THE SUPERSALESMAN
I
Cornelia Thornwell would wake up in the middle of the night, trembling,
in a cold sweat. They were going to murder Bart and Nick! Impossible to
fool herself any longer; they did actually intend to do it!
For hours she would lie, evolving plans; going over in her mind the
names of persons she knew who might be capable of a concern for either
justice or mercy. She would turn on the light by her bedside and make
notes of things to be done during the day. Betty and Joe, who now lived
in the next apartment, would come in at daylight and find her writing
letters. Impossible to rest!
There being no more hope from the courts, the energies of the defense
were turned to the Governor of the Commonwealth, who had the power to
pardon, or to commute the sentences to life-imprisonment. Legally, his
power was subject to the consent of his “council,” a sort of state
cabinet; but then, he had power over this “council,” being what was
known as a “strong” man, accustomed to having his own way.
Alvan Tufts Fuller was his name, and he had begun life as a trick
bicycle-rider and racer. He went into the bicycle-repair business, and
prospered, and when the bicycle gave way to the automobile, he stayed
on the top of the wave, and obtained the agency for the Packard car
in New England, and also in Pennsylvania, and of the Cadillac car in
New England. Upon every machine sold in these territories he received
twenty per cent of the purchase price. Since the Packard limousine
was a five thousand dollar car, it amounted to a great sum, in the
neighborhood of two million dollars a year. “Allie” Fuller, trick
bicycle-rider, was now the richest man in New England; authorities
differed as to whether his fortune was twenty millions or forty, but
as a rule they guessed the higher sum.
He had begun his political career as a “Roosevelt Progressive,” but
that thin veneer had worn off quickly. He had been elected to Congress
for two terms, but had been too busy to attend the sessions--except
when it was necessary to make a speech denouncing the “Reds.” He had
served four years as lieutenant-governor, and had earned the enmity
of the Thornwell clan by insisting upon an exposure of Rupert Alvin’s
purchase of the legislature in connection with the Elevated Railway
bill. Fuller played the rôle of an “independent” in politics, stern
and incorruptible; he made a grand gesture of refusing to take his
salary--thereby obtaining advertisement worth many times the amount.
He wanted the legislators and officials to have the same scorn for
small sums of money; if they had possessed an income of two millions a
year, they would doubtless have obliged him. As it was, they took their
salaries of fifteen hundred dollars, and eked them out by means of tips
from the lobbyists who swarmed to the State House, or the hotel-rooms
nearby.
The system of universal graft which is American government was going
on, and Fuller knew that it was going on. Once in a while some
“reformer” or “crank” or “sore-head” would force an exposure, whereupon
the lieutenant-governor would leap up and make a fuss in the papers,
and the public would know that they had an honest public servant. The
statements he made got him into trouble; the Speaker of the House
sued him for slander and won a verdict--only to have it upset by the
Supreme Court. But Fuller got the advertising and on the basis of
it became Chief Executive of the Commonwealth--the great master of
millions condescending to play the game of democratic politics. The
procedure consisted of going about shaking hands with grimy workingmen
who thought he was still the bicycle repairer of thirty years ago.
Hale and hearty, full of animal magnetism, with a rough exterior and a
“golden heart,” he kept the admiration of the “plain people.” To the
starving strikers of Fall River he began a campaign speech, “I am not a
politician”--and they believed him. “I am no orator,” he would say--and
doubtless meant it, not knowing that this was a device explained in
every treatise on oratory.
A typical specimen of the “strong man” in American affairs; a competent
executive, a driver of other men, but utterly devoid of ideas, and
incapable of thinking except in current tags. He had known all his
life what he wanted, and had gone after it and got it. To a salesman
of Packard automobiles, the human race is sharply divided into two
parts: those who have the money to buy Packard automobiles, and those
who have not. To the former, “Allie” Fuller would come forward smiling
and voluble, his mentality concentrated upon flattery and “service.”
To that far greater number whose costume and manners make clear that
they have not the price of a Packard car and never will have it, the
attitude is one of indifference, except just prior to election day.
This supersalesman of automobiles was as cold as marble; utterly
selfish, and lacking not merely in the finer feelings, but even in
the common every-day kindness, of which politicians often have too
much. No friend, no matter how intimate, ever got a discount on a car.
In politics he granted no quarter; he gave the punishment and took
none. In business he was the modern slave-driver with a fountain-pen
instead of a whip. When, after the war, the workers in his repair
and body-factory came to him, pleading humbly that on account of the
increase in the cost of living they could not get along on a wage of
twenty-five dollars a week, he gave them a brutal refusal. There was
a strike, which was embarrassing to an ambitious politician in later
years. But no diminution of that two million dollar a year income!
Such is the way by which “strong” men build up fortunes; and then they
sit on the heap, regarding with instant instinctive hostility any one
who suggests that there is any other ideal in life, or any other duty.
And now such a man was called upon to decide the issue of life or death
for Nicola Sacco, who had stood up in court and said: “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.”
He was to decide the issue of life or death for Bartolomeo Vanzetti,
who had stood up in the same court and said: “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.”
II
The Madeiros confession, the Letherman and Weyand confessions, Judge
Thayer’s decision, with its tone of raving--all these had brought a new
element into the Sacco-Vanzetti case. So-called “decent” people--that
is, people who had money, but nevertheless believed in fair play--were
shocked by a too-obvious demonstration of class justice. One by one the
few daily newspapers in America which profess a trace of liberalism
were persuaded to investigate the case, and one by one they took up the
campaign for a new trial.
The Springfield _Republican_, the only liberal daily in New England,
pleaded the cause. The Boston _Herald_ published an editorial, which
won the Pulitzer prize for the best newspaper editorial of 1926. “As
months have merged into years, and the great debate over the case has
continued, our doubts have solidified slowly into convictions, and
reluctantly we have found ourselves compelled to reverse our original
judgment.” That gave a terrible shock to Boston conservatism; for
substantial persons who didn’t read the _Globe_ in the morning read
the _Herald_, and such an editorial interfered with the digestion of
cod-fish balls. A friend of Governor Fuller’s met him on his way to the
State House that morning and said, “Have you seen that the _Herald_ has
come out for a new trial for those wops?” Said His Excellency, “What?
Has the _Herald_ fallen for that bunk?”
Now had come the death sentence; and all those energies of protest
which had been centered upon the courts were turned upon the Chief
Executive. “Write to Governor Fuller! Wire to Governor Fuller!” said
the bulletins and appeals of the defense committee. The State House was
inundated by a flood of mail. It came, literally by the bushel-basket
full, several times every day. The best brains of the world, the finest
and most sensitive spirits, laid aside their work and composed appeals,
of a sort which they imagined might stir the conscience and influence
the judgment of the chief executive of a great Commonwealth. They spent
money upon telegrams and cablegrams, they wrote letters for which a
collector of autographs would have paid large sums of money; and what
became of the product of their efforts?
The defense committee received a letter addressed to the Governor,
signed by a dozen or more labor members of the British Parliament,
asking him to do what he could to bring about a new trial. Gardner
Jackson, Amherst graduate and a presentable person, was selected to
deliver the document, and he took the precaution to take along the
State House reporter for the Boston _Globe_, to introduce him.
