Chapter XVI: The Law’s Delay (1)

I

Judge Webster Thayer was considering the various motions for a new trial, and Bartolomeo Vanzetti was manufacturing automobile license plates in Charlestown State Prison; in his free time toiling at the task of becoming a master of English prose. He wrote an elaborate pamphlet on the Plymouth case, the importance of which, as a preliminary step to the frame-up, he alone had realized. Then his “Story of a Proletarian Life,” an autobiographical sketch, written in Italian, and later translated into English with the help of friends. To Cornelia he wrote, “I have received many praises for it. I must look out to not be spoiled.”

There is a story of old-time New England, how the rebel Thoreau refused to pay taxes to a government which captured fugitive slaves. He was put into jail, and his friend Emerson came to see him, somewhat shocked. “Henry, why are you here?” The answer was, “Waldo, why are you _not_ here?” This anecdote was recalled by an author who came to visit Vanzetti in his cell at this time, and wrote about the case: “Now, as formerly, Massachusetts has its finest soul in jail.” To this Vanzetti replied:

“I understand and appreciate the reasons by which you were adviced to exalt me far above my little merit. If there is a little of goodness in me--I am glad of it--but really I do not deserve your praises (as they are). I think there are some prisoners within these very four walls which exile me from society, which are much better than I.... Humble I wrote for the humble who must conquire the world to peace and freedom; and I try to make plaine humble but ignored truths.”

He studied incessantly, and criticized what he read. “Last evening I read a chapter of the ‘psicology’ (by William James). I perceive at once to deal with a really great one. He speak with simplicity as Reclu and others did. I will learn a good deal from this lecture. I feel the fever of knowledge in me.”

He studied the problems of his own revolutionary movement, and contributed to the anarchist press. “Actually I am overloaded of works. To-day, at noon, instead of eat my dinner I have finished the translation--from English into Italian of a quite long article. Beside that I intend to write the last letter upon ‘Syndicates and Syndicalism.’ I have wrote a historical, theoretic treaty on the subject. I wrote it in epistolary form. They were published--many congratulations came to me--at last the syndacalist replied to me with an article that is a misery.”

He grew still more ambitious; he would write a novel! It was to be a story of an immigrant laborer: as he phrased it, “a story that really happened and has me as a spectator.” “Events and Victims” was the title he chose, and he labored at it incessantly. He was not satisfied with translations made by friends, and rewrote a great part of it in his own English, patiently groping his way through the labyrinth of strange idioms. When the long labor was finished, he wrote:

“I realize, by proof, how hard the literary test is. I have no
illusions. I wrote more for exercise than for anything else, and
I perceived to have gained something through it by improving my
capacity. The fact told had happened. As for the ideas, they are
sincere. But the write was spoiled when it happened that an egg,
believed cooked, smashed in my pocket outsetting thus my whole
nervous system.”

II

Poor old Bart! Lovable, queer, slyly humorous fanatic, keeping his sense of whimsey, the same in a prison cell as Cornelia had known it in the Brini household, and during long walks on the beach and in the woods of Plymouth! He appreciated the troubles of his friends, who were not great writers themselves, trying to help one who was excessively ambitious. To Mrs. Evans he wrote:

“A few years ago, a good divvol of comrade, felt to have something
to say and wrote it down in an article that he sent to the weekly
for publication. In the enclosed letter he said to the edictor:
‘I have put down the words: please put down for me the commas and
the periods.’ To make that written presentable, the poor edictor
almost lost his reason and he wrote to the writer: ‘Next time, if
you wish your article to be pubbliced, just put down the commas and
the periods that I will put down the words for you.’”

And then the problem of keeping alive, while spending fifteen and one-half hours per day in a prison cell! Bart’s friends gave him advice, and he himself took much thought. He read the edicts of an American specialist in omniscience, and commented:

“Mr. A. Brisbane always trouble me. Several month ago I read in a book of physical culture, that to sit down is an unhealthy habit and that the more one stand the better he feel. I like to feel well and consequently I took the advice. But to-day Mr. A. Brisbane tell me that the more we lay down the better it is. So I do not know now what I have to do for my good health. Till now I used to read on my feet, more often leaning like an elephant against the wall; from now I will maibe sit down. Of course, the best way to prevent diseases and troubles to a man is kill him while he feel well. Accept, please, my regards and thanks.”

And always with his passionate love of the outdoors, and everything to be found there. In the summer-time Cornelia went to visit friends in the country, near the paper-box factory where Betty and Joe were working. Because the strain of her long labors was telling upon her, she took to outdoor work, and wrote much about her adventures. Bart replied:

“I am still smiling--to not say laughing. Yes, I would be very amused to see you work in your garden, for I alway laugh in observing the women at a manual work. When I wish to smile--I have only to think at a woman choping wood. I have take the ax out from the hands of some dozen of them, and cut the wood.

