DAYS OF GRACE
I
Sacco and Vanzetti, brought up from Dedham jail on the first day of
July, had been put into the death cells. When the Governor granted the
first reprieve of thirty days, to allow the Lowell Commission to work,
they had been moved back to what was called the Cherry Hill section of
the prison. On the first of August, it being ten days to the new date
of execution, they went back into the death cells. Now, the Governor
having granted twelve days more, the rules required another return to
the Cherry Hill section. “Oh, this is wearisome!” exclaimed Sacco.
“This moving!”
He was on the twenty-sixth day of a fast, and barely able to totter.
But he would not be assisted; no, he would take care of himself. A
slow, feeble procession, the guards at his side ready to catch him
if he fell. Vanzetti walked behind; having broken his fast, he had
a little strength. Out into the open sunshine in the prison yard; a
glimpse of the flower-beds along the walk, of blue sky overhead, white
clouds, and gray and white gulls wheeling; the sounds of freight cars
being shunted in the Boston and Maine yards, on the other side of the
prison walls. A few steps to be climbed; wait, let him alone, Nick
would do it by himself. At last he was lying on his cot in the new
cell; tortured, distracted--when his wife and son came to see him they
found his mind wandering. He was in what is known as a “blind” cell,
having a solid wooden door in front of the barred iron door, and a
peep-hole through which the keepers could look in.
Vanzetti also was in such a cell, and had fits of frenzied protest
against the long drawn out and senseless agony. He talked aloud at
night, and disturbed the other prisoners. His words being mostly in
Italian, the guards and reporters said they were “incoherent.” He
shouted about “the machine, the machine!”--which they took to mean the
electric chair; not understanding the social system which is crushing
human hopes throughout the world, grinding up the souls and minds of
millions. Vanzetti was told that his cries were keeping other men
awake, and that if he kept it up, he would be put in the padded cell,
known as the “Blue Room.” At this he became furious, and dragged his
cot and wooden bureau in front of the door of his cell, and warned the
guards that they would not get him out alive.
Cornelia heard that news, and came to the prison early in the morning.
They had refused her admission to the death-cells--only relatives and
attorneys were allowed there, a strict rule. Now they told her that
Vanzetti was “dangerous,” but she laughed at them; Bart had never been
dangerous to those who used the methods and the language of love. She
told them that she could tame this wild man for them, and without
padded cells or strait-jackets. Since they dreaded a scandal very
much, they gave way and took her through the prison yard, and into the
corridor of “blind” cells.
Poor Bart--a dreadful change from the early days in that prison, when
he had been so eager to see her, yet made her wait while he washed
the coal dust from his face and hands! And always carefully shaved,
clear-eyed, and with his unconscious natural dignity. Now he lay in a
dark hole, feeble and wasted, his hair falling out, his teeth decaying,
a gray and wasted specter. He started up when he heard her gentle
voice, but then had to sink back on the cot, for he grew dizzy if he
got up suddenly.
Cornelia asked the guard to let him come out into the corridor and
sit with her. She knew that he would be gentle. The prisoner answered
that of course he would; but he was not fit to be seen. She promised
not to look at him, and so he came, and she looked into his eyes, and
smiled and began to talk. She had been to Plymouth a few days ago, to
interview a witness for Musmanno; she had seen the Brinis, and had
much news about the family. They had moved to a place on Cherry Court,
and the baby was grown up. A hundred items of gossip--even the latest
reports from Vincenzo’s garden, and the explosion which had occurred in
his home-made wine!
And then news about that most precious of young creatures, Rupert
Alvin Thornwell Randall--a mouthful of names. He was a sturdy one;
two years old now, toddling and talking at a great rate; spending the
summer at his grandmother’s country place on the North Shore, while
his mother gave her time to the Sacco-Vanzetti defense. Betty had
been so determined that this infant should grow up in a proletarian
environment--but alas, it was midsummer, and hot in a little apartment,
and out there on the North Shore were cool, refreshing breezes; so
the grandparents had the precious one, completely surrounded by a
battalion of servants, and all the demoralizing uses of luxury. Betty
had to choose between saving one infant and saving the world--a dilemma
frequently encountered by reformers. Cornelia told Bart a little about
the family duel, which had been going on for two years; now the great
banker and his wife had got their way. Bart said they always would, so
long as they were able to control the things which other persons needed.
Vanzetti had been writing off and on, in spite of handicaps. He had
a statement which he wanted Cornelia to revise; she might assure
the warden that there was nothing in it like calling the Governor a
“murderer,” which had made such a terrible scandal throughout all
Massachusetts. He wanted to give her a lot of his manuscripts to
keep--but she didn’t want to take them, because that would be admitting
that he was going to die! In the course of their talk he developed
signs of timidity, and said he had written something that he had wanted
to show to her, but he was afraid maybe it wasn’t very good; it was a
poem--a poem about a nightingale! Cornelia reassured him--it wouldn’t
need to be very good in order for her to be interested in it. He drew
it from the lot of papers, and read it to her: this “dangerous” one,
sitting in the corridor of the “blind” cells, with a lynx-eyed guard
watching every move and listening to every word. The poem began:
_When in the course of endless cosmic changes,
Upon the close of winter dark and drear
From far away, benignant, crowned with roses,
We see the lovely, longed-for spring appear...._
Cornelia had to tell the poet that such emotions had been expressed
before; nevertheless, there were tears to her eyes over the effort
of a wop in prison to describe a nightingale in Italy! Springtime
in Villafalletto--the fruit trees in blossom and the vegetables
thriving--and the poet behind bars, condemned to death! Was it because
of her aching pity for the doomed idealist, or was there really beauty
and pathos in the closing lines?
_Thus in my garden, in bright morning’s glow,
I saw thee in an April long ago._
II
Twelve days of grace had been granted to the defense. Twelve days in
which to educate the world! Twelve days for lawyers to compose more
briefs, packed full of legal formulas and imposing citations; to hop
into automobiles or airplanes, and go hunting for judges, and argue,
plead, insist--there could not be a total failure of law, when new
evidence had been discovered, proving that innocent men were about to
be executed. The judges would listen politely and patiently; but in all
that long list, from the lowest to the highest, not one would think
about anything but precedent, not one would act upon a basis of mercy
or justice, political wisdom or ordinary common sense.
“Unless a million men can be mobilized in our defense, we are lost!”
Such had been Vanzetti’s statement, two or three years ago. It had
taken the United States government a year to mobilize a million men,
and the Sacco-Vanzetti committee now set out to do it in twelve days.
They drafted appeals and sent long telegrams--a great sum in tolls each
day. Mass meetings were held in hundreds of American cities and towns,
and in all the capitals of the world; the newspapers were full of
reports of riots and strikes. But such events only stiffened the backs
of the State House crowd; this was “Bolshevism,” and the answer to it
was several thousand rifles with bayonets, and a plentiful supply of
gas bombs and machine guns.
The one thing the State House crowd really feared was a general strike.
That was the weapon which had saved the lives of Ettor and Giovannitti,
and which might have saved Sacco and Vanzetti. The police were on the
alert day and night for the first move towards it. Two Jews, officers
of the cap makers’ union, started a movement for a strike among the
clothing workers of Boston, and were arrested and framed on a bombing
charge. The police hadn’t the slightest thing on them, and confessed
it with a laugh when they released them--after the execution. There
were spies everywhere, bringing word, hour by hour, of what was going
on in all the centers of sedition. The ruling classes waited for the
least little sign of violence, the least departure from the rôle of
martyrdom--so odious and exasperating to those who believe in gold and
steel.
The “highbrow” sympathizers labored to mobilize liberal opinion. They
organized emergency groups and drafted appeals to the Governor, and
collected signatures from leaders of every form of intellectual and
artistic activity. It was a simple matter to get such persons to voice
their horror at the idea of executing men after seven years on the
rack, and when there were so many reasons for doubting their guilt. The
trouble was that after the signatures were collected, there was nothing
to do with them--except to take them to the State House, and turn them
over to a man who read the _Saturday Evening Post_, and to whom a list
of leaders of international thought was of less significance than a
list of the delegates to an “ad-men’s” convention.
