THE CITY OF FEAR
I
“This is our career and our triumph,” Bart had proclaimed; and
assuredly never had “a good shoemaker and a poor fish-peddler” caused
such excitement in the world. On Saturday, two days before the
execution, there was an order for a general strike in Buenos Ayres; in
Berlin a protest from the trade unions, and the first radical meeting
ever held in the former House of Lords of the Kingdom of Prussia; in
London a mob of ten thousand in front of the American embassy; in
Geneva a call for the boycotting of American goods; in Russia enormous
protest meetings in every city; in Paris a hundred thousand workers
parading, carrying red flags and huge placards denouncing American
justice; tourists being greeted with shouts from thousands of throats,
“Pardon! Pardon!”--and as a rule finding it prudent to reply, “Vive
Sacco et Vanzetti!” The workers were bewildered by the spectacle of
Puritan severity, and helpless in the face of it. Pierre Leon, editing
a French communist paper, cabled to Joe Randall: “What can we do?”
Joe’s answer was: “Repudiate the debts.” But that, alas, was not an
immediate program; the best the French could do was to fail to pay them.
Only in Massachusetts itself was silence. Boston under the iron heel,
and civil rights subject to revocation. One simple rule, easy for
all to understand: do what the police tell you and keep your mouth
shut. Superintendent Crowley had requested the mayor to cancel all
the eighteen speaking permits on the Common, and thus free speech was
dumped out of the “cradle of liberty.” The defense committee was trying
to hire a hall for a last minute protest-meeting, but the police made
a round of the halls and warned the owners; if they rented to the
Reds, they would lose their license. It was a trick which “Mickey
the Gunman” had been working for several years; by means of it he had
suppressed a young Lithuanian named Bimba, who proclaimed himself an
atheist, and annoyed the Catholic priests. The police would close up
halls, on the ground that they violated fire ordinances; something
which, in an old city like Boston, a great many buildings did.
At the last minute the defense committee succeeded in finding a hall,
and on Saturday evening a pitiful meeting was held, with almost as
many “cops” as audience. A speaker started to describe what was going
to happen in Charlestown prison on Monday midnight, and a police
official stepped forward, saying, “No more of that, or we’ll shut you
up.” So the orators discussed the case in abstract terms, not saying
anything rude about governors or college presidents, nor using bad
words like “anarchistic bastards.” Paxton Hibben spoke, military and
incisive; Powers Hapgood, fiery and determined; Alfred Baker Lewis,
who seemed like a big but very serious boy; then Betty Alvin, for the
Back Bay; and--miracle of miracles--a Catholic lifting his voice for
two infidels! The members of the Boston police force rubbed their eyes
as the Reverend Francis Xavier Regan took the platform, and told the
story of Caleb Cunningham, the wealthy resident of Milton who had shot
and killed the Swede, John Johnson, for cutting wood on his land, and
had been so considerately treated by the authorities of Norfolk County.
One Catholic remembered the humble origins of his Church--even in the
diocese of His Eminence, “Big Bill”!
A call had been issued for labor union delegates to meet on that same
Saturday evening, to consider plans for a general strike. Since it was
manifestly too late, the police did not interfere. About fifty workers
attended, mostly from the Italian barbers and the Jewish needle trades;
the American workers present might have been counted on the fingers of
one hand. The American workers were out on the roads in second-hand
cars with their families, eating hot-dogs and drinking soda-pop; they
were at the movies, watching poor girls marry millionaires and poor
boys make fortunes overnight; they were shooting craps and playing
poker and drinking home brew. Assuredly they were not out on the
streets, getting their heads broken for any wops.
Michael Gold went about listening, and reporting public sentiment in
Boston. A young sailor prowling in Scollay Square, on the hunt for
women: “They ought to be burned; they insulted the flag.” A clerk
drinking ice cream soda at a fountain: “All them Italians look like
murderers to me.” A timid little groceryman expressing himself over the
counter: “Yes, maybe they are innocent, but we gotta bump ’em off, or
we’ll all be bombed in our beds.” A telephone girl, hearing an Italian
voice complaining of a wrong number: “Aw shut up, you Guinney rat, wait
till you see what we do to you on August 22nd!”
All this they had got out of their newspapers, of course. For a brief
time there had been a break in newspaper solidarity regarding the
Sacco-Vanzetti case; an editorial writer of the _Herald_ had won the
Pulitzer prize of 1926 for an editorial demanding a new trial. But now
his voice was silent. The department-stores were clamoring to have an
end to the public anxiety; business had fallen off, because women, who
do most of the shopping, were afraid to go about. The only industry
which was thriving was that of riot and bomb insurance; the companies
wrote it to the amount of eight hundred million dollars, and didn’t
have to pay one cent! A net profit of a cool million to the companies,
and a corresponding loss to Boston merchants. Preposterous that two
wops should cause such trouble! The newspapers, which thrive upon
department-store advertising, made one sweet harmony: “Stand by the
Governor and the courts.” In the profession, Boston was known as “the
poor-house of journalism.”
II
Cornelia, splashing around frantically for a straw to catch hold of,
bethought herself of Cardinal O’Connell. Luigia Vanzetti was a faithful
daughter of the church, and a pitiful figure; perhaps she might be
able to tempt the great man into making an appeal for clemency. So
Jessica Henderson came with her limousine, always there to help the
Sacco-Vanzetti defense, and they drove the anxious, fearful little
woman out to the summer home of the great prelate at Marblehead. He was
on the lawn with his dog when the party arrived, and Mrs. Henderson’s
daughter went to ask if he would see Luigia. “Bless her heart, of
course,” he said.
He was cordial, charming, as he knew how to be when it was worth while.
He served tea himself, and remarked to Cornelia, “It may be a long time
before you have a cardinal pouring tea for you again.” He chatted with
Luigia in Italian, and Cornelia could understand enough to know that he
was sympathizing greatly, and doing nothing. Afterwards he wrote and
gave to the papers a statement on the subject which was a masterpiece
of diplomatic piety: “Human judgment is fallible at best.... But the
judgment of God is perfect and in the end He and His ways, mysterious
as they are, are our hope and salvation.” Said the sarcastic Betty:
“Now we know why God was invented--so that princes of the church may
dodge their moral responsibilities!”
Futile to try to make headway in Boston, with the weight of such
authority against you! The local liberals were hamstrung by the Lowell
report. If Mr. Lowell said it, it must be so, and who are we to set
ourselves up against him? Likewise Bishop Lawrence had clambered onto
the bandwagon. Having asked the Governor to appoint an impartial
commission, he now accepted the impartial decision, and commended the
Governor for his firmness and courage. He did this in a letter, which
appeared in the press.
There they stood, the three intellectual and spiritual guides of
Boston: the Cardinal of the Holy Roman Catholic Church, the Bishop
of the Protestant Episcopal Church, and the President of Harvard
University. When a stranger inquired concerning them, he was struck by
a curious fact: the first statement about any one of the three would
be that he was an efficient administrator of enormous properties. This
was not his fault, of course; the properties were there, and must be
administered; but the automatic effect was this, that if you were to go
to any one of the three administrators, and make a remark suggesting
that he should act upon the creed he taught, he would begin to watch
you to see whether you were the dangerous kind.
