Chapter XIV: Judge Fury (1)

I

Four times each day the prisoners made their march down the middle of the street, accompanied by military escort. Four times each day the jury made a march, from their hotel to the court-house, at noon to a restaurant and back, then to the hotel in the evening: twelve “good men and true,” with court officers preceding and following, the aged foreman toddling at their head--he was to die within three months. It was a heavy strain upon old men, to sit for six hours a day in a crowded court-room, in suffocating midsummer heat. The judge mercifully said they might take off their coats, but their Puritan consciences required most of them to be uncomfortable!

Seven weeks their semi-imprisonment lasted; the bored victims got to know one another too well, and when they were tired of playing cards they sought refuge in the daily newspaper. They were not allowed to read, about their own case--the sheriff cut it all out of the papers; but they read about a court up in Boston, where Charles Ponzi was being punished for having made five million dollars without permission of the Federal Reserve Board. The financial wizard’s digestion had been wrecked by the ordeal of law, so the papers explained, and he had to be taken out to a restaurant each day, to get his diet of little neck clams and cream of tomato soup.

And then the story of Mishawum Manor, where the emperors of the moving picture world had been entertained by naked young ladies dancing the highland fling! Who could have invented more delicious material for the beguiling of bored jurymen? The Hearst newspaper put it on the front page each day: the romantic life story of “Brownie” Kennedy, the “madame” of this roadhouse; the number of husbands she had deserted, the millionaires she had plundered and ruined; details about the “champagne and chicken supper,” the hugging and the dancing, and how the guests had disappeared to the rooms upstairs, so that at one time there was nobody to eat the chicken or drink the champagne. Later they were reassembled, much in déshabille, and the young ladies--names, addresses and prices all given--were flinging their very highlandest, when a flashlight went off and a photograph was taken of the scene. Most of the guests were too drunk to know what this meant; when they woke up next afternoon, they paid a thousand dollars for “entertainment and breakage,” and thought that would be the end of it--just as if they had been at home in Hollywood.

But no, this was a pious Puritan community; and presently the emperors of moving pictures were receiving letters informing them that several of the young ladies who had been hired for the party had husbands, and these husbands were threatening suits for the desecration of their wives; furthermore, some indignant moralist had carried the story to the district attorney of Middlesex County, and that official was greatly shocked. Middlesex is sacred territory, because it contains the city of Cambridge, home of Harvard, the center of the center and hub of the hub. It would take no less than half a million dollars to wipe out the stain which these Hebrew and Babylonian emperors had put upon New England culture.

After much dickering, and threats and counterthreats, the dispute was settled by the payment of a hundred and five thousand dollars, which, according to the newspapers, had been divided among the chiefs of the political “ring,” including the Middlesex district attorney--no Irish-Catholic “mick,” but a blue-blood of registered pedigree, a gentleman with two hobbies, Red-baiting and college athletics. Only a year ago he had led a spectacular raid against “Red headquarters” in Cambridge, with a patrol wagon, cops, reporters and camera men, and had confiscated a load of literature. He was engaged in umpiring the Yale-Princeton football game, when the newspaper reporters came to inform him that the Supreme Judicial Court had removed him from office. Being a good sport, he went on with the game.

Middlesex County lies immediately to the north of Norfolk, and at its nearest point is only four or five miles from Dedham; so it might occur to some jurymen to wonder, could this corruption have crossed the border, and affected those in charge of the present trial? The authorities deemed it wise to provide automobiles, with bailiffs for chauffeurs, to keep the jury entertained. On holidays the twelve good men and true were escorted to the beach to picnic, and Sundays they went to church in the morning, and in the afternoon they motored to witness some of the patriotism rampant in the community.

On Sunday, twelve days after the trial started, the bodies of three dead soldiers, dug out of the ground in France, were buried in the city of Brockton, in Plymouth County, and the whole town turned out for the ceremonies. On the same day at Whitman, in the same county, two bodies were buried. On the following Sunday another one at Hingham, in Norfolk County. The day before that was the anniversary of the Battle of Belleau Wood, celebrated by veterans all over both counties; the day before that was a great New England holiday, Bunker Hill Day, celebrated in every town. On June 25th, just as the defense was getting under way, the sacred Plymouth Rock was restored to place with a new shrine over it, and there was a great celebration in Vanzetti’s old home, reported in all newspapers and read about by all jurors. A week later five thousand veterans of the “Yankee Division” assembled in Plymouth, and held their exercises over the Fourth of July, the great American patriotic holiday. On that day the town of Quincy, in Norfolk County, witnessed the greatest parade of veterans in its history; the whole countryside echoed with the sounds of firecrackers and bells and military exhortations. “Never shall America forget the brave boys who died for her!”--so said the orators.

II

And then the college commencements! There are a score of colleges and universities in Massachusetts, to say nothing of two hundred and forty-nine high schools; and all of them celebrated their exercises while the Sacco-Vanzetti trial was in progress. All had eminent persons to deliver orations, and few were the orators who did not refer to the enemy within our midst, and the need for good citizens to stand together. These exhortations would be quoted in the next day’s newspapers, and read by the twelve good men and true in their legal quarantine.