This salesman of motor cars posed as being completely impartial, and
delighted to assure his visitors, “I don’t know what an anarchist is,
I don’t pay any attention to that sort of stuff.” But right in the
midst of these pretenses some researcher in Washington dug up his
hate-speeches--the only ones of any consequence he had made during his
four years’ service in Congress. He had been an ardent advocate of
the exclusion of Victor Berger, the socialist congressman, and with
hot anger had called for “the crucifixion of disloyalty, the nailing
of sedition to the cross of free government, where the whole brood of
anarchists, bolsheviks, I.W.W.’s and revolutionaries may see and read
a solemn warning.” He had talked about the “red scum,” and the “agents
of the red flag,” and had denounced opposition to preparedness as “a
devilish scheme of undermining the morale of the people.” These tirades
had been delivered just before a thousand men and women were dragged
from their homes and thrown into Boston jails.
III
Not since the days of the Civil War had there been such a test of
the consciences of men and women in Boston. Strange things happened,
unexpected workings of the spirit. To Cornelia Thornwell in her little
apartment came the second son of James Scatterbridge, known as “James’s
Josiah,” and sat in a chair and fixed his pale blue, earnest eyes upon
her, and in a timid, half-apologetic voice began, “Grandmother, it
seems to me as if I ought to do something to help.”
“There is plenty to be done,” said the old lady.
“I decided I ought to contribute some money, so I went to defense
headquarters yesterday evening. I had made up my mind to give half
my vacation allowance. But while I was there three Italian laborers
came in; you could see they had just come from the day’s work, their
shoes were covered with mortar, and the backs of their hands had big
knotted veins on them. They brought more than fifty dollars which they
had collected on the job. I couldn’t understand what they said, but I
watched their faces, and I realized it was money which their wives and
children must need, so I got ashamed of myself. I think we all have too
easy a time. I gave every cent I had, and now I don’t know what I’ll
do.”
“Lots of college boys go to work in vacation time, Josiah, and
sometimes they learn more than in classes.”
“I know, Grandmother, and that’s what I’ll do; but first it seemed to
me that I oughtn’t to let you and Betty and Joe carry the brunt of all
this. Betty says she’s going to get arrested next Sunday, and it seems
to me I ought to go, too. What do you think?”
Another family problem! Cornelia declined to solve it; she said that in
matters of conscience, every person has to act for himself. “It will
make your father very angry, of course.”
“I know; he’s terrible when he gets excited about the Reds. But I don’t
think it’s quite the same as being a Red, to say that men ought not to
be executed when there is so much doubt of their guilt. But I can’t get
Father to see that at all. You’ll be shocked, I know, but he said they
ought to be executed, anyhow.”
“I’ve heard many people say that, Josiah; it is almost a respectable
opinion in Boston. A member of the Governor’s Council has voiced it, I
am told.”
“We’re having a funny time at home right now,” continued the youth.
“Have you heard about Great-uncle Abner? He is determined to break into
the _Transcript_ with a letter about the case, and Father has promised
Uncle Henry that he won’t let him--out of respect for you, of course.”
“I know,” said Cornelia. “It is very kind of them.”
“Father is provoked with you, but he won’t have any scandal, and he
has been having all the servants bring Great-uncle Abner’s letters to
him, instead of posting them. Great-uncle Abner found out about it,
and there was a terrible row, you could hear him shouting all over
the house: ‘Am I in jail or am I not in jail? Answer me that? Have I
been legally committed? If not, take me out of here, and let me die
a free man!’ He just wouldn’t give up, and Father had to pacify him,
for fear he’d have another stroke. What Father did--you won’t believe
it--he promised to send the letter to the _Transcript_, and he had a
printer take the editorial page from an early edition, and reproduce it
complete, with the page on the other side also--but with Great-uncle
Abner’s letter in it. It was quite wonderful--it would have fooled
anybody. They put it in the evening edition and brought it to the old
gentleman, and he was as pleased as punch--read it about twenty times,
and some of his old friends were let in on the secret, and came to
see him and patted him on the back and said it was a great letter and
ought to settle the case with the Governor. It said there ought to be a
Bolshevik hanging from each tree on the Common, and they ought not to
have any trials. It said that American institutions must be saved from
rape at the hands of Russian gold and Italian dynamite. It was almost
as bad as some of the letters that really get published!”
IV
The case worked also upon the consciences of persons who were cursed
with artistic temperaments. Such unfortunates read the letters of
Vanzetti and recognized a brother in distress. He who had made himself
a master of English prose spoke to all other writers, now as in times
to come. They gathered from far and near, anxious that a great soul and
a prophet should be recognized before he was dead.
There came Arturo Giovannitti, compatriot and fellow-victim of the
“frame-up” system: one of those whom Captain Proctor had set out to
“get,” in the days of Proctor’s prime, before his conscience began to
trouble him. For more than a year Giovannitti had lain in Salem jail,
and had written a haunting poem, “The Walker.”
_One-two-three-four: four paces and the wall;
One-two-three-four: four paces and the iron gate._
Now he walked a somewhat longer road in front of the State
House with the golden dome; measured, not by paces, but by
minutes--one-two-three-four-five-six-seven. He went to the Common,
temple of free speech with elm-tree limbs for arches. “Fellow-workers,”
he began--being an I.W.W., that was his formula. “Break it up!” shouted
“Mickey the Gunman.” “You’ve said enough!” But the poet protested:
“I haven’t said anything yet! Wait till I finish before you arrest
any one.” “You’re talking against the courts!” was the answer of the
superintendent of police. “You’re not allowed to talk against the
courts!” The mounted troopers drove their reluctant horses into the
crowd. “Break it up! Move along there!”
John Dos Passos came, playwright and novelist, genial, gentle, and
bold as a young bull buffalo. A graduate of Harvard, he came to save
the honor of his alma mater. “You have put your name and indirectly
the name of the university to an infamous document”--so he wrote to
President Lowell; and then, since no Boston paper would publish his
letter, he went out on the picket-line and exposed his head to the
policemen’s clubs, and his skin to the vermin in the old Joy Street
police-station.
“Fair Harvard, thy sons to thy jubilee throng!” There thronged George
L. Teeple, of the class of ’97, and got himself arrested with the other
pickets, and read a statement in court, paying fifteen dollars extra
for the privilege, because the judge remarked that there might be an
excuse for ignorant foreigners, but there was very little excuse for a
Harvard man to violate the law.
Also Powers Hapgood, nephew of Norman and of Hutchins. His was not the
sort of head the Boston police were used to breaking. He had completed
four years’ work at Harvard in three; he had “made” the Dickey and
the Hasty Pudding Club, the varsity track squad and the Harvard
“Crimson.” He had been in the service abroad, and was one of the few
undergraduates honored by election to the Harvard Memorial Society.
He was one of those young Americans in whom readers of fiction refuse
to believe; “unreal and made to order,” they say, of a college youth
who travels over the country working in coal mines, and becoming a
leader of the left wing miners. Now he came to express his opinion of
President Lowell, and the opinion was such that official Boston shut it
up in the Psychopathic Hospital.
Heywood Broun was carrying on the same fight in New York, as
“colyumist” of the _World_, at a salary of four hundred and fifty
dollars a week. Broun had been “flunked out” of Harvard in his youth,
and this may have made him feel disrespectful. “From now on,” he
wrote, “will the institution of learning at Cambridge which we once
called Harvard be known as Hangman’s House?” The _World_ published
that, but refused to publish the next articles, so the “colyumnist”
went on a “permanent strike,” which made an enormous sensation among
the literati. An extraordinary thing, the way the case “got” the
intelligentsia, even that portion which prides itself most upon being
hard-boiled and immune to social emotions.