The Cardinal of the Catholics was exiling rebellious spirits to the
backwoods, and raising up a generation of young clerics who were at
once preachers, politicians, and real estate experts; you could know
when one of them was in favor by the fact that his mother and father,
brothers and sisters, cousins and aunts, moved immediately into
expensive residences. As for the Bishop of the Blue-bloods, he had a
father who helped to finance John Brown’s expedition to fight slavery
in Kansas; the son was known as the best money-raiser in New England,
and had turned his vast organization into a school of social propriety.
When it was a question of a blue-blood church official accused of
undue intimacy with choir-boys, you would see this well-bred bishop
as anxious to have the law not enforced as he was to have it enforced
against anarchist wops.
As for President Lowell, he would boast that every professor in his
great institution enjoyed complete freedom of speech, and when some one
asked him how he could manage anything so dangerous, he would smile and
say that it was easy if you were careful whom you allowed to become a
professor. When it chanced that a Harvard lecturer dared to attack the
electric light and power interests, whose directors and bankers compose
the governing body of the university, President Lowell would “fire”
him, and incidentally lie to him, with exactly the same heartiness as a
“wop” standing by a friend accused of banditry, or a blue-blood banker
trying to save fifteen million dollars.
III
Bugles in the streets; a regiment of the state militia marching,
with grim set faces--the answer of the Commonwealth to the challenge
of anarchy. Airplanes flying overhead, watching for bombers in the
sky. Military squads on duty at every public building, suspicious of
every foreign face, and now and then stopping a passerby to search a
bundle or open a suitcase. Every policeman on twenty-four hour duty
again; sitting in the station-houses, and now and then called out
for a wild ride or a gallop, on account of a bomb-scare. The firemen
also on twenty-four hour duty, and all armed. The American Legion
mobilized to guard the homes of the rich and the great. Every judge,
juror, prosecutor, witness, or official who had ever had anything to
do with the Sacco-Vanzetti case was being protected, and there was no
foolishness about the protection.
A man hopped out of an automobile at the home of President Lowell,
and started towards the rear entrance, carrying a heavy black bag.
They did not stop to ask him who he was or what he wanted, they hit
him over the head and laid him out--and then ascertained that he was
delivering a load of that heavy aluminum ware which is the latest fad
in fancy cookery for the rich. A young Catholic priest stepped off
the train in South Station, arriving from the west for a holiday; he
went to the information bureau and said, “Will you please tell me the
way to the State House?” “Certainly,” replied the clerk, and called a
policeman, saying, “This man wants to know the way to the State House.”
The kind-hearted policeman said he would escort him, and led him to a
patrol-wagon, and drove him to the nearest station-house, where they
held him “incommunicado” for twenty-four hours.
The great Commonwealth had told ten thousand lies; and now for every
lie there was a club and a bayonet. If you wished to oppose the lies,
there was just one way--put your head under the crashing clubs, throw
your body onto the gleaming bayonets. This was not merely the law of
Massachusetts, this was the law of life, the way by which lies have
been killed throughout history. The friends of the defense confronted
this crisis, and either went forward and took the punishment, or shrunk
back and sneaked away with a whole skin and a damaged conscience.
Terrible scenes in the Thornwell family. In “Hillview,” Great-uncle
Abner storming, because the Governor had been browbeaten once, and
might yield again; Abner declared that he would wheel himself all
the way to Boston, thirty miles or so on the public highway, and
present himself at the Governor’s office to demand the death of the
two anarchists. On the other hand, in the tenement on the north side
of Beacon Hill was Deborah pleading and praying to her daughter, not
to throw away her life, not to disgrace herself and her innocent and
helpless family.
Cornelia was not going to get arrested; she was motoring with Mrs.
Henderson to make an appeal to Justice Brandeis of the Supreme Court.
But Betty had pledged herself to carry a placard on the Common, and
Joe also. They had sent out a call for a thousand demonstrators, and at
least two were going to respond. Nothing that Deborah could say would
have any effect; no tears, no prayers. “They are surely going to arrest
me once,” said Betty, and laughed, a trifle hysterically. “They are not
going to murder Bart and Nick without arresting me at least once!” When
Deborah brought in the sacred names of little Rupert Alvin Thornwell
Randall, the unnatural mother made reply: “The best thing that could
happen to him would be for me and Joe to be clubbed to death, so that
you and Father could raise him to be respectable!”
That was late Saturday night, after the meeting in Scenic Auditorium.
Deborah stayed in town that night, and telephoned to Rupert, who gave
up a service in his new private chapel, the joy of his life, to come
and add the immense weight of his authority. But Betty did not even
wait to see him; she went off to a gathering of the “New York nuts,”
who were making cardboard signs to wear while undergoing martyrdom.
Her Uncle James Scatterbridge came upon her in the lobby of the Hotel
Bellevue--most fashionable of hostelries, adjoining the State House,
where a group of the leisure class “nuts” had made their headquarters,
to the great dismay of the management.
Uncle James came there, with blood in his eye, looking for his Josiah,
intending to take him captive by force if necessary. But James’s Josiah
was hiding, and when his father actually found him, he was walking on
the outskirts of the Common, with a policeman holding each arm, and a
jeering crowd all around. James pushed his way through and took charge,
to the relief of the “cops,” who had been told to make as few arrests
as possible. There followed painful hours for both father and son; but
do not worry too much, for it will turn out happily in the end--the
great cotton-master will be able to keep his son’s name out of the
papers, and also be able to make his Josiah into a mildly successful
young business man. They will look back on this adventure some day,
and the older will be secretly rather proud of the younger’s nerve. “A
damned fool, of course; but then, we’re all damned fools when we’re
young.”
IV
Boston Common is an irregularly shaped park, comprising, with the
Public Gardens, about a square mile. It is laid out with rambling
paths, and has a Monument Hill, with cannon and other trophies; there
are greenswards, groups of trees, a band-stand with benches, the
“Frog Pond,” and in the Public Gardens a little lake for boats. The
State House with the golden dome overlooks it from one corner; the
Park Street Church, the Union Club, and many of the homes of the old
families on Beacon Street. On the other side is Tremont Street, with
the fashionable shops; and from the end of the Public Gardens starts
Commonwealth Avenue, where the Alvins lived. All very fashionable, in
a dignified way, mixed up with history and tradition, taking itself
seriously. In the old days, this Common had been the place where the
villagers pastured their cows; now it was a place for nursemaids to
flirt with sailors from the ships, and for out-of-works to study the
“help wanted” ads in the newspapers. On Sunday afternoons all the
religious cranks, the holy rollers and the Salvation Army, shouted
under the trees along the mall; also the atheists and the socialists
and the single taxers, and those who refuse to believe that the earth
is round.
But this Sunday, August 21st, all that was off, and for a year to
come. There was a band concert and a radio concert to keep the
crowds occupied; also two ball-games, and two impromptu dog-fights.
Twenty-five thousand people came--having read in the papers that some
new-style martyrs were going to feed themselves to the lions.
One thousand had been called for, and fourteen came. The lawyers were
in part responsible for that, having strenuously urged against it. The
demonstrators would be sure to get their heads clubbed, and could only
do harm to the case by cheap notoriety. Those who were troubled by
the former consideration were glad to have the latter for an excuse.