His Excellency was not in, and they met his efficient private
secretary. To him Jackson handed the letter from the members of
Parliament, and the secretary took one glance at it, and burst out:
“Oh, those God-damn crooks! Do you think we pay any attention to this
stuff? It comes in here by the barrelful and we immediately chuck it
into the fire.” Then he turned upon the reporter, demanding, “What do
you mean by bringing this fellow up here on a matter like this? First
thing you know, those God-damn wops will be getting out and coming
to live near you in Brookline. How would you like that?” It was a
witticism, and the secretary laughed loudly, and threw the letter back
at Gardner Jackson.
Such was the agent through whose hands would pass everything which
came to the Governor on the case. When documents of great urgency were
entrusted to him, and it was discovered several days later that the
Governor had never seen nor heard of them, the defense committee would
be infuriated, and would blame the secretary for failure of their
hopes. But Joe Randall would laugh--he was furnishing labor papers with
news on the case, and was up at the State House at all hours of the day
and night, meeting the other reporters and hearing the gossip. “Don’t
fool yourself, Nonna!” said he--cynical young “Red.” “The secretary
forgets what Fuller doesn’t want to have remembered. He is paid two
salaries to serve as the goat, and have us blame him instead of his
boss!”
Alas for blue-blood ladies, who left the refinements of an exclusive
home, and mixed themselves in the public affairs of capitalist society!
Cornelia Thornwell was now seventy-two years of age, and her hair was
snow-white, and her step no longer firm--she had to be helped upstairs
now and then. And here she was, forced to measure her wits against
a supersalesman of automobiles and his entourage. Startling were the
tales which Joe Randall brought home about the goings on of the “State
House gang.” Down underneath the beautiful golden dome there was a
cellar, stocked with liquors confiscated by the state police; and the
heads of this “gang” were presenting the stuff or selling it to all
and sundry, including the state legislators. Still more dreadful, to
the mind of an old-fashioned lady, some of this crowd were using the
state police boat, the _Lotus_, for what the newspaper slang termed
“orgies”--drunken parties with women. All the reporters knew about
it--but the friends of Sacco and Vanzetti had to wait until nine months
after the wops were in their graves, before a disgruntled employee at
the State House spilled the Boston beans to some prying clergymen, and
an investigation was forced.
III
Cornelia Thornwell belonged to the little group of those who have
a right to know. Therefore she went to her son-in-law, Henry Cabot
Winters, and asked him to find out for her the Chief Executive’s real
attitude toward the Sacco-Vanzetti case, and what he intended to do.
It was only a month after the Jerry Walker victory, and Henry was
his old genial self again, pleased to have a call from his Bolshevik
mother-in-law. He reported his relations with the Governor to be fairly
good; he had not joined with Rupert in his row--the canny Rupert had
warned him not to, for in the game of politics you can never tell at
what hour your deadly enemy may become your best friend.
The great lawyer would go up to the State House, and not merely find
out, but put in a word for some form of executive clemency, as a matter
of political tactics. So much Cornelia had been able to accomplish
by twelve years of radical propaganda in her family! She was deeply
grateful, and went home and prepared a fine dinner for her son-in-law,
with ribs of spring lamb, and new potatoes and green peas, and
strawberries from Georgia.
But alas, the news which Henry brought completely spoiled the dinner
for them both! Cornelia hardly ate a mouthful, and Henry made a poor
pretense. “I’m sorry, Mother,” he said, “but you’ve got to steel
yourself to the worst. There is no chance of saving your two boys.”
Cornelia went white, and her soft brown eyes were wide with horror.
“Henry, why?”
“Well, the police have got to Fuller, and he’s heard all the worst
about your anarchists. I don’t think there’s any power in the world
that can change his opinion.”
“What has he heard, Henry?”
“All the things I’ve told you before: that they were dynamiters, and
were hiding dynamite on the night of their arrest.”
“But, Henry, they weren’t even accused of that!”
“I know--not publicly; but it’s the real reason they were prosecuted,
and the reason they were convicted, and Fuller has got it fixed in his
mind. ‘Bad actors,’ he calls them.”
“Then he’s going to execute men for one crime, because he’s heard
rumors they committed another!”
“As a matter of fact, Mother, he is equally convinced they were
bandits, too. He’s been told that the money went to Italy, to make a
revolution there. They’ve even told him rumors about having found maps
in Lee Swenson’s trash-basket, showing where the treasure was buried.”
“My God, Henry! That was a joke!”
“I know, so you told me--but it was a poor time for joking. The police
are using everything they have. It seems there’s a woman in Milton
who told Mike Stewart that Vanzetti made the bomb that blew up Judge
Hayden’s house.”
“Henry, that is the talk of lunatics!”
“No, Mother, it’s the talk of the police, and the Governor regards
himself as the head of the force, and he stands by it. They have told
him that two of the crowd blew themselves up with a bomb they were
making in Bellingham--the Galleani formulas didn’t work right.”
“You keep talking about bombs, Henry.”
“I’m telling you what was told me. Fuller says that both your boys were
regular terrorists, and had a criminal record. He insists that Vanzetti
was a convicted bandit before he came to trial at Dedham. He has got it
into his head that Vanzetti was arrested, indicted, tried and convicted
of the Bridgewater crime, and then arrested, indicted, tried and
convicted of the South Braintree crime. It didn’t happen that way, did
it?”
“Of course not, Henry! They arrested them for both crimes. They decided
to convict Bart for Bridgewater, as a means of making things look
blacker for Nick.”
“Well, that’s what I thought, and I tried to get it across to Fuller,
but he didn’t take kindly to it. He doesn’t like to have his mind
changed.”
“Henry, you appall me! You mean he is actually as ignorant of the case
as that?”
“I don’t know so much about the case myself, Mother, but I was able to
note half a dozen mistakes he made; and you’re going to have a hard
time changing him, because stubbornness is his leading quality. He
makes a virtue of it, because he can’t think, and knows it, and resents
having to try. That’s what you’re up against, and you might as well
know it at the outset--no use fooling yourself. Go and see him, and
make sure, if you want to.”
“Will he see me?”
“He says he’ll see everybody--that’s going to be his grandstand play.
You understand, he’s a politician, and has to play the game. He will
pretend to be open-minded--but I’m telling you what’s in the back of
his head, and what will be his final decision.”
IV
Cornelia discussed the soul of this Governor, and a possible way to
move it. No use in public propaganda, mass-meetings and petitions; he
regarded them with contempt. Could he be reached by social pressure,
the snobbery of the automobile dealer, who sold high-priced cars to
high-priced customers? Henry answered that Fuller himself didn’t appear
to care for the social game; but doubtless his family would be glad to
be received. The only sign of an interest in culture on Fuller’s part
was that he went abroad and purchased paintings. He didn’t really know
about painting, and would not have dared to buy the work of Americans,
for fear of playing the fool. But “old masters” were standard, as safe
as corner real estate on Tremont Street; so he would pay a quarter
of a million dollars for a Van Dyke, and put it in his drawing-room,
and that would make a great stir in the papers. But it hadn’t had
any effect socially, as Cornelia knew; to the inner circle of Boston
exclusiveness, Fuller was His Excellency during office hours, but at
tea-time and in the evening he was a dealer in motorcars.
“Too bad that Alice is so spiritualized,” said Henry. “She might give
them a dinner.” Alice, he added, was now receiving the ministrations of
a Yogi “master,” being subjected to the most esoteric rite of healing,
which consisted of blowing into her ear.
