Chapter XVIII: The Supersalesman (1)

I

Cornelia Thornwell would wake up in the middle of the night, trembling, in a cold sweat. They were going to murder Bart and Nick! Impossible to fool herself any longer; they did actually intend to do it!

For hours she would lie, evolving plans; going over in her mind the names of persons she knew who might be capable of a concern for either justice or mercy. She would turn on the light by her bedside and make notes of things to be done during the day. Betty and Joe, who now lived in the next apartment, would come in at daylight and find her writing letters. Impossible to rest!

There being no more hope from the courts, the energies of the defense were turned to the Governor of the Commonwealth, who had the power to pardon, or to commute the sentences to life-imprisonment. Legally, his power was subject to the consent of his “council,” a sort of state cabinet; but then, he had power over this “council,” being what was known as a “strong” man, accustomed to having his own way.

Alvan Tufts Fuller was his name, and he had begun life as a trick bicycle-rider and racer. He went into the bicycle-repair business, and prospered, and when the bicycle gave way to the automobile, he stayed on the top of the wave, and obtained the agency for the Packard car in New England, and also in Pennsylvania, and of the Cadillac car in New England. Upon every machine sold in these territories he received twenty per cent of the purchase price. Since the Packard limousine was a five thousand dollar car, it amounted to a great sum, in the neighborhood of two million dollars a year. “Allie” Fuller, trick bicycle-rider, was now the richest man in New England; authorities differed as to whether his fortune was twenty millions or forty, but as a rule they guessed the higher sum.

He had begun his political career as a “Roosevelt Progressive,” but that thin veneer had worn off quickly. He had been elected to Congress for two terms, but had been too busy to attend the sessions--except when it was necessary to make a speech denouncing the “Reds.” He had served four years as lieutenant-governor, and had earned the enmity of the Thornwell clan by insisting upon an exposure of Rupert Alvin’s purchase of the legislature in connection with the Elevated Railway bill. Fuller played the rôle of an “independent” in politics, stern and incorruptible; he made a grand gesture of refusing to take his salary--thereby obtaining advertisement worth many times the amount. He wanted the legislators and officials to have the same scorn for small sums of money; if they had possessed an income of two millions a year, they would doubtless have obliged him. As it was, they took their salaries of fifteen hundred dollars, and eked them out by means of tips from the lobbyists who swarmed to the State House, or the hotel-rooms nearby.

The system of universal graft which is American government was going on, and Fuller knew that it was going on. Once in a while some “reformer” or “crank” or “sore-head” would force an exposure, whereupon the lieutenant-governor would leap up and make a fuss in the papers, and the public would know that they had an honest public servant. The statements he made got him into trouble; the Speaker of the House sued him for slander and won a verdict--only to have it upset by the Supreme Court. But Fuller got the advertising and on the basis of it became Chief Executive of the Commonwealth--the great master of millions condescending to play the game of democratic politics. The procedure consisted of going about shaking hands with grimy workingmen who thought he was still the bicycle repairer of thirty years ago. Hale and hearty, full of animal magnetism, with a rough exterior and a “golden heart,” he kept the admiration of the “plain people.” To the starving strikers of Fall River he began a campaign speech, “I am not a politician”--and they believed him. “I am no orator,” he would say--and doubtless meant it, not knowing that this was a device explained in every treatise on oratory.

A typical specimen of the “strong man” in American affairs; a competent executive, a driver of other men, but utterly devoid of ideas, and incapable of thinking except in current tags. He had known all his life what he wanted, and had gone after it and got it. To a salesman of Packard automobiles, the human race is sharply divided into two parts: those who have the money to buy Packard automobiles, and those who have not. To the former, “Allie” Fuller would come forward smiling and voluble, his mentality concentrated upon flattery and “service.” To that far greater number whose costume and manners make clear that they have not the price of a Packard car and never will have it, the attitude is one of indifference, except just prior to election day.

This supersalesman of automobiles was as cold as marble; utterly selfish, and lacking not merely in the finer feelings, but even in the common every-day kindness, of which politicians often have too much. No friend, no matter how intimate, ever got a discount on a car. In politics he granted no quarter; he gave the punishment and took none. In business he was the modern slave-driver with a fountain-pen instead of a whip. When, after the war, the workers in his repair and body-factory came to him, pleading humbly that on account of the increase in the cost of living they could not get along on a wage of twenty-five dollars a week, he gave them a brutal refusal. There was a strike, which was embarrassing to an ambitious politician in later years. But no diminution of that two million dollar a year income!

Such is the way by which “strong” men build up fortunes; and then they sit on the heap, regarding with instant instinctive hostility any one who suggests that there is any other ideal in life, or any other duty. And now such a man was called upon to decide the issue of life or death for Nicola Sacco, who had stood up in court and said: “I know the sentence will be between two classes, the oppressed class and the rich class, and there will be always collision between one and the other.” He was to decide the issue of life or death for Bartolomeo Vanzetti, who had stood up in the same court and said: “I have refused myself of what are considered the commodity and glories of life, the prides of a life of a good position, because in my consideration it is not right to exploit man.”