The few stubborn ones who insisted upon coming were troubled by both
considerations, but of course would only admit the latter. They brought
little rolls of cardboard, printed with Sacco-Vanzetti protests, to
wear over their shoulders, and made their rendezvous in a corner
drug-store, eyed suspiciously by the proprietor, because they looked
fidgety and queer, not at all “Boston.” The job had fallen mostly to
the “New York nuts.”
There was John Dos Passos, faithful son of Harvard, and John Howard
Lawson, another one of the “New Playwrights” from Greenwich Village.
There was Clarina Michelson, ready to do the hard work again, and
William Patterson, a Negro lawyer from New York, running the greatest
risk of any of them, with his black face not to be disguised. Just
up Beacon Street was the Shaw Monument, with figures in perennial
bronze, of unmistakable Negro boys in uniform, led by a young Boston
blue-blood on horseback; no doubt Patterson had looked at this, and
drawn courage from it. To uphold the high traditions of the city,
there came Betty Alvin and Joe Randall, considered a Bostonian-in-law;
also James’s Josiah, more scared of his father than of the police; and
Margaret Hatfield, whose father was a prominent Republican, treasurer
of Middlesex county. Margaret had taken the precaution to “dress the
part,” so she was safe, though she couldn’t be sure of it. Her mother
was behaving exactly like Betty’s mother, wandering about the Common
twisting her hands together, and moaning to herself, “Oh, _why_ do they
have to do it?”
V
“Come on, you sons-of-bitches, do you want to live forever?” So,
according to army tradition, a sergeant shouted to a squad, going “over
the top” in the Argonne forest. It is an idea which, with or without
the language, has animated martyrs through the ages. They have walked
to the lions, they have walked to the stake and the gallows and the
guillotine, and other forms of terror; now they walked to the clubs
and the bayonets--a little group from the corner drug-store, quaking
inside, and trembling in the knees, but setting their teeth and holding
their heads high. As it happened, none was to be seriously hurt, but
they could not know that; pain is pain, and a cracked skull, or the
hoofs of horses in your stomach, are as unpleasant as any other form.
Come on, you New York nuts, do you want to live forever?
The Common stretching before them. The mall, where the speaking should
have been, is closed by a cordon of police; no use to try it there.
They get out on the concrete walk, and then look at one another
anxiously. Are they in a good place, among the crowd? Some one says
yes, and with trembling fingers they unroll the placards and put them
over their shoulders. The bystanders see, and cheers go up. Crowds
begin to gather; they have been wandering about, waiting for something
to happen, and here it is! “Hurrah for Sacco and Vanzetti!” “Save Sacco
and Vanzetti!” At once a counter demonstration: “Down with the Reds!
Lynch them!”
The little band of martyrs walk on, seeing nothing, hearing nothing;
a trifle dizzy with the excitement--that rare mood of martyrdom, more
wonderful than drunkenness. You walk upon the air, into the clouds;
the earth and the limitations of the flesh no longer exist; you have
transcended them all, you belong to the ages, you speak to God. “Wir
sind all des Todes eigen,” sings the German poet--“we all belong to
death.” We have seen such wickedness upon earth that we choose rather
to die than to let it prevail.
“All right,” says the world, “if you want to die, we are willing!”
The lions roar; if you want to be eaten, their stomachs are made for
the purpose! Here come the police, clubs drawn. “Enough of that now!
Take off those signs and get out of here!” They try to grab the signs,
and the marchers dodge this way and that, to protect them as long as
possible; bystanders grab at the signs, others try to block the way of
the “cops.” The clubs begin to fall; a disagreeable sound, the thud of
hickory on human flesh and bone.
Here come the mounted men, riding through the throngs. “Look out
for yourself!” Women shriek; the horses charge straight ahead,
knocking people down. A strange experience for a daughter of the best
families--Betty can hardly believe it; she thinks the horse will swerve
at the last moment; then she realizes that the rider means to run her
down, and she leaps too late, the shoulder of the passing horse strikes
her and sends her spinning.
The trooper speeds on; he has spied the black face, and wants that
most of all. The Negro runs, and the rider rears the front feet of
his steed, intending to strike him down with the iron-shod hoofs. But
fortunately there is a tree, and the Negro leaps behind it; a man
can run round a tree faster than the best-trained police-mount--the
dapper and genial William Patterson proves it by making five complete
circuits before he runs into the arms of an ordinary cop, who grabs
him by the collar and tears off his sign and tramples it in the dirt,
and then starts to march him away. “Well,” he remarks, sociably, “this
is the first time I ever see a nigger bastard that was a communist.”
The lawyer is surprised, because he has been given to understand that
that particular bad word is barred from the Common; Mike Crowley was so
shocked, two weeks ago, when Mary Donovan tacked up a sign to a tree:
“Did you see what I did to those anarchistic ----? Judge Thayer.” But
apparently the police do not have to obey their own laws.
The “Black Maria” is in readiness, and comes with clanging bell, and
the prisoners are loaded into it--all but the “nigger bastard.” He has
to be walked to the police-station--because it would not be decent
for him to ride in the same patrol-wagon with his friend Clarina
Michelson! The others are driven off--and when they get to the La
Grange Street station-house and compare notes, they discover that they
have lost their blue-bloods! Betty is missing, and her husband, and
her cousin Josiah! Margaret Hatfield is missing! Even in the midst of
that excitement, the police have found time to consult the “social
register”! A little later they turn loose John Dos Passos--no Harvard
graduates wanted! The only ones they arrest are five workers, two named
Sansevrion, one Schulman, one Amari, and that Cosimo Carvotta against
whom they have a special grudge, on account of having lied about him in
the police court after the previous Sunday’s arrests.
VI
In the La Grange Street station they found Paula Holladay, waiting for
some company. No story of that last Sunday would be complete without
the Odyssey of Paula, who had made a parade all by herself--and a
long one! She was the founder of “Polly’s,” a Greenwich Village
café renowned in song and story; that summer she had been running a
restaurant in Provincetown, on Cape Cod. Her conscience began to gnaw
at her, and she decided to do what one woman could to express a sense
of injustice. She turned her business over to a friend, and put on a
sign reading, “Is justice dead? Save Sacco and Vanzetti,” and set out
to walk from Provincetown to Boston, a distance, as the “nut” walks, of
a hundred and twenty-five miles.
Now and then on the route, women working in their gardens would see
that sign, and follow along on the other side of the picket-fence,
saying, “I wish I had a shot-gun in the house, I’d show you what I’d
do to you!” Ladies in automobiles would stop to express the same
sentiment. But apparently the shotgun is an obsolete instrument in
Massachusetts, for Paula reached Boston with a whole skin, except for a
blister on the heel. She joined the other nuts, and learning that the
police were destroying all banners and signs, she painted her message
on a red “slicker,” or waterproof coat, and sallied forth onto the
Common thus garbed.
She was passing the bandstand, when the first “cop” spied her, and
took her in tow. A crowd gathered quickly, and there were waves of
shouting, some for, some against. The policeman’s hand began to tremble
on the woman’s arm. “Why are you so nervous?” she said--after which
he managed to control himself. Another came to his aid, and then two
mounted men, who kept her between them, safe. When she told them that
she was determined to stay on the Common, they conducted her to the
police-station. “What is the charge?” she demanded; the answer was,
“Oh, never mind that, just lock her up.”