Cornelia took a day off and went up to the Harvard exercises. Impossible to refuse, for it was the crisis of the effort to hold Alice in line, and this was an occasion that would never come again, the graduation of her only son; the public appearance of Alice with Henry, and with all the family about her, would set forth their solidarity to the world, and repudiate malicious gossip. Such was the requirement of propriety. The three sisters might quarrel ever so bitterly among themselves, but the world must see them side by side, going through the formalities with dignity.

So now Clara spent the night in the Winters home in Boston, to keep Alice from taking poison or running away. Deborah came early in the morning, and the two of them worked with moral exhortations, and cups of strong coffee, and an expert hairdresser, to get their distracted sister into shape for exhibition. Clara rode in the car with Alice and Henry, to relieve them of the necessity of talking--Clara could always tell a thousand stories about the progress of her brood.

Deborah sent her car early in the morning to bring her mother; and there they were, three middle-aged ladies and one old one, dressed with the restrained and dignified but none the less expensive elegance of the Brahmins; Henry in tall silk hat and frock coat, braided trousers and spats; Quincy Thornwell, gentleman of leisure, escorting Priscilla Alvin Shaw, returned from her honeymoon in Florida. They took their appointed places in Sander’s Theater, bowing right and left, greeting their friends, exchanging compliments with the nearest. All the conventions were satisfied.

The academic procession moved through the “Yard”; all the dignitaries in their gorgeous-colored silk hoods and gowns, led by the university marshal, and followed by thirteen hundred graduates-to-be, all in caps and gowns. It was a special occasion, because Harvard was making an innovation; for the first time in its two hundred and eighty-five years, women were to be awarded regular Harvard degrees--not just Radcliffe degrees signed by President Lowell. There were thirty-six of these intruding females, but they were not permitted to leave the sacred yard with the men, they had to join the procession near Lawrence Hall.

In Sander’s Theater the sheriff of the county called the meeting to order; the dean of the divinity school offered a prayer, three graduates delivered orations, and the Governor of the Commonwealth made a speech. A curious moment for Cornelia Thornwell, with ghosts walking upon the platform, in costumes much out of style. How many years since she had sat up there, and heard Josiah’s stern dry voice? The fashion in speeches had not changed a particle; they still talked about the responsibility of educated men for citizenship; they still rebuked disturbers of the public thought. Said Governor Cox: “We ought to stop complaining about the wrongs other men are doing until we are sure each one of us is doing his part honorably and well.”

President Lowell arose to confer the degrees; an old gentleman with a brown mustache and full red cheeks and proper coldness of manner. He belonged to the inner circle of the sacred caste, enjoying an income of not far from a million dollars a year from the family cotton mills and real estate. He had been a lawyer on a small scale, when the great financial interests of Boston had selected him to take charge of their university. Under his direction there had been established a Graduate School of Business Administration, to put a gloss of culture upon the crudities of commercialism; the institution had grown with such speed that it was turning matters about, and taking a lot of the gloss off Harvard.

There was a slow procession of thirteen hundred young men in black gowns and mortar-boards, walking across a stage, putting out a hand and taking a roll of sheepskin; listening to a little speech, if it happened to be a “cum laude,” with an extra sentence if it happened to be a “magna cum laude,” and several sentences if it happened to be a “summa cum laude.” It seemed symbolical of New England hypocrisy that these were not real diplomas, but merely blanks; next day the graduates had to go rooting in tubs, in the basement of the theater, to get their own!

The only thrill in the ceremony is when one of the young men happens to be known to you; then you make a decorous little noise with the palms of your hands--the relic of enthusiasm among the blue-bloods. Cornelia looked at the young faces, grave and pale, mostly, but still clean and alive. She looked at the sheriffs and mayors and politicians and lawyers and bankers--masks of cynicism, hardness and dullness. What evil power presided over the lives of men, to work this transformation from youth to age?

It came the turn of Josiah Thornwell Winters; and Cornelia hoped that not many of these graduates were hiding a tragedy like his. She had heard from Quincy Thornwell the end of the story: the woman from “Larry Shay’s stable,” who had succeeded in making Young Josiah think she was only nineteen, and innocent, was in reality twenty-five, a victim of drugs, and also of a disease. This latter she had passed on to her victim, so now he was paying several visits a week to leading specialists, and his pale set face as he walked across the platform was due to the fact that walking hurt him. But all over Sander’s Theater, members of the audience nudged one another, whispering, “The grandson of Governor Thornwell--the tall one.” They thought about his blue blood, and mothers with marriageable daughters pondered ways to meet him.

There was an elaborate banquet at the close of these ceremonies; and also a series of class banquets, at which the “old boys” got together and listened to patriotism and jokes. At one of these revelries the orator was that courageous patriot, District Attorney Frederick G. Katzmann, of Norfolk and Plymouth counties. The chairman introduced him as one who had set out to rid Massachusetts of the Reds, and the orator accepted the stern duty, and talked about the Sacco-Vanzetti case, and what he was going to do to those anarchists. Tumultuous applause from the assembled banqueters, and toasts from their hip-pocket flasks, and singing of “Fair Harvard” and “He’s a Jolly Good Fellow!”