II

The Madeiros confession, the Letherman and Weyand confessions, Judge Thayer’s decision, with its tone of raving--all these had brought a new element into the Sacco-Vanzetti case. So-called “decent” people--that is, people who had money, but nevertheless believed in fair play--were shocked by a too-obvious demonstration of class justice. One by one the few daily newspapers in America which profess a trace of liberalism were persuaded to investigate the case, and one by one they took up the campaign for a new trial.

The Springfield _Republican_, the only liberal daily in New England, pleaded the cause. The Boston _Herald_ published an editorial, which won the Pulitzer prize for the best newspaper editorial of 1926. “As months have merged into years, and the great debate over the case has continued, our doubts have solidified slowly into convictions, and reluctantly we have found ourselves compelled to reverse our original judgment.” That gave a terrible shock to Boston conservatism; for substantial persons who didn’t read the _Globe_ in the morning read the _Herald_, and such an editorial interfered with the digestion of cod-fish balls. A friend of Governor Fuller’s met him on his way to the State House that morning and said, “Have you seen that the _Herald_ has come out for a new trial for those wops?” Said His Excellency, “What? Has the _Herald_ fallen for that bunk?”

Now had come the death sentence; and all those energies of protest which had been centered upon the courts were turned upon the Chief Executive. “Write to Governor Fuller! Wire to Governor Fuller!” said the bulletins and appeals of the defense committee. The State House was inundated by a flood of mail. It came, literally by the bushel-basket full, several times every day. The best brains of the world, the finest and most sensitive spirits, laid aside their work and composed appeals, of a sort which they imagined might stir the conscience and influence the judgment of the chief executive of a great Commonwealth. They spent money upon telegrams and cablegrams, they wrote letters for which a collector of autographs would have paid large sums of money; and what became of the product of their efforts?

The defense committee received a letter addressed to the Governor, signed by a dozen or more labor members of the British Parliament, asking him to do what he could to bring about a new trial. Gardner Jackson, Amherst graduate and a presentable person, was selected to deliver the document, and he took the precaution to take along the State House reporter for the Boston _Globe_, to introduce him.

His Excellency was not in, and they met his efficient private secretary. To him Jackson handed the letter from the members of Parliament, and the secretary took one glance at it, and burst out: “Oh, those God-damn crooks! Do you think we pay any attention to this stuff? It comes in here by the barrelful and we immediately chuck it into the fire.” Then he turned upon the reporter, demanding, “What do you mean by bringing this fellow up here on a matter like this? First thing you know, those God-damn wops will be getting out and coming to live near you in Brookline. How would you like that?” It was a witticism, and the secretary laughed loudly, and threw the letter back at Gardner Jackson.

Such was the agent through whose hands would pass everything which came to the Governor on the case. When documents of great urgency were entrusted to him, and it was discovered several days later that the Governor had never seen nor heard of them, the defense committee would be infuriated, and would blame the secretary for failure of their hopes. But Joe Randall would laugh--he was furnishing labor papers with news on the case, and was up at the State House at all hours of the day and night, meeting the other reporters and hearing the gossip. “Don’t fool yourself, Nonna!” said he--cynical young “Red.” “The secretary forgets what Fuller doesn’t want to have remembered. He is paid two salaries to serve as the goat, and have us blame him instead of his boss!”

Alas for blue-blood ladies, who left the refinements of an exclusive home, and mixed themselves in the public affairs of capitalist society! Cornelia Thornwell was now seventy-two years of age, and her hair was snow-white, and her step no longer firm--she had to be helped upstairs now and then. And here she was, forced to measure her wits against a supersalesman of automobiles and his entourage. Startling were the tales which Joe Randall brought home about the goings on of the “State House gang.” Down underneath the beautiful golden dome there was a cellar, stocked with liquors confiscated by the state police; and the heads of this “gang” were presenting the stuff or selling it to all and sundry, including the state legislators. Still more dreadful, to the mind of an old-fashioned lady, some of this crowd were using the state police boat, the _Lotus_, for what the newspaper slang termed “orgies”--drunken parties with women. All the reporters knew about it--but the friends of Sacco and Vanzetti had to wait until nine months after the wops were in their graves, before a disgruntled employee at the State House spilled the Boston beans to some prying clergymen, and an investigation was forced.

III

Cornelia Thornwell belonged to the little group of those who have a right to know. Therefore she went to her son-in-law, Henry Cabot Winters, and asked him to find out for her the Chief Executive’s real attitude toward the Sacco-Vanzetti case, and what he intended to do. It was only a month after the Jerry Walker victory, and Henry was his old genial self again, pleased to have a call from his Bolshevik mother-in-law. He reported his relations with the Governor to be fairly good; he had not joined with Rupert in his row--the canny Rupert had warned him not to, for in the game of politics you can never tell at what hour your deadly enemy may become your best friend.

The great lawyer would go up to the State House, and not merely find out, but put in a word for some form of executive clemency, as a matter of political tactics. So much Cornelia had been able to accomplish by twelve years of radical propaganda in her family! She was deeply grateful, and went home and prepared a fine dinner for her son-in-law, with ribs of spring lamb, and new potatoes and green peas, and strawberries from Georgia.

But alas, the news which Henry brought completely spoiled the dinner for them both! Cornelia hardly ate a mouthful, and Henry made a poor pretense. “I’m sorry, Mother,” he said, “but you’ve got to steel yourself to the worst. There is no chance of saving your two boys.”