“But here we are! You know how to make an asparogus bed! I do not know to do it, and I have thought many time of it, for I like asparogus, and I intend if the possibility should come to cultivate them. Now I know by whom to be taught; and would it be possible, you would know what a worker I am, and what a garden I will plant and work out under your advice joined to some of my critersims. You would also know what a lighted heart the rough Bartolomeo has. In spite of all, I often feel yet as a child. I like to sing, to play and to foolish. But indeed, the water is rough now. Maibe, thanks to all the good ones among whom you are prominent, we will reach the shore someday.”

III

More discoveries of evidence, and more appeals to Judge Thayer. The defense got an expert on arms, and he studied the so-called “mortal bullet” under a high-powered microscope, and submitted a series of charts with very expensive photographs, proving that this bullet could not possibly have come through the Sacco pistol. To that the answer of the Commonwealth was easy; they too had money, and could employ experts. There were more long affidavits, full of technical terms and mathematical formulas. From first to last there were only two things a layman could be sure of; that every statement by every expert would be flatly contradicted by another statement of another expert; and that “Web” Thayer would believe the experts of his own side, and overlook those of the defense.

These charts and affidavits constituted what was known as the “Hamilton motion.” Then came the “Proctor motion”: an amazing story, exploding like a bombshell among the friends of the cause. A new lawyer had become active in the defense, William G. Thompson, and it happened that he had had some dealings with Captain Proctor of the state police. He went to Proctor and pleaded with him, and worked upon his conscience, with the result that the old man blurted out the whole story of his part in the “frame-up.” Thompson begged him to come and tell it to Judge Thayer, and Proctor said he would--provided the judge invited him. The lawyer went to Thayer in a fine fervor, thinking that the judge would be concerned about the truth, and be glad to see it prevail. But to his dismay he discovered that Thayer did not want to talk with Proctor. “We will try this proposition on affidavits,” he insisted.

So Proctor told his story, how the district attorney and his assistant had framed a question to Proctor in such a way that the jury would think he meant one thing, when in reality he meant another. And then came the answering affidavits of Katzmann and Williams, another illustration of the subtle art of betrayal--these answers were framed in such a way as to seem to deny the Proctor charge, but in reality to leave the central point untouched, and by implication to admit it!

The too-ardent young radicals imagined that this story would “blow things wide open.” But they found that what seemed a bombshell to them was a small firecracker to the rest of Massachusetts. This was the Harding-Coolidge era; “Nan Britton’s boy” was president of the United States, and the “Ohio gang” were the rulers of the nation. The oil men had finished looting the oil reserves of the navy, and the Veterans’ Bureau, supposed to take care of the victims of the great war, had stolen some hundreds of millions; all along the line, the password of government was “loot,” and the power of the secret service and the attorney-general’s office was used to threaten and intimidate those who disturbed the looters. In such a world it was hard indeed to get publicity for injustice done to a pair of wops; and after you had got it, the response of the public was that of the flag-saluting jury-foreman: “Damn them, they ought to hang anyhow!”

Boston was different. Boston had blue-bloods, Boston was pious, proper, and proud. But the payrolls for city work were padded with the names of many imaginary laborers; twenty policemen were accused of breaking into stores, holding wine parties in warehouses, and robbing prisoners. The state police were confiscating liquor, and selling it again, or giving it to their politician friends, who found it agreeable. The formula, “It just came off the boat,” was changed to read, “It just came from the State House.” By stages of graft you could mount, higher and higher, until you found yourself dealing in millions, and associating with the great bankers, who had loaned money to state legislators without security; these legislators had bought Elevated Railway stock, and had then voted a bill guaranteeing dividends, thus causing twenty-five million dollars worth of stock to jump from twenty-five to ninety. Rupert Alvin and his Pilgrim National crowd had not even had the inconvenience of being indicted for that crime; one rebel legislator, Thomas A. Niland, one opponent of graft among politicians, had hired a sandwich-man and set him to picket the Court House with a sign, reading: “Mr. District Attorney, indict the bribe givers and bribe takers of the Boston Elevated.”

IV

The Jerry Walker case came to trial. More than five years after his properties had been taken from him, the manufacturer of felt got a chance to tell his troubles to a jury, and the public to see what happened to big bandits in the august Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The case was tried in Dedham Court House with the round white dome and portholes like an ocean liner; and it was destined to be appealed to the Supreme Judicial Court, and finally decided within four weeks of the Sacco-Vanzetti case.

The Jerry Walker trial lasted from the beginning of November, 1923, to the end of November, 1924; the longest law-battle ever known in the history of the Commonwealth. During that period of time Cornelia Thornwell heard about little else when she was in touch with her family. Two of her sons-in-law, two nephews-in-law, and two cousins-in-law were involved, and the families ate, slept, walked, rode and prayed with the case for the whole thirteen months. It was not merely that fifteen millions of dollars were at stake, but the family honor, and the safety of the country’s banking system; for if Jerry Walker won his case, all the business men who had lost their properties to bankers would set up similar claims. What would be the fun in banking, if you were confined to the interest on your funds, and could not use your control of credit to get possession of industry?

Cornelia was making it a rule to visit Sacco once or twice a month in Dedham jail, and she would stop at the court-house and watch the great duel of law. No guards with rifles on the steps, no gruff policemen to search your hand-bag, no steel cage for the defendants! No; for these were not the little bandits who break the law, these were the big bandits who make the law. Everything quiet and dignified, in the Harvard manner. With the exception of poor Jerry Walker himself, everybody was Harvard--the real reason poor Jerry had lost out.