III

Back to Dedham courthouse with its high white dome, with a ring of port-holes like an ocean liner; the jury making its daily marches, and the foreman saluting the flag; the manacled prisoners parading down the middle of the street with their military escort; the guards keeping watch, searching the spectators, even the handbags of the ladies; the newspapers reporting sensations.

The defense was having its innings. Frank Burke, a man in his fifties, formerly sealer of weights and measures for the city of Brockton, and now giving demonstrations of glass-blowing, had been on the street in South Braintree, where the bandit car crossed the railroad tracks. The car had passed within ten feet of him, and the bandit in the right front seat had leaned out and snapped a gun at him--it had failed to explode. The man supposed to be Sacco had been in the right rear seat, and Burke got a good look at him and described him, a flat, full face, with broad heavy jowl--no resemblance to Sacco. There had been so much patriotism in the trial that Burke thought a little would be welcome from him, so he tried it, and there resulted a curious dialogue between him and the district attorney:

“What was the color of the gun you saw?”

“Blue.”

“You have seen them, haven’t you?”

“Yes, my boy brought one home from the war.”

“Did you think I asked about your boy bringing one home?”

“No, but you were asking me about automatics, and I told you when I seen one.”

“You thought you would tuck that in, did you?”

“I am not attempting to tuck anything in, Mr. Katzmann.”

“Did you do it inadvertently?”

“Yes, sir, I am trying--”

“And have all your answers made heretofore that have not been called for been done inadvertently? I want you to tell the truth.”

Five laborers took the stand, men who had been digging an excavation, and had witnessed the murder. These men all swore that neither Sacco nor Vanzetti were in the bandit car; but they were Italians and Spaniards, having to talk through interpreters, and it was easy for Katzmann to discredit them. One laborer estimated that he was forty or fifty feet from the shooting; Katzmann very cunningly got him to answer a complicated question--that he was as sure of the distance as he was that the bandits had not been Sacco and Vanzetti. Then he measured the distance on the map, and said it was ninety-five feet; and that finished Pedro Iscorla. In his closing speech Katzmann attacked all these laborers as cowards, because they had stood by with picks and shovels and failed to attack bandits who were shooting guns.

Two gun experts testified for the defense. Experts always balance one another--if you have as much money as the other side. One was a champion pistol shot and department head in a cartridge company; the other was superintendent of the testing department of the Colt Automatic Pistol Company, which had made Sacco’s gun, and he should have known more about it than Captain Proctor, who had found himself on the witness stand vainly trying to take the weapon apart. Both the defense experts testified that the “mortal bullet” could not have come from Sacco’s gun; nor did they, like Proctor, take back their testimony later on.

Witnesses appeared to counter the testimony of the gateman Levangie, and say how he had told them he did not see the bandits. The same for Goodridge, the ex-convict; four men swore that he had made statements contradicting his present testimony. Too bad these poolroom gentlemen were not named Jones, Smith, Brown and Robinson, instead of Magazu, Arrigoni, Manganio and D’Amato!

And then the witnesses to answer “Fainting Lola”: her friend, Mrs. Campbell, a white-haired old woman who broke down and wept because she did not like to call Lola such a liar; the policeman and the reporter to whom Lola had admitted that she could not identify the bandits; and then Kurlansky, the storekeeper, who got his rebuke from Judge Thayer for having failed to tackle the police and prosecuting authorities of Norfolk County, all by his valiant self!

And then poor Joseph Rosen, the Jewish peddler of cloth, who had sold Vanzetti a piece of suiting at a great bargain because it had a hole in it. He had gone with Vanzetti to show the goods to Mrs. Brini, and they had had a long talk. Three weeks later he had read of Vanzetti’s arrest for banditry, and had seen his picture and recognized him, and realized that it was the day he had sold the cloth. He told his story to the jury, and Katzmann provided a four-hour circus for bored jurymen by kidding Rosen’s Yiddisher dialect, and asking where he had been on a certain day a year ago, and where he had been three weeks ago. Poor Rosen tried to protest that if he had a little time he could remember some of that; which of course Katzmann and the jury took to mean that he could have the lawyers’ help in remembering it.

As a matter of fact it would have been easy for the prosecution to have verified Rosen’s story if it had cared to, for he said he had sold cloth to many persons in Plymouth that day, including the wife of the chief of police. But it was as Lee Swenson had told Cornelia--hardly any use at all to put on foreign witnesses; the jury took it for granted that their stories were “built,” and whether they were all “built,” or only a few of them “built,” made no difference in the result. Of course no jury would ever dream that the cultured gentlemen who represented the Commonwealth would do such a thing as tell a witness what to say! Never in a thousand years could they be made to realize that of the five identification witnesses upon whom the case against Sacco rested, one was a many times convicted crook, one a hysterical prostitute, one a halfwit, one a disordered fantast, and one a feeble victim of police pressure; all five of them persons who had made statements identifying other men as the bandits, or else saying that they could not identify any one. And all this known to the prosecution, and some of it to the judge on the bench--so that the procedure represented a conspiracy between the district attorney and the judge, to deceive the jury, to hide the essential facts from them, and persuade them that white was black.

