Cornelia.
“Yes, indeed, my dear, you can look it up in the books. If you want to
make any headway in Boston, why don’t you really find out about us?”
It happened that at this time a New York newspaper had sent its labor
editor to study the Madeiros case. This man had come with the usual
prejudices, but convinced himself against his will that Sacco and
Vanzetti were innocent. He wanted to do something to help, and Cornelia
told him of this colonial precedent. Seeing the chance, he took it to
one of the most bitter reactionaries in Boston, a man whom Cornelia
herself would never have approached, for she knew that he had put up,
out of his private purse, more than half a million dollars for the war
upon the “Reds.”
This powerful person, who had been demanding a quick death for Sacco
and Vanzetti, was confronted with that sacred precedent, and felt
himself rebuked. Had John Adams and the first Josiah Quincy really
done such a thing? If it was true, he would do no less! He would write
or call upon the Governor, and ask for a reprieve of the Madeiros
sentence! He did so; and the result was, the reprieve was granted,
and Sacco and Vanzetti got another six months in which to make their
impression upon the world!
XI
Seven years had passed since the felt plants of Jerry Walker had been
taken from him by Henry Cabot Winters and Rupert Alvin and the rest of
the “Pilgrim National crowd.” Two years had passed since the jury had
brought in that tremendous verdict of ten and one-half million dollars
in Mr. Walker’s favor. In the course of seven years the new owners had
made more than that amount of money out of the properties; but still
Mr. Walker had not got a penny. The case had been appealed to the
Supreme Judicial Court, and at last, in the fall of 1926, the seven old
gentlemen in black silk robes were ready to hear the argument. A great
event in the legal world of Boston: the highest priced lawyers in the
city pitted against one another, for the highest stakes in history.
You might be sure that none of the elderly judges would fall asleep
this time! They listened day after day, while more than two thousand
“exceptions” were explained and debated before them; the mere brief of
the plaintiff filled three printed volumes.
The wrangling over, the seven judges took their seven heads full of
arguments, and the printed briefs and the huge “bill of exceptions,”
to meditate and discuss among themselves. Three or four months they
would need to make up their minds; but--a dreadful circumstance, almost
blasphemy to mention--Rupert and Henry thought that they foresaw the
outcome! In strictest secrecy the word went the rounds of the family;
no need to worry, everything was going to be all right!
And so it proved. On the ninth of March, 1927, the black-clad justices
spoke the final word on the Jerry Walker case: declaring that the
verdict of the jury had been an error, and that the trial judge
should have directed a verdict for the banker-bandits. From this time
forth all banker-bandits who desired to put pistols to the heads
of businessmen need only have to take the precaution to make the
businessmen sign a paper forgiving them for the action.
An amazing decision for a court which was forbidden to deal with the
facts, and claimed that it never did so! The release which Jerry Walker
had been induced to sign, at the time that he had parted with his
properties, had been an obvious part of the conspiracy; he had signed
it in ignorance of what had been done to him, and one consideration
of the release had been his parting with more of his property. So the
jury had decided; but now the august justices stepped in and declared
that this was not so; the conspiracy had been over before the release
was signed, and “no fraud or duress entered into the execution of the
release.” In order to say this, they had to do exactly what “Web”
Thayer had done so many times in the Sacco-Vanzetti case; that is, to
shut their eyes to a mass of testimony which stood in the record. When
it came to sparing the rich or condemning the poor, all judges appeared
to be alike.
A great relief to the masters of the Boston banking-ring. No longer
need they fear having to part with most of their wealth acquired during
the last few years! They patted the old boys of the court on the back
at lunch-time in the Union Club, and told them that they were true
friends of sound and conservative business. All right to talk about the
case now; neither would there be any harm if you offered to take a son
or a favorite nephew into the bank at a generous salary. In time of
peace prepare for war!
Jerry Walker’s legal bull-dog was raising a howl, and talking about
appealing to the United States Supreme Court; but that was all
rubbish, said Henry Cabot Winters--the Federal courts would never take
jurisdiction. He went about among his friends and took his share of the
back-patting. The great bankers and lawyers who had made faces at him
now began to make smiles. Since they were to keep the money, they would
manage to forgive him for having forced it upon them.
John Quincy Thornwell was in Paris at the time of the decision,
and Henry sent him a cablegram which was the talk of Boston clubs
and drawing-rooms for many a day thereafter. “Tout est sauvé sauf
l’honneur,” said Henry. Since the World War all Boston blue-bloods
know French--or they have secretaries who help them pretend to. The
humorless president of the Fifth National Bank of Boston would find
somebody to translate and explain those shining words: “All is saved
but honor!” Goethe made the remark that every bon mot of his had cost
a purse of gold; but Mr. Jerry Walker operated upon the modern scale,
with splendor suited to the masters of mechanized production; he had
paid ten and one-half million dollars for that bon mot of the Back Bay!