Polished gentlemen, with soft voices and slow drawls, dressed with elegance, and always immaculate, regardless of weather and possible weaknesses of the flesh, arguing fine points of law, and presenting mountains of documents and miles of figures to a bewildered jury. You would not have guessed that there was anything very special or thrilling in process--unless you knew the sacred names, and realized that here were the bluest of blue-bloods, the center of the center and hub of the hub. These men who sat on hard benches listening, who took the witness-stand to testify for days and sometimes weeks, were the inner ring of those who held the financial and industrial power of New England for their own. There were times when, if you had sat with an adding machine, and tabulated the wealth owned by men in the court-room, it would have amounted to several hundred million dollars; if you had counted the wealth of other persons which they controlled, and used to sway markets and support credit for their own advantage, it would have totaled billions.

The trial would occupy a hundred and eighty-seven days of actual hearings; more than two thousand exceptions would be taken to the judge’s rulings, to be submitted to the higher court; the testimony would be close to six million words, and the cost of the procedure to the County of Norfolk would be more than two hundred thousand dollars. Out of its great generosity of heart, the legislature went so far as to pass a special measure, providing for the payment of nine dollars a day to the jurymen in this case--and the bill was made retroactive! It was in the public interest that these wholesale bandits should fight out their fights in a court-room, instead of hiring private armies and settling it on the streets. When the issue had been decided, these two facts would stand out: first, that Harvard blue-bloods had the money; and second, that their fellow-members of the Union Club had permitted them to keep it.

V

To Cornelia Thornwell the really significant thing was this: that so many concerned with the defense of the case were lying. The great bankers were hiding what they had done to Jerry Walker, and their great lawyers were sitting down with them, day after day and night after night, framing what they were going to say. For five years Cornelia had known that they would do this; it was so well understood in the family that nobody was equal to the task of attempting to fool her. There were fifteen millions of dollars at stake; and the driving power of this sum was so colossal that it swept every barrier before it, and truth, honor, dignity, justice, law, country, God and religion went out like the contents of a chicken-ranch when a dam bursts at the head of a valley.

Privately these bankers were quarreling bitterly among themselves as Cornelia knew; the wives were cutting one another at bridge-parties, and families were riven pro tem. But on the witness-stand every man stood by the ship, and obeyed the orders of the captain, Rupert Alvin. Cornelia got a new understanding of her oldest son-in-law. He had always seemed to her a semi-comic figure, with his face and neck of pink and purple bulges; humorless, naïve in spite of his heavy pomposity, and pathetic while being hen-pecked by a Thornwell lady whose family was older and greater than his. But now Cornelia observed him as a man among men, and realized what are the qualities of a successful bandit-leader.

They might be summed up in a single word, dependability; the gang must know that the leader will always be there, and will never change; that he will be the incarnation of solid, heavy, earnest greed, an irresistible and incessant push for large sums of other people’s money. Also, the gang must know that the leader will give them individually a greater share than any other leader of equal greed-power. A quality of Rupert’s that came out in the trial--he was a veritable mountain of righteous respectability. He had only wanted a small share of the loot for himself, and it had been necessary for his associates to insist that he should have a large share. Said Quincy Thornwell, gossiping with his Aunt Cornelia during the course of the revelations, “You always have to insist that Rupert take a large share. And you always do it. If you don’t, you are not in on the next big deal.”

Now here he was on the witness-stand, telling the story of his relationships with Jerry Walker; the president of the Pilgrim National Bank, who had promised poor Jerry a three-million-dollar loan at twenty-seven per cent interest, and had “strung him along” for months, having the plans all made, the syndicate of bankers formed, and Henry Cabot Winters supposed to be getting the agreements ready--when as a matter of fact Rupert had ordered that no agreements be got ready, having no purpose but to have poor Jerry in a “jam” when his “paper” came to maturity.

For more than a week Rupert was cross-questioned by Jerry’s little bull-dog of a lawyer, and he was most gentlemanly and aristocratic about his lying. He had reduced it to a formula, suitable to his simple mind; he could remember ten thousand details which were to his advantage, and he did remember them, promptly and exactly; but whenever there was any detail which would have been to his disadvantage, then he had forgotten about it. And that was all; it was charmingly easy--he had only to say, “I do not remember.” The cross-examiner might phrase the question in a score of different ways, he might make any number of approaches to it, but he could never get anything from the imperturbable Rupert except, “I do not remember.” It amused the lawyers of Jerry Walker to go over the record, and count up the number of matters about which Rupert’s memory had thus been adjusted to his interests; he had managed to forget one hundred and seventy-three different things.

Only once a bad slip! Early during the negotiations with Jerry Walker he had put the blame on Henry Cabot Winters, and had said to Jerry, “Henry has had his teeth in this thing once”--meaning in Jerry’s felt-business. That was a terrible admission, and Rupert made it elaborately, and in great detail, before his lawyers managed to interrupt, and convey to him that it wouldn’t do. The great banker then took the liberty of consulting his counsel; after the consultation, he retracted his admission, and denied that he had ever said any such thing to the plaintiff. A distressing moment; for there sat the reporters of half a dozen newspapers, their pencils plying busily, and the whole of State Street and the Union and Somerset Clubs waiting to read the story that afternoon.