Presently came “Mike” Crowley, having kissed the Blarney stone that
morning. “Now it would be too bad for a nice-looking young lady like
you to get into any trouble that might get her on the books here.” The
answer of Paula was, “I am neither so young nor so good-looking, and
I am not afraid to get on the books. I want to know whether I am kept
here by force without any charge.” When he wouldn’t answer, she said,
“I will find out,” and started to leave; so then he put his hand upon
her shoulder, and she was there by force. They kept her until evening,
when there were no more crowds upon the Common, and no more harm to be
done by the wearing of a red “slicker” with the question, “Is justice
dead?”
VII
The lawyers were making another attempt to open the Department of
Justice files, and they appealed to Governor Fuller for a respite until
the documents could be studied. Arthur Hill asked also for time to
permit the United States Supreme Court to consider his application. The
Governor followed his usual policy of declining to say what he would
do; so the lawyers were racing about from one country-place to another,
trying to persuade some judge to order a stay. In those last hectic
days they put the matter before a dozen different judges, representing
the Superior Court and the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, and
the District Courts and the Supreme Court of the United States.
Mr. Hill journeyed to see Justice Holmes at his place in Beverly, on
the North Shore: Oliver Wendell Holmes, son of the poet, eighty-six
years of age, respected by all liberals, because he and Brandeis
invariably wrote a minority opinion when the court made further
restrictions upon human rights in the interest of privilege. The
old gentleman now said that he did not think he had the power to
interfere, but wished them luck with some other justice who might think
differently. “Unofficially,” he said that Sacco and Vanzetti could not
have got a fair trial in 1921.
They went to Louis Brandeis, their last hope. A Jewish lawyer of great
ability, Brandeis had begun practice in Boston, and made a fortune
early, and then turned against the system, and became an advocate of
the public interest, and therefore one of the most hated men in the
city. When Woodrow Wilson had named him for the Supreme Court bench,
there had been a howl from State Street, and no voice louder than that
of President Lowell of Harvard. Nevertheless, the radical Jew had got
in; and now he had the greatest chance of his career--and missed it.
The Court was composed mainly of hard-boiled corporation lawyers,
selected by President Taft--now the Chief Justice--and by Harding and
Coolidge. Undoubtedly these men would have reversed any action that
Brandeis might have taken; but at least it would have been a gesture,
and a crown upon a great life. Cornelia spent Sunday afternoon arguing
and pleading with the justice, but in vain; telegrams came raining
upon him, in vain. He was bound, like all other judges. It so happened
that Rosina Sacco had occupied a house belonging to Mrs. Brandeis in
Dedham, and this constituted “prejudice.” The justice could not be
persuaded that prejudice in favor of mercy was different from prejudice
in favor of one interest against another. Vanzetti commented upon this
singular situation in a letter to Harry Dana--almost the last words he
wrote:
“So it is coming to pass that some justices repel our appeal
because they are friendly with us, and other justices repel our
appeal because they are hostile to us, and through this elegant
_Forche Caudine_ we are led straight to the electric chair.”
These nine elderly gentlemen who did the real governing of the United
States were overworked, and in dread of taking more upon their bowed
shoulders. They had the task of telling the American people what laws
they might pass and what laws they might not pass; what their laws
meant, or ought to mean; in short, what served the propertied classes,
and what threatened them. An enormous task; and the old gentlemen
contemplated with dismay the idea of opening the sluice-gates and
letting in more work upon themselves.
They dealt with the law, they said, and never with the facts. But
when there came an emergency where it seemed necessary to deal with
facts, they would find a way to do it. The Supreme Judicial Court of
Massachusetts had just shown that in the Jerry Walker case, where
the jury had decided the facts against the interest of the fellow
club-members of the Court. The Court had stepped in and considered such
facts as they pleased, and like all special pleaders they had stated
the facts on their own side, and suppressed the facts on the other
side. But in the case of Sacco and Vanzetti there were no vast sums of
money at stake--only the lives of two wops. “It were better that you be
ruined than that the law be changed for the likes of you!”
VIII
Cornelia came back to her apartment on Sunday evening, beaten and
exhausted. Betty was over at defense headquarters, helping to organize
the new arrivals and plan the last demonstration. Poets, writers,
artists--all persons, old and young, with an urge to martyrdom--were
pouring into Boston, and in front of the State House they would have
their chance. Betty was lame from her effort to upset a horse, but was
sticking to her desk; she had not been to bed the night before, and was
not going to-night. “Plenty of time to sleep after Monday midnight,”
she said. “Bart and Nick will keep us company.”
Joe was at the headquarters of the new “Citizens’ National Committee,”
which was concentrating its efforts upon trying to persuade the Federal
authorities to accept their responsibility in the case. The committee
was sending and receiving hundreds of telegrams every day: obtaining
signatures to a petition to the President of the United States, asking
him to intervene, according to the precedent set by Woodrow Wilson,
when the State of California had been on the point of executing Tom
Mooney. But there was an important difference between the two cases;
Mooney was an A. F. of L. man, and labor had to be handled gingerly in
war-time. But now there was what capitalism calls “peace,” and Sacco
and Vanzetti had no standing in the court of power-politics.
The President of the United States was that “Cautious Cal,” whom we
saw shot up on the Massachusetts escalator. “Keep cool with Coolidge,”
had been the slogan which had got him the greatest vote ever given to
a wizard of prosperity. Now the wizard was keeping himself cool upon a
high mountain peak in Yellowstone Park. He knew the way to do nothing,
and do it more systematically, than any man who had ever held the
office. He had as much idea of dipping his fingers into that boiling
Boston caldron as he had of spending his vacation in the mountains of
the moon. Hundreds of dollars were spent collecting signatures to a
petition, and thousands were spent by individuals telegraphing direct.
The messages came by the basketful, and served to start the evening
fires for a chilly and frugal New Englander.
Musmanno was at Hill’s office, trying for a long-distance telephone
connection with Chief Justice Taft. This elder statesman was in Canada,
where he could not legally sign a writ; it was Musmanno’s idea that
he might come to the border, and there at least hear a petition. The
young lawyer had an airplane ready, and would start that Sunday night.
He sat at the telephone from seven in the evening until four the next
morning, but the great jurist was able to find some perfectly good
legal reason for staying where he was.
IX
Deborah was in the apartment, waiting for her mother, to plead with her
not to kill herself in this dreadful crisis. Cornelia was hardly able
to get up the stairs without help; yet unwilling to go to the Alvin
home, where there was an elevator. She could not sleep; she must lie
on the bed, with the telephone receiver to her lips, asking for news.
She would sink back, and Deborah would think she was resting--but no,
she was getting ready to call Mr. Moors, to see if he could not induce
Mr. Lowell to induce the Governor to grant a few more days! She was
appealing to Hubert Herring, a young Congregational clergyman who had
risked his job, getting a dozen other clergymen to sign an appeal to
the Governor!
Mother and daughter shouted to each other across an abyss, and just
now the abyss was full of thunder, and it was hard for voices to get
across. “Mother! Mother!”--Cornelia heard a faint cry--“You think more
about two Italian anarchists than you do about any member of your own
family!”
“My dear”--Cornelia shouting back--“no one is planning to murder any
member of my family.”
Deborah would take a sentence and meditate over it, until an answer
became so urgent in her bosom that she would try once more. “Mother,
there are other kinds of unhappiness, almost as bad as being murdered.”
“My child, that is God, trying to break the hard shell of your pride.”