XII
Property was safe, so now there was time to think about life. The
seven black-robed old gentlemen got to work on the Madeiros motion in
the Sacco-Vanzetti case--the last chance for a new trial. They had
been stung by world-wide criticism of the law’s delay, and wanted to
get the matter over, so that Massachusetts might have peace again.
The motion had been argued in February, and on April 5th came the
unbelievable opinion: Judge Thayer’s decision, like all his other
decisions in the case, had been “in his own discretion,” and it was to
stand! All lawyers commented upon the amazing contrast with the Jerry
Walker decision, less than one month earlier. When it was a question
of safeguarding the lives of workingmen, the Supreme Judicial Court
held itself powerless to deal with the facts, and could only pass on
the judge’s interpretation of law. “Finding no error, the verdicts are
to stand.” But when it was a question of protecting the property of
bankers, the court had not hesitated to set aside the verdict, and to
declare that the jury had been unjustified in drawing the conclusions
it had seen fit to draw.
The decision was written by Justice Wait, who had begun his public
career as an alderman of the city of Boston--an occupation which leaves
a man in no ignorance as to the relationship between business and
politics, and the power of big money in American affairs. Immediately
after the decision was made public, his home was put under guard, and
the homes of all the other judges, district attorney and officials.
Judge Thayer’s home had been guarded for the past nine months, and a
husky detective followed him everywhere he went.
It was “Web’s” hour of triumph, and he made the most of it. His cries
of exultation echoed through the dining-rooms of Worcester and Boston
clubs. He would button-hole acquaintances on the golf-links, and
boast of his perfect knowledge of legal precedents. “I told them they
couldn’t put it over on me! I wasn’t going to be intimidated by anybody
or anything! I told those damned fools they couldn’t hoodwink me! I
represent the integrity of the courts of Massachusetts, and I shall see
that the integrity is maintained! I taught a lesson to that long-haired
arnychist from California! Yes, and I’ll teach a lesson to the people
who are raising money and slandering the courts of this Commonwealth!”
A prominent member of the Worcester Country Club came out to his car
and told his family and friends how he had just been one of a group
of men to whom “Web” had been holding forth, referring to Sacco and
Vanzetti as “those bastards down there,” as “Bolsheviki,” and saying
that he would “get them good and proper”; that he would “show them
and get those guys hanged. No Bolsheviki can intimidate Web Thayer!”
In one of the clubs of Boston a horrified whisper went the rounds--a
United States senator had said to the steward in the dining-room: “If
you let Judge Thayer come to my table again, I’ll have you fired.” The
“blue-bloods” shook their heads and said it was a consequence of the
low type of men who were being appointed to the bench. But even so, the
courts must be upheld!
“Web” and the district attorney, who knew all tricks of the law,
were quick as a tiger in their next spring. No other appeals were
on file; and if “Web” sentenced the men, he would clinch the case.
After sentence had been passed, no other judge of the Superior Court
could take jurisdiction, and “Web” would be the undisputed master. On
April 9th, four days after the Supreme Court’s decision, he had the
two “Bolsheviki” brought to Dedham court-house, with the round white
dome and portholes like an ocean liner, and had them locked safe in
their cage--the same from which they had gazed at him six years ago
through a period of seven weeks. With rustling black robes he emerged
from his chamber, and took his seat upon his throne: a frail old man,
more withered than ever; badly scared, yet clinging desperately to
his dignity in this great hour of triumph. Lawyers and spectators
looking up to him, a score or two of armed men protecting him--inside
the court-room with automatic revolvers on their hips, outside on the
steps with rifles in hand. “I represent the integrity of the courts of
Massachusetts!”
XIII
“Nicola Sacco, stand up,” said the clerk of the court; and Nick rose,
pale and haggard, dressed in his best black go-to-court suit.
“Nicola Sacco, have you anything to say why sentence of death should
not be passed upon you?”
Poor Nick, he knew many reasons, which he wanted to shout to all
the world. But his friends had advised him that he could produce no
impression in a Yankee court-room, because of his blundering English.