Cornelia went white, and her soft brown eyes were wide with horror. “Henry, why?”

“Well, the police have got to Fuller, and he’s heard all the worst about your anarchists. I don’t think there’s any power in the world that can change his opinion.”

“What has he heard, Henry?”

“All the things I’ve told you before: that they were dynamiters, and were hiding dynamite on the night of their arrest.”

“But, Henry, they weren’t even accused of that!”

“I know--not publicly; but it’s the real reason they were prosecuted, and the reason they were convicted, and Fuller has got it fixed in his mind. ‘Bad actors,’ he calls them.”

“Then he’s going to execute men for one crime, because he’s heard rumors they committed another!”

“As a matter of fact, Mother, he is equally convinced they were bandits, too. He’s been told that the money went to Italy, to make a revolution there. They’ve even told him rumors about having found maps in Lee Swenson’s trash-basket, showing where the treasure was buried.”

“My God, Henry! That was a joke!”

“I know, so you told me--but it was a poor time for joking. The police are using everything they have. It seems there’s a woman in Milton who told Mike Stewart that Vanzetti made the bomb that blew up Judge Hayden’s house.”

“Henry, that is the talk of lunatics!”

“No, Mother, it’s the talk of the police, and the Governor regards himself as the head of the force, and he stands by it. They have told him that two of the crowd blew themselves up with a bomb they were making in Bellingham--the Galleani formulas didn’t work right.”

“You keep talking about bombs, Henry.”

“I’m telling you what was told me. Fuller says that both your boys were regular terrorists, and had a criminal record. He insists that Vanzetti was a convicted bandit before he came to trial at Dedham. He has got it into his head that Vanzetti was arrested, indicted, tried and convicted of the Bridgewater crime, and then arrested, indicted, tried and convicted of the South Braintree crime. It didn’t happen that way, did it?”

“Of course not, Henry! They arrested them for both crimes. They decided to convict Bart for Bridgewater, as a means of making things look blacker for Nick.”

“Well, that’s what I thought, and I tried to get it across to Fuller, but he didn’t take kindly to it. He doesn’t like to have his mind changed.”

“Henry, you appall me! You mean he is actually as ignorant of the case as that?”

“I don’t know so much about the case myself, Mother, but I was able to note half a dozen mistakes he made; and you’re going to have a hard time changing him, because stubbornness is his leading quality. He makes a virtue of it, because he can’t think, and knows it, and resents having to try. That’s what you’re up against, and you might as well know it at the outset--no use fooling yourself. Go and see him, and make sure, if you want to.”

“Will he see me?”

“He says he’ll see everybody--that’s going to be his grandstand play. You understand, he’s a politician, and has to play the game. He will pretend to be open-minded--but I’m telling you what’s in the back of his head, and what will be his final decision.”

IV

Cornelia discussed the soul of this Governor, and a possible way to move it. No use in public propaganda, mass-meetings and petitions; he regarded them with contempt. Could he be reached by social pressure, the snobbery of the automobile dealer, who sold high-priced cars to high-priced customers? Henry answered that Fuller himself didn’t appear to care for the social game; but doubtless his family would be glad to be received. The only sign of an interest in culture on Fuller’s part was that he went abroad and purchased paintings. He didn’t really know about painting, and would not have dared to buy the work of Americans, for fear of playing the fool. But “old masters” were standard, as safe as corner real estate on Tremont Street; so he would pay a quarter of a million dollars for a Van Dyke, and put it in his drawing-room, and that would make a great stir in the papers. But it hadn’t had any effect socially, as Cornelia knew; to the inner circle of Boston exclusiveness, Fuller was His Excellency during office hours, but at tea-time and in the evening he was a dealer in motorcars.

“Too bad that Alice is so spiritualized,” said Henry. “She might give them a dinner.” Alice, he added, was now receiving the ministrations of a Yogi “master,” being subjected to the most esoteric rite of healing, which consisted of blowing into her ear.

Cornelia got out her address-book, which had secret marks, indicating degrees of responsiveness to subversive propaganda. She and her son-in-law compiled a list, and laid out a program upon which blue-bloods should be asked to concentrate--to persuade the Governor to appoint some sort of commission to investigate the case, and give it an informal new trial. If, as Henry believed, the supersalesman himself was hopeless, the strategy was to get him committed to an arrangement whereby the final decision would rest with more open-minded persons.

The little old lady had an inspiration: instead of appealing directly to the Governor, they would concentrate their energies upon Bishop Lawrence of the Episcopal Church, blood-brother to all blue-bloods, and official delegate of the Prince of Peace on earth. Persuade the Bishop to appeal to the Governor for an impartial commission! To make a thorough job of it, why not determine the commission in advance, and make certain of getting competent and high-minded persons? Why not? agreed Henry; so they proceeded to discuss names. Cornelia worked herself up to a pitch of excitement. “Couldn’t we ask him to appoint Mr. Lowell?” She meant President Lowell of Harvard University. The blue-blood ladies, while paying full homage to this great personality, do not grant him his title, as in the case of the Bishop; by this means they indicate the fact that the intellectual life, while important, is a merely human affair, while the spiritual life is from God.

“He wouldn’t take the responsibility,” said Henry, “but of course it would settle the matter if he did. Fuller wouldn’t dare go against Lowell and the Bishop.”