Then, the ordeal being over for Rupert, he went back to Boston, and attended an assemblage of some men’s organization connected with his Episcopal Church. Some evil person proposed that the organization should take a stand upon the question of social justice, and Rupert got up and moved that the resolution be tabled, and made a powerful and impressive speech, in which he declared that the purpose of the Episcopal Church was “spirituality,” and that it should not be lured into controversies over mundane affairs. The Boston newspapers all reported the discourse, and were strong for “spirituality.”

VI

Mr. Justice Thayer was rendering his decisions upon the various motions for a new trial. The “Ripley motion,” the “Daley motion,” the “Pelzer motion,” the “Andrews motion,” the “Goodridge motion”--he denied them all; and he was judge, and the sole judge. He decided that his own conduct had been proper, he decided that the new evidence was not such as to warrant a new trial.

The one thing his victims got out of these decisions was a holiday every time. The law required that the defendants should be present at all stages of the proceedings; and so a miniature army would be called out to move Nicola Sacco from Dedham Jail to Dedham Court-house, and Bartolomeo Vanzetti would leave his cell for a whole day, and become the delighted center of an automobile parade. He wrote Cornelia about it, beginning with his breakfast, “a cup of coffee, three slices of bread, two frankforts and mashed potatoes, all as cold as ice cream could be.” Later when it was proposed to publish this narrative, Bart was distressed, and insisted upon its being made plain that he had made this remark playfully, because of course the prison authorities could not prepare hot food out of hours.

“After such a breakfast, an official took me in the ‘Guard Room.’
The little chauffeur, an old officer, and the bravest one were
waiting for me. I was chained with the last one, and all four left
the room and went down to the street where the automobile was
ready. Six or seven officers stood at the door, with their right
hand near the back pocket, ready to protect me from any attack.
One must be most ungrateful man of the world for not feeling quite
reconoscent.”

And then his love of nature, the joy of escaping from darkness into sunshine and open air:

“So we enter now into a Park the name of which I already forget,
but the beauty of it, I will never forget anymore. If I were poet
and know the meter, I would write a song of it in third rhyme.
(Italian, terza rima). I am not a poet, but neither so profane to
disturbing such splendor with my poor ink. The concerned officer
point to me a big brick building, saying ‘It is the Fine Arts
Museum.’ He point many other buildings saying that they are almost
all a private schools. I was, then regretting to have only a pair
of eyes, able to look in one direction alone. I observe everything,
the trees, the bushes, the grass, the rocks, and the brook along
the way on which I was raptured. The drops of dew look like pearls;
the sky reflects himself in the waters of the brook, and let one
think that it is bottomless.”

VII

Nicola Sacco had been for more than three years a victim of the law’s delay. He had spent all but an hour or two each day in a cell with nothing to do, and the strain of it was affecting his mind. He could not understand why persons who espoused his cause should look for justice to one old man who hated him and was determined to have his life. He could not understand why this one old man should need years to decide matters about which his mind was made up in advance. He could not understand why the money of the anarchist movement should be wasted upon futilities. Brooding thus, he became morose, like a dog chained up; he suspected every one who came near him, he would not sign any more legal papers; presently he would not write letters, nor leave his cell, nor speak to any one.

Cornelia would travel to Dedham to test her social prestige upon the “chief officer,” as he was called, to obtain some amelioration of the harsh prison régime. The chief officer was large, stout, superannuated, and Cornelia, seeking to win his favor, had to listen to long discourses concerning his diet; he was centered upon “reducing,” and talked about it in more intimate detail than even Clara Thornwell Scatterbridge. He would keep an old lady standing while he enumerated the pounds he had managed to take off by this method and that; and the next time she came, he would forget what he had told her, and tell it again. “Would you believe that I used to weigh two hundred and sixty?”

This man who could not keep from eating too much would take a tin plate of cold food, with two slices of bread on top--a narrow plate, made especially to go between the bars of a cell--and if the prisoner in the cage complained of monotony and failed to eat the food, the chief officer would discourse for another hour to his visitors: these men were worth nothing, the more you did for them the less grateful they were. When Cornelia went away, he would grumble to the other officers about rich women who came “butting in on prisons,” spoiling the inmates, insisting on new things that nobody had ever heard of before. “Gosh, if that old hen would mind her own business!”

Some friends of this old gentleman insisted to Cornelia that he was well-meaning, and trying to do his duty as he saw it. But to her he seemed the embodiment of that mountainous, colossal, insensitive stupidity which was in authority throughout the world--which indeed seemed to be the very nature of authority. Several years ago there had been a legislative investigation of county institutions, and a severe arraignment of conditions; but the county graft-rings had been able to block every move, and nothing had been done.