V
Also there came alumni of the University of Hard Knocks. Those foreign
names which pleased the readers of Boston newspapers so little belonged
to clothing-workers who had given up their jobs, and spent their
savings to come and jeopardize their skulls; to sailors from the port,
to iron-workers, barbers, bakers and waiters; also to poets and writers
who had educated themselves, and thus could understand the soul of
Vanzetti. There came Michael Gold, a young Jew from the slums of New
York, who had been a newspaper reporter in Boston when not yet out of
his teens, and had been one of that group of anarchist sympathizers
whom Cornelia had seen, eleven years ago, accompanying Galleani to the
Plymouth cordage strike.
Mike was now a playwright and editor of the _New Masses_, but resented
being classified as an “intellectual,” and wanted to remain a worker;
so he dressed in khaki, which gave a shock to Boston. He wandered
about, fascinated by the spectacle of a city gone mad with fear. He
listened to the conversation of sleek clerks and stock-brokers of
State Street, ex-football players of Harvard who wished they might
have a chance to tackle the “Reds.” He listened to taxi-drivers and
soda-jerkers, who knew what they had read in a capitalist newspaper, or
learned from others who had read it in some other capitalist newspaper.
On the afternoon of the “false execution” he joined the “death march”
in front of the State House, and the same two iron-handed cops who
grabbed Dorothy Parker the poet grabbed Mike Gold the playwright, and
hauled them away to the oddly-named Joy Street police station. “Hang
them! Hang the anarchists!” cried the straw-hatted mob; and Mike,
who had written a life of John Brown, saw the ghost of William Lloyd
Garrison going down the street with a rope about his waist, followed by
the “mob in broadcloth,” crying “Hang him! Hang the abolitionist!”
Those Boston merchants of a hundred years ago had been, some of
them, the “bootleggers” of their day; smuggling “black ivory” from
Africa, Negro slaves whose labor would be turned into molasses in
Louisiana. The molasses would be brought to New England and made into
rum, and the rum would go back to Africa, to make drunk the savage
chiefs whose war-victims would compose the next bootleg cargo. Now
the great-great-grandsons of those old merchants bore the same names,
and looked so much like their ancestors that when they came up for
election to the Somerset Club, the directors thought they were voting
for the ancestors. These great-great-grandsons had imported hundreds
of thousands of white niggers from the Mediterranean and Baltic lands,
to operate their steam and electric machines, and had built a colossal
system for the exploiting of this new slave labor. These new masters
considered themselves civilized, and were willing to install “welfare
work,” and have their wives “do charity.” But at the same time they
looked upon these foreign hordes with mingled contempt and fear, and
dreaded the day when they might refuse obedience. To suggest this to
them was the worst crime that could be committed in modern New England;
the “black abolitionists” of 1831 had been replaced, as objects of
ruling class hatred, by the “red scum” of 1927.
So it was that Boston was under what amounted to martial law, and there
were more detectives watching strangers than there were strangers.
Any one who wore a beard, or had a dark face, was liable to be halted
on the street and ordered to give an account of himself. A messenger
carrying a box of seidlitz powders had to stop for a chemical analysis.
Helen Black and Ann Washington Craton--a descendant of the father
of her country--were arrested and taken to the police station and
cross-questioned for hours; the reason assigned being that they “looked
like New Yorkers.” Six Italians arrived in an automobile, and two of
them needed a shave, so they were held on a bombing charge.
Joe Randall, of course, was a marked man; the fact that he wrote
articles for newspapers and posed as a reporter only made him worse
than the other “Bolsheviks.” Detectives followed him everywhere, in
restaurants, in drug stores when he bought an ice cream soda, in barber
shops when he got a shave. He made trouble for them by insisting upon
talking with them, which was destructive of morale and against the
ethics of “shadowing.” New “dicks” were substituted, but Joe said you
could always recognize them by their blank and stupid faces; there was
no other occupation by which such low-grade persons could manage to be
well-dressed and well-fed.
Impossible to imagine anything more grotesque than the activities of
these anthropoid mentalities, trying to deal with a world of which
they had no gleam of understanding. Some of the things they did were
beyond the absurdities of musical comedy. Heywood Broun’s wife, Ruth
Hale, came to Boston at the height of the tragedy. Two sleuths of the
city spent the night in a Ford car, keeping watch on Hanover street,
opposite defense headquarters, and in the morning a newspaper man asked
them what they had been doing, and the answer was, “We had a straight
tip on a bomb-plot, and we were watching for the bombers.” “Who are
they?” asked the reporter. The reply was, “Two women from New York,
Ruth Hale and Dorothy Parker.”
VI
On Thursday, the eleventh, Justice Sanderson of the Supreme Judicial
Court allowed a bill of exceptions from his ruling to go to the Full
Court. Also Web Thayer was persuaded, for the sake of appearance, to
permit exceptions to his rulings to be carried up. So there were two
more hopes for salvation from the courts; Massachusetts was going to
lean over backwards in respecting the legal rights of two convicted
wops. Chief Justice Rugg was ill, and Crosby was in Europe; Sanderson
was barred from considering his own ruling, so there were Braley, Wait,
Carroll, and Pierce, with Braley, oldest member, presiding. He issued
a summons for a special sitting on the following Tuesday, to listen to
arguments of counsel.
Hope once more in the hearts of all believers in law and order.
Surely the ruling group was coming to its senses; it had realized the
frightful blunder it was making, and had chosen a dignified way to back
down! Patience now, and keep cool, and don’t do anything to excite
public feeling, and make it harder for the learned justices! Stop the
wild talk, and keep the New York radicals off the streets and out of
the newspapers! Above all, no disorders on the Common, nor in front of
the State House! So argued the “respectables.”
Was there really a chance? Or was it merely that those in charge of
affairs wanted it to seem that way? Quincy Thornwell came to his Aunt
Cornelia, bringing rumors: the Governor had talked with So-and-so, and
had said this and that. More important yet, Mr. Lowell was showing
signs of weakening; he was defending himself, for the first time in
his long life. One of the “middle minds” had been to see him, and he
had argued until two o’clock in the morning, trying to justify his
decision; he had been so anxious about it that he had followed his
visitor downstairs in his pajamas, and out into the garden, flashing a
torchlight into the bushes to make sure there were no bombers hiding.
Quincy Thornwell chuckled over the picture: assuredly the strangest
sight ever witnessed by the chaste nymphs who haunt the shades of the
classic elms of Harvard!
And then the learned justices of the Supreme Judicial Court, actually
giving signs of humanity! Justice Wait had made a speech, defending
the action of the court; and now here was the wife of another one,
the presiding justice, Braley, telephoning to Mrs. Jessica Henderson;
a Leach of Bridgewater she was, a highly respected person, and twice
she called up to say: “Don’t worry, my dear, everything is coming out
all right, I assure you. They are not going to let them be executed,
they will find some way out. The judge does not believe in capital
punishment.” What could have been the meaning of that? Could it be that
these old boys were fooling their own wives, in the effort to cheer
them up and keep peace in the family? Or were they using the wives to
lull the defense, and damp the dangerous agitation during the critical
days? Impossible to guess.
VII
In the Sacco-Vanzetti committee the never-ceasing struggle between
those who wanted to be judicious and those who wanted to make
propaganda. Lawyers and college professors telephoning in, or calling
to make personal pleas: “Remember this is Boston, and keep the New York
nuts out of the limelight!” But the “New York nuts” had something to
say about that, and so had the Boston newspapers. The visitors came
hiking, wearing oil-cloth placards over their shoulders, getting cursed
and nearly mobbed in each respectable town they passed through. They
came in sport-cars, with bootleg bottles in their baggage. Girls came
in pants, and men with no hats or neckties. One brought a portable
typewriter, ready for work, and when he found no room in headquarters,
he set himself up on the curbstone outside the Hotel Bellevue, and
started writing letters for Sacco and Vanzetti. The newspapers, of
course, got pictures of him at once. Also they eagerly interviewed
a young man who announced his intention of marching to Dedham jail
to rescue Sacco and Vanzetti, and was disconcerted to learn that his
campaign maps were out of date.