IV

The great day of the trial: Bartolomeo Vanzetti taking the stand in his own defense! He looked neat and proper in his new black suit, clean white collar and little black silk tie. He had grown bald about the temples during his long confinement, but he still had his heavy droopy mustache; his earnest, deeply lined face was that of a student and thinker.

They took him out of the “cage” to give his testimony, and stood him in the prisoner’s dock, with a little low railing before him, where for hours he answered the questions of his lawyers. His manner was quiet and courteous, and his command of English remarkable; he had profited by his year of study to drop most of his Italian peculiarities, and the newspapers commented upon his education, so that Cornelia was proud of her pupil. Only once did he let himself be goaded by Katzmann into a flash of “redness”; when he had occasion to refer to the place where some of his friends lived, working on the railroad near Springfield: “Yes, in a shanty, you know, the little house where the Italian live and work like a beast, the Italian workingman in this country.”

He told the jury the story of his life: his childhood in Italy, his slavery to a pastry cook, the breakdown of his health, the death of his mother. He told about coming to America, his work in the great rich club in New York City--he no longer called it a “clooba”--and then in the smart restaurant; his work in the brickyard, the stone quarry, on the railroad, the Worcester reservoir--near the home of Judge Thayer; then in a wire mill, then for the Plymouth Cordage Company. He told about his going to Mexico, because he did not believe in war; he had learned by now that he had not been liable to the draft, and he mentioned it, but apparently without result.

He told about his fish-selling business--and the defense counsel showed his license to dig clams, and the receipts for his fish. All the morning of the South Braintree crime he had been selling fish in Plymouth--in Cherry Street, Standish Avenue, Cherry Court, Suosso’s Lane, Castle Street. A little after the noon hour he had met Rosen, and bought from him the piece of suiting with a hole in it; Vanzetti still had the cloth, and it was introduced in evidence. He had taken Rosen to Mrs. Brini, because she worked in a woolen mill, and was a judge of cloth. In the afternoon he had left his cart in the yard of Melvin Corl, the fisherman, and had gone down to the shore, where Corl was painting a boat, and at the actual moment of the South Braintree murders he had been chatting with Corl. The owner of the boat-yard, Gessi, had come along during the talk, and another man, Holmes. Later Bart had dug clams and bait, and had gone home and had his supper at six o’clock, and had spent the evening in Plymouth.

He told about his doings from that April fifteenth to the day of his arrest three weeks later. He had gone to the club in East Boston, and had been asked to go to New York to see about Salsedo and Elia. But there Katzmann and Thayer stopped him; it was the intention of the district attorney to argue that the defendants had no reason to be afraid on the night of their arrest, and to tell lies to the police. Katzmann wanted to argue that the worst that anarchists had to fear was getting a free trip to Italy; that as Sacco was going anyhow, the claim of fear was obviously silly. The entire ruling class of Massachusetts was going to maintain that argument for six years; so the jury must be kept from realizing that sixty-seven hours prior to the arrest of Sacco and Vanzetti, their friend and comrade Salsedo had jumped, or had been thrown to his death from the fourteenth story of the Park Row Building in New York! The defense came back to it, again and again, but they were blocked here and blocked there, and the real meaning of the matter was never made clear to the jury.

It was the aim of the prosecution, not so much to refute the testimony of Vanzetti, as to rouse the prejudices of the jurors against him; to fill them with emotions of hatred and fear, so that they would be incapable of thinking; to make them see an anarchist infidel draft dodger as a depraved wretch, deserving to die many deaths. When the time came for cross-examination, Mr. Katzmann’s first question had nothing to do with the problem whether Vanzetti had sat in a bandit car and pointed a shot-gun out of the rear window; it had to do with the problem whether the jury was going to find him guilty, regardless of whether he had sat in the bandit car or not. Said Mr. Katzmann: “So you left Plymouth, Mr. Vanzetti, in May, 1917, to dodge the draft, did you?”

Mr. Katzmann of course knew perfectly well that Vanzetti had not been liable to the draft; but he went on to rub in the sneer, with that mock indignation acquired in the course of eleven years’ service for the Commonwealth: “When this country was at war, you ran away, so you would not have to fight as a soldier?” The district attorney was not interested to question Vanzetti about the South Braintree crime, and try to prove that he was there; the district attorney was not interested in trying to break Vanzetti’s alibi; he was only interested to prove that Vanzetti had lied to the police, and that he was unpatriotic.

He took up the prisoner’s effort to organize a meeting, and the pitiful circular he had drafted: “You were going to advise in a public meeting men who had gone to war? Are you that man?” “Yes, sir,” answered Bart, quietly, “I am that man, not the man you want me, but I am that man.” The newspapers made much of this scene; it was what their readers were hungry for. “A tensely dramatic moment,” said the Boston _Traveler_, and described how the prosecutor “thundered.” Said the _American_, “The district attorney’s voice was vibrant with emotion. It thrilled the spectators.”