Sacco was more of a problem than the average prisoner. He could not work in the plant which made shoes for the prisoners, because he was such a swift worker, he cleaned up everything in sight; moreover, another prisoner had attacked him, hating him as a “Red” and an atheist. He could not work in the carpenter shop, because he was a “murderer,” not to be trusted with tools. Kitchen work was barred for the same reason. In short, there was nothing for him but twenty-two hours a day in a cell; so he became frantic, and at half-past one o’clock in the morning leaped from his cot and began to pound his head against a chair, in an effort to dash out his brains. He succeeded in cutting four gashes in his scalp, which a surgeon had to sew up. Then Nick declared what he called a “hungry strike,” and for thirty-three days he did not touch food.

The chief officer was not allowed to do anything about it--so he understood the law; if a wop didn’t want to eat, nobody had a right to make him eat. It was good anarchist doctrine, and Cornelia discovered that many members of the defense committee agreed with it. The Italians were convinced that there was no hope of saving Nick from the chair, and according to their philosophy, a man had a right to end his life if he wanted to. If he did so, the agony would be over, and the cause would have a good martyr.

There was a hearing due on one of the motions for a new trial; one of those interminable farces that occurred every month or two, whenever a motion was made, a new affidavit submitted, an argument heard. Every such time the miniature army would go into action, and the two wops would be brought in and locked in the cage; Judge Thayer would enter with a rustle of black silk robes, and the bailiff would pound with his wand and repeat his formula, beginning, “Hear ye! Hear ye!” The judge would sit down, and have another chance to pour out his withering contempt upon the prisoners and their counsel.

But during the “hungry strike,” the sheriff refused to take the responsibility of moving Sacco from the jail to the court-house. What was to be done? Fred Moore had an office assigned to him, across the hall from the court-room; and there was a terrible scene--the lawyer maintaining his intention of going before the judge with a motion to determine Sacco’s sanity, and the anarchists arguing, denouncing, threatening, clamoring for the prisoner’s right to decide his own fate, without the intervention of aliens, enemies, traitors and spies. The uproar became so great that the judge sent the bailiff to command order. In the end Moore went ahead and made the motion, with Cornelia standing behind him. For this neither of them was ever forgiven.

VIII

Examinations were made, and the prisoner adjudged insane, and committed to the Boston Psychopathic Hospital--where they made short work of his anarchistic right to commit suicide. They strapped him into a chair and put a rubber tube up into his nose and down into his gullet, and poured in some milk. It is a hideously painful experience, and rather than undergo it again, Nick agreed to eat. After that he was committed to the Bridgewater Hospital for the Criminal Insane, where they were kind to him; the doctors would listen while he set forth his principles, and would agree that they were beautiful principles--as indeed they were. Very soon Nick was strong again, and a “good fellow,” eager and sociable. Outdoor work was given to him, and he did it gladly.

So now he was “cured,” and must go back to Dedham. But the physicians refused to certify him unless he was to have occupation; so the chief officer was induced to modify his time-honored régime. Nick was to do basket-weaving, and three times a week a volunteer teacher was to come and give him lessons. This was Mrs. Bang, a Danish lady, who taught manual training to blue-blood children in private schools; she must guard the dark secret, that she came three afternoons a week to visit an anarchist atheist draft-dodger convicted of banditry and murder.

Mrs. Bang was one more problem in Sacco’s life. Why should a person who was able to wear good clothes and drive about in an automobile, take six long journeys a week, through a New England winter, to teach anything to a prisoner without pay? It did not fit into the class-war theory. But Mrs. Bang won his confidence--it was easier, because she was a foreigner. Strange to say, she found that Nick loved America, and wanted to live here. His wife talked about going back to Italy, but he insisted that the children had a better chance in the new world. Page Mr. Katzmann!

Nick made bags from twine, decorated with beads; he made an elaborate tray of reeds, with flowers and butterflies. He developed a wish to learn English, the better to take his lessons. So came letters, to Mrs. Evans, to Mrs. Henderson, to Cornelia: letters in home-made spelling, but otherwise clear and direct. For example, when Cornelia made a present of clothing to his family:

“I remember a few years ago on our love day when I bought the first
lovely blue suit for my dear Rosina and that dear remembrance
still remains in my heart. That was the first day nineteen twelve
in Milford, Mass., the celebration day of the five martyrs of
Chicago, that in the mind of the humanity oppressed never will be
forget. So in morning May first nineteen twelve I dress up with my
new blue suit and I went over to see my dear Rosina and I asked
her father if he won’t let Rosina come with me in the city town to
buy something and he said yes. So in afternoon about one o’clock
we both us went in city town, and we went in a big store and we
bought a brown hat, a white underdress, a blue suit, one pair
brown stock, one pair brown shoes, and after she was all dress up,
I wish you could see Rosina, how nice she looked, while now the
sufferings of to-day had make her look like an old woman. But I
never was ambitious to buy her diamonds and so-so, but I always
bought everything that could be natural and usefull.