Such were the surface aspects of the invasion, easy to see and to
record. But there was another aspect, not so obvious to Boston
newspapermen, nor so diverting to their readers. The soul of the
demonstration, a common feeling which animated all the participants,
men and women, old and young, rich and poor, educated and ignorant:
a sense of black despair, of agonizing littleness in the face of a
colossal evil; an impotent rage, a hatred, bitter as gall, rolling
up in their minds, for this whole great city of greed masked by
bigotry--smug and polite and treacherous, cultured and correct and
deadly.
Very few of these agitators were professionals; not many of them
had any training, any party to guide and support them. They came as
individuals, hesitating and confused. They didn’t like to do what they
were doing; the women, and many of the men, felt like Lady Godiva
riding through the town naked--worse even than she, because they had no
certainty of accomplishing anything; perhaps they were making fools of
themselves to no purpose at all.
They came because American labor would not come. Vanzetti had called
for a million workers, and the million workers answered, “What the
hell?” Most of them were content for Vanzetti to die--so that American
prosperity might live; they were ready to make that sacrifice to
Moloch, precisely as the mothers and fathers of Carthage were ready
to put their infants into the red-hot iron arms of the god, so that
Carthage might live. So, instead of the million workers, came one or
two hundred poets, painters, dreamers and lovers of beauty, Greenwich
Villagers, bums, bohemians--whatever names Boston, the correct and
murderous, might choose to call them. A pitiful little group, throwing
themselves against the iron battlements of American capitalism, with
its machine-guns and poison gas bombs, its police in the front rank and
army and navy in reserve.
And for every dreamer who came, there were thousands who stayed at
home, chained by poverty, or a greater share of timidity; waiting,
waiting, with a ghastly sense of uncertainty, feeling themselves more
effectively imprisoned than Sacco and Vanzetti. Writing letters,
but not knowing if they were read; sending telegrams--like shooting
arrows into the dark! Unable to get any real news--a few bare events
each day in the papers, but no opinions, no guidance, no light. The
radio grinding out its eternal silly thumping of drums and whining of
saxophones--this greatest story in modern American history not worth a
moment’s attention!
VIII
Sunday was coming, and what was the committee going to do? Was there
to be another meeting on the Common, or should they oblige the lawyers
and wait? Agonized arguments, turning into bitter quarrels. “When did
you come into this case?” the old-timers would jeer; and to that the
answer was obvious: “A fine mess you made of it!” The communists would
rage at the members of the committee: “Do you think you own Sacco and
Vanzetti? What do you want--to put their ashes in an urn and set it on
your parlor mantel?”
Some were determined to speak on the Common, committee or no committee,
police or no police. The Socialist Labor Party had a permit not yet
confiscated, and the Sacco-Vanzetti defenders would use that; so it
was announced, and the would-be martyrs prepared placards on canvas,
which could be folded up and hidden under the clothing. Betty and
Joe refused to tell the family what they were going to do; so here
came Deborah in all her majesty, mixing with the “mob” on the Common,
walking about unable to keep her hands quiet, so agitated she was.
When it came to a test, she really did love her daughter, in spite of
so many bitter words spoken during eleven years of wrangling. After
all, it was “Boston”; conscience was conscience, and when you followed
yours, you commanded respect from others who followed theirs. When the
little group of white-faced men and women marched into the midst of
armed ruffians, Deborah’s emotions were those which had been felt by
patrician Roman matrons, when their Christian children walked into the
arena among the lions.
Police Judge Zottoli, an Italian anxious to prove his respectability,
had announced that for those arrested in future “the sky would be the
limit.” But evidently among those in authority there must have been
some wiser heads. The police had orders to disperse all gatherings, to
allow no speeches, but to do as little arresting as possible; no more
martyrs--and especially no well-dressed ones! A curious experience
for young ladies who lived on Beacon Street, within sight of this
greensward; they were made to leap out of the way of mounted troopers,
they had their placards taken away, and their arms squeezed black and
blue--but always the last word was, “Move on! Keep moving!” Were these
the traffic officers who had been helping them across street-crossings,
and knew them? Or were they detectives who had been keeping watch over
the wedding presents in fashionable homes?
The permit which the Sacco Vanzetti committee had hoped to obtain was
found to be unavailable; so those who attempted to speak would all
be outlaws. They brought soap-boxes--and the “cops” took them away
and broke them up. For Joe Randall two young martyrs upon a sudden
impulse got down and made a soap-box of their backs; on this precarious
pedestal Joe stood, and began: “Fellow-citizens of Massachusetts, we
are here to assert the fundamental principles of free speech”--and that
was all, for there were three husky “dicks” who had been following Joe
about the field, and grabbed him by the arms and pulled him from his
platform and led him away.
Joe had made one concession to his anxious grandmother-in-law, he would
not resist and get his head broken; he went quietly--and only when he
was out on Beacon Street did he discover the scurvy trick which had
been played upon him. The three huskies gave him a shove and said,
“Move along now, young fellow, and keep moving.” “What do you mean, am
I not under arrest?” “Move along, buddy, what do you want to get into
trouble for?” When he tried to force his way back, they held him. They
would not fight him, they would merely block his way, and see that he
didn’t get to the Common. Later on, when Joe learned that the same
thing had happened to “James’s Josiah,” he realized that it could not
have been an accident; some member of an all-powerful family had called
in a detective agency, and paid a fancy price to keep his relatives out
of jail, and his family name out of the papers!
It was Powers Hapgood who made the real fight that Sunday before the
last; Powers, with a young Italian sewing-machine repairer named
Cosimo Carvotta, who got inspired by Powers’ eloquence, and insisted
on rescuing him from the entire police force of the City of Boston.
Cosimo had upon him a pocket-knife containing a small screw-driver,
an inch long, used upon sewing-machines; he did not try to use it, but
they found it in his pocket at the police station, and it was enough to
constitute a “dirk,” and make a startling story in the papers.
As for Powers, he had a highly honorific arrest, performed by
Superintendent Crowley and a captain and a sergeant and other
majesties. “I insist on the right of free speech! The people must save
Sacco and Vanzetti! We must not allow our comrades to be murdered!
Don’t forget, Comrades--keep it up--save the men!”--thus the member
of the Dickey and the Hasty Pudding Club and the Harvard Memorial
Society, being dragged away to the police-box at the corner of Charles
and Beacon streets. “Mickey the Gunman” himself pulled the hook which
summoned the patrol-wagon, and within five minutes there were a hundred
officers at the spot, and a squadron of mounted men to drive back the
crowd.
IX
The special sitting of the Supreme Judicial Court was set for Tuesday
the sixteenth at ten o’clock. Six hours before that came a dreadful
event; some one put dynamite on the front porch of the home of one of
the Sacco-Vanzetti jurors, in East Milton, and blew out the front of
the house. Once more the authorities were certain that this had been
the work of friends of Sacco and Vanzetti; whereas the friends of Sacco
and Vanzetti were equally certain that it was the work of their worst
enemies. They called attention to the peculiar placing of the dynamite,
to make a loud noise and not hurt any one; they called attention to
its exact timing--when it would do the utmost possible harm and least
possible good to the defense.
The mystery was never solved; but the Governor took occasion to write
a letter to the juror, denouncing those who were trying to “coerce
the courts,” and at the same time assuring the victim that the cost
of repairing his home would be paid by the Commonwealth. A singular
impulse of generosity from an official who just recently had vetoed a
bill providing for compensation to state employees who had been injured
in the performance of their duties!
With the crash of this bomb echoing in their ears, the four
black-robed justices assembled. The courthouse, and Pemberton Square
around it, presented a scene of war. Benches were placed for barriers
in front of courtroom doors, and Cornelia had to exhibit the contents
of her handbag before she entered the room. She noticed that detectives
assigned the little group of “Reds” to special seats, and then stood
near them. Most of the crowd did not get in at all.