He had made up his mind to let Bart speak for him; but standing before
that gray old man who had tortured him for six years; seeing the row
of newspaper men, with eager pencils poised, ready to flash his words
to the farthest ends of the earth--such a temptation was too much for
a propagandist soul. Nineteen years Nicola Sacco had been in America,
driven, humiliated, repressed; and here for the second time in his life
America was ready to listen. He spoke; and the court reporter and the
newspaper men kindly straightened out his dialect, and the world read:
“Yes, sir. I am not an orator. It is not very familiar with me
the English language, and as I know, as my friend has told me, my
comrade Vanzetti will speak more long, so I thought to give him the
chance.
“I never knew, never heard, even read in history anything so cruel
as this Court. After seven years’ prosecuting they still consider
us guilty. And these gentle people here are arrayed with us in this
Court to-day.
“I know the sentence will be between two classes, the oppressed
class and the rich class, and there will be always collision
between one and the other. We fraternize the people with the books,
with the literature. You persecute the people, tyrannize them and
kill them. We try the education of people always. You try to put a
path between us and some other nationality that hates each other.
That is why I am here to-day on this bench, for having been of the
oppressed class. Well, you are the oppressor.
“You know it, Judge Thayer--you know all my life, you know why
I have been here, and after seven years that you have been
persecuting me and my poor wife, and you still to-day sentence us
to death. I would like to tell all my life, but what is the use?”
It was no use whatever, and so Nicola Sacco sat down.
XIV
“Bartolomeo Vanzetti, stand up,” said the clerk of the court; and the
other figure in the cage stood up: thin, worn, and partly bald, but
with the droopy mustache as big as ever; a large, loose figure in a
neat black suit with a little black silk tie.
“Bartolomeo Vanzetti, have you anything to say why sentence of death
should not be passed upon you?”
“Yes,” said Bart, quietly.
And now he would reap the reward of those years of hard work in
his lonely cell; of his practice writing letters, and treatises on
syndicalism, and an autobiography, and a novel, and a translation of
Proudhon, and even a poem about a nightingale! Bart would be able
to find words; with hesitation now and then, but not too much; with
mispronunciation enough to be picturesque, but not enough to be
offensive. Quietly, firmly, he spoke, as one who has meditated long
upon his ideas; as one who was addressing posterity, rather than the
casual few in a court-room. Posterity, hear him!
“What I say is that I am innocent, not only of the Braintree crime, but
also of the Bridgewater crime. That I am not only innocent of these two
crimes, but in all my life I have never stolen and I have never killed
and I have never spilled blood. That is what I want to say. And it is
not all. Not only am I innocent of these two crimes, not only in all
my life I have never stolen, never killed, never spilled blood, but I
have struggled all my life, since I began to reason, to eliminate crime
from the earth.
“Everybody that knows these two arms knows very well that I did not
need to go into the streets and kill a man or try to take money. I
can live by my two hands and live well. But besides that, I can live
even without work with my hands for other people. I have had plenty of
chance to live independently and to live what the world conceives to be
a higher life than to gain our bread with the sweat of our brow.
“My father in Italy is in a good condition. I could have come back in
Italy and he would have welcomed me every time with open arms. Even if
I come back there with not a cent in my pocket, my father could have
give me a position, not to work but to make business, or to oversee
upon the land that he owns.... But I have refused myself of what are
considered the commodity and glories of life, the prides of a life
of a good position, because in my consideration it is not right to
exploit man. I have refused to go in business because I understand
that business is a speculation on profit upon certain people that must
depend upon the business man, and I do not consider that that is right
and therefore I refuse to do that.
“Now, I should say that I am not only innocent of all these things,
not only have I never committed a real crime in my life--though some
sins but not crimes--not only have I struggled all my life to eliminate
crimes, the crimes that the official law and the moral law condemns,
but also the crime that the moral law and the official law sanction and
sanctify,--the exploitation and the oppression of the man by the man,
and if there is a reason why I am here as a guilty man, if there is a
reason why you in a few minutes can doom me, it is this reason and none
else....
“We have proved that there could not have been another judge on the
face of the earth more prejudiced, more cruel and more hostile than you
have been against us. We have proven that. Still they refuse the new
trial. We know, and you know in your heart, that you have been against
us from the very beginning, before you see us. Before you see us you
already know that we were radicals, that we were underdogs, that we
were the enemy of the institutions that you can believe in good faith
in their goodness--I don’t want to discuss that--and that it was easy
at the time of the first trial to get a verdict of guilty.
“We know that you have spoken yourself, and have spoke your hostility
against us, and your despisement against us with friends of yours
on the train, at the University Club of Boston, at the Golf club
of Worcester. I am sure that if the people who know all what you
say against us have the civil courage to take the stand, maybe Your
Honor--I am sorry to say this because you are an old man, and I have an
old father--but maybe you would be beside us in good justice at this
time....