“Just now I am sitting alone always, but with me, in my soul, in my
heart, in my mind, are all immense legion of the noble and generous
friends and comrades. Here I say I’m sitting writing to you these
few lines; the sunlight it shines on my face and for a brief time
it is a relief to my soul, and it brightens my mind by looking at
the clear blue sky and the beautiful mother of nature.... I will
live for humanity and for the solidarity and for the fraternity and
for gratitude to all the friends and comrades who have worked for
Sacco and Vanzetti; and I will live for freedom and for justice
that is the justice of all of us.”

IX

From scenes in Dedham jail Cornelia would walk a few blocks to Dedham court-house, and watch the male members of her family engaged in wholesale respectable perjury. She saw Henry Cabot Winters, who had spent his life harrowing other persons, and now for the first time was toad instead of harrow. Every trace of the familiar ease and charm was gone from Henry’s manner; he was exactly like any other witness telling lies and getting caught; the perspiration appeared upon his forehead, and had to be mopped away repeatedly. Under solemn oath he had declared that on a certain date he had had no interest whatever in the concerns of Jerry Walker; and then Jerry’s lawyer produced the charge-accounts of Henry’s office, in which the great man and his subordinates kept a record of the expenditure of their valuable time. On those pages Henry was set down as having given a thousand dollars’ worth to the Jerry Walker matter, and then five thousand more--it meant several days! He had even gone so far as to open a separate account for time given to the felt-business; he was starting to take it over, at a time when the owner was resting serene in the promises of Rupert and the other bankers, that he was to have three million dollars’ credit to handle his war-contracts!

Jerry Walker’s lawyers produced the accounts of all his concerns, and showed how prosperous they had been. They showed the complicated series of moves whereby Henry Cabot Winters had made it impossible for Jerry to get a dollar out of any of them. The lawyer had started fake bankruptcy proceedings against one enterprise; he had secretly purchased some of Jerry’s notes, and caused other persons to start lawsuits, to place attachments and obtain injunctions. And now here he was on the witness-stand, squirming and wincing, obliged either to admit that he had done these things, or else to be proved a perjurer.

On another day Cornelia heard the cross-examination of a great banker from New York, president of one of the dozen institutions which control the financial life of America. This gentleman had held several hundred thousand dollars’ worth of Jerry’s notes, and had turned them over to Rupert and Henry, to be used in clubbing Jerry to his knees. He had sat down with the lawyers and learned an elaborate mass of perjury, and felt very uncomfortable while telling it to Jerry’s lawyer, because that lawyer happened to know him well. The lawyer asked a simple question, about which he knew the banker was going to lie; and he fixed his stern gaze upon his victim, a sort of hypnotic stare. Something happened to the witness, he “lost his head,” as the saying is; all that elaborate structure of falsehood which he had learned went suddenly out of his mind, he couldn’t remember the beginning or the end of it.

A dead silence in the court-room, a long, long silence, apparently endless. The witness sat with the lawyer staring into his eyes, like a rabbit fascinated by a snake. At last the judge had to intervene: “Are you conscious at all of any mental agitation just now, so that you would like to leave the stand for a time and compose your mind? I think we have been waiting nearly fifteen minutes for your answer to that question. Are you sensible of a desire to leave the stand for a while? If you are you may do so.”

But the great banker could not think what to say, even to that. The Court had to repeat and urge. “You might answer that question. I ask you if you desire to leave the stand for a time and collect your thoughts on this subject?”

Finally the witness found his voice: “I would like to, to be perfectly sure on this.”

Upon which the proceedings of the Superior Court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, now sitting within and for the County of Norfolk, came to a halt. The great Wall Street banker left the chair, and sat apart in the court-room, while everybody else, including the judge and the jury, did nothing but wait. An amazing, an incredible scene. Whispers of the spectators now and then, but mostly dead silence, so as not to interrupt the mental labors of the man of millions, supposed to be trying to recall whether he had had a certain conference with a certain man on a certain day--but in reality trying to bring back to mind the elaborate structure of falsehood which his lawyers had worked out for him.

For almost an hour that extraordinary pause continued; and all the while there were ghosts in the court-room, calling to Cornelia Thornwell. The ghosts of Nicola Sacco, being harrowed by District Attorney Katzmann! Nick being accused of the crime of having slandered Harvard College! Cornelia imagined him asking for an hour’s time to dig up from his subconscious mind the statistics, that Harvard educated free something over one hundred students every year, while the University of Wisconsin educated five thousand, eight hundred and ninety-five! She imagined Nick asking for an hour’s time to recollect whether he was “that man” who had dared to criticize America, after running away to Mexico! She imagined him sitting for an hour trying to recall what his lawyers had told him he had been doing on the night of his arrest! Picturing such things, Cornelia had an impulse to laugh out loud; which would have been a shocking breach of decorum--the Superior Court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, now sitting within and for the County of Norfolk, would never have recovered from it. But no, Cornelia had been for forty years the mistress of a blue-blood household, and she sat, perfectly rigid, keeping her excitement inside.

X

Dark days for the Sacco-Vanzetti defense, that year of 1924, with first Nick in the insane asylum, and then Bart. Funds had run out entirely; Fred Moore was a lawyer without an office; there was no committee, no program, no action--nothing but two wops in torment, and a promise of some legal decisions in an indefinite future. Judge Thayer was having an attack of pneumonia, and then of appendicitis; but refusing to die and let some other judge deal with the case. He would keep the half-crazed victims in their cells, until he could have the glory and the thrill of summoning them to court again, and with his cold metallic voice like a thin strip of steel cutting into their souls.