So it came about that at the office of Mr. John F. Moors, of the firm of Moors and Cabot, investment bankers, there assembled one afternoon a group of socially and intellectually significant persons: half a dozen Harvard professors, and the wives of several others; Episcopal clergymen of Boston and Concord; and such persons as Mrs. Thornwell, Mrs. Evans and Mrs. Winslow, with Mary Donovan and Gardner Jackson to represent the committee. They met for the purpose of working out a method of approaching the Bishop of the Blue-bloods, and asking him to bring it about that the University-president of the Blue-bloods should be invited to conduct a blue-blood trial of Sacco and Vanzetti, and thus save the good name of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts before the civilized world.

A curious gathering: soft-voiced, gentle, noble-minded, but not entirely efficient persons, meeting in dead secrecy, with their fingers upon their lips, in this melodramatic neighborhood of State Street; a group of kindly conspirators, babes in the woods surrounded by ravenous wolves--in the form of newspaper reporters who would gobble up their respectability with half a dozen snaps of their slavering jaws. So careful they must be, to make exactly the right approach to the ineffable Bishop; putting on felt-slippers and walking on tiptoes! Not saying anything extreme to him! Not declaring that the men were innocent, but merely that they had not been proved guilty to impartial minds! Sparks began to fly from the eyes of Mary Donovan, Irish ex-Catholic Joan of Arc of the labor movement. A curious contrast between self-contained and decorous ladies of the Back Bay, and this fiery Celtic girl, plain of garb, severe of countenance, making no secret of her bitter scorn for liberals and their ritual.

Silence! Secrecy! Hush, not a word! Even the widow of Governor Thornwell had lost caste, because she had had her name in the newspapers! No one who had been in the newspapers must approach the Bishop, nor even be named to the Bishop--for fear the timid episcopal soul might seek refuge in the recesses of the episcopal hole and refuse to emerge. The members of the Sacco-Vanzetti committee were “untouchables,” and merely to have it known that they desired a certain procedure would be sufficient to render it episcopally impossible. All were warned to silence, the meeting dispersed--and in an hour or two the newspapermen had the whole story on the front page, each after its own fashion. The Hearst man explained the social stratifications, referring to the Sacco-Vanzetti committee as the “low minds,” the Moors group as the “middle minds,” and the Bishop Lawrence group as the “high minds”!

V

Mr. Thompson had presented an appeal for clemency from Vanzetti, and an explanation that Sacco refused to make any appeal, but ought to have it granted just the same. It was, perhaps, the most singular document ever submitted to an automobile salesman in the history of the industry. Bartolomeo Vanzetti had insisted upon writing it himself, with only verbal revision by his lawyer. He took it as an occasion to explain his doctrines and beliefs to the world:

“Our ideas are not new. In one form or another they have influenced human thought in the western world, and therefore history, for at least two thousand years. Among their modern champions are men such as William Godwin, Shelley, Carlo Pisacane, Proudhon, Reclus, Kropotkin, Bakunin, Tolstoi (in a sense), Flammarion, Malatesta, Galleani, and in your country Tucker, and other great intellects and hearts. The great philosopher Ernest Renan said that Christ was a ‘political anarchist.’”

And this to a pious Baptist, who told the newspaper reporters that his real preference in life would be to run a Baptist Sunday-school! A Mason, an Elk, an Odd Fellow and a Knight of Pythias--his idea of literature the _Saturday Evening Post_! Said Vanzetti:

“Our counsel has warned us that what we have to say may deepen the prejudice against us; but we are foremostly concerned to save what no human power except ourselves can deprive us of, our faith and our dignity, since we have already been deprived of almost all of what men can deprive men.”

The Governor announced that he would consider evidence from both sides; and so it was a question of repeating all over again the Dedham, and later the Plymouth trial. But under what singular circumstances! Mr. Thompson, the lawyer for the petitioners, was not allowed to make any opening statement, to say what he expected to prove; he was allowed to bring his own witnesses, but not to hear the witnesses of the other side, nor even to know who they were. Sacco and Vanzetti lay in their cells, and men came to the Governor’s private office and whispered rumors about them, and their attorney learned about it from gossip in the newspapers! Betty Alvin came home from her brief session in the executive chambers and revised the “Alice in Wonderland” verses to fit this new situation:

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

Quite literally, this supersalesman of automobiles was judge, jury, and prosecuting attorney; and so ignorant of psychology that he really thought he could fill all three rôles; so ignorant of law that he really thought it was a trial he was conducting, and would be accepted as such by the world. Or rather, if you could believe the sarcastic young lady Bolshevik, he thought that he was so rich and great that he didn’t give a damn what the world thought. In that point of view he had the support of the whole prosperous mob, which gloried in defying the opinion of mankind.

The State House swarmed with reporters. Every Boston paper had several men on the story, and the press associations and New York papers had their own representatives. But those who saw the Governor were cautioned not to talk, and all but the friends of the defense obeyed. The only news was what the Governor’s office gave out every day, and mostly it was disguised propaganda. The private secretary had not been quite accurate when he said that they “immediately” chucked the mail into the fire. They first went over it, and extracted letters which were violent in demanding death for the two wops, and these were mimeographed and handed to the newspapermen. So the world read the weighty sentiments of Mrs. J. E. Damon of Brockton, who attached a small American flag to her letter, to make sure it would not be overlooked:

“I feel very sure that you will stand firm for ‘law and order.’ ... Foreign people will not respect our Government unless we uphold our Judges and Supreme Court. What is this country coming to if radical elements are allowed to do as they see fit?”