Cornelia phoned to Arthur Hill’s office. His daughter-in-law was in
charge of the phone, and would tell her if there was any more news.
There was none, and Cornelia hung up, and sat staring before her
with a face of torment. Deborah’s heart ached, but the only way she
could help was to diminish her mother’s interest in those dreadful
Italians! “Mother, Henry has become positive that both those men were
dynamiters.” And again: “Mother, I believe you really prefer dynamiters
to law-abiding people!”
Make allowances for Cornelia. These family disputes, that go on for
years and years and never get anywhere, are hard upon the nerves. Said
the mother: “I prefer the dynamiter who cares about justice to the most
law-abiding person in the world who doesn’t!”
The telephone rang; Deborah’s older daughter, Priscilla, asking if
she might come round. This had been one of Deborah’s schemes--her
daughter would keep Cornelia’s mind occupied with news about the
great-grandchildren. But Priscilla had better not mention that her
mother had suggested the visit. Deborah was forever devising such
little plots--always, of course, for the other person’s good; and she
had trained her older daughter to coöperate.
Cornelia began asking about the wife of Governor Fuller--what sort
of woman was she? It seemed that Jessica Henderson and Cornelia were
planning to motor up to Rye Beach, New Hampshire, the next day, and
implore the help of this much-troubled lady. Deborah told what she had
been able to judge from one dinner-party. Mrs. Fuller was a Catholic;
and Cornelia asked, what would that mean? Could she possibly be made
to understand that Jesus was to be electrocuted in Boston to-morrow
midnight?
So Deborah burst out again: “Mother, do you think Jesus ever used
dynamite?”
“No, my dear, it wasn’t invented in those days. All he had was a whip,
to drive the moneychangers out of Trinity Church.” And after Deborah
had expatiated upon the extreme charitableness of Trinity Church, her
mother shocked her by exclaiming: “Oh, Boston, Boston, thou that givest
the prophets a ride in the patrol-wagon!”
X
Priscilla came, a tall and distinguished young matron now; but she
did not get any chance to tell the news about her three children. She
found the poor old woman lying back on her pillow with her eyes closed,
speaking in whispers which might have come from a death-bed. She took
Priscilla’s hand, and said, “I talk to your mother, and it means
nothing to her. Let me try the next generation!”
“Yes, Grandmother,” said Priscilla, obediently. “What is it?”
“Your mother cannot understand how anarchists come to be in Boston.
So I try to explain to her. When I was a young married woman, about
your age, I used to look out of our back windows and see pitiful
children of the poor, going about in winter-time with ragged shawls
over their shoulders and holes in their shoes, rooting in the frozen
garbage in alleys behind the Back Bay homes. I was told that it was
the will of God, so I did nothing. But now I have discovered that it
is a social system. All those miles of slum tenements down in the
South End, falling into ruins, with filth and litter in the alleys and
mangy cats prowling--that hideousness which is the underside of our
proud and pious city--that is not God, that is blue-blood old ladies
and gentlemen holding acres and acres of land, inherited from their
great-grandfathers, and letting the tenements fall into ruins while
they wait for an increase in land values which they do nothing to
produce. Is that so hard to understand, Priscilla?”
“No, Grandmother.”
“Well, that is one detail out of a hundred. Your husband owns millions,
because he was allowed to inherit a mountain of copper, which he did
nothing to earn, and which others manage and work for him. You will
inherit millions because your father is allowed to manufacture the
credit of the country and keep it for his own use--no, Deborah, don’t
argue with me, for I know you haven’t studied our banking system, even
though you are a banker’s wife. Mr. Lowell is a multi-millionaire
because he is allowed to exploit the labor of thousands of slaves
in cotton-mills--even though he never tended a spindle or managed a
factory in his life. Governor Fuller is the richest of all of us,
because he is allowed to sit like a robber baron of the Middle Ages,
and fine everybody a thousand dollars for the privilege of driving a
Packard car in New England. He talks about bandits, and really thinks
they should all be executed! All of us sit on top of our privileges,
and haven’t the least idea of getting off; we use all the powers of
society to seduce or destroy those who resist us--if necessary, we kill
them for a crime, whether they committed it or not.”
There were many questions that Priscilla would have liked to ask, and
many objections that her mother would have liked to register. But both
of them were frightened, thinking that Cornelia might gasp out her
life on that bed. So they sat silent, with distress in their eyes; and
presently the poor soul was whispering again:
“My children, I have followed this case for seven years, and here is
what I know about it, a frightful thing to say--from first to last
there has not been one honest man who had anything to do with it on the
government side: not a single one, from the policemen who lied on the
witness-stand to your three blue-blood commissioners who doctored the
record--every man has been seeking a pretext to carry out his will upon
two fanatics whom he considers dangerous. That is the truth about the
Sacco-Vanzetti case; and there lie those two men in the death-house,
one of them a self-taught philosopher, a man of genius who has managed
under the pressure of affliction to make himself into the most
beautiful character I have ever known in my years on this earth--”
There came tears from the wrinkled old eyelids. “Sacco, too!” she
exclaimed. “A man with the heart of a child!” She put out her hand and
took some papers from the lamp-stand by her bed, and began turning
them over. “Listen; he is writing to Inez, his six-year-old daughter;
a letter which the child may have in after years, to tell her what her
father was like:
“‘It was the greatest treasure and sweetness in my struggling life that
I could have lived with you and your brother Dante and your mother in a
neat little farm and learn all your sincere words and tender affection.
Then in the summer time to be sitting with you in the home nest under
an oak tree shade, beginning to teach you of life and how to read and
write, to see you running, laughing, crying, and singing through the
little verdant fields picking the wild flowers here and there from
one tree to another and from the clear vivid stream to your mother’s
embrace. The same I have wished and loved to see for other poor girls
and their brothers, happy with their mother and father, as I dreamed
for us. But it was not so and the nightmare of the lower classes has
saddened very badly your father’s soul. The men of this dying old
society brutally have pulled me away from the embrace of your brother
and your poor mother. But in spite of all, the free spirit of your
father’s faith survives.’”
XI
On Monday morning, the last day, Governor Fuller came to his office
in the State House at half past ten o’clock; rosy and smiling,
greeting the newspapermen: “Good morning, boys; a fine day. I’ll be
here at my desk until midnight, boys, doing my duty.” Already there
were deputations waiting for him, lawyers from New York, editors,
writers, labor leaders, society women--he would see them all, in
batches, all day long; he would greet them with his marble smile,
listen with politeness, and say: “I will take what you have said under
consideration.”
Some came to urge him on the other side; including the newly elected
officers of the American Legion, which was holding a convention in
the State House that morning. Returned soldiers who hadn’t had enough
of war, they were keen for this as for all other killings. They were
singing the “Star-spangled Banner” at noon, when the first group of
pickets began their march on the street outside.
All day long the pickets would come, one batch after another, ten or
twenty at a time, with their placards of polite protest, all bad words
barred. They would walk their appointed number of paces, and then the
police would close about them, and take them in tow, and march them
to Joy Street, and then--“Files right!”--to the police-station. The
men were packed, eight into a cell, and the women in the guard-room,
waiting for their bail.