“We believe more now than ever that war is wrong, and we are against
war more now than ever, and I am glad to be on the doomed scaffold if
I can say to mankind, ‘Look out; you are in a catacomb of the flower
of mankind. For what? All that they say to you, all that they have
promised to you--it was a lie, it was an illusion, it was a cheat,
it was a fraud, it was a crime. They promised you liberty. Where is
liberty? They promised you prosperity. Where is prosperity? They have
promised you elevation. Where is the elevation?’
“From the day that I went in Charlestown, the misfortunate, the
population of Charlestown, has doubled in number. Where is the moral
good that the war has given to the world? Where is the spiritual
progress that we have achieved from the war? Where are the security of
life, the security of the things that we possess for our necessity?
Where is the respect for human life? Where are the respect and the
admiration for the good characteristics and the good of the human
nature? Never before the war as now have there been so many crimes, so
much corruption, so much degeneration as there is now.
“This is what I say: I would not wish to a dog or to a snake, to the
most low and misfortunate creature of the earth--I would not wish to
any of them what I have had to suffer for things that I am not guilty
of. I am suffering because I am a radical and indeed I am a radical; I
have suffered because I was an Italian, and indeed I am an Italian; I
have suffered more for my family and for my beloved than for myself;
but I am so convinced to be right that you can only kill me once but
if you could execute me two times, and if I could be reborn two other
times, I would live again to do what I have done already.
“I have finished. Thank you.”
XV
It was “Web” Thayer’s turn. He, too, rose to speak. As it turned out,
he rose to apologize; to plead that it was not his fault. A singular
fact, which Vanzetti had noted about the legal machinery of the august
Commonwealth--he had commented upon it to Cornelia--that everybody
put the responsibility on somebody else! The arresting policemen had
said it was not their fault, they had been obeying the orders of their
superiors. The jailers one and all said the same thing. The chief
officer of the jail had said that the higher powers would not permit
this and that. Members of the jury had said that they had had to follow
the instructions of the learned judge. And now here was the learned
judge--at the very crisis of events--putting the blame upon the jury!
The Supreme Judicial Court had said that the trial judge had had the
final say as to the facts. And now here was the trial judge putting the
responsibility upon the Supreme Judicial Court!
Could it be that even “Web,” the insensitive, had been awed by the
majesty of Vanzetti’s words? Could it be that “Web,” the vainglorious,
was assailed by a doubt about himself? Be that as it may, the braggart
was gone from his manner, and his voice was no longer a thin strip of
steel, but trembling and mumbling. He said:
“Under the law of Massachusetts, the jury says whether a defendant is
guilty or innocent. The Court has absolutely nothing to do with that
question. The law of Massachusetts provides that a judge cannot deal in
any way with the facts. As far as he can go under our law is to state
the evidence.
“During the trial many exceptions were taken. Those exceptions were
taken to the Supreme Judicial Court. That Court, after examining the
entire record, after examining all the exceptions--that Court in its
final words said, ‘The verdicts of the jury should stand; exceptions
overruled.’ That being true there is only one thing that this Court
can do. It is not a matter of discretion. It is a matter of statutory
requirement, and that being true there is only one duty that now
devolves upon this Court, and that is to pronounce the sentence.
“It is considered and ordered by the Court that you, Nicola Sacco,
suffer the punishment of death by the passage of a current of
electricity through your body within the week beginning on Sunday, the
tenth day of July, in the Year of our Lord One Thousand Nine Hundred
and Twenty-seven. This is the sentence of the law.
“It is considered and ordered by the Court that you, Bartolomeo
Vanzetti....”
Here Vanzetti broke in: “Wait a minute, please, Your Honor. May I speak
a minute with my lawyer, Mr. Thompson?”
Said Thompson: “I do not know what he has to say.”
Said Judge Thayer: “I think I should pronounce the sentence ...
Bartolomeo Vanzetti, suffer the punishment of death....”
But here came Nick, with one of his wild cries: “You know I am
innocent. Those are the same words I pronounced six years ago. You
condemn two innocent men.”
But the mumbling voice went on, in the solemn legal formula: “... by
the passage of a current of electricity through your body within the
week beginning on Sunday, the tenth day of July, in the year of our
Lord, One Thousand Nine Hundred and Twenty-seven. This is the sentence
of the law.” It was customary for the judge to add, “And may God have
mercy on your souls.” But for some reason Judge Thayer omitted this
part of the formula.