Also the sentiments of a representative of Comrade Jesus, the “political anarchist”: the Reverend Floyd W. Johnson of the First Presbyterian Church of Central City, Nebraska, who appealed to the Governor of Massachusetts to “let these propagandists of un-American policies know that there is not enough money in Russia to buy even one district court in America.” A curious item for members of the defense committee, who at that late hour were being visited by the relative of an important judicial personage, and informed that it would still be possible to work out an “arrangement”! By the payment of only fifty thousand dollars--from Russia or any other place--everything could be settled amicably. Vanzetti--since he was admitted to be innocent--would be pardoned; while Sacco--who might possibly be guilty--would be judged insane, and held until the excitement had died down!

VI

It was a war going on for the possession of public opinion; a day and night campaign, with forays and sallies, rumors and alarms, plots and counter-plots. The big guns thundered from the rear, and independent sharp-shooters crept forth to do sniping. “Hundred percent American” and “Pro Bono Publico” wrote letters to the _Transcript_, and the defense committee changed its “Bulletin” from a monthly to a fortnightly, and filled many columns with letters from friends of social justice all over the world.

Prof. Felix Frankfurter, one of the liberals of the Harvard Law School, published an article in the _Atlantic Monthly_, the Back Bay’s palladium of culture, reviewing the case and exposing the manifold errors of Judge Thayer. To Boston conservatism that was a frightful scandal, and something had to be done at once. A champion was found, a tremendous personage by the name of Wigmore, with so many titles and honors that it took two and seven-eighths inches in “Who’s Who” to recite them: a graduate of Harvard and of the Harvard Law School, Past President of the American Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology, Past President of the American Association of University Professors, Commanding Member of the Staff of the Judge Advocate-General of the United States Army with the rank of Major, Member of the United States Section of the Inter-American High Commission, Chevalier of the Legion of Honor of France, Member of the League of Nations Committee on Intellectual Coöperation, and Dean of the Law School of Northwestern University--a Methodist institution lifted to worldly magnificence by Judge Gary of the Steel Trust.

This two hundred and forty centimeter gun went into action from its emplacement a thousand miles away. Dean Wigmore wrote a broadside, starting with two columns on the front page of the _Transcript_, and expanding into seven half-columns on the next page. He gave Felix Frankfurter one of those wiggings which professors exist to receive and deans exist to administer. With annihilating wit he referred to him, all through the two columns and the seven half-columns, as “the plausible pundit”; he accused him of having made “errors and misstatements which if discovered in a brief of counsel submitted in a case would qualify him for proceedings for disbarment.”

Alas for poor Dean Bigwig! He had got his citations from Thayer, or from some friend of Thayer’s; and never could it have entered his bewigged head that a judge of the Superior Court of the august Commonwealth of Massachusetts would practice the device of falsifying a legal record, quoting statements incorrectly, and even making up passages which he said were in the record, but which were not in the record! If such procedures “would qualify a lawyer for proceedings for disbarment,” what would they do to a judge of the Superior Court? Apparently they would qualify him for the enthusiastic support of all the courts and most of the newspapers of his Commonwealth, as well as of the Dean of the Law School of the University of Judge Gary. They would qualify him a few months later to have the banqueting alumni of Dartmouth College stand up and cheer themselves hoarse for a five full minutes by the watches of newspaper reporters.

Defending himself in his last decision, Judge Thayer had boasted that the Supreme Judicial Court had “approved” the verdict of the Dedham jury. Felix Frankfurter had pointed out that this was not true. All that the higher court could do was to “affirm” the verdict, which in the technical language of lawyers is an entirely different matter. The dean now elaborately denied that Thayer had used the word “approved,” and he accused Frankfurter of libeling Thayer. “It is a libel on the worthy trial judge, in that it charges him with knowing falsity in an official statement.”

Touching indeed the faith of poor Dean Wigmore in his “worthy trial judge” a thousand miles away! Had this “worthy trial judge” failed to furnish him with the full text of the decision? Or had the dean been in such a hurry to burst into the _Transcript_ that he hadn’t stopped to examine the document for himself? All that Felix Frankfurter had to do in his reply was to refer the worthy dean to the sentence in Judge Thayer’s opinion, as printed in the Amended Bill of Exceptions over Judge Thayer’s signature, attested by the Clerk for the Superior Court of Norfolk County, pages 366 and 367, where the word “approved” was plainly to be read. So there was Dean Wigless, in the distressing position of having furnished the rope to hang his friend, Judge Thayer, for “knowing falsity in an official statement”!