V

But it was during the cross-examination of Sacco that the great official’s vibrations did their heaviest thundering, and the spectators, and readers of newspapers, got their choicest thrills. Nicola Sacco had a poor command of English, and had to call for the aid of the interpreter-crook; also he had poor command of his emotions, and could be jeered at and goaded, provoked into saying things that would ruin him. The district attorney asked him seventeen hundred questions; and more about patriotism than about anything else. Said Mr. Katzmann: “Did you leave this country in May, 1917?”

Said Sacco: “I can’t answer in one word.”

“Please answer my questions, Mr. Sacco”--“in thundering voice,” the newspapers said. “One week before the day of the first draft in May, 1917, did you leave this country?” There followed a long dialogue, a scene which made Cornelia think of a deer in the forest, when a wolverine or lynx or other fierce creature drops upon him from a tree, and chews into his neck as he runs. That is a common event in nature; but in this case appeared a phenomenon unknown to zoology--another animal running alongside the fleeing deer, to keep any one from interfering with the neck-chewing process. This creature went by the name of a webthayer.

“Did you say yesterday you love a free country?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Did you love this country in the month of May, 1917?”

“I did not say,--I don’t want to say I did not love this country.”

“Did you love this country in that month of 1917?”

“If you can, Mr. Katzmann, if you give me that,--I could explain--”

“Do you understand that question?”

“Yes.”

“Then will you please answer it?”

“I can’t answer in one word.”

“You can’t say whether you loved the United States of America one week before the day you enlisted for the first draft?”

“I can’t say in one word, Mr. Katzmann.”

“Did you love this country in the last week of May, 1917?”

“That is pretty hard for me to say in one word, Mr. Katzmann.”

“There are two words you can use, Mr. Sacco, yes or no. Which one is it?”

“Yes.”

“And in order to show your love for this United States of America when she was about to call upon you to become a soldier you ran away to Mexico.”

That question was, obviously enough, not intended to elicit any information of use to the jury; that question was, purely and simply, a sneer. And Katzmann hammered and hammered upon it; eleven separate times he repeated the word “love.” First, did Sacco run away for love of his country? Then, did he run away for love of his wife? “Would it be your idea of showing your love for your wife that when she needed you, you ran away from her?”

Said Sacco: “I did not run away from her.”

Said Sacco’s lawyer: “I object.”

But the webthayer said: “He may answer,”--and added, with his usual cunning: “Simply on the question of credibility, that is all.”

So the wolverine or lynx went on with the neck-chewing. “Would it be your idea of love for your wife that you were to run from her when she needed you?”

Said Mr. McAnarney: “Pardon me. I ask for an exception on that.”

The webthayer excluded the question; but obligingly indicated to the neck-chewer how he might go on. “He had not admitted he ran away.”

So, of course, the torture was resumed. “Then I will ask you, didn’t you run away from Milford so as to avoid being a soldier for the United States?”

“I did not run away.”

“You mean you walked away?”

“Yes.”

“You don’t understand me when I say ‘run away,’ do you?”

“That is vulgar.”

“That is vulgar?”

“You can say a little intelligent, Mr. Katzmann.”

“Don’t you think going away from your country is a vulgar thing to do when she needs you?”

“I don’t believe in war.”

“You don’t believe in war?”

“No, sir.”

“Do you think it is a cowardly thing to do what you did?”

“No, sir.”

“Do you think it is a brave thing to do what you did?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Do you think it would be a brave thing to go away from your own wife?”

“No.”

“When she needed you?”

“No.”

VI

The prosecutor kept at the wife question until he had got all the hate out of it he could, and then he took up the sneer that “wops” come to America to make money. “Is it because,--is your love for the United States of America commensurate with the amount of money you can get in this country per week?”

“Better conditions, yes.”

“Better country to make money, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“Is your love for this country measured by the amount of money you can earn here?”

“I never loved money.”

This went on, until the defense broke in again. Said Mr. Jeremiah McAnarney: “No, if your Honor please. And I might state now I want my objection to go to this whole line of interrogation.”

Said the webthayer: “I think you opened it up.”

Said the lawyer, very humbly: “No, if your Honor please, I think I have not.”

Said the webthayer: “I think you have,”--and went on to give an argument which for prejudice-carrying capacity exceeded anything the fertile mind of the district attorney had been able to conceive. It was the contention of the defendants that on the night of their arrest they had been going with Boda and Orciani to visit some of the anarchist comrades, and collect the dangerous literature from their homes, and hide it until the storm of persecution had blown over. And now here was the webthayer, elaborating an even more complicated sneer than the one about love of country and of wife. Said he: “It seems to me you have. Are you going to claim much of all the collection of the literature and the books was really in the interest of the United States as well as these people and therefore it has opened up the credibility of the defendant when he claims that all that work was done really for the interest of the United States in getting his literature out of the way?”

Said Mr. McAnarney: “That claim is not presented in anything tantamount to the language just used by the Court, and in view of the record as it stands at this time I object to this line of inquiry.”