There sat in a row, behind a long raised desk, the four white-haired
old gentlemen who held the lives of Sacco and Vanzetti in their
hands. Henry King Braley, former city solicitor and mayor of Fall
River, now seventy-seven years of age; Edward Peter Pierce, recently
tried for misconduct, and convicted of very bad taste, seventy-five
years of age; James Bernard Carroll, former city solicitor of
Springfield, seventy-one years of age; and William Cushing Wait,
former city alderman of Boston, sixty-seven years of age. Braley was
a fellow-alumnus of Thayer’s, Pierce and Wait were fellow-alumni of
Katzmann’s, while Carroll was a graduate of Holy Cross, which made him
a fellow-alumnus of St. Peter. They told their fellow-alumni Arthur
Hill and Arthur Reading, that they might have all the time needed;
and then they sat, like four black-and-white images, motionless and
impassive, while Mr. Hill recited the list of the high crimes of their
fellow-alumni, Thayer and, indirectly, Katzmann.
Mr. Hill spared nothing of the story of “Web’s” prejudice and
the manifold proofs thereof. Also he asked a hearing for the new
evidence--of which more was coming in every day. He called it
“monstrous” to maintain that there was any stage in the process of
taking men’s lives when it ceased to be possible to present newly
discovered evidence to establish their innocence. “It is the bench and
bar of Massachusetts that is on trial,” he declared. “It is our entire
system of criminal law.” He might have added “our entire system of
criminal capitalism,” but his vision did not extend that far, and very
surely he could not have made it clear to four members of the Union
Club of Boston.
Then came the genial Mr. Reading, with pockets stuffed with the money
of the Decimo Club and the “L.A.W.” He asserted his solemn faith that
Judge Thayer had been just and unprejudiced; nor was he in the least
afraid of being “monstrous” in reciting the law which specified that
after sentence had been pronounced by the trial judge, no motion for a
new trial could be entertained, no matter what the new evidence might
be. The four old gentlemen mumbled a few questions to the lawyers,
impossible for the spectators to hear; and then they gathered up their
books and papers, and the session was adjourned. The friends of Sacco
and Vanzetti went home, to continue that process of waiting in which
they had become so expert in the course of seven years, three months,
and eleven days.
X
But they did not have to wait very long this time. Massachusetts took
pride in paying no heed to “outside clamor,” but here was a different
situation--a military expense of great sums every day, and enormous
losses to retail trade. It was a time for sleepy old gentlemen to
wake up and earn their keep. On Tuesday the hearing, on Friday the
decision--an unprecedented procedure!
The document was written by Justice Braley, that oldest gentleman whose
wife had more than once telephoned to Jessica Henderson, assuring her
that everything was all right, no need to worry, the judge did not
believe in capital punishment. Now the judge spoke for himself. With
the other three judges concurring, he said that the legal system of the
great Commonwealth was infallible, and the fact that it contravened
decency, humanity, and common sense was of no significance. A long
decision, highly technical, bristling with citations; the heart of it
in one dreadful sentence: “A motion for a new trial in capital cases
comes too late if made after sentence has been pronounced.” Such is
the law of the Brahmins and the Blue-bloods, which altereth not! “The
exceptions are overruled.”
Horror among so-called “liberals,” those of Boston, as well as those
who had come from outside! They had staked all their hopes upon the
courts; they had pleaded, argued, practically forced the defense
committee to obey, to let them handle it, to put their trust in the
processes of law. And here suddenly was the ghastly fact revealed in
all its nakedness--there was no law! There was only the class struggle!
Exactly as Bartolomeo Vanzetti had been saying for twelve years, ever
since Cornelia had first met him: there was a propertied class, and
there was a laboring class, and between them there was a war!
And now a battle under way, and the lines drawn, and deserters hated
and punished--if necessary, killed! The immense, rich, eager, nervous,
implacable young Empire was smashing a revolt of its slaves, crucifying
its resisting gladiators by the roadside for a warning to all the
rest! This legal decision was a searchlight, flashing suddenly upon
that bloody deed! The Sacco-Vanzetti case was no longer the casual
venality of a few local politicians, no longer the accidental malice
of one elderly legal despot; the Sacco-Vanzetti case was capitalist
government, the same in America as everywhere else in the world--the
will of a predatory class!
Once before America had been like that, when the slave power had ruled
it, and in those old days New England had had one poet with the gift
of ecstasy and prophetic rage. A fugitive slave was sent back from
Massachusetts, and Whittier, the Quaker abolitionist, pictured Liberty
marching handcuffed down the street--
_And Law, an unloosed maniac, strong,
Blood-drunken, through the blackness trod,
Hoarse-shouting in the ear of God
The blasphemy of wrong...._
_“Mother of Freedom, wise and brave,
Rise awful in thy strength,” I said;
Ah me! I spake but to the dead;
I stood upon her grave!_
XI
A dreadful ordeal for the whole prison had been that “hungry strike”
of Sacco’s. They didn’t want him to die that way--it was against the
rules, and an impropriety; also they were sorry for him, and for his
wife and child. They argued and pleaded; the wife and child argued and
pleaded, but Nick was obdurate; he would not eat. Neither would he sign
any papers for capitalist courts or governors; he would not ask for
mercy or for pardon--he was an innocent man, and would die protesting
it.
On the thirty-first day of the fast he became so weak that the prison
doctor decided to act. He brought some hot beef broth to the cell,
and reminded Nick how very painful it was to be fed by a tube through
the nose. He went so far as to take hold of Nick’s nose, and say that
he was going to pour the broth down his throat. So Nick gave up, and
drank. They had all their strength, and he had little of his.
Then came young Musmanno, devoted slave of the case, broken-hearted,
and shrinking from the job he had to do. They took him first to the
cell of Nick, who was eating something. Said the young lawyer: “You are
a brave man, aren’t you, Nick?”
It was the correct psychology; Nick said, quietly, “Yes, I think I am.”
“Well then, I must tell you that the Full Court has turned down our
appeal.”
“I expected it,” said Nick, quietly. “What are they there for?” He did
not wince; but he pushed his bowls and dishes aside and forgot them.
“Sure,” he said, “they have us, they will kill us. We will die like
men.” Then he said, “I will write a letter to Dante. You will come for
that, Musmanno, I want the bimbo to have it when he gets older, and
will be able to think about it.” “Bimbo” is an Italian endearment for a
boy; and Musmanno said he would come without fail.
He went to Vanzetti, the man of emotions, of words rather than of
actions. When Bart heard the news, his eyes opened wide like saucers,
and he sat staring before him, as if he were in a dream. He got up, and
began pacing his cell wildly, shouting in Italian. “There is nobody
more innocent in all this world!” He would not take it as a matter of
course that a man should die; he was a propagandist, and had reason
to live. “A million men! A million men!” he cried. He began to demand
that a microphone be brought to his cell, so that he might speak to the
workers of the world. Musmanno had to say that both these propositions
were equally impossible. All they could do was to make more appeals
before more judges. He was leaving for Washington that night, to file
an application before the United States Supreme Court.
The young lawyer came back late in the afternoon, but found that
Nick had not been able to work upon the letter to his son. They had
moved him back into the death cells for the third time. “Oh, this
is wearisome!” He lay, very weak, his mind unsteady. He could only
say, “I can’t understand it. They will kill us?” Vanzetti was sunk in
melancholy, and would say nothing except, “My sister! My sister!”
Luigia Vanzetti landed in New York that day; a quiet, thin, sad-faced
little woman in a faded brown traveling cloak, coming second class,
her name kept off the passenger list of the great liner. A strange
fate to have befallen a simple woman of an Italian village; in Paris
she had been set to march at the head of a huge parade of workers.
Now, bewildered by throngs coming to greet her, and by urgent young
newspapermen of this strange land of hustle and sensation, she clutched
a gold medallion of the Madonna in her hand; relying upon this ancient
magic to save her unhappy brother, whom she had not seen for nineteen
years. She hoped to convert him, she said; “I will ask him to see a
priest, and return to the faith of his childhood, of those happy days
before he left us.” Felicani and Rosina Sacco had come to meet her, and
persuaded her to soft-pedal that aspect of her mission. As it turned
out, she was no more able to save her brother’s soul than she was to
save his life.