And then the questions and answers about Sacco’s dialogue with Katzmann, which Judge Thayer had invented and inserted into his decision! The dean had accepted this bogus passage, and put it into his letter to the _Transcript_, and the _Transcript_ had solemnly published it. Now, said Frankfurter, “a careful search of the record of Sacco’s cross-examination discloses no such questions and answers as Dean Wigmore quotes. Will he not be good enough to give me a reference to the page of the record?” Needless to say, Dean Baldhead would not be that good! He would fail to mention the matter again; and the Back Bay’s hatred of Felix Frankfurter, Viennese Jew, became so intense that they started a tale of his having been hired by the defense to write the _Atlantic Monthly_ article; they raised his price several thousand dollars a day, until they had got it up to the colossal sum of one hundred and forty thousand dollars! Such was opinion in that part of Boston which Vanzetti described as “the golden rabble.”

VII

Rumors! Rumors! The State House was converted from a bootleggers’ joint to a poison gas factory. Every day new witnesses went to see the Governor, and there was a new crop of stories as to what they had told him, and what he had asked them. The Governor wants to know why Vanzetti didn’t take the stand at the Plymouth trial! The Governor has heard that Mrs. Brini got all the Plymouth witnesses together in her home and told them what to say! The Governor has learned that the _Springfield Republican_ got twenty thousand dollars from the defense committee for its editorial on the case! And all these rumors were not rumors, they were for practical purposes the truth; the Governor heard them, and the Governor believed them. Surrounded as he was by men who took bribes, how could he conceive that anybody would work for nothing? Some one was causing state detectives to follow the witnesses for the defense, and these detectives would come back with notebooks full of formulas for the poison-gas factory under the golden dome.

Sometime previously the defense had got hold of the reports of the Pinkerton detectives on the South Braintree crime. An amazing revelation to Cornelia and Betty and Joe: those voices which had been shouting to them in the days before the trial, when they had been seeking witnesses, and failing to find them! The ghosts which had shrieked in Dedham courtroom, unheard by mortal ear! The secrets which had been in the head of Henry Hellyer on the witness-stand--the very notes he had held in his hand! Now Cornelia and Betty and Joe might go with this “Operative H.H.,” immediately after the South Braintree crime, to interview Mary Splaine, the star identification witness; that marvelous-eyed young woman who had looked out of a factory window in the midst of shooting, and at a distance of eighty feet, in a period of one or two seconds, had noted the minutest physical details of Sacco, including a “good-sized left hand,” which he assuredly never had, and “complexion of a peculiar greenish-white,” which he had after being kept in Dedham jail for a year, but never while he was growing tomatoes in Mr. Kelley’s garden!

Here in these reports you saw Mary Splaine in the company of Henry Hellyer, Mike Stewart and Captain Proctor, inspecting the photographs of criminals, and making a positive identification of Antonio Parmisano, or “Tony the Wop,” as the bandit who had played the part which was later attributed to Sacco. Captain Proctor set out to get “Tony the Wop,” and discovered that he had been in jail on the day of the crime--the one really safe place for wops in Massachusetts! And meantime Mary had told to “H.H.” a detailed and circumstantial tale about two men in the shoe-factory who had plotted and committed the crime; she gave the names of the men, and recited a story which covered the affairs of the shoe-factory for some eighteen years. Six days after the arrest of Sacco and Vanzetti, the detective was entering his report as follows:

“As opportunities occurred I made discreet inquiries about Mr. X,
who Miss Splaine accused of having been implicated in the murder
and robbery. My inquiries show that there is absolutely no ground
for Miss Splaine’s accusation and that Mr. X enjoys Mr. Slater’s
confidence.” (Mr. Slater was the owner.) “To-day I took the matter
up with Mr. Frayer” (the superintendent). “He ridiculed the idea of
Mr. X being implicated and further states that no serious attention
must be attached to Mary Splaine’s stories, because she is one of
the most irresponsible persons he ever came in contact with.”

And then, a little glimpse into the soul of an “operative,” representing a great national detective agency and looking for bandits. He knows that the police have got Sacco and Vanzetti and are planning to put the crime onto them; and he reports how he questioned a laborer who was digging a trench, close to the scene of the crime. He reports this laborer as having had a very good chance to get a good look, and adds, “Some one who can speak Italian ought to interview this man, as if he went on the stand to-day he would say that Sacco and Vanzetti were not the men.”

VIII

Witness after witness went to interview Governor Fuller and returned to defense headquarters, reporting that the supersalesman had got his mind centered on the Bridgewater crime. So Mr. Thompson did some inquiring and pulled some wires, and managed to get from the lawyer of the shoe company the reports on that earlier crime, made by the same “Operative H.H.,” and another man, “J.J.H.” Here again the evidence wiped out practically everything the government had proved. On the day of the crime all four of the leading witnesses had described both the car and the bandits differently from the way they later described them at the trial.

These Bridgewater reports seemed of especial importance, because they destroyed the witness “Skip” Harding, who saw the Bridgewater crime, and at the trial identified Vanzetti as the shotgun bandit. Here in the Pinkerton reports was “Skip,” talking with the police a few hours after the crime, and that certainty which he had displayed upon the witness-stand was wholly lacking. “I did not get much of a look at his face, but think he was a Pole,” he said; and eight or nine days later he again referred to the faces of the bandits, saying that he “did not see them on the day of the hold-up.” The car he described as a “black Hudson six,” and gave the registration number; as an automobile mechanic, he knew cars. The police decided to prove that it was a Buick. When Harding testified at the trial, he testified that it was a Buick.