There followed upon this a phenomenon never observed in any forest; the wolverine or lynx desisting from his neck-chewing, and letting the webthayer take his place on the victim’s back! The webthayer liked his mockery so well that he repeated it five separate times, in detail, and several other times by implication. “Are you going to claim that what the defendant did was in the interest of the United States?” And each time with a broader wink at the jury, a broader grin from the jury in response. When the defense lawyer objected, “Your Honor please, I now object to your Honor’s statement as prejudicial to the rights of the defendants and ask that the statement be withdrawn from the jury”--then instantly the webthayer was on the alert to protect the record and make everything look all right. “There is no prejudicial remark made that I know of, and none were intended. I simply asked you, sir, as to whether you propose to offer evidence as to what you said to me.”

After which he went on to repeat the sneer and rub it in; and closed, as usual, by telling the wolverine or lynx how to get back to the neck-chewing: “I will let you inquire further as to what he meant by the expression.” So, of course, Katzmann took the hint, and went on, exactly as if there had been no interruption: “What did you mean when you said yesterday you loved a free country?”

VII

Poor Nick! He was a talkative, eager young fellow, a propagandist; and for fourteen months and two days they had had him behind steel bars. He had boiled, he had seethed, he had all but exploded. And now suddenly he saw a hope! “Give me a chance to explain,” he pleaded; and the cunning prosecutor said: “I am asking you to explain now.” Actually, the great Mr. Katzmann asked him to explain! The great Judge Thayer said it would be all right for him to explain! The jury, the spectators, everybody was ready to listen--while he told what he thought about America, about Italy, about liberty, about the workers and their rights, the rich and the poor, good food and vegetables, schools, free speech, Debs, the capitalist class, Harvard College, D. Rockefeller, Morgan, working people, war, socialism, Abraham Lincoln, Abe Jefferson, the Irish, the Germans, the French, governments, devilment and robbery--everything! Perhaps he could not convert them, but at least he could make them understand him!

Forgive him if his stump-speech is long--he has all the conclusions of a lifetime to state! Forgive him if it is jumbled--he has no time to arrange it, he does not know at what moment they may shut him off again and lock him up for another fourteen months! Forgive him if it is incoherent--he is groping desperately for words in a strange tongue, stammering, halting, starting again, tripping himself up with his excitement, the intensity of his convictions. And meantime the bland prosecutor stands silent, smiling--why should he trouble to work, when his victim will hang himself with his own rope? The judge is content, for he knows it will look well in the record--the defendant has had a chance to express himself, no possible claim that he was misrepresented. Most content of all are the jury-men--because they have power to punish a wop who is insulting and defiling all their most sacred Yankee prejudices.

Said Nicola Sacco, in defense of his life:

“When I was in Italy, a boy, I was a Republican, so I always thinking Republican has more chance to manage education, develop, to build some day his family, to raise the child and education, if you could. But that was my opinion; so when I came to this country I saw there was not what I was thinking before, but there was all the difference, because I been working in Italy not so hard as I been work in this country. I could live free there just as well. Work in the same condition but not so hard, about seven or eight hours a day, better food. I mean genuine. Of course, over here is good food, because it is bigger country, to any those who got money to spend, not for the working and laboring class, and in Italy is more opportunity to laborer to eat vegetable, more fresh, and I came in this country. When I been started work here very hard and been work thirteen years, hard worker, I could not been afford much a family the way I did have the idea before. I could not put any money in the bank; I could no push my boy some to go to school and other things. I teach over here men who is with me. The free idea gives any man a chance to profess his own idea, not the supreme idea, not to give any person, not to be like Spain in position, yes, about twenty centuries ago, but to give a chance to print and education, literature, free speech, that I see it was all wrong. I could see the best men, intelligent, education, they been arrested and sent to prison and died in prison for years and years without getting them out, and Debs, one of the great men in his country, he is in prison, still away in prison, because he is a Socialist. He wanted the laboring class to have better conditions and better living, more education, give a push his son if he could have a chance some day, but they put him in prison. Why? Because the capitalist class, they know, they are against that, because the capitalist class, they don’t want our child to go to high school or college or Harvard College. There would be no chance, there would not be no,--they don’t want the working class educationed; they want the working class to be a low all the times, be underfoot, and not to be up with the head. So, sometimes, you see, the Rockefellers, Morgans, they give fifty,--I mean they give five hundred thousand dollars to Harvard College, they give a million dollars for another school. Every day say, ‘Well, D. Rockefeller is a great man, the best man in the country.’ I want to ask him who is going to Harvard College? What benefit the working class they will get by those million dollars they give by Rockefeller, D. Rockefellers. They won’t get, the poor class, they won’t have no chance to go to Harvard College because men who is getting $21 a week or $30 a week, I don’t care if he gets $80 a week, if he gets a family of five children he can’t live and send his child and go to Harvard College if he wants to eat everything nature will give him. If he wants to eat like a cow, and that is the best thing but I want men to live like men. I like men to get everything that nature will give best, because they belong,--we are not the friend of any other place, but we are belong to nations. So that is why my idea has been changed. So that is why I love people who labor and work and see better conditions every day develop, makes no more war. We no want fight by the gun, and we don’t want to destroy young men. The mother been suffering for building the young man. Some day need a little more bread, so when the time the mother get some bread or profit out of that boy, the Rockefellers, Morgans, and some of the peoples, high class, they send to war. Why? What is war? The war is not shoots like Abraham Lincoln’s and Abe Jefferson, to fight for the free country, for the better education to give chance to any other peoples, not the white people but the black and the others, because they believe and know they are mens like the rest, but they are war for the great millionaire. No war for the civilization of men. They are war for business, million dollars come on the side. What right we have to kill each other? I been work for the Irish. I have been working with the German fellow, with the French, many other peoples. I love them people just as I could love my wife, and my people for that did receive me. Why should I go kill them men? What he done to me? He never done anything, so I don’t believe in no war. I want to destroy those guns. All I can say, the Government put the literature, give us educations. I remember in Italy, a long time ago, about sixty years ago, I should say, yes, about sixty years ago, the Government they could not control very much those two,--devilment went on, and robbery, so one of the government in the cabinet he says, ‘If you want to destroy those devilments, if you want to take off all those criminals, you ought to give a chance to Socialist literature, education of people, emancipation. That is why I destroy governments, boys.’ That is why my idea I love Socialists. That is why I like people who want education and living, building, who is good, just as much as they could. That is all.”