Betty and Joe had finished their year in the paper-box factory in a blaze of excitement. They had organized the workers, and been discharged for their activities; whereupon the workers had declared a strike, and stayed out nearly a month, and got soundly walloped by police and bosses. Betty had had her turn on the picket-line, and as a result had changed her philosophy; she was all for solidarity, and opposed to every label--socialist, communist, anarchist, or what not--which split the workers and wasted their energies. She would go to Charlestown to visit Bart, and they would get into an excited controversy, and Bart would write treatises to controvert her heresy. He would forget his own deadly peril, in his anxiety to save Betty from a false theory.

That was characteristic of all the Boston anarchists--they were strong on theory, and weak on actuality. It was that which made the defense so difficult; when a new move was to be made, they had to be persuaded, and it was a job that took until the small hours of the morning, and then had to be done all over again. No anarchist committee meeting ever ended, because somebody had a right to say something more; no decision could be taken, and if it was, it wasn’t binding. If you didn’t like it, you said nothing, but went off and worked against it. If anybody said that wasn’t fair, you shrugged your shoulders and said: “Shoo--er, why not? Ain’t I got right for say what I please? No, I no got to say it in committee, I say it when I want say it. If you not like it, you got right say so--any time, any place.”

In other words a committee of anarchists was a contradiction in terms; it was not a committee, but a number of impermeable and unassimilable units, and anybody who ever did anything was sure to be regarded as a dictator or meddler. Fred Moore was sleeping on a canvas cot in the committee-headquarters, and living on pancakes, because he had turned in his last salary-check to pay the printer; yet, if you brought up a new plan to raise funds, you would be sure to hear that it was contrary to “filosofia anarchica.” If, nevertheless, you insisted upon action, you would be told, “All right, do it, if you want, you got right.” But if you insisted that the sanction of the committee was necessary before the action could be effective, you would hear, “No, we don’t give no sanction, if you want do it, you do it for self.”

Even at times when money was on hand, it was almost impossible to get them to pay it out. Money was contrary to “filosofia anarchica,” it was an instrument and a symbol of graft. What did people need so much for? What right did they have to it? In one desperate pinch, Cornelia sent an organizer to New York, to address meetings and appeal to the radical labor unions, especially the Jewish clothing-workers. This man sent back a couple of thousand dollars; but he had to come back to Boston in order to get his weekly pay-check to keep him going.

Fred Moore’s idea was to spend money to get more; it was the American way. When he learned that there was a convict in Atlanta penitentiary who might tell something about the real bandits, he wanted to get on the train and rush down there; he did not want to spend a night arguing with the committee, and miss his train as a result. When he wanted to send a man to Italy to hunt for Coacci or Boda, or to trail a suspected bandit to Texas or the Argentine, Moore would have to threaten to drop the case; it would be the only way to get a check signed.

Such were the sufferings of lawyers in contact with anarchists: and equally real and anguished were the sufferings of anarchists in contact with lawyers! To rebels and “libertarians” the lawyer was the incarnation of repression and enslavement; he was a spider who spun webs of tradition about the limbs of humanity. Everything he did was waste, his very language was an insult, and the expense he incurred meant a bleeding to death of the radical movement. Let the martyrs die, and spend the money upon “literature,” said the fanatics. But the lawyer would point out that the money would not come for “literature,” it came to keep the martyrs alive, and he was the sole possessor of the secret lore whereby that might be accomplished.

As individuals, you would find many of these Italian anarchists simple and lovable, sometimes charming; in their naïveté a relief from New England stiffness and solemnity. You must be patient with their fanaticism, realizing that it was the excess of a virtue; they represented the principle of variation, without which human life would be that of the ants and bees. When you found them most exasperating--when you felt like taking the whole of “filosofia anarchica” and dumping it into the Back Bay--then you must remind yourself that great scientists had held and taught this creed, Kropotkin and the Reclus brothers; great poets, such as Shelley and Emerson; moral teachers, such as Tolstoi and Thoreau, George Fox and William Penn, Jesus and Buddha. Not all these had called themselves by the name anarchist, but all had stood for the principle, the supremacy of the individual conscience over social compulsion. If the movement produced more dangerous lunatics than it did prophets and saints, that was the price which humanity had to pay in the search for higher types of being.

XI

Dark days for idealists and dreamers of “joostice”! Fascist reaction enthroned in Italy, and reaching out to control America; organizing the Italians into murder-bands, to break up Socialist meetings in American cities, and obtain the deportation of Italian radicals, to be shot at home. In such activities they would have the coöperation of American police, and of Federal secret service; Mussolini was the new hero of our bankers and college-students, generally voted the greatest man in the world.