Every one of the other principal witnesses was discredited in the same way. The witness Bowles, for example, had described the shotgun bandit as having “red cheeks,” “slim face,” and “a closely cropped mustache,” which surely did not fit Vanzetti. So the defense lawyers felt that they had won their case, and Mr. Thompson prepared an elaborate letter to the Governor, thirty-three typewritten pages. The reports and the letter were taken to the State House and delivered to the Governor’s secretary, and everybody waited, on tiptoe with excitement, for some word of the result. A week or two later one of the friends of the defense, arguing with the Governor, happened to remark, “That is disproved in the Pinkerton reports.” Said the Governor, “Pinkerton reports? What are they?” “Those reports which were turned over to you,” replied the amazed visitor. “I haven’t seen any such thing,” declared the Governor, and turned to his secretary. “What’s this about Pinkerton reports?” “Oh,” said the secretary indifferently, “something about a cropped mustache!”

IX

Beltrando Brini was in his nineteenth year, a slender, dark-eyed youth, preparing to enter college, and earning his living by teaching the violin to Italian children in Plymouth. He still went now and then to play for Bart in prison; also he was in demand to play at meetings for the defense. He could play fine music, but the number most effective was “Old Black Joe,” because it was the tune which Bart had helped to teach him as a little boy. Trando would tell the story of that ill-fated day-before-Christmas morning, when he had helped to peddle the eels in North Plymouth; he would tell what Vanzetti’s teachings and example had meant to him, all through his early life; after which he would play Bart’s favorite song, “When you and I were young, Maggie,” and tears would run down the faces of women in the audience.

Now Trando went to see the supersalesman of automobiles, and told the story to him; but no tears appeared upon those ruddy, rounded cheeks. It seemed that the great man had worked out a new theory for himself; he pictured Bartolomeo Vanzetti attempting the Bridgewater crime at a quarter to eight that winter morning, and then driving twenty miles or more to North Plymouth, and starting in to sell eels with Trando for an alibi. In vain did Trando insist that he and his father and his mother and Bart’s landlady and many other persons had seen Bart from the moment he woke, at six o’clock that morning, long before daylight; in vain did Trando tell about Bart sending him to hunt for his rubbers. Apparently the Governor thought that Bart had gone to Bridgewater and attempted the hold-up while Trando was rummaging in the attic for his rubbers!

And then Mrs. Brini, the gentle and kindly, who shed tears every time she thought of her former boarder, and insisted, over and over: “He is good man! He is good man!” The Governor confronted her with the proposition that she had gathered all the witnesses at her home and taught them what to say. In vain she explained the origin of that tale--that the lawyer had been too lazy to go and interview the witnesses, but had told her to have them come to her home, and he would meet them there to consult about the case.

And then Joseph Rosen, the Jewish peddler of cloth. The defense had to advertise for him in the _Jewish Daily Forward_. One day came a telegram from Buffalo, he had heard about the case and would come. Having learned more English in the course of the last six years, Rosen could take care of himself. When he was ushered into the executive chambers and the Governor started to question him about where he had been six weeks ago, and could he remember what he had done on March seventeenth last, “What’s this?” said Rosen. “More of that Katzmann stuff?” He had not forgiven the district attorney for trying to make a fool of him before the jury.

X

And then one of the editors of the Boston _Transcript_. The age of miracles had come; an editor of the sacred _Transcript_ had been persuaded to investigate the case, and had become convinced that the men were innocent! He was so conscientious about it, his employers were impressed, and generously let him do it on their time: they would pay for the getting of material, even though they would not publish it! Now this conservative and indubitably respectable gentleman proceeded to the Governor’s office, with a brief-case full of documents and charts. He went prepared to point out to the chief executive of his Commonwealth the flaws in the government’s case; and he had what he later described to his friends as the most preposterous hour of his life. For the Governor didn’t want to have any flaws pointed out to him, and when the editor insisted, his recourse was to interrupt with rude and brutal ejaculations, and to snort through his nose.

But the editor went on, insisting, because it was a matter of justice, and the New England conscience is that way. There was the matter of the discrepancy of the trains, upon which the editor had done enough research work and calculation to have earned him a degree at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Practically the only proof the government had against Vanzetti in the South Braintree crime was the identification of Levangie, gate-tender at the railroad crossing, plus the identification of another crossing-tender, who thought Vanzetti had pointed a gun at him and made him raise his gates, while the bandit-car was fleeing with the loot. This latter crossing was on the way to the Manley Woods, where, according to the “theory,” the bandits had “thrown away” the Buick car, not far from the Coacci house.

This made what the jury had accepted as a story; but now came the editor, showing that each of these two crossing-tenders had specified a certain train, and the time of these trains was a matter of record, and they didn’t fit. The Governor thought that possibly one train or the other had not been on time; but the editor answered that there were such things as “train-sheets.” He had the greatest difficulty in the world convincing his Governor that a railroad has records showing the hour at which every train passed every station, even as far as six years back. As a matter of fact, the sheets of those trains had been produced on the stand at the trial, and the district attorney might have found the truth if he had wanted it.