Cornelia got out her address-book, which had secret marks, indicating
degrees of responsiveness to subversive propaganda. She and her
son-in-law compiled a list, and laid out a program upon which
blue-bloods should be asked to concentrate--to persuade the Governor to
appoint some sort of commission to investigate the case, and give it an
informal new trial. If, as Henry believed, the supersalesman himself
was hopeless, the strategy was to get him committed to an arrangement
whereby the final decision would rest with more open-minded persons.
The little old lady had an inspiration: instead of appealing directly
to the Governor, they would concentrate their energies upon Bishop
Lawrence of the Episcopal Church, blood-brother to all blue-bloods,
and official delegate of the Prince of Peace on earth. Persuade the
Bishop to appeal to the Governor for an impartial commission! To make
a thorough job of it, why not determine the commission in advance,
and make certain of getting competent and high-minded persons? Why
not? agreed Henry; so they proceeded to discuss names. Cornelia worked
herself up to a pitch of excitement. “Couldn’t we ask him to appoint
Mr. Lowell?” She meant President Lowell of Harvard University. The
blue-blood ladies, while paying full homage to this great personality,
do not grant him his title, as in the case of the Bishop; by this means
they indicate the fact that the intellectual life, while important, is
a merely human affair, while the spiritual life is from God.
“He wouldn’t take the responsibility,” said Henry, “but of course it
would settle the matter if he did. Fuller wouldn’t dare go against
Lowell and the Bishop.”
So it came about that at the office of Mr. John F. Moors, of the firm
of Moors and Cabot, investment bankers, there assembled one afternoon
a group of socially and intellectually significant persons: half a
dozen Harvard professors, and the wives of several others; Episcopal
clergymen of Boston and Concord; and such persons as Mrs. Thornwell,
Mrs. Evans and Mrs. Winslow, with Mary Donovan and Gardner Jackson to
represent the committee. They met for the purpose of working out a
method of approaching the Bishop of the Blue-bloods, and asking him to
bring it about that the University-president of the Blue-bloods should
be invited to conduct a blue-blood trial of Sacco and Vanzetti, and
thus save the good name of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts before the
civilized world.
A curious gathering: soft-voiced, gentle, noble-minded, but not
entirely efficient persons, meeting in dead secrecy, with their fingers
upon their lips, in this melodramatic neighborhood of State Street;
a group of kindly conspirators, babes in the woods surrounded by
ravenous wolves--in the form of newspaper reporters who would gobble
up their respectability with half a dozen snaps of their slavering
jaws. So careful they must be, to make exactly the right approach
to the ineffable Bishop; putting on felt-slippers and walking on
tiptoes! Not saying anything extreme to him! Not declaring that the
men were innocent, but merely that they had not been proved guilty to
impartial minds! Sparks began to fly from the eyes of Mary Donovan,
Irish ex-Catholic Joan of Arc of the labor movement. A curious contrast
between self-contained and decorous ladies of the Back Bay, and this
fiery Celtic girl, plain of garb, severe of countenance, making no
secret of her bitter scorn for liberals and their ritual.
Silence! Secrecy! Hush, not a word! Even the widow of Governor
Thornwell had lost caste, because she had had her name in the
newspapers! No one who had been in the newspapers must approach the
Bishop, nor even be named to the Bishop--for fear the timid episcopal
soul might seek refuge in the recesses of the episcopal hole and
refuse to emerge. The members of the Sacco-Vanzetti committee were
“untouchables,” and merely to have it known that they desired a certain
procedure would be sufficient to render it episcopally impossible. All
were warned to silence, the meeting dispersed--and in an hour or two
the newspapermen had the whole story on the front page, each after
its own fashion. The Hearst man explained the social stratifications,
referring to the Sacco-Vanzetti committee as the “low minds,” the Moors
group as the “middle minds,” and the Bishop Lawrence group as the “high
minds”!
V
Mr. Thompson had presented an appeal for clemency from Vanzetti, and an
explanation that Sacco refused to make any appeal, but ought to have it
granted just the same. It was, perhaps, the most singular document ever
submitted to an automobile salesman in the history of the industry.
Bartolomeo Vanzetti had insisted upon writing it himself, with only
verbal revision by his lawyer. He took it as an occasion to explain his
doctrines and beliefs to the world:
“Our ideas are not new. In one form or another they have influenced
human thought in the western world, and therefore history, for at
least two thousand years. Among their modern champions are men such as
William Godwin, Shelley, Carlo Pisacane, Proudhon, Reclus, Kropotkin,
Bakunin, Tolstoi (in a sense), Flammarion, Malatesta, Galleani, and in
your country Tucker, and other great intellects and hearts. The great
philosopher Ernest Renan said that Christ was a ‘political anarchist.’”
And this to a pious Baptist, who told the newspaper reporters that
his real preference in life would be to run a Baptist Sunday-school!
A Mason, an Elk, an Odd Fellow and a Knight of Pythias--his idea of
literature the _Saturday Evening Post_! Said Vanzetti:
“Our counsel has warned us that what we have to say may deepen the
prejudice against us; but we are foremostly concerned to save what
no human power except ourselves can deprive us of, our faith and our
dignity, since we have already been deprived of almost all of what men
can deprive men.”
The Governor announced that he would consider evidence from both sides;
and so it was a question of repeating all over again the Dedham, and
later the Plymouth trial. But under what singular circumstances! Mr.
Thompson, the lawyer for the petitioners, was not allowed to make any
opening statement, to say what he expected to prove; he was allowed
to bring his own witnesses, but not to hear the witnesses of the other
side, nor even to know who they were. Sacco and Vanzetti lay in their
cells, and men came to the Governor’s private office and whispered
rumors about them, and their attorney learned about it from gossip in
the newspapers! Betty Alvin came home from her brief session in the
executive chambers and revised the “Alice in Wonderland” verses to fit
this new situation:
I’ll be judge, I’ll be jury,
Said _stupid_ old Fury;
I’ll try the whole cause and condemn you to death!
Quite literally, this supersalesman of automobiles was judge, jury,
and prosecuting attorney; and so ignorant of psychology that he really
thought he could fill all three rôles; so ignorant of law that he
really thought it was a trial he was conducting, and would be accepted
as such by the world. Or rather, if you could believe the sarcastic
young lady Bolshevik, he thought that he was so rich and great that he
didn’t give a damn what the world thought. In that point of view he had
the support of the whole prosperous mob, which gloried in defying the
opinion of mankind.
The State House swarmed with reporters. Every Boston paper had several
men on the story, and the press associations and New York papers
had their own representatives. But those who saw the Governor were
cautioned not to talk, and all but the friends of the defense obeyed.
The only news was what the Governor’s office gave out every day, and
mostly it was disguised propaganda. The private secretary had not
been quite accurate when he said that they “immediately” chucked the
mail into the fire. They first went over it, and extracted letters
which were violent in demanding death for the two wops, and these
were mimeographed and handed to the newspapermen. So the world read
the weighty sentiments of Mrs. J. E. Damon of Brockton, who attached
a small American flag to her letter, to make sure it would not be
overlooked:
“I feel very sure that you will stand firm for ‘law and order.’ ...
Foreign people will not respect our Government unless we uphold our
Judges and Supreme Court. What is this country coming to if radical
elements are allowed to do as they see fit?”