There were well-known names among them. Edna St. Vincent Millay, from
Rockland, Maine, home of her ancestors for many generations. Loveliest
of women poets, she would find this a devastating experience; life
would not seem the same after a rendezvous with murder. “My personal
physical freedom, my power to go in and out when I choose, my personal
life even, is no longer quite so important to me as it once was.... The
physical world, and that once was all in all to me, has at moments such
as these no road through a wood, no stretch of shore, that can bring me
comfort. The beauty of these things can no longer make up to me for all
the ugliness of man, his cruelty, his greed, his lying face.”
John Dos Passos again, and John Howard Lawson; also Clarina Michelson,
and Paula Holladay--still with her red slicker. And Paxton
Hibben--still with his speech. Alfred Baker Lewis of the Socialist
Party, Harry Canter for the communists, and Margaret Hatfield, who
might be taken as representing the Republicans, since her father
was county treasurer. Professor Ellen Hayes of Wellesley College,
seventy-six years of age, marching with a cane, and holding her head
up high--the most serious hour of a scholar’s life! A picturesque
figure she made, in a Norfolk jacket and skirt, square-toed shoes, a
little flat hat, and white hair bobbed to her shoulders; bright, eager
eyes and sensitive face, now grim--the New England conscience working.
“What is your occupation?” asked the clerk. “Professor of astronomy and
applied mathematics.” They did not book these very often!
Others to uphold the honor of “Old Boston”: Catharine Huntington, who
lived on Pinckney Street, with ancestry going back three hundred years
in New England; Helen Peabody, and Helen Todd, suffrage workers; Lola
Ridge, the poet--all these New England born, with forefathers on the
_Mayflower_, or the _Fortune_, the second-best boat. This was true of
Edna Millay, of Margaret Hatfield and of Dos Passos. The committee had
sent out a call for everybody “with a background”--the polite Boston
phrase. Nothing would count so much with the newspapers; the humble
Jews and Italians and Slavs--Frishman and Pogrebisky, Chiplovitz and
Chasanovitz, Pulcini and Magliocca and Spognodi--these must be content
to have their names listed wrong. “What is fame?” say the British army
officers. “To die in battle, and have your name misspelled in the
_Gazette_.”
Betty and Joe had their chance now; the police were taking them as
they came, blue-bloods and all; so near the end, they no longer
worried about public opinion; it would all be over to-night, things
would settle down, the dead wops would stay dead. Over in the office
of the Boston _Herald_, on Tremont Street, they were putting into
type an editorial, kissing the case good-by. A year ago they had been
heroically demanding justice, and winning a prize for it; now what
they wanted was “Normalcy.” “Back to Normalcy! The asperities which
have attended the Sacco-Vanzetti case in its long and tedious journey
through the courts are greatly to be regretted, and should be forgotten
as quickly as possible. Let us get back to business and the ordinary
concerns of life, in the confident belief that the agencies of law have
performed their duties with fairness as well as justice.... The chapter
is closed. The die is cast. The arrow has flown. The voice of the
department store advertising agent has been heard in the office of the
_Herald_.”--They did not publish that last sentence, of course. That
was the truth.
XII
Betty and Joe marshaled all the others, and then joined the last
contingent, a group of needle-trade workers, risking their jobs to go
to jail. The little party came into Beacon Street, and saw a mob of
thousands on the side adjoining the Common. The great iron gates in
front of the State House were closed and chained. The policemen were an
army, the reporters and photographers and plainclothesmen were another.
The pickets were accused of obstructing the sidewalk, but really it was
these others who did it.
The little group exposed their signs and began to walk. The cops closed
round them, not much formality or delay; the guardians of order were
tired, and the seven-minute provision got scant attention. The pickets
were told to disperse, and when they walked on, paying no attention,
they were shoved against the railing and closed in. “Christ, my arm!”
screamed a Jewish boy, not yet out of his teens.
“What are you doing?” cried Betty, to the policeman. “You don’t have to
twist his arm like that!”
“Shut up, you bitch!” was the answer.
“I don’t have to! I’ll take your number, and make it hot for you, if
you don’t let up on that boy!”
“Shut your trap, and go back where you came from!”
“I came from Commonwealth Avenue, and my father is Rupert Alvin,
president of the Pilgrim National Bank of Boston.”
“Holy Jesus!” said the pious cop, and stopped his torture.
The reporters came running; a story for the last afternoon editions.
“Have you anything to say, Miss Alvin?”
“Yes, I have a whole speech to make, but your papers won’t print it.”
“Give us a try!”
“Well, I’ll say that the men we are murdering to-night will have a
statue in front of the State House before you and I die. I’ll say there
are two judges whose names will be linked together in history--Pontius
Pilate and Webster Thayer.” Thus Betty, trembling with rage, the white
and pink in her lovely cheeks coming and going like Northern lights in
the sky.
“Come on, Miss,” said the scared cop; and Betty walked down the street,
remarking, “My husband is back there--Joe Randall; he’s got a statement
written out.”
So the reporters went to Joe, who gave them a copy of a cablegram he
had sent that day, in answer to one from Pierre Leon in Paris: “Tell
the workers of the world that the way to punish Boston for this crime
is to repudiate the debts. Cancel every dollar owed to America, both
publicly and privately. When the first nation does that, Boston will be
sorry it committed murder. When the second nation does it, Boston will
take steps to bring Sacco and Vanzetti back to life.” Needless to say,
that did not appear in any Boston newspaper!
The old Joy Street police station, so oddly named. The main room
crowded with tired and disgusted-looking policemen, and young ladies
from sheltered homes, getting their first lessons in profanity. “Take
these god-dam bastards to number nine.” “Take them bitches to the
detention room.” “What the hell we going to do with this new bunch?”
There were more than a hundred and fifty in all, and the old place
had been built before the program of “loitering for liberty” had been
thought of. The walls shook with cheering, and waves of revolutionary
song:
_Arise, ye prisoners of starvation,
Arise, ye wretched of the earth!_
Outside in the crowd there were Reds who joined in. Boston was
honeycombed with sedition, so the patriotic societies declared.
The women sat on the benches lined against the wall. They spread
newspapers, for the place was in a state of filth not to be described
in print; the walls against which you wanted to lean were covered with
dark smears, the blood of that creature which Vanzetti termed the
“bed-buck.” If a woman asked for a toilet, she was taken to a place
of filth in an open cell among the men. If she asked for a drink, she
was pointed to a faucet with a dipper so dirty that she would not take
it in her hand. If she complained, the word would be, “Why don’t you
go back to Rooshia?” When your time came to be bailed out, you put up
two dollars extra for the bailer; graft in Boston had become a system,
a vested right. You could even have got a drink of the best liquor,
confiscated from the unlicensed bootleggers, if you had looked like the
right sort, and had the price. But you could not get the windows of
this hellhole opened--not unless everybody would agree to stop singing
Bolshevik songs.
XIII
Mary Donovan came, with bail for Powers Hapgood. He was to be her
husband before long, and she had reason to be concerned about him
now, for he had won special enmity. This was his fourth arrest. After
the Sunday demonstration, a fortnight ago, the police had come with
a warrant and arrested him again upon the more serious charge of
“inciting to riot.” “A bare-headed youth leading women into danger,”
said the police sergeant in court, and the judge said, “Six months.”