A singular interview! The Governor would profess complete mastery of matters concerning which it was evident that he knew very little, and when he was corrected, would fly into a rage and demand, “What right have you to question me?” The too-conscientious editor could not make his arguments clear, because the Governor did not know the elementary facts upon which the arguments rested; nor could he explain these elementary facts, because that would offend the great man’s dignity. He came out from the interview to report that the situation was hopeless from the point of view of the defense. He realized, of course, the political game that was going on: the “grand-stand play,” in current slang. The Governor would have the whole world marveling at his patience and open-mindedness, while in reality he was impatient of argument, and his mind was closed.

XI

Bitter struggles in the rooms of the defense committee on Hanover street, where radicals and conservatives fought over the question of how to meet this desperate situation! Controversies lasting until the small hours of the morning, and then not settled! Feuds between respectable persons who wanted to follow the guidance of respectable lawyers, and young socialists and communists who wanted to make mass appeals, and have parades on the streets, and threats of a general strike! The young radicals organized a protest meeting in Symphony Hall, to tell Boston the facts which the Governor knew and was hiding; but then came Thompson and Frankfurter, and forced the calling off of that meeting, by threatening to withdraw from the case. Joe Randall and his wife would labor all night to prepare hair-raising stories for the newspapers; but when the reporters came to Thompson, he would wave them away with a phrase, “Nothing for the papers to-day.” It was easy to understand his point of view. There was no worse charge to be brought against a lawyer by respectable Boston than that he was “trying his case in the newspapers”; and Thompson clung to his belief that somehow it was going to be possible to persuade respectable Boston to grant justice to his clients.

A brilliant idea came to Betty--to collect the testimony of persons with whom Judge Thayer had discussed Sacco and Vanzetti during the past six years! To present respectable Boston with the profanity, vulgarity and hatred which old Judge Fury had poured out in the presence of everybody, from senators to club waiters! This idea was presented to the lawyers, and at first they were horrified; but as time passed, and the Governor’s bias became clear, they worked out a way to make it into a legal procedure. They would appeal to the Governor on the ground of Thayer’s prejudice; if that did not succeed, they would make a further move in the courts on that basis, with a possible appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States on a writ of certiorari.

So began a still hunt among those who knew but did not admire the “worthy trial judge.” There were many such persons in high station; but would they consent to violate the reticences which protect social life? Appeals to their consciences were made, and a few yielded: George U. Crocker, a former city treasurer, and member of the University Club, where Judge Thayer had lived during the Dedham trial; Mrs. Lois Rantoul, who was a Lowell; Robert Benchley, one of the editors of _Life_; Elizabeth Bernkopf, a newspaper correspondent; John Nicholas Beffel; and Prof. Richardson, of Dartmouth College, to whom the judge had said, “Did you see what I did to those anarchistic bastards yesterday?” What “Web” had really said was “arnychistic bastards,” but there was no use trying to get that across to the public; nobody would believe it, and anyhow, all persons who handled the story--reporters and compositors and copy-readers--would decide that it was an error, and do their duty. Prof. Richardson said he thought that “Web” had also said “sons-of-bitches”; but of course there was no way to get that printed in a moral community.

A picturesque little drama over the getting of the signature of Frank P. Sibley, star reporter of that premier family-paper, the Boston _Globe_! “Sib,” as he was known to his colleagues, was a much beloved and slightly picturesque figure, known to everybody on the streets of Boston--six feet tall and wearing a Windsor tie, as near to a “Bohemian” as could survive in that frigid atmosphere. He had been the correspondent of the _Globe_ at the Dedham trial, and had heard many expressions of prejudice by Thayer. He had agreed to sign an affidavit, and it was got ready; but then he discovered that he couldn’t sign it, his managing editor wouldn’t let him! In fact, “Sib” had come to agree with his managing editor--it was necessary for a newspaper reporter to be impartial. Just like a judge!

A serious disappointment to the defense, for Sibley was an experienced man, who had been covering major court cases in New England for some twenty years; moreover, he didn’t have to rely upon his memory of Thayer’s conduct, he had written a letter about it to the attorney-general of the Commonwealth. There was a conference of Joe Randall and Gardner Jackson and others who knew the newspaper game, and there came a tip from one of the editors of the _Globe_ as to how the issue might be forced. Let the _Globe_ hear the threat of public exposure of the fact that it was refusing to let one of its reporters sign an affidavit in the interest of justice. Mild blackmail, in short!

William G. Thompson was consulted, and proposed to submit the Sibley affidavit to the Governor as his own affidavit, and have Sibley called before the Governor--which would, of course, open up the story. Armed with that dire threat, Gardner Jackson went to see the managing editor of the _Globe_, under whom he had worked for seven years, and they had their first quarrel in that long period. The managing editor said that they were playing an unfair trick upon his paper, that it was a dirty thing to do, and so on. He would not give any decision; but that same afternoon Frank Sibley came to Thompson’s office and affixed his signature!

XII

The supersalesman of automobiles had announced that he would not appoint any commission; the law did not permit him to delegate his authority, but required him to make the decision himself. But Cornelia and her blue-blood friends went on with their quiet intrigue, and one day there appeared in the papers a letter signed by the Bishop of the Blue-bloods and four of his flock, appealing to the Governor for an advisory commission. Just as Cornelia had foretold, it was impossible for a mere automobile dealer to withstand such pressure; he changed his mind. As a great man in public life, he of course did not announce that he had changed his mind; he merely announced that he was going to do what he had previously announced he was not going to do.