Also the sentiments of a representative of Comrade Jesus, the
“political anarchist”: the Reverend Floyd W. Johnson of the First
Presbyterian Church of Central City, Nebraska, who appealed to the
Governor of Massachusetts to “let these propagandists of un-American
policies know that there is not enough money in Russia to buy even one
district court in America.” A curious item for members of the defense
committee, who at that late hour were being visited by the relative of
an important judicial personage, and informed that it would still be
possible to work out an “arrangement”! By the payment of only fifty
thousand dollars--from Russia or any other place--everything could be
settled amicably. Vanzetti--since he was admitted to be innocent--would
be pardoned; while Sacco--who might possibly be guilty--would be judged
insane, and held until the excitement had died down!
VI
It was a war going on for the possession of public opinion; a day
and night campaign, with forays and sallies, rumors and alarms,
plots and counter-plots. The big guns thundered from the rear, and
independent sharp-shooters crept forth to do sniping. “Hundred percent
American” and “Pro Bono Publico” wrote letters to the _Transcript_,
and the defense committee changed its “Bulletin” from a monthly to
a fortnightly, and filled many columns with letters from friends of
social justice all over the world.
Prof. Felix Frankfurter, one of the liberals of the Harvard Law
School, published an article in the _Atlantic Monthly_, the Back Bay’s
palladium of culture, reviewing the case and exposing the manifold
errors of Judge Thayer. To Boston conservatism that was a frightful
scandal, and something had to be done at once. A champion was found, a
tremendous personage by the name of Wigmore, with so many titles and
honors that it took two and seven-eighths inches in “Who’s Who” to
recite them: a graduate of Harvard and of the Harvard Law School, Past
President of the American Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology,
Past President of the American Association of University Professors,
Commanding Member of the Staff of the Judge Advocate-General of the
United States Army with the rank of Major, Member of the United States
Section of the Inter-American High Commission, Chevalier of the Legion
of Honor of France, Member of the League of Nations Committee on
Intellectual Coöperation, and Dean of the Law School of Northwestern
University--a Methodist institution lifted to worldly magnificence by
Judge Gary of the Steel Trust.
This two hundred and forty centimeter gun went into action from its
emplacement a thousand miles away. Dean Wigmore wrote a broadside,
starting with two columns on the front page of the _Transcript_, and
expanding into seven half-columns on the next page. He gave Felix
Frankfurter one of those wiggings which professors exist to receive
and deans exist to administer. With annihilating wit he referred
to him, all through the two columns and the seven half-columns, as
“the plausible pundit”; he accused him of having made “errors and
misstatements which if discovered in a brief of counsel submitted in a
case would qualify him for proceedings for disbarment.”
Alas for poor Dean Bigwig! He had got his citations from Thayer,
or from some friend of Thayer’s; and never could it have entered
his bewigged head that a judge of the Superior Court of the august
Commonwealth of Massachusetts would practice the device of falsifying
a legal record, quoting statements incorrectly, and even making up
passages which he said were in the record, but which were not in the
record! If such procedures “would qualify a lawyer for proceedings
for disbarment,” what would they do to a judge of the Superior Court?
Apparently they would qualify him for the enthusiastic support of all
the courts and most of the newspapers of his Commonwealth, as well as
of the Dean of the Law School of the University of Judge Gary. They
would qualify him a few months later to have the banqueting alumni of
Dartmouth College stand up and cheer themselves hoarse for a five full
minutes by the watches of newspaper reporters.
Defending himself in his last decision, Judge Thayer had boasted that
the Supreme Judicial Court had “approved” the verdict of the Dedham
jury. Felix Frankfurter had pointed out that this was not true. All
that the higher court could do was to “affirm” the verdict, which in
the technical language of lawyers is an entirely different matter. The
dean now elaborately denied that Thayer had used the word “approved,”
and he accused Frankfurter of libeling Thayer. “It is a libel on the
worthy trial judge, in that it charges him with knowing falsity in an
official statement.”
Touching indeed the faith of poor Dean Wigmore in his “worthy trial
judge” a thousand miles away! Had this “worthy trial judge” failed to
furnish him with the full text of the decision? Or had the dean been
in such a hurry to burst into the _Transcript_ that he hadn’t stopped
to examine the document for himself? All that Felix Frankfurter had
to do in his reply was to refer the worthy dean to the sentence in
Judge Thayer’s opinion, as printed in the Amended Bill of Exceptions
over Judge Thayer’s signature, attested by the Clerk for the Superior
Court of Norfolk County, pages 366 and 367, where the word “approved”
was plainly to be read. So there was Dean Wigless, in the distressing
position of having furnished the rope to hang his friend, Judge Thayer,
for “knowing falsity in an official statement”!
And then the questions and answers about Sacco’s dialogue with
Katzmann, which Judge Thayer had invented and inserted into his
decision! The dean had accepted this bogus passage, and put it into
his letter to the _Transcript_, and the _Transcript_ had solemnly
published it. Now, said Frankfurter, “a careful search of the record of
Sacco’s cross-examination discloses no such questions and answers as
Dean Wigmore quotes. Will he not be good enough to give me a reference
to the page of the record?” Needless to say, Dean Baldhead would not
be that good! He would fail to mention the matter again; and the Back
Bay’s hatred of Felix Frankfurter, Viennese Jew, became so intense that
they started a tale of his having been hired by the defense to write
the _Atlantic Monthly_ article; they raised his price several thousand
dollars a day, until they had got it up to the colossal sum of one
hundred and forty thousand dollars! Such was opinion in that part of
Boston which Vanzetti described as “the golden rabble.”
VII
Rumors! Rumors! The State House was converted from a bootleggers’
joint to a poison gas factory. Every day new witnesses went to see
the Governor, and there was a new crop of stories as to what they had
told him, and what he had asked them. The Governor wants to know why
Vanzetti didn’t take the stand at the Plymouth trial! The Governor
has heard that Mrs. Brini got all the Plymouth witnesses together in
her home and told them what to say! The Governor has learned that the
_Springfield Republican_ got twenty thousand dollars from the defense
committee for its editorial on the case! And all these rumors were not
rumors, they were for practical purposes the truth; the Governor heard
them, and the Governor believed them. Surrounded as he was by men who
took bribes, how could he conceive that anybody would work for nothing?
Some one was causing state detectives to follow the witnesses for the
defense, and these detectives would come back with notebooks full of
formulas for the poison-gas factory under the golden dome.
Sometime previously the defense had got hold of the reports of
the Pinkerton detectives on the South Braintree crime. An amazing
revelation to Cornelia and Betty and Joe: those voices which had been
shouting to them in the days before the trial, when they had been
seeking witnesses, and failing to find them! The ghosts which had
shrieked in Dedham courtroom, unheard by mortal ear! The secrets which
had been in the head of Henry Hellyer on the witness-stand--the very
notes he had held in his hand! Now Cornelia and Betty and Joe might
go with this “Operative H.H.,” immediately after the South Braintree
crime, to interview Mary Splaine, the star identification witness; that
marvelous-eyed young woman who had looked out of a factory window in
the midst of shooting, and at a distance of eighty feet, in a period of
one or two seconds, had noted the minutest physical details of Sacco,
including a “good-sized left hand,” which he assuredly never had, and
“complexion of a peculiar greenish-white,” which he had after being
kept in Dedham jail for a year, but never while he was growing tomatoes
in Mr. Kelley’s garden!