VIII

July 7th was the date of this oration. Three days previously all patriots had celebrated the Declaration of Independence, with its opening assertion that “all men are created equal.” If the author of that document, “Abe Jefferson,” could have been present in the Dedham court-house, he would have been able to understand the blundering protest of an uneducated foreigner, chained for life to an edge-trimming machine in a shoe-factory. But not so this jury, not this judge nor this prosecuting attorney! To them it was treason; and the moment the orator ceased, the wolverine or lynx was on his neck again. “And that is why you love the United States of America? She is back more than twenty centuries like Spain, is she?”

Worse yet, the presumptuous wop had dared to insult Harvard College! The district attorney waited until after lunch, to refresh himself and gather his energies to deal with such insolence. “Did you say in substance you could not send your boy to Harvard? Don’t you know Harvard educates more boys of poor people free than any other university in the United States of America?”

The defense lawyers objected, but were overruled, and poor Sacco had to answer. If he had been an authority on educational statistics, his answer would have been that Harvard was educating free something over one hundred students, while the University of Wisconsin had educated free in that year five thousand, eight hundred and ninety-five, and the University of California had educated free eleven thousand, three hundred and forty.

But alas, poor Nick was not an authority on educational statistics, and could only say that he didn’t know; thereby confessing to a more serious crime than first degree murder. Said the outraged Mr. Katzmann: “So without the light of knowledge on that subject, you are condemning even Harvard University, are you, as being a place for rich men?”

More argument, more interruptions; the defense lawyers protesting, Judge Thayer overruling them--he and Katzmann like two skillful basket-ball players, keeping the ball in play between them and working it down the field to the goal. “Did you intend to condemn Harvard College?” (Objection overruled.) “Were you ready to say none but the rich could go there without knowing about offering scholarships?” (Objection overruled.) “Does your boy go to the public schools? Are there any schools in the town you come from in Italy that compare with the school your boy goes to?” (Objection.) And then, free nursing in the town of Stoughton! The number of children in the schools of Boston, and what did Sacco know about it! Said Mr. McAnarney: “I object to that answer. I object to the question and the answer.” Said Judge Thayer: “The question may stand, and the answer also.”

To Cornelia Thornwell, watching this scene, listening to these interminable wrangles, this was not a real procedure in a court; this was some kind of crazy dream, a world of cross-questions and crooked answers, another Alice in Wonderland. Yes, that was it--Cornelia was in the home of the White Rabbit and the March Hare, the Mock Turtle and the Queen of Hearts! “He’s murdering the time! Off with his head!” A world where things changed their form suddenly, where they grew enormously big and terrifying and then shrunk to littleness, so that you had to laugh at them! A world in which a blond and genial gentleman with bursting red pulpy face turned suddenly into a wolverine or lynx, chewing a deer’s neck--and then into a basketball player, romping down a field with a judge! Anything but a responsible public official, conducting a judicial procedure involving human life!

I’ll be judge, I’ll be jury,
Said cunning old Fury;
I’ll try the whole cause and condemn you to death!

They got onto the question of the literature which Sacco and Vanzetti claimed they had been intending to gather up. “Books relating to anarchy, were they not?” “Not all of them.” “How many of them?” “Well all together. We are Socialists, democratic, any other socialistic information, Socialists, Syndicalists, Anarchists, any paper.” They discussed for a while what had been intended with the literature, whether it was to be destroyed or only hidden for a while. Sacco admitted it was to be hidden. “Certainly, because they are educational for book, educational.” Said the prosecutor: “An education in anarchy, wasn’t it?” Said the witness: “Why, certainly. Anarchistic is not criminals.” This greatly incensed the district attorney. “I did not ask you if they are criminals or not. Nor are you to pass upon that, sir.” What a light this threw upon his purpose! And upon the argument which Cornelia was to hear in future years from the whole of official Massachusetts--that the purpose of this cross-examination had been to prove that Sacco and Vanzetti had not been genuine “Reds,” but were merely making a pretense at it!