It was a presidential election year, and Senator LaFollette, who had exposed the oil-thieves, was a Bolshevik and betrayer of his country, while “Cautious Cal” was the strong silent statesman, who had made more speeches than any other man ever in the White House. In their frenzy of reaction the big business men even set out to smash the proposed constitutional amendment prohibiting child-labor, and keep several millions of little ones in mills and mines, instead of going to school. There was a ferocious campaign in Massachusetts, an explosion of all the forces of bigotry and avarice. The little group of workers for the Sacco-Vanzetti defense lived in the midst of that uproar, like travelers in an African jungle who hear the beating of tom-toms and see the glare of fires upon which human flesh is being roasted.

Cal Coolidge’s political and financial boss was a great lord of cotton-mills in New England, soon to be made a United States senator. He it was who led this campaign, and rallied the business men and bankers, the newspaper editors and college professors, the bootleggers, the criminals, and the hierarchy of the Catholic Church. This latter organization, kept generously by the business interests, had invested its funds in choice real estate, and become one of the wealthiest corporations in the Commonwealth. Now was the time for it to pay its debt, and suffer the little children to come unto the mill-masters.

The head of this religious machine was Cardinal O’Connell, jovially referred to by the newspaper men as “Big Bill,” and by his enemies as “the papal bull”; a huge hippopotamus of a man, weighing over three hundred pounds, and like Clara Thornwell Scatterbridge and the chief officer of Dedham Jail, devoting his attention to the problem of “reducing.” It happened that Cornelia had spent her summers near the prelate’s summer residence, and seen him daily, taking his constitutional, a picturesque figure in a scarlet cloak, against a background of azure river. To his intimates he was a genial and convivial soul--not troubled by the eighteenth amendment, but having access to the best stores of conviviality. He was an organist and a judge of pictures, a generous buyer of old masters and rare books; a Renaissance prince of the church, building a white stone palace out on Commonwealth Avenue. The Jews had built themselves a Temple Israel nearby, a plain concrete structure, and the Irish-Catholic conductors of street-cars, answering the questions of tourists, would point their thumb contemptuously and say, “That? Sure, that’s Cardinal O’Connell’s garage.”

Cornelia went to see him, a little later on, escorted by her nephew Quincy. She pleaded with the great man to say a word for mercy to Sacco and Vanzetti; but he was cautious and preferred to talk about Japanese art and Buddhist philosophy. Quincy sat, a much-amused spectator; being a wit and diner-out, he knew the great man, and had brought his Bolshevik aunt to tea by way of a prank. Going and coming, Quincy told stories about the Cardinal, who had begun life as an Irish “mick” in “the Patch,” as the slums of Lowell were known. He was much too intelligent a man to believe the mythology he taught; but he held that it was what the masses needed to keep them obedient. He owned many blocks of stock in cotton-mills, and was a reactionist now, but in his young days had been a modernist, and highly indignant because some of his writings had been put on the Index.

There were many Catholics among the millionaire industrialists and bankers of Massachusetts, and the Cardinal would invite them to dinner; they would come with stars on their bosoms and garters on their legs, and would be in heaven. The great prelate could ask them for a million or two any day, and buy the best sites for orphan asylums and seminaries and church colleges and what not. In this way he had spent fifty million dollars in ten years. So now when these mill-owners and bankers wanted the people of Massachusetts to vote their children into wage-slavery, “Big Bill” was the boy to do their job.

Four Sundays during the month of October, 1924, he made every priest in the diocese stand before the high altar at high mass, and read aloud a diatribe, based upon the lies circulated by the manufacturers’ agents, representing the Children’s Bureau at Washington as a device of Moscow for the undermining of the American home. Mrs. Florence Kelley, leading social worker, and champion of the child-labor amendment, had once been the wife of a Russian. Thirty-two years previously, she had divorced this man, and had received from the courts the right to resume her father’s name of Kelley; she had been a “Kelley” for sixty out of her sixty-eight years of life. But now the opponents of the child-labor amendment placarded her from Maine to California as Mrs. Wischnewetzky, Bolshevik agent! By methods such as this, they induced the people of Massachusetts to vote down the amendment by two to one, and the little children of the Commonwealth were saved for God and Senator Butler.

XII

In November, 1924, after a year, Judge Thayer handed down his decision on the Proctor motion for a new trial. This motion was the main reliance of the defense lawyers; they could not imagine how the confession of one of the state’s leading witnesses that he had “framed” his evidence in collusion with the prosecutors, could fail to be ground for a new trial. But “Web” would show them! He would crowd all his arts into one document--twisting and wriggling, evading issues; misrepresenting everything the defense lawyers had claimed about the Proctor confession.

The issue was very simple, but “Web” wound it up in thousands of words, and to make plain all his tricks would require thousands more. He said that the questions asked of Captain Proctor were clear, and must have been perfectly understood by him; which would have been a good joke, if it had been meant as such. Of course they were understood by Proctor, and no one had ever suggested that they were not. What Proctor had confessed was that the questions had been contrived for the purpose of being obscure to the jury: which was certainly an entirely different matter.

Next “Web” asked whether the questions were “unfair or improper.” Of course they were not. What had been “unfair and improper” was that the witness and the district attorney had framed the questions in such a way that the jury would think they meant what they didn’t mean; also that the judge had represented to the jury that they meant what they didn’t mean.