XII
Henry Cabot Winters had to postpone important legal conferences, worth
at least a thousand dollars a day to him, to come and comfort his
distracted mother-in-law; to argue with her, explain to her--or just
listen to her. “Yes, I know, Mother, it seems very wrong that new
evidence cannot be considered; my judgment is, the Supreme Court won’t
stand by that ruling very long--they’ll reverse it, or the law will be
changed. But this time they must have it. You see, this Sacco-Vanzetti
evidence is not real evidence to them--it’s just more wops telling the
same old lies, and every one is tired of it.”
“Too tired to consider the good of our courts, Henry!”
“It’s just the other way to them, Mother--they think they are standing
by the courts. You must realize the dilemma; how can they throw Web
down?”
“It would seem to me that Web has thrown them down.”
“Web has been a vulgarian, of course. But after all, what he said is
what everybody thinks; and he’s been game, you have to admit that--he
had a nasty job, and he stuck to it like a little soldier. For seven
years he’s risked being shot or dynamited every hour of his life; and
now, to repudiate him--it can’t be thought of.”
“Couldn’t they find some other ground to grant a new trial?”
“It’s all very well to talk about new trials as a matter of propaganda;
but if you mean it seriously, stop and think. With this agitation
and uproar--how could there be a trial? You couldn’t get a jury in a
hundred years. Look at what happened to those people in East Milton!
Think of the witnesses--appearing and testifying, with dynamite
exploding all around them!”
“We wouldn’t need dynamite for those witnesses, Henry; with what we
know about them to-day, there isn’t one who would dare take the stand.”
“All right, grant that is true--where does it leave us? It comes to
this, the Commonwealth has had two Reds within a few minutes of the
electric chair, and now has to admit that it has no real evidence, the
whole thing blows up. We might just as well hand our courts over to the
Bolsheviks and be done with it. We’d never be able to convict another
one.”
“So, Henry, you are going to send two innocent men to death, because it
would be embarrassing to admit a blunder!”
The lawyer smiled patiently. “Don’t get to believing your rhetoric, and
putting it off on me, Mother! You asked me what is in the minds of the
Supreme Court, and I am telling you. When I talk to lawyers about it,
and bring them to admit that maybe the evidence is weak, that is the
argument they end up with--the courts must be sustained.”
“A brand new idea of justice, Henry!”
The other smiled again. “On the contrary, an idea as old as courts
themselves.” He cited the pronouncement of some fine old Tory judge to
a too-urgent plaintiff: “It were better that you be ruined, than that
the law be changed for the likes of you!” Henry was no legal scholar;
but because he lived in Boston, it was necessary for him to possess
some handy learning, for public purposes. He told his mother-in-law
that this pungent saying went back even farther; it was in Law-French,
which is a barbarous combination of old Norman-French with bastard
Latin. He wrote it out, in an effort to divert the poor soul’s mind
for a few moments. “Que est ceo a nous? Il est mieulx qu’il soit tout
defait, que la ley soit chaunge pur luy.”
XIII
Cornelia insisted that she had to see the Governor once more, to plead
with him for mercy. Even granting the worst, these men had been on the
rack for seven years, and surely that was punishment! Henry said that
would not get her very far; Fuller was a Roman senator, he believed
in a life for a life. He had not pardoned a single man during his
two terms as governor, and he had shortened only one sentence. But
Cornelia, being a very old lady, was entitled under the Boston law to
have her way; so Henry called up and made an appointment for her the
next morning, and promised to come take her.
A great crowd in front of the State House, more picketing having been
announced. Policemen so plentiful, they could have touched hands all
the way along the front of the great building. Much scrutiny of those
who came into the building--but Cornelia and Henry being obviously of
the ruling caste, the guards took one glance and passed them on. Crowds
of people in the corridors outside the executive chambers, reporters
hungry as a shoal of fish; but etiquette of course forbade the old lady
and her escort to talk to them. They were escorted into an inner office
to wait.
The Governor’s time was given up entirely to the hearing of pleas.
People came in groups, every sort--lawyers, clergymen, social workers,
labor leaders, writers--he saw them, and took pleasure in putting to
each lot his string of “posers”: Did you attend the trials? Have you
read the record? Have you talked with the witnesses? Then what do you
know about the case? When they set out to tell what they knew, he would
not always listen. Said Arthur Garfield Hays, attorney from New York:
“I wish to talk to you about the Department of Justice files.” Said the
Governor: “Who wrote that editorial in the _World_?”
Cornelia was escorted to her seat in the torture-chair, and the
automatic smile and the cold agate eyes were fixed upon her. Other
eyes also: Mr. Joseph Wiggin, the Governor’s personal attorney, and
Attorney-General Reading, and another lawyer. They never left him alone
now, there must be witnesses to every word he said, and expert football
players to employ what was known as “interference”--jumping in and
protecting him, to keep him from revealing his ignorance about the case.
It was as Henry had said--he was a Roman senator, and did not want to
talk about mercy. He wanted to pin this old lady down, and vent his
exasperation at the trouble she had caused him. He did not say in so
many words that she was to blame for all the lunatics carrying placards
outside on the street, but that was the meaning of his attitude.
Since his decision had been announced, he no longer had to pose as
open-minded; he might be the bitter advocate, asking questions, and
not paying any attention to her answers. “If Vanzetti was an innocent
man, why didn’t he take the stand at Plymouth? Why leave his alibi to a
twelve-year-old boy?”
“He produced eighteen alibi witnesses, Governor, and he could have got
more if his lawyers had worked. We have found a dozen since.”
“If Sacco and Vanzetti were good men as you say, why were they intimate
with a man like Boda?”
“But what have you against Boda, Governor?”
“I have sources of information, Mrs. Thornwell.”
“Boda was brought into the trial, and even Judge Thayer had to throw
him out. They dragged in all that tale about the Coacci shed, and about
Boda’s little Overland car--on purpose to make the jury think they had
a bandit-gang--”
“I don’t understand you, Mrs. Thornwell; there is nothing in the record
about Boda’s Overland car.”
“Why, Governor, of course it is there! I heard it in court, and I have
read it a hundred times.”
“You are mistaken, I am certain.” It was a great man speaking. “Wiggin,
is there anything in the record about Boda’s Overland car?”
“Nothing, Governor, that I have ever seen.”
What could Cornelia say? She could challenge him, of course, demand the
record, and show him; or she could offer to send him the citation in a
couple of hours. But what effect would it have, except to annoy him?
Several persons had had this same experience, and had told her about
it. Three times in the course of a brief interview, Cornelia would have
to let him make incorrect assertions about the record. She must be
tactful, and try to keep him smiling; for he was a man, and a Roman,
and he did not like women butting in, arguing, correcting. Woman’s
place was the home!
XIV
The salesman of motor-cars rested upon the authority of greater minds
than his own. “Mrs. Thornwell, I appointed a commission to investigate
this case, and I assure you, if a single one of those gentlemen had
thought there was a doubt of the men’s guilt, I would not have taken
this stand. But here you have three impartial referees--”
“Judge Grant had expressed a belief in their guilt before you appointed
him, Governor.”
“I have heard that gossip, but you should not repeat such a thing
unless you know it to be true.”
“But Judge Grant has written his opinion of Italians--he practically
called them a nation of pickpockets.”
“Where do you get that? I never heard such a tale!”
“I have the book upon my table at home, Governor, and I will send it to
you if you wish.”
But what he wished was to change the subject quickly. “I have had
witnesses coming to this room for two months--person after person,
assuring me of their identifications--”
“But Governor, even Judge Thayer had to throw out the identification
testimony before he got through with this case!”
“What do you mean--throw it out?”
“I thought you had studied Judge Thayer’s decisions. In his 1924
decision he said: ‘These verdicts did not rest, in my judgment, upon
the testimony of the eye-witnesses.’”
“What did he say they rested upon?”
“Upon the consciousness of guilt.” So then the Governor hastened to
talk about the consciousness of guilt. Sacco and Vanzetti had lied when
they were arrested, and they had lied on the stand, and their lies were
manifest and had been exposed, so that no sensible person would dispute
them.