Here in these reports you saw Mary Splaine in the company of Henry
Hellyer, Mike Stewart and Captain Proctor, inspecting the photographs
of criminals, and making a positive identification of Antonio
Parmisano, or “Tony the Wop,” as the bandit who had played the part
which was later attributed to Sacco. Captain Proctor set out to get
“Tony the Wop,” and discovered that he had been in jail on the day of
the crime--the one really safe place for wops in Massachusetts! And
meantime Mary had told to “H.H.” a detailed and circumstantial tale
about two men in the shoe-factory who had plotted and committed the
crime; she gave the names of the men, and recited a story which covered
the affairs of the shoe-factory for some eighteen years. Six days after
the arrest of Sacco and Vanzetti, the detective was entering his report
as follows:
“As opportunities occurred I made discreet inquiries about Mr. X,
who Miss Splaine accused of having been implicated in the murder
and robbery. My inquiries show that there is absolutely no ground
for Miss Splaine’s accusation and that Mr. X enjoys Mr. Slater’s
confidence.” (Mr. Slater was the owner.) “To-day I took the matter
up with Mr. Frayer” (the superintendent). “He ridiculed the idea of
Mr. X being implicated and further states that no serious attention
must be attached to Mary Splaine’s stories, because she is one of
the most irresponsible persons he ever came in contact with.”
And then, a little glimpse into the soul of an “operative,”
representing a great national detective agency and looking for bandits.
He knows that the police have got Sacco and Vanzetti and are planning
to put the crime onto them; and he reports how he questioned a laborer
who was digging a trench, close to the scene of the crime. He reports
this laborer as having had a very good chance to get a good look, and
adds, “Some one who can speak Italian ought to interview this man, as
if he went on the stand to-day he would say that Sacco and Vanzetti
were not the men.”
VIII
Witness after witness went to interview Governor Fuller and returned to
defense headquarters, reporting that the supersalesman had got his mind
centered on the Bridgewater crime. So Mr. Thompson did some inquiring
and pulled some wires, and managed to get from the lawyer of the shoe
company the reports on that earlier crime, made by the same “Operative
H.H.,” and another man, “J.J.H.” Here again the evidence wiped out
practically everything the government had proved. On the day of the
crime all four of the leading witnesses had described both the car and
the bandits differently from the way they later described them at the
trial.
These Bridgewater reports seemed of especial importance, because they
destroyed the witness “Skip” Harding, who saw the Bridgewater crime,
and at the trial identified Vanzetti as the shotgun bandit. Here in
the Pinkerton reports was “Skip,” talking with the police a few hours
after the crime, and that certainty which he had displayed upon the
witness-stand was wholly lacking. “I did not get much of a look at his
face, but think he was a Pole,” he said; and eight or nine days later
he again referred to the faces of the bandits, saying that he “did
not see them on the day of the hold-up.” The car he described as a
“black Hudson six,” and gave the registration number; as an automobile
mechanic, he knew cars. The police decided to prove that it was a
Buick. When Harding testified at the trial, he testified that it was a
Buick.
Every one of the other principal witnesses was discredited in the same
way. The witness Bowles, for example, had described the shotgun bandit
as having “red cheeks,” “slim face,” and “a closely cropped mustache,”
which surely did not fit Vanzetti. So the defense lawyers felt that
they had won their case, and Mr. Thompson prepared an elaborate letter
to the Governor, thirty-three typewritten pages. The reports and the
letter were taken to the State House and delivered to the Governor’s
secretary, and everybody waited, on tiptoe with excitement, for some
word of the result. A week or two later one of the friends of the
defense, arguing with the Governor, happened to remark, “That is
disproved in the Pinkerton reports.” Said the Governor, “Pinkerton
reports? What are they?” “Those reports which were turned over to you,”
replied the amazed visitor. “I haven’t seen any such thing,” declared
the Governor, and turned to his secretary. “What’s this about Pinkerton
reports?” “Oh,” said the secretary indifferently, “something about a
cropped mustache!”
IX
Beltrando Brini was in his nineteenth year, a slender, dark-eyed youth,
preparing to enter college, and earning his living by teaching the
violin to Italian children in Plymouth. He still went now and then to
play for Bart in prison; also he was in demand to play at meetings for
the defense. He could play fine music, but the number most effective
was “Old Black Joe,” because it was the tune which Bart had helped
to teach him as a little boy. Trando would tell the story of that
ill-fated day-before-Christmas morning, when he had helped to peddle
the eels in North Plymouth; he would tell what Vanzetti’s teachings and
example had meant to him, all through his early life; after which he
would play Bart’s favorite song, “When you and I were young, Maggie,”
and tears would run down the faces of women in the audience.
Now Trando went to see the supersalesman of automobiles, and told the
story to him; but no tears appeared upon those ruddy, rounded cheeks.
It seemed that the great man had worked out a new theory for himself;
he pictured Bartolomeo Vanzetti attempting the Bridgewater crime at a
quarter to eight that winter morning, and then driving twenty miles
or more to North Plymouth, and starting in to sell eels with Trando
for an alibi. In vain did Trando insist that he and his father and his
mother and Bart’s landlady and many other persons had seen Bart from
the moment he woke, at six o’clock that morning, long before daylight;
in vain did Trando tell about Bart sending him to hunt for his rubbers.
Apparently the Governor thought that Bart had gone to Bridgewater and
attempted the hold-up while Trando was rummaging in the attic for his
rubbers!
And then Mrs. Brini, the gentle and kindly, who shed tears every
time she thought of her former boarder, and insisted, over and over:
“He is good man! He is good man!” The Governor confronted her with
the proposition that she had gathered all the witnesses at her home
and taught them what to say. In vain she explained the origin of
that tale--that the lawyer had been too lazy to go and interview the
witnesses, but had told her to have them come to her home, and he would
meet them there to consult about the case.
And then Joseph Rosen, the Jewish peddler of cloth. The defense had
to advertise for him in the _Jewish Daily Forward_. One day came a
telegram from Buffalo, he had heard about the case and would come.
Having learned more English in the course of the last six years, Rosen
could take care of himself. When he was ushered into the executive
chambers and the Governor started to question him about where he had
been six weeks ago, and could he remember what he had done on March
seventeenth last, “What’s this?” said Rosen. “More of that Katzmann
stuff?” He had not forgiven the district attorney for trying to make a
fool of him before the jury.
X
And then one of the editors of the Boston _Transcript_. The age of
miracles had come; an editor of the sacred _Transcript_ had been
persuaded to investigate the case, and had become convinced that the
men were innocent! He was so conscientious about it, his employers were
impressed, and generously let him do it on their time: they would pay
for the getting of material, even though they would not publish it!
Now this conservative and indubitably respectable gentleman proceeded
to the Governor’s office, with a brief-case full of documents and
charts. He went prepared to point out to the chief executive of his
Commonwealth the flaws in the government’s case; and he had what he
later described to his friends as the most preposterous hour of his
life. For the Governor didn’t want to have any flaws pointed out to
him, and when the editor insisted, his recourse was to interrupt with
rude and brutal ejaculations, and to snort through his nose.
But the editor went on, insisting, because it was a matter of justice,
and the New England conscience is that way. There was the matter of
the discrepancy of the trains, upon which the editor had done enough
research work and calculation to have earned him a degree at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Practically the only proof the
government had against Vanzetti in the South Braintree crime was the
identification of Levangie, gate-tender at the railroad crossing, plus
the identification of another crossing-tender, who thought Vanzetti
had pointed a gun at him and made him raise his gates, while the
bandit-car was fleeing with the loot. This latter crossing was on the
way to the Manley Woods, where, according to the “theory,” the bandits
had “thrown away” the Buick car, not far from the Coacci house.