Powers was nowhere to be found, and there was great alarm. For several
hours nobody could find out what had become of him; then came a
“tip”--he was in the “Psychopathic.” That had been the bright idea of
the captain of the state police. The shortest time in which anybody
could get through the “Psychopathic” mill was ten days; and meantime
Boston would be “back to normalcy.” It was all for the prisoner’s good,
to keep him out of danger, said the police; the most considerate lot of
sluggers that ever filled their stomachs with bootleg whisky and their
pockets with bootleg graft.
A weird experience for a member of the Dickey and the Hasty Pudding
Club and the Harvard Memorial Society! He was a handsome, athletic
young fellow, but he looked less impressive after they had stripped him
of his clothes, and put him in a dirty bathrobe. They took him to one
of the wards, and put him in the very bed in which Sacco had once lain!
Next to him was a man who believed himself to be God; on the other
side a man who sat with his head in his hands and never moved for
hours. The attendants apparently desired to get Powers excited, so that
they could put him “on the ice.” They would come and make provocative
remarks; a woman nurse started to express her opinion of Sacco--an ugly
wop, and she pounded the bed as she said it; worse than that, he was an
atheist. Powers was aware of the importance of keeping cool without any
ice; he answered amiably, and with his charming smile. One attendant
whispered that he was in danger, and offered to phone a doctor for him.
Doubtless that was the source of the “tip.”
Doctors came to examine him; all the regulation mental stuff. You
believe that Sacco and Vanzetti are being framed? Are you yourself
being framed? Have you a mission from God? What are your dreams? Please
take this pencil and write, how much is fourteen times fourteen? If
twelve is greater than ten put a dot inside the circle which is not
inside the square. Did your mother have a hard time at your birth?
Explain this little story, how the Pope was crowned and so the little
boy died of gilt paint. If you can explain it, then it is established
that you are a “nut”!
They must have found this Harvard graduate an interesting specimen, for
they put him up before the whole staff that evening. They made him put
on his bathrobe backwards; which he thought was to make him look crazy,
but doubtless was to keep a lunatic from committing any indecency.
There were forty or fifty persons, men and women; doctors, nurses and
students, many flappers. They put him on the platform and asked him
to explain his ideas about reforming the world; so he made them a
little socialist speech, ten minutes at least. They began asking him
questions: a flapper wanted to know why he thought Sacco and Vanzetti
were not guilty. What did he think about the McHardy bomb--the one
which had blown out the front of the juror’s home? That was a catch, of
course; he would say it was a provocateur job, and then they would all
know he was a “nut.”
He said it. He fitted perfectly into their categories. And yet--a
singular development--he began to expand before their eyes, and
before he stopped, he had smashed their categories. A distressing
experience to scientific minds--to have their categories smashed!
Some one had said of Herbert Spencer that “his idea of a tragedy was a
generalization killed by a fact.”
Powers had many facts, all deadly. The strike-breaking agencies planted
bombs all the time, nothing simpler. It was the accepted technique of
class war in the mining districts; one bomb, and the militia came and
broke up the strike. It had been done right here in Massachusetts, by
the great Mr. William Wood, president of the American Woolen Company;
it had been proved in court, the men he had hired had been sent to
jail for it. Too bad that Bostonians didn’t know their own industrial
history!
After this session, fifteen alienists turned in a report to the effect
that the former member of the Dickey, the Hasty Pudding Club and the
Harvard Memorial Society was sane; one of them added that he had better
be got out of “Psychopathic” as quickly as possible, or he would make
socialists of the whole staff! They held him overnight, in Sacco’s bed,
and in the morning they turned him loose--the first man who had ever
got through the mill in one day. A triumph for a Harvard education!
XIV
Monday noon, with the execution twelve hours away, the Governor was in
session with three lawyers of national repute: Arthur Garfield Hays,
Frank P. Walsh, and Francis Fisher Kane, formerly a Federal prosecutor
in Pennsylvania. These three were concentrating upon the subject of
the Department of Justice files. They had traveled all the way to
Vermont, to interview the United States Attorney-General. They had then
proceeded to Washington, to interview a subordinate, and had succeeded
in getting the admission that Sacco and Vanzetti were referred to in
the files; also the written statement that the files would be turned
over to the Massachusetts authorities, if these authorities would
request it. Now the three lawyers endeavored, in vain, to persuade the
Governor to make the request.
At this same hour, Arthur D. Hill was off the coast of Maine in a
steamer, searching in a fog for an island eight miles out, where
lived Justice Stone of the United States Supreme Court; Elias Field,
assistant counsel, was making a motion before another judge of the
Superior Court of Massachusetts; Musmanno was waiting for a chance
to appeal to the Governor with new arguments and affidavits of new
witnesses; while Jessica Henderson and Cornelia were motoring eighty
miles or more to the Governor’s summer home to make their appeal to the
great man’s wife.
A stately home for a multi-millionaire, set far back from the
boulevard, and well hidden by shrubbery. When the owner himself was
there, a miniature army was on guard; twenty-six men, with several
machine-guns, and seventy-five reserves in a near-by town. But
apparently it was not feared that the enemy would harm the family, for
now there was only one plainclothesman on watch.
The Governor’s wife received the visitors courteously, and heard them
to the end. Evidently the other members of the family resented the
strain being put upon her, for three different persons came, seeking to
cut the session short; but Mrs. Fuller would not have it so.
Cornelia knew something about the cares of office. She had realized
that possibly the jauntiness of the supersalesman was merely a mask;
it was his idea of being “game,” the male courage which defies death
and danger. Certainly it was not the same in his family; his wife
had been ill, his son and daughter had been ill. “It has taken years
from his life!” exclaimed the woman. “You can have no idea what it
means. We, too, sit in the electric-chair.” Cornelia, who had lived
for forty years in a home of wealth, knew the whole story--even though
in Josiah’s day they had not thought about anarchists and dynamite.
Somehow or other, great sums of money found a way to wreck the
happiness of those who held them. Yet, no one would give them up, no
one would cease the mad chase!
Cornelia poured out her story. It was one to move any woman’s heart,
and the Governor’s lady sat with tears welling into her eyes. A little
boy, her youngest child, played about the room and sat on the arm
of Cornelia’s chair; she told him about Plymouth, and about Trando,
who had made himself a violinist; about Dante Sacco, who had bidden
his father farewell in the death-cell, but had not been allowed to
touch him through the bars. She told the mother about the framing of
witnesses, and some of the new evidence they had found. But even while
she spoke, she read in the face of her listener that her errand was a
vain one.
“I can do nothing but this, Mrs. Thornwell; I will have the Governor
see you to-day, so that you may tell him these things.”
“I have already told him so much,” answered Cornelia. “I was hoping you
would go with me to the Governor.”
“No, I could not do that; it would do no good, I assure you.”
Mrs. Fuller would telephone, and see to it that Mrs. Thornwell and
Mrs. Henderson had another interview that afternoon. The Governor must
be made to comprehend those circumstances which made it so doubtful
whether the men were really guilty. The Governor’s lady put her arm
about Cornelia as she led her out to the car; and Cornelia thought, if
only the women would run the world! But no, she had seen it happen;
women went into public life, and became as hard as the men. Could it be
that, as Vanzetti said, there was something fundamentally immoral about
the business of dominating the lives of your fellows?
XV
Three hours later they were back at the State House, having made no
stop for lunch. There were larger crowds than ever in the corridors
before the Governor’s chambers, more than half of them secret service
men and reporters. Mrs. Fuller had kept her promise; the Governor would
see the two ladies, the secretary said.