On and on, with no end in sight. Presently the wolverine or lynx was back at his neck-chewing--though you would think his victim must by now be bled to death. “And you are a man who tells this jury that the United States of America is a disappointment to you?” Again an objection of the defense, and the webthayer telling the wolverine or lynx how to proceed. The judge pointed out that Katzmann had made the mistake of “assuming” that Sacco was the man. So of course Katzmann took the hint, and framed it as a question; _was_ Sacco the man? The lawyers again objected, and the judge overruled, and the lawyers asked an exception, and then the victim couldn’t understand the phrase, “passed judgment upon the United States of America,” and it had to be explained to him: “Well, tell us about how disappointed you were, and what you did not find and what you expected to find. Are you that man?” Yes, Sacco admitted, he was the man; and the jury was greatly enlightened.

IX

The ordeal was over at last, and a court official came to Cornelia Thornwell, saying that His Honor would like to see her in his chambers. Another interview with the judge--the third during the trial! It was intolerable to him that members of the aristocracy which he reverenced should be sitting there in court day by day disapproving of the procedure; he must argue with them, he must explain and defend himself, he must bring the great ones to appreciate his services. He meant it for a compliment to them; but unfortunately he paid the same compliment to newspaper reporters and photographers, and other persons whom the aristocracy does not recognize.

He had taken off his black silk robe and hung it on a hook, and was now a quite ordinary little old man, small, narrow-shouldered, with white hair and a feeble chin and bloodless complexion. He rose from his chair and bowed her to a seat, and she saw that his hands were trembling, and his blinking worse than usual--he was a tired old man, who had been through a severe ordeal and was wrought up and suffering. He was fussy in his manner, over-cordial and lacking in repose; he repeated himself, saying the same words several times: “Now, Mrs. Thornwell, you see, you see! You see what I told you about those men!”

“How do you mean, Judge Thayer?”

“You heard the testimony that fellow Sacco gave? You see he admits it, he admits the worst--they are arnychists, of the most desperate character--they say it, defiantly--they defy the court and all society!”

“But, Judge Thayer, I have always known they were anarchists. I don’t understand they are on trial for anarchism.”

“No, but it shows their character, their ideas. They have no respect for the law--they are men who would commit crimes.”

“But I heard Sacco’s employer testify that he was a good workman, that he had not been absent from his machine but one day in a long time--he was trusted with the keys to the factory--he had been a night-watchman--”

“Oh, but Mrs. Thornwell, you should hear what Kelley says outside!”

“What do you mean, what Kelley says?”

“I cannot tell you his words, they are not fit for a lady’s ears; the substance of it is that Kelley is afraid to tell the truth about what he thinks of Sacco.”

“Judge Thayer, you appal me!”

“How do you mean, madame?”

“You are going outside the testimony of the case, considering gossip that people bring you, things that the witnesses are unwilling to say under oath!”

“I am dealing with people who are terrorized. You cannot imagine the condition in this community, the time we have had getting men to come forward and testify at all. Think of the situation, Mrs. Thornwell--what it means, where it was necessary to summon nearly seven hundred veniremen in order to get a jury!”

“And so you think that our legal system has broken down, and you throw it overboard! I have read that men were executed upon the gossip of spies in Turkey under the sultans, and in Russia under the tsars, but I did not know we had come to that in Massachusetts.”

The old man’s face showed that he had blood in him after all. He held up a shaking hand to stop her. “Mrs. Thornwell, it is a grave impropriety for you to address such words to a judge who is presiding over a trial!”

Cornelia rose. “You well know that I did not seek this meeting, Judge Thayer. If it is your idea that you are free to say what you please in condemnation of these men, and that impropriety begins when you hear what you do not wish to hear, then I would advise you to confine your talks to your social inferiors, for I have not been brought up to carry on conversation on that basis.”

The pitiful old man had risen, trembling so that he had to hold onto the back of the chair to sustain himself. His voice became shrill--it was like a thin strip of steel. “Mrs. Thornwell, I deeply regret having to say such a thing to you, but it amounts to contempt of court, what you have said to a judge while he is sitting upon a case.”

“I will leave your chambers,” said Cornelia, haughtily, “and trust that you will refrain from troubling me with further invitations. But I will not fail to tell you what is the opinion of every disinterested person in the court-room--that the scenes witnessed to-day constitute a travesty upon justice, the worst I have ever heard of in my life!”

She started to the door. But even then the old man could not give up. He came hurrying behind her, stretching out a hand that seemed to be palsied. “Mrs. Thornwell! I warn you! You are letting yourself be deceived! You are being used by unscrupulous persons! We are surrounded by criminals, by desperate and embittered enemies of our institutions! You owe it to your ancestry and your heritage to stand behind us--we are trying to protect the community--a public service--patriotic duty--a desperate danger--arnychists--assassination--conspiracy--” they were snatches of words that Cornelia heard, while she was going down the corridor, not yet out of sound of the shrill metallic voice.

X