This made what the jury had accepted as a story; but now came the
editor, showing that each of these two crossing-tenders had specified
a certain train, and the time of these trains was a matter of record,
and they didn’t fit. The Governor thought that possibly one train or
the other had not been on time; but the editor answered that there
were such things as “train-sheets.” He had the greatest difficulty in
the world convincing his Governor that a railroad has records showing
the hour at which every train passed every station, even as far as six
years back. As a matter of fact, the sheets of those trains had been
produced on the stand at the trial, and the district attorney might
have found the truth if he had wanted it.
A singular interview! The Governor would profess complete mastery of
matters concerning which it was evident that he knew very little,
and when he was corrected, would fly into a rage and demand, “What
right have you to question me?” The too-conscientious editor could
not make his arguments clear, because the Governor did not know the
elementary facts upon which the arguments rested; nor could he explain
these elementary facts, because that would offend the great man’s
dignity. He came out from the interview to report that the situation
was hopeless from the point of view of the defense. He realized, of
course, the political game that was going on: the “grand-stand play,”
in current slang. The Governor would have the whole world marveling at
his patience and open-mindedness, while in reality he was impatient of
argument, and his mind was closed.
XI
Bitter struggles in the rooms of the defense committee on Hanover
street, where radicals and conservatives fought over the question of
how to meet this desperate situation! Controversies lasting until
the small hours of the morning, and then not settled! Feuds between
respectable persons who wanted to follow the guidance of respectable
lawyers, and young socialists and communists who wanted to make mass
appeals, and have parades on the streets, and threats of a general
strike! The young radicals organized a protest meeting in Symphony
Hall, to tell Boston the facts which the Governor knew and was hiding;
but then came Thompson and Frankfurter, and forced the calling off of
that meeting, by threatening to withdraw from the case. Joe Randall and
his wife would labor all night to prepare hair-raising stories for the
newspapers; but when the reporters came to Thompson, he would wave them
away with a phrase, “Nothing for the papers to-day.” It was easy to
understand his point of view. There was no worse charge to be brought
against a lawyer by respectable Boston than that he was “trying his
case in the newspapers”; and Thompson clung to his belief that somehow
it was going to be possible to persuade respectable Boston to grant
justice to his clients.
A brilliant idea came to Betty--to collect the testimony of persons
with whom Judge Thayer had discussed Sacco and Vanzetti during the past
six years! To present respectable Boston with the profanity, vulgarity
and hatred which old Judge Fury had poured out in the presence of
everybody, from senators to club waiters! This idea was presented to
the lawyers, and at first they were horrified; but as time passed, and
the Governor’s bias became clear, they worked out a way to make it into
a legal procedure. They would appeal to the Governor on the ground of
Thayer’s prejudice; if that did not succeed, they would make a further
move in the courts on that basis, with a possible appeal to the Supreme
Court of the United States on a writ of certiorari.
So began a still hunt among those who knew but did not admire the
“worthy trial judge.” There were many such persons in high station;
but would they consent to violate the reticences which protect social
life? Appeals to their consciences were made, and a few yielded: George
U. Crocker, a former city treasurer, and member of the University
Club, where Judge Thayer had lived during the Dedham trial; Mrs. Lois
Rantoul, who was a Lowell; Robert Benchley, one of the editors of
_Life_; Elizabeth Bernkopf, a newspaper correspondent; John Nicholas
Beffel; and Prof. Richardson, of Dartmouth College, to whom the judge
had said, “Did you see what I did to those anarchistic bastards
yesterday?” What “Web” had really said was “arnychistic bastards,” but
there was no use trying to get that across to the public; nobody would
believe it, and anyhow, all persons who handled the story--reporters
and compositors and copy-readers--would decide that it was an error,
and do their duty. Prof. Richardson said he thought that “Web” had also
said “sons-of-bitches”; but of course there was no way to get that
printed in a moral community.
A picturesque little drama over the getting of the signature of Frank
P. Sibley, star reporter of that premier family-paper, the Boston
_Globe_! “Sib,” as he was known to his colleagues, was a much beloved
and slightly picturesque figure, known to everybody on the streets
of Boston--six feet tall and wearing a Windsor tie, as near to a
“Bohemian” as could survive in that frigid atmosphere. He had been the
correspondent of the _Globe_ at the Dedham trial, and had heard many
expressions of prejudice by Thayer. He had agreed to sign an affidavit,
and it was got ready; but then he discovered that he couldn’t sign it,
his managing editor wouldn’t let him! In fact, “Sib” had come to agree
with his managing editor--it was necessary for a newspaper reporter to
be impartial. Just like a judge!
A serious disappointment to the defense, for Sibley was an experienced
man, who had been covering major court cases in New England for
some twenty years; moreover, he didn’t have to rely upon his memory
of Thayer’s conduct, he had written a letter about it to the
attorney-general of the Commonwealth. There was a conference of Joe
Randall and Gardner Jackson and others who knew the newspaper game,
and there came a tip from one of the editors of the _Globe_ as to how
the issue might be forced. Let the _Globe_ hear the threat of public
exposure of the fact that it was refusing to let one of its reporters
sign an affidavit in the interest of justice. Mild blackmail, in short!
William G. Thompson was consulted, and proposed to submit the Sibley
affidavit to the Governor as his own affidavit, and have Sibley called
before the Governor--which would, of course, open up the story. Armed
with that dire threat, Gardner Jackson went to see the managing editor
of the _Globe_, under whom he had worked for seven years, and they
had their first quarrel in that long period. The managing editor said
that they were playing an unfair trick upon his paper, that it was a
dirty thing to do, and so on. He would not give any decision; but that
same afternoon Frank Sibley came to Thompson’s office and affixed his
signature!
XII
The supersalesman of automobiles had announced that he would not
appoint any commission; the law did not permit him to delegate his
authority, but required him to make the decision himself. But Cornelia
and her blue-blood friends went on with their quiet intrigue, and one
day there appeared in the papers a letter signed by the Bishop of the
Blue-bloods and four of his flock, appealing to the Governor for an
advisory commission. Just as Cornelia had foretold, it was impossible
for a mere automobile dealer to withstand such pressure; he changed his
mind. As a great man in public life, he of course did not announce that
he had changed his mind; he merely announced that he was going to do
what he had previously announced he was not going to do.
More intrigue, to induce him to name the right commission! Dignified
established persons, wholly without taint of contact with anarchism,
atheism or draft-dodging, called upon the Governor, or wrote letters,
pointing out to him that there was one eminent citizen who would be
trusted by all right-minded persons in New England to give a just and
impartial opinion regarding the guilt of the two accused men--and
that was “Mr. Lowell”! It was the “middle minds” who were inspiring
this intrigue; Cornelia, partly of her own impulse, partly led by her
friends, had come to center her hopes upon the august President of
Harvard University. “Radical” friends, including her granddaughter and
her grandson-in-law, laughed at her for believing that Mr. Lowell would
prove himself more free from prejudice than any other millionaire. But
they had nothing in particular against him, and nobody to prefer, among
those whom the Governor would consider. “So let dear old Grannie go
ahead,” said Betty; “it keeps her hoping.”
Grannie went ahead, and in due course an announcement came from the
State House; the Governor had appointed a commission consisting of A.