“Granting your argument, Governor--”
“So you are prepared to admit that there was perjury in the case?”
“I am trying to find out where the argument leads us. If both sides
made up testimony--and certainly we know that there was a great deal of
it on the side of the prosecution--”
“I don’t know anything of the sort, Mrs. Thornwell.”
“You must know that Erastus Corning Whitney perjured himself.”
“Erastus what? I never heard of any such witness. Do you know of any
such, Wiggin?”
Cornelia broke in. “Pardon me, Governor, I was not setting a trap for
you. Erastus Corning Whitney is the real name of the man who took the
stand and swore that his name was Carlos E. Goodridge, and thereby
manifestly perjured himself. So, as I say, if we assume perjury on both
sides--”
“Then we can say that one cancels the other.”
“Pardon me if I point out the fallacy, Governor. To begin with, the
prosecution has to establish a case. When you wipe out the witnesses
of the prosecution, one by one, as we have done by our new evidence,
there is no case left, and under the law the men are innocent--quite
regardless of whether some of their Italian friends may have taken the
stand and made false alibis for them.”
“Why should innocent people have to be defended by perjury, Mrs.
Thornwell?”
“For only one reason that I know, Governor--that they know positively
the other side is preparing a perjured case against them. We have
established that, but we have never had any judgment upon it, except
that of Judge Thayer.”
One of the lawyers here considered it advisable to justify the high
fees which the Governor was paying him out of his private purse to
sit day by day and listen to these wrangles. “Mrs. Thornwell,” he
interposed, “you overlook the fact that the Supreme Judicial Court has
passed upon Judge Thayer’s rulings. As good citizens, we must have some
belief in the competence and disinterestedness of our highest court.”
Cornelia turned her brown eyes upon him. These eyes had somehow lost
their softness, and had a sparkle that might be malice. “Are you going
to advance that doctrine in your new brief on the Jerry Walker case?”
“My God!” thought the legal gentleman, and it took all his blue-blood
inheritance and Harvard training to keep his annoyance from showing
on his face. He relapsed into dignified silence, and pretended not to
see the look of mischief which his enemy Henry Cabot Winters shot at
him. Truly a comical situation: This gentleman, who was counsel for the
Governor in the Sacco-Vanzetti case, also was one of the counsel for
Jerry Walker, and was on the point of filing before the Supreme Court
of the United States an application for a writ of certiorari, to take
that case away from the highest court of Massachusetts and reverse its
decision. In that application the lawyer and his associates were going
to make the most outrageous charges--implying that the Supreme Judicial
Court of Massachusetts had become a “house of refuge for the rich and
powerful,” and declaring flatly that the judgment of the Full Court
was “made in bad faith,” and that “there is nothing more odious than
judicial favoritism,” which in this case had been “exercised in favor
of bankers.” A marvelous thing, that flexibility of the legal mind,
which can hold two diametrically opposite opinions at the same time;
sorting out truth and error into two baskets, as it were, and carrying
both to market, one in the right hand and one in the left!
XV
But it didn’t do Cornelia a bit of good to score points like that; it
only made these gentlemen hate her. She must swallow her indignation,
and come back to beg for mercy. “Remember, Governor, you must be
_sure_. You are doing something that can never be undone. There is an
old saying--I don’t know who is the author--that ‘only an infallible
judge should pass an immutable sentence.’”
“Do you know that those men are innocent, Mrs. Thornwell?”
“Of course I don’t know that; how could I know it--unless I had been
with them at the time? But I have been studying the case for seven
years, and I believe that they are innocent, and certainly I know
this--that they have not been proved guilty. I know all that I need to
know--that they did not have a fair trial.”
“Well,” said the Governor, “I know that they are guilty, so I don’t
care whether they had a fair trial or not.”
Cornelia stared at him; she was so taken aback by the remark that she
could hardly believe she had heard it. “You know they are guilty,
Governor Fuller?”
“I know it.”
“But how can you know it, unless there was a fair trial--somewhere,
somehow--to establish it?”
“I have sources of information, Mrs. Thornwell, which I am not at
liberty to reveal. You should find out what the Italian colony thinks
about this case.”
“Governor, what are you saying? Some one has come and whispered into
your ear, and you have been willing to believe it!”
“You cannot expect witnesses to tell all they know in the face of such
peril as has been created in this community, Mrs. Thornwell.”
“So then, it is exactly as Vanzetti said to me--for weeks he has been
saying it: ‘We are being murdered by the whispers of unknown men!’
Boston has gone back to the days of Russia under the tsars, of Turkey
under the sultans, of China under the mandarins! Spies come and whisper
secrets, and our rulers execute men upon words which they cannot or
dare not produce in open court!”
One of the lawyers thought he had better justify his fees again.
“Surely it is not quite so bad as that, Mrs. Thornwell--”
“It is so bad that it cannot be worse! And I implore you, Governor
Fuller--consider, before you take this fatal step, which will blast the
rest of your life! You are executing men upon secret testimony--but I
tell you, the world will insist upon knowing what that testimony is!
History will never let you alone until you tell what it is! And when
mankind has learned that it was the whispers of spies--the gossip of
what you are pleased to call ‘the Italian colony’--then you will face
such a blast of indignation as no man can face and live!”
After that they did not want to listen to her any more. After that
she was a distracted old woman who had fallen under the influence of
sinister “Reds,” and lost entirely her mental balance. All they desired
was to keep her from wasting the time of a busy and important public
man. They would be polite, of course--even in Russia and Turkey and
China the high officials were doubtless polite to old ladies of the
ruling caste. “Glad to have seen you again, Mrs. Thornwell. I will give
my best consideration to what you have said.” So Cornelia made her way
out through the crowds, with tears in her eyes for all the newspapermen
to see and report.
“Henry,” she asked, when they had got by themselves, “what can those
whispers be?”
Said the lawyer, “There’s a man in that State House crowd who will talk
with me, and I’ll see if I can find out.”
XVI
Michael Angelo Musmanno was in Washington, haunting the empty chambers
of the United States Supreme Court. The justices were on vacation,
but he lodged in the office of the clerk the two appeals from the
Massachusetts courts. He entered the formal appearance of Hill and
himself, paid the docketing fees, and the only thing remaining to
perfect the appeals was the record of the case, which the clerk of the
Dedham court had promised to send but which had not yet arrived. This
was later secured, and duly filed.
But this procedure did not of itself postpone the execution, and Monday
midnight was the hour set. Would any judge order a stay of execution?
The lawyers were rushing to this one and that; it was a free-lance
matter now, every man for himself--but still they found time to form
opinions of one another. The Boston lawyers thought they knew Boston;
they were conservative, and did things in a dignified manner, and held
newspaper reporters off at the end of a ten-foot pole. The New Yorkers,
on the other hand, were radicals, fighting in the open, and welcoming
the reporters as allies. They accused the Boston crowd of being jealous
about the case--“acting like a bunch of prima donnas!” said one.
Also among the committee, the frantic last-hour antagonisms between
those who wanted to save Sacco and Vanzetti as human beings, and
those who wanted to make them into symbols of the class war. Hardly
a telegram could be sent, or a statement given to the press, that
did not involve the controversy. The differences of ideas had become
embodied in personal antagonisms. The communists were collecting
sums of money for the defense, and the committee charged that this
money was not coming to them, but was being used for communist
propaganda. The communists replied with charges that the committee was
wasting its funds upon high fees to capitalist lawyers. Charges and
counter-charges--to the great glee of the enemy. The whispering gallery
which was the State House buzzed and hummed with gossip. The spies came
running, and the Governor’s advisers were on tip-toe. “What are they
doing now? What do they say about this? About that?”