Tom O’Connor sat with them while they waited; a reporter who was now
with the defense, having given up a State House job a year ago. He
would tell them the news.
Delegations to see the Governor, all through that day; there had been
more than nine hundred telegrams received; few of them read. Musmanno
had brought more affidavits; he had had word that his application for
a writ had been docketed with the United States Supreme Court. Fuller
had not said what he would do. A deputation of labor men from New York
had been in a while ago; Fuller had said to one of them, “I know the
men are guilty, so I don’t care whether they had a fair trial or not.”
“He said those same words to me,” said Cornelia; and then, “old Boston”
speaking in her, “Don’t quote me, please.”
Never had there been so many sensations, piling one upon another--not
in the memory of the oldest employee at the State House. The
Springfield _Republican_ had published a powerful editorial,
underscoring the doubts as to the men’s guilt; Seward Collins,
publisher of the _Bookman_, had put up the money to insert it as a
full-page advertisement in every Boston newspaper. The _Globe_ had
refused the money; others had run the ad that morning, and the State
House gang was furious. Then, bright and early, who should walk in but
Waldo Cook, editor of the _Republican_--sixty-two years of age, and the
most respected journalist in New England. He came with a deputation of
editors to see the Governor, and the private secretary tackled him. “I
understand, Mr. Cook, that you got twenty thousand dollars from the
defense committee for that editorial.” “It’s a damned lie!” said the
editor.
“I suppose they get used to taking money here in the State House,” said
Cornelia; and O’Connor grinned. The Governor himself was no better than
his secretary, when it came to repeating charges without evidence. He
had said to one deputation that Professor Frankfurter had been paid
great sums by the defense; he would go on saying this, even though he
had been many times assured that it was false. He was obsessed with
hatred of Frankfurter, and blamed him more than any other; he would
accuse people of having read Frankfurter’s book, and if they admitted
this crime, he would not hear them any longer.
XVI
The two ladies were ushered into the presence: two persistent pests
who had sneaked into a man’s home, seeking to undermine his domestic
peace! Nevertheless, he would be polite. He had set himself the task of
remaining here until midnight, and seeing every one who came; and one
person was about the same as the next.
He started at once on the aggressive. “My wife tells me that you
ladies still don’t think the men had a fair trial. But you must know
they had three trials--one before Judge Thayer, one before the Lowell
Commission, and one which I have conducted in these rooms. I tell you
that I would not ask for my own son any fairer trial than that which
took place before Mr. Lowell.”
Said Cornelia: “It is the first principle of our law that the accused
shall be confronted by the witnesses against them. But Sacco and
Vanzetti did not see many of the witnesses who appeared before Mr.
Lowell.”
“Surely you must realize the absurdity of such a proposition! How could
those desperate anarchists have been brought every day to the State
House?”
“All right, if it is too much trouble to conform to the principles of
our law, let us follow our convenience--but then don’t claim that it is
a fair trial.”
“The men were represented by the best counsel.”
“Even the counsel were barred sometimes; they were not present at
Judge Thayer’s examination; they were limited in questioning Katzmann.
Worse than that--they don’t even know the names of all the witnesses.
I understand that Mr. Lowell is saying that he had ‘confidential
information.’ He is telling that to all his friends; and what place
have secret whispers in a fair trial? You say that the trial before
Judge Thayer was fair--yet the Lowell report admits that Judge Thayer
committed ‘a grave breach of official decorum.’”
“That was after the trial, Mrs. Thornwell.”
“It was while he still had the various motions before him. He was
still the judge of the case, and the sole judge, right up to the time
he pronounced sentence last April, and automatically excluded any
other judge from acting. Are not men entitled to have new evidence
considered before an unprejudiced judge? And who else has considered
that evidence?”
“I have, Mrs. Thornwell; and I think that I have common sense, even if
I haven’t legal training.”
“Pardon me, Governor, but we have suffered much from inability to get
you to consider new evidence. We brought you the express receipt for
eels, but we are told that you say you know Vanzetti never got them.
We bring you the Pinkerton reports, but we don’t know if you know
what is in them. They cancel Mary Splaine, but you still go on citing
Mary Splaine. We bring you the son of Lola Andrews, and he tells you
that his mother is not to be trusted, but you go on trusting her.
You tell Musmanno that you don’t believe Vanzetti ever sold fish, and
Musmanno brings you an affidavit from Carbone, the wholesaler from whom
Vanzetti bought fish in Plymouth regularly. We bring you all sorts of
affidavits, but nothing does the least good, because you have some
secret information that we are not permitted to know about, and that
determines the whole matter for you. What is it, Governor--tell us now,
instead of too late. Believe me, the world is going to know some day!”
Thus the little old white-haired woman; and with elaborate and patient
courtesy the sorely tried statesman assured her that she had fallen
victim to the machinations of dangerous and depraved persons. He had
the duty of deciding this case, not she; and when he made promises to
witnesses in fear of their lives, he would keep those promises. When
she broke down and wept, and Mrs. Henderson began to plead for mercy,
he said that Massachusetts was in the grip of a crime wave, and that to
pardon guilty men would set a dangerous precedent. He had refused to
pardon the “car-barn bandits,” even though they were native Americans,
one of them a World War veteran. No, he was not troubled by the clamor
from outside, the pleadings of what people said were “great minds”;
they might be great in their own line, but they didn’t know about the
Sacco-Vanzetti case. This clamor would pass quickly. When Cornelia
started to argue against capital punishment, his answer was: “You and I
both sleep better in a state which has capital punishment.”
Cornelia gazed at him, with a look of dismay. She could not reply to
such words. Men had killed their fellows for fear and for hate, for
piety and for glory, for exercise, for sport, for food; but here for
the first time in recorded history they killed for a soporific! The
little old woman stood up, trembling.
“Governor Fuller, answer me this: What are you going to do when we find
the real criminals? Somewhere in the world are two men who really did
the Bridgewater job; somewhere are four, or five, who did the South
Braintree job. And rest assured, we are going to find them--we are
never going to rest until we have found them--and then, how will you be
able to face life? What will all you gentlemen do--judges and governors
and college presidents--knowing that you sent two innocent men to
their death? What will there be in the world for you--but insanity or
suicide?”
He did not answer, and she went out, with despair plainly written
upon her aged face, for all the newspapermen to see and record. In
the corridor they told her the news, right hot off the wire--Arthur
Hill had telephoned to his office, Justice Stone had turned down his
request. The lawyer was up in Maine, and could not get back to Boston
until morning, so his work was at an end.
What had Mrs. Thornwell to say to that? What was she going to do? The
reporters gathered about, eager for more story. A marvelous melodrama
this was to them--a whole day packed full of thrills! Melodrama at
the State House, with millionaires and blue-bloods and “headliners”
of all sorts in a fourteen-hour stream! All over the city, with two
hundred persons arrested, and tens of thousands looking on; with poets
and hoboes, “Reds” and “scions of wealth,” famous lawyers and judges,
playing their lively parts! All over the world, with bombs exploding
and plate glass shattering, mobs yelling and cavalry charging! And
at the end death waiting, in the aspect of a chair with widespread,
capacious arms, gaping for its victims! Monday, August 22nd, 1927, a
date never to be forgotten in the history of the world!