Lawrence Lowell, President of Harvard University, Robert Grant, retired
judge of the Probate Court, and Samuel W. Stratton, President of the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. A vast and unanimous sigh of
relief went up from the Back Bay. At last the terrible problem would
be settled, and settled right! It would be dealt with by gentlemen,
instead of by vulgarians and political tricksters, corrupted officials
and police agents! A new atmosphere would be brought into the case,
and the world would see that Massachusetts brains and breeding still
counted for righteousness and dignity! Two of the three members of
the commission were registered blue-bloods; the third, though he came
from the west, had been adopted and placed in charge of the great
school which, next to Harvard, was Boston’s pride, the place where
the technicians of her giant industries got their exact and efficient
training.
XIII
Vanzetti was now in Dedham jail, and Cornelia made a trip to carry
him the good news. Needless to say, he did not know the President of
Harvard University, but if Nonna said that he was a good and great
man, Bart was willing to believe it. But she must not forget that it
was hard for a rich man to rise above the ideas of his class. Was Mr.
Lowell a very rich man? When the prisoner learned that he owned huge
cotton-mills, and enjoyed an income of close to a million dollars a
year from the ill-paid labor of wage-slaves, the prisoner said, “He
must be a very great man if he do joostice to anarchistas.”
Bart preferred to converse about Proudhon’s “Peace and War,” which he
was translating. Here was his idea of a great man. They discussed the
formula, “Property is theft”; and Bart showed a letter to the Vanguard
Press, to which he was sending the manuscript of the translation. “By
gosh, don’t loss it!” was his injunction.
Also he had been doing more work upon his novel, “Events and Victims.”
It was in reality a very short novelette: the story of an immigrant
worker in America; but alas, no magazine would publish such material!
Bart thought that if some one would send a copy to Russia, it might be
published there--or possibly made into a moving picture. In America,
of course, they wanted moving pictures about the rich, or in praise of
riches. Bart had put a passage about the “movies” into his novel, and
he read it now to his friend.
A curious circumstance: in nine or ten weeks he was to die, in the
midst of terrific public clamor; and the chiefs of the moving picture
industry would hold a meeting and resolve that the name of Vanzetti
was to be forever barred from the screen, and that all pictures which
had been taken of the case should be immediately destroyed. They, the
propaganda chiefs of capitalism, knew who their enemies were, and no
mistake about it. Said Bartolomeo Vanzetti, speaking to the suppressors
of his fame:
“I went out and walked towards the theater, hoping to see Johnny whom I
knew to be passionately fond of moving picture shows. That night they
were showing a screen version, a fragment of one of those romances
which distort truth and realities; falsify history; provoke, cultivate
and embellish all the morbid emotions, confusions, ignorances,
prejudices and horrors; and, purposely and skillfully pervert the
hearts and, still more, the minds. The characters of these morbid
melodramas are always of two opposite types, one very good, the other
very bad. The good ones are the good folks who are always good, always
do good, are always right, and in the end always triumph. The others
are always bad folk, who are always wrong, always do evil and finally
pay the penalty. Just the reverse of life!
“Thus meditating, I reached the theater. Of course it was, as usual,
crowded to the doors. The common people, being all heart, with little
brain and less knowledge, are passionately interested in such senseless
stories, and not a scene escapes them. They develop a wild and
unreasoning affection for the unreal characters of the unreally good,
whose hatreds and loves, risks and triumphs they share, and fervid
hatred for and resentment against the unreal characters of the unreally
bad gang. They lose their heads, weep, sigh, laugh, smile, fear, hope
and throb, and, forgetting their cross of infamy, leave the theater
more stupid than when they entered it.”
XIV
The Advisory Commission could not get to work until after the college
commencements were over. But meantime the secret hearings before the
Governor went on, and in the offices of the defense committee several
typewriters clicked all day and most of the night, and sacks full of
letters, leaflets, and pamphlets went out. The barriers set up by the
capitalist press were broken down; even the great news agencies had
to spread the world’s protest. The flood of letters rose higher in
the Governor’s office, and while the secretary still boasted of the
promptness with which he burned them, they did not fail to produce an
effect--especially when reinforced by the explosion of bombs in front
of United States embassies in Europe, and the crashing of window-glass
in Argentina.
Cornelia wrote letters, and carried on long telephone conversations,
and traveled about visiting businessmen and bankers in their offices,
and wealthy ladies in their homes on Beacon Hill and Commonwealth
Avenue. For the most part they listened with the patience which her
age and station demanded; they promised to study the case, and often
did so. Now and then they told her that while they appreciated her
sincerity, they knew that she was being imposed upon by scoundrels, and
that it would be wiser if she did not force them to discuss the matter.
Cornelia knew what to expect; she had watched Boston for a couple
of generations, and read of it still earlier. In any moral issue,
officialdom had always been on the side of reaction, and the broadcloth
mob had supported it--even to the extent of putting a rope about the
waist of William Lloyd Garrison and dragging him through the streets.
But always there had been a small minority of choice spirits who had
come out in opposition, and made the glory of the city’s history. Among
these had been the oldest names and the bluest blood; and so it was
now. There appeared an open letter addressed to Governor Fuller, asking
a list of pertinent questions, and the signers of that letter included
the best that Massachusetts had to show in every form of culture. Nor
did these people stop with writing letters; they wrote their names
upon checks, and gave time and thought to the case--everything that
civilized human beings could do to make headway against brutal power.
The Thornwell family offered a miniature of the whole Back Bay.
Cornelia crusading, and her granddaughter Betty ready to turn into a
militant, and get her head broken by the police; while on the other
hand the aged Abner Thornwell, oldest member and nominal head of the
family, was sitting paralyzed in his wheel-chair, boiling like a steel
crucible about to explode. Great-uncle Abner--so he was always referred
to, because of the children--resembled his sister-in-law Cornelia in
one thing, that he could not think or talk about anything but Sacco
and Vanzetti; his conversation, a monologue on account of his complete
deafness, resembled a verse-form with a refrain--“Burn them! Burn them!”
Abner insisted upon writing bloodthirsty letters to the Governor and
to the newspapers. This would have been a scandal, because everybody
knew of Cornelia’s part in the case; and since she had taken it up
first, family etiquette declared it to be hers. So the Scatterbridge
family, with whom the old man resided, entered into an elaborate
conspiracy to suppress his letters; secretaries, chauffeurs and
attendants, butlers, footmen and maids--everybody had to be warned
to bring the old gentleman’s letters to Mr. James instead of mailing
them! In the end the victim found out about that, and worked himself
into such a fury that the family was afraid he would die on the spot.
He had to be allowed to mail a letter to the Governor, and to have an
acknowledgment, as his rank and station required; James having sent his
secretary to explain the circumstances and see that the letter was not
given to the press.
XV
Between these two extremes the other members of the family were
distributed here and there. Henry Cabot Winters had become quite
sympathetic toward his “Bolshevik mother-in-law”; he gave it as his
legal opinion that she had come out of her seven years’ struggle with
unexpected glory. Regardless of whether her wops were innocent or
guilty--and Henry said he had no opinion--she had proved to all the
world that they had not had a fair trial. Who could have foreseen
that luck would oblige her with such incidents as the making of bogus
citations by “Web” Thayer, and the annihilation of poor “Dean Wigless”
in the columns of the _Transcript_? Manifestly, the judicial system
of Massachusetts had slipped up. While the great lawyer would not do
anything about it, nor even say anything about it, he would furnish his
mother-in-law with first-class legal advice free of charge.