The “New York nuts” organized another “death march.” This time it was
led by Captain Paxton Hibben, diplomat, war correspondent, and army
officer; dapper, erect, and with sharp little military mustaches. He
knew all about marches and parades, of course, and Boston knew him
because the _Transcript_ had slandered him and then had to retract and
apologize. Hibben was a Harvard master of arts, and with him came Dos
Passos and Hapgood, bachelors of arts, and therefore subordinates; also
James Rorty, the poet; and Clarina Michelson, from Greenwich Village,
a tireless soul who did the hard work; and several humble wage-earners
with names never heard before on Beacon Street. They marched their
allotted time--one-two-three-four-five-six-seven--with a captain of
police holding a watch on them; then they were led off under escort,
with the crowd hooting, and a few cheering.
At the corner of Joy Street, Captain Hibben, being in advance,
commanded, sharply, “Files right!” The huge police sergeant who had
him in charge looked at him, and said, “Were you in the service?” The
answer was, “I was a captain in the 332nd Field Artillery in France.”
“Well, Captain,” said the sergeant, “this is a strange place for you to
be!” “If you knew as much about Boston as I do, you would be with me,”
said Hibben; and in the old Joy Street police station, so oddly named,
they had a chat. Hibben had more than one man’s share of adventures to
tell; he had been second secretary in the American legation in old St.
Petersburg, he had been a war correspondent in the Near East in the
early days of the war, and secretary of the Russian Red Cross for the
Bolsheviks; a Chevalier of the Order of St. Stanislaus (Russian), an
Officer of the Order of the Redeemer (Greek), and of the Order of the
Sacred Treasure (Japan). “Holy smoke!” said the police sergeant; and on
Monday morning in court he was wholly unable to remember that he had
seen this starred and beribboned diplomat on the picket-line, and so
Hibben was discharged. The sergeant meant it for a favor, but it was a
cause of vexation to the prisoner, who had prepared a ringing statement
to read in court--and now it was a dud!
XVII
The three condemned men--Madeiros always with them!--had been moved
back into the death-house; into the three little cells with clean,
smooth white-tiled floors, and doors that were never opened--no guard
ever entered and no prisoner ever came out, except to die. Six feet
in front of the cells ran a painted line, beyond which no visitor was
permitted to step; at least, it had never yet happened in the history
of Massachusetts, which lives by precedent.
But now Luigia Vanzetti arrived in Boston, followed by a stream of
reporters, eager to make the most of this human interest story--“sob
stuff” is the technical name. A frail, pathetic woman, weighing not
more than a hundred pounds, and looking for all the world like a New
England school teacher--she was coming to the prison to meet her
brother, whom she had not seen since he was a youth. She had come all
the way from Villafalletto to help him die, and naturally she would
wish to step over the painted line and clasp him in her arms. To obtain
this favor all the eloquence of the ladies of the Sacco-Vanzetti
defense was concentrated upon Warden Hendry. They came to his office
and wept, and prayed, and stormed and scolded, until at last the
Commonwealth of Massachusetts broke a precedent, for the first time in
its three hundred years of history.
Bart was led out from his cell, and allowed to sit in a chair on the
other side of the painted line. The warden himself brought Luigia, and
two guards stood by to see that she did not give the condemned man any
poison, or a revolver, or an Italian stiletto. They tottered into each
other’s arms, sobbing; and in a moment more the woman collapsed, and
one guard had to catch her, while the other brought a chair. Bart sat,
patting her gently, and for an hour they talked about all the things
which might interest a brother and sister who had parted in their
teens, and met again in their middle thirties, with only two days more
of life upon earth together.
The twelve-year-old Dante Sacco had come with Rosina and paid a last
visit to his father; a terrible ordeal for a child, to pass that
canvas-shrouded death-chair, and sit listening to a faint voice, and
peering at a wasted shadow of a man through narrow steel bars which
must not be approached. The boy and the mother went out sobbing, the
latter hardly able to walk; each one of these visits was like a spell
of illness to her. The father set himself to his last task, of writing
the promised letter to the “bimbo”; to leave him some permanent message
which he might study when he grew older. Pitiful, rambling words of a
man trying to hold his faculties in the midst of torment, and to write
in a foreign language--because the “bimbo” spoke that language, and was
going to an American school. “Much I thought of you,” wrote the father,
“when I was lying in the death-house--the singing, the kind tender
voices of the children from the playground, where there was all the
life and the joy of liberty--just one step from the wall which contains
the buried agony of three buried souls.... Yes, Dante, they can crucify
our bodies to-day as they are doing but they cannot destroy our ideals
that will remain for the youth of the future to come....
“Well, my dear boy, after your mother had talked to me so much and I
had dreamed of you day and night, how joyful it was to see you at last.
To have talked with you like we used to in the days--in those days.
Much I told you on that visit and more I wanted to say, but I saw that
you will remain the same affectionate boy, faithful to your mother who
loves you so much, and I did not want to hurt your sensibilities any
longer, because I am sure that you will continue to be the same boy and
remember what I have told you. I knew that and what here I am going to
tell you will touch your feelings, but don’t cry, Dante, because many
tears have been wasted, as your mother’s have been wasted for seven
years, and never did any good.”
XVIII
The Great Novelist who makes up history had brought it about that while
Sacco and Vanzetti were lying in the death-cells, there preceded them
to the land of shadows a great American lord of steel and finance:
Elbert H. Gary, chairman of the board of directors and chief executive
of the United States Steel Corporation, with resources of two billions
of dollars. A great Christian he had been, helping to build that
mighty university of Methodism from which Dean Wigless had assailed
Felix Frankfurter; holder of eight honorary degrees from church
universities--the most pious plutocrat who ever split his strikers’
skulls and set thousands of spies to cow their souls. Before he left
for his mansion above, he also wrote a message to his beloved ones,
giving his _vade mecum_ as a follower of the gentle Jesus. His last
will and testament it was, and all the capitalist newspapers of America
featured his exalted words:
“I earnestly request my wife and children and descendants that
they steadfastly decline to sign any bonds or obligations of any
kind as surety for any other person, or persons; that they refuse
to make any loans except on the basis of first-class, well-known
securities, and that they invariably decline to invest in any
untried or doubtful securities or property or enterprise or
business.”
At this same time two anarchist wops, one of them an avowed atheist,
the other a vague deist of the old-fashioned sort, were writing their
last words to their beloved ones, and these words also were published.
Said Nicola Sacco, with one foot in eternity:
“So, Son, instead of crying, be strong, so as to be able to comfort
your mother, and when you want to distract your mother from the
discouraging soulness, I will tell you what I used to do. To take
her for a long walk in the quiet country, gathering wild flowers
here and there, resting under the shade of trees, between the
harmony of the vivid stream and the gentle tranquillity of the
mother nature, and I am sure that she will enjoy this very much,
as you surely would be happy for it. But remember always, Dante,
in the play of happiness, don’t you use all for yourself only,
but down yourself just one step, at your side and help the weak
ones that cry for help, help the persecuted and the victim because
they are your better friends, they are the comrades that fight and
fall as your father and Bartolo fought and fell yesterday for the
conquest of the joy and freedom for all the poor workers. In this
struggle of life you will find more love and you will be loved.”
Also Vanzetti left his message for Dante to study in after years. One
day before he died he wrote a letter to a little boy whose school
friends jeered him because he was the son of a murderer. Said Bart:
“I tell you all this now, for I know well your father, he is not
a criminal, but one of the bravest men I ever knew. Some day you
will understand what I am about to tell you, that your father has
sacrificed everything dear and sacred to the human heart and soul
for his faith in liberty and justice for all. That day you will be
proud of your father, and if you become brave enough, you will take
his place in the struggle between tyranny and liberty and you will
vindicate his name and our blood.
“Remember and know also, Dante, that if your father and I would
have been cowards and hypocrites and renegades of our faith,
we would not have been put to death. They would not even have
convicted a leprous dog; not even executed a deadly poisonous
scorpion on such evidence as that they framed against us. They
would have given a new trial to a matricide and habitual felon on
the evidence we presented for a new trial.
“Remember, Dante, remember always these things: We are not
criminals; they convicted us on a frame-up; they denied us a new
trial; and if we will be executed after seven years, three months
and seventeen days of unspeakable tortures and wrongs, it is for
what I have already told you; because we were for the poor and
against the exploitation and oppression of man by man.”