Also Quincy Thornwell had been impressed by the interest taken in the
case by men of standing in the financial world, such as John F. Moors,
who was a member of the “Fincom,” or Financial Commission--a device of
the blue-blood bankers to watch the politicians, and keep them from
stealing too large a percentage of the public funds. When Mr. Moors
publicly said there was something wrong, Quincy stopped arguing with
his aunt, and took to toddling round on his withered legs, a faithful
messenger-boy, bringing gossip from the dinner-tables of the rich.
Mrs. Jack Gardner had left Fenway Court for palaces and mansions above;
but other hostesses had taken her place, and Quincy would bring home
the funny stories which smart society liked to tell about the super
salesman of automobiles, and his old paintings and other efforts at
culture. He had proposed to appoint Harry Garfield, president of
Williams College, to the Lowell commission, but Mrs. So-and-so had
insisted that it wouldn’t do, because Harry’s grandfather had been
assassinated by an anarchist. It had really been his father, said
Quincy; but the State House wasn’t very strong on history. Cornelia
added that the assassin had not been an anarchist, but a plain lunatic,
which was different, whether the Governor would admit it or not.
“As a matter of fact,” said Quincy, “on that basis the Governor would
himself be barred from deciding, because somebody murdered _his_
grandfather.”
Cornelia took that bit of history home with her, and mentioned it to
the sarcastic Betty, who retorted: “Somebody murdered him too late!”
Cornelia shuddered, and said “Hush!”--looking about for a spy. The
thing of which she lived in hourly terror was that some lunatic might
kill somebody connected with the government--in which case it would
be all over with Sacco and Vanzetti, and perhaps with the defense
committee as well!
Another person who had been startled by developments in the case was
Betty’s mother. Impossible that Deborah should not be shaken by the
letter from Bishop Lawrence, whose prize parishioner she was--he came
to a state dinner at her home once every year. Yes, Deborah said, her
mother had had ground for the protest; but now her troubles were all
over, Mr. Lowell had the matter in charge, and would see that it was
straightened out.
There was quite a tug of war in the Alvin family, for Rupert said
thumbs down on all anarchists. But of course he wouldn’t dare to say
so publicly, in defiance of his mother-in-law and his wife. What the
great banker did was to keep out of the uproar, by pleading temporary
retirement on account of ill-health. His doctors had insisted that he
should find a “hobby,” something else to be interested in but other
people’s money. So he was taking up church architecture, designing
with his own hands a miniature English abbey, and having it built as
a private chapel on his North Shore estate. It was costing a hundred
and fifty thousand dollars, but was really an economy, so the great
banker explained; it would be a church for his friends and servants on
the estate, thus saving gasoline and tires, and later on it would be a
mausoleum.
XVI
And then the Scatterbridge family. Clara had raised her brood, who were
in schools and colleges, and asking questions; therefore the mother
was trying to understand public affairs, but finding them extremely
complicated. She accepted the pamphlets her mother gave her, but
the trouble was, she fell asleep so easily. As that was bad for her
“reducing,” she found it better to go to bridge parties. When Cornelia
told her a sad story about the wife of a shoe-worker, whose marriage
had been a sort of death in life for seven years, Clara would be deeply
touched, and would write a check to help feed and clothe the Sacco
children. Then, in course of their talk, Cornelia would learn that
Clara had just given a check to a patriotic lady who had called on her,
representing a society which was seeking to compel all foreigners to
be good, by having them registered and finger-printed by the police.
This society was sending out literature demanding death for Sacco and
Vanzetti; so Clara’s money was at work on both sides!
But no such conflict in the case of Clara’s husband. James
Scatterbridge was one of the stern ones, upon whom Cornelia could
make no impression whatever. The sarcastic Betty explained it by what
she called “economic interpretation.” A great lawyer like Uncle Henry
had to keep his mind open, because he could never tell which side
might hire him; a banker like Father didn’t have to worry, because no
matter whose money was stolen, it always came back to the bank; but an
industrialist like Uncle James was a slave-driver with a whip, and if
he didn’t hold it tight there would be no money for anybody.
James Scatterbridge would keep Abner’s stuff out of the papers, because
family dignity required it; but he would go about among the lords of
cottons and woolens and shoes and hardware and transportation, and
voice his conviction that this was the great test of our institutions,
and if we didn’t teach a lesson to the forces of disorder, the
government might as well abdicate once for all. James had a voice
that was like his annual product of a hundred million yards of cotton
sheeting being ripped all at once by a giant hand; and just now was a
great moment in his life, because he had been invited to address some
important gathering of his fellows. He had set his best advertising man
to writing a speech for him to learn, and Cornelia heard him rehearsing
it in the library, in the presence of his adoring wife and several
indigent female relatives: denouncing the rumors that the cotton
industry was going to be lost to New England, and likewise the rumors
that the “_boot_nshoe” industry was going to be lost.
James pronounced this latter as one word, with the accent on the first
syllable; and he said it several times--“I say that the _boot_nshoe
industry shall _not_ leave New England!” It was a kind of incantation,
which became effective when you said it loud enough and often enough.
Quincy Thornwell explained to Cornelia that the old families who owned
the cotton mills and shoe factories insisted on having all the money in
dividends, and left nothing to keep the plants up. James hadn’t put a
new machine into his mills in thirty years--so of course he was being
undermined by Jews who got capital in New York and cheap labor in the
Carolinas, and had no fear of blue-blood bankers conspiring to put them
out of business because they were not graduates of Harvard and members
of the Union Club!
XVII
Nemesis was waiting for James Scatterbridge, with such a tragedy as she
prepares for powerful, aggressive, absolutely certain men. His sons
were growing up; the oldest, James junior, was a member of the Harvard
class of ’27, and Cornelia failed to attend the graduation, because of
the anguish and suspense of the Sacco-Vanzetti case. The second son,
Josiah Thornwell Scatterbridge, was a sophomore at Harvard, and called
on the phone, saying that he wanted to see his grandmother; so Cornelia
invited him to lunch.
She hardly knew these children of Clara and James; to her they were
still the nursery mob that scratched rare old furniture and smeared
chocolate caramels on brocaded upholstery. They were growing up into
individuals, but she had not had time for them. Now came “James’s
Josiah”--such was his awkward designation--a shy, yellow-haired youth
with staring blue eyes--and revealed the amazing thing that had
happened. “Grandmother, I went to a meeting of the Liberal Club in
college, and heard a man tell something about your case. It sounds to
me pretty rotten, and I don’t think the family ought to leave you to do
all the work. I thought I’d ask you to give me something to read, so
that I can answer what people say.”
So there was punishment for a powerful, aggressive, absolutely certain
manufacturer of one hundred million yards of cotton sheeting per
annum! He had a son who was sensitive and open-minded, and was going
to disgrace him before the world! “James’s Josiah” took the handful of
pamphlets from his grandmother, and he did not fall asleep over them,
but read them in a day, and told his brothers and sisters what was in
them, and there were family rows, and word came to the father, who
summoned the renegade to his office.
There was a stormy scene, in the course of which the son was absolutely
forbidden to believe certain things which he could not help believing.
He explained how he could not help it--thus administering to his
father a subtle form of annoyance, which no enemy could have made
worse. There was a “bust-up” between father and son; and when Clara
heard about it, there was a near “bust-up” between husband and wife.
For Clara took the boy’s side; he had a right to think for himself,
and should most certainly not be put to work in the mills by way
of punishment. Maybe Clara’s mother was right; there was a lot of
rottenness in politics, and it was time that women began to make their
votes count. So there was the Scatterbridge family, in the same turmoil
over the Sacco-Vanzetti case as all the rest of Massachusetts!