Chapter XVIII: The Supersalesman (2)

More intrigue, to induce him to name the right commission! Dignified established persons, wholly without taint of contact with anarchism, atheism or draft-dodging, called upon the Governor, or wrote letters, pointing out to him that there was one eminent citizen who would be trusted by all right-minded persons in New England to give a just and impartial opinion regarding the guilt of the two accused men--and that was “Mr. Lowell”! It was the “middle minds” who were inspiring this intrigue; Cornelia, partly of her own impulse, partly led by her friends, had come to center her hopes upon the august President of Harvard University. “Radical” friends, including her granddaughter and her grandson-in-law, laughed at her for believing that Mr. Lowell would prove himself more free from prejudice than any other millionaire. But they had nothing in particular against him, and nobody to prefer, among those whom the Governor would consider. “So let dear old Grannie go ahead,” said Betty; “it keeps her hoping.”

Grannie went ahead, and in due course an announcement came from the State House; the Governor had appointed a commission consisting of A. Lawrence Lowell, President of Harvard University, Robert Grant, retired judge of the Probate Court, and Samuel W. Stratton, President of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. A vast and unanimous sigh of relief went up from the Back Bay. At last the terrible problem would be settled, and settled right! It would be dealt with by gentlemen, instead of by vulgarians and political tricksters, corrupted officials and police agents! A new atmosphere would be brought into the case, and the world would see that Massachusetts brains and breeding still counted for righteousness and dignity! Two of the three members of the commission were registered blue-bloods; the third, though he came from the west, had been adopted and placed in charge of the great school which, next to Harvard, was Boston’s pride, the place where the technicians of her giant industries got their exact and efficient training.

XIII

Vanzetti was now in Dedham jail, and Cornelia made a trip to carry him the good news. Needless to say, he did not know the President of Harvard University, but if Nonna said that he was a good and great man, Bart was willing to believe it. But she must not forget that it was hard for a rich man to rise above the ideas of his class. Was Mr. Lowell a very rich man? When the prisoner learned that he owned huge cotton-mills, and enjoyed an income of close to a million dollars a year from the ill-paid labor of wage-slaves, the prisoner said, “He must be a very great man if he do joostice to anarchistas.”

Bart preferred to converse about Proudhon’s “Peace and War,” which he was translating. Here was his idea of a great man. They discussed the formula, “Property is theft”; and Bart showed a letter to the Vanguard Press, to which he was sending the manuscript of the translation. “By gosh, don’t loss it!” was his injunction.

Also he had been doing more work upon his novel, “Events and Victims.” It was in reality a very short novelette: the story of an immigrant worker in America; but alas, no magazine would publish such material! Bart thought that if some one would send a copy to Russia, it might be published there--or possibly made into a moving picture. In America, of course, they wanted moving pictures about the rich, or in praise of riches. Bart had put a passage about the “movies” into his novel, and he read it now to his friend.

A curious circumstance: in nine or ten weeks he was to die, in the midst of terrific public clamor; and the chiefs of the moving picture industry would hold a meeting and resolve that the name of Vanzetti was to be forever barred from the screen, and that all pictures which had been taken of the case should be immediately destroyed. They, the propaganda chiefs of capitalism, knew who their enemies were, and no mistake about it. Said Bartolomeo Vanzetti, speaking to the suppressors of his fame:

“I went out and walked towards the theater, hoping to see Johnny whom I knew to be passionately fond of moving picture shows. That night they were showing a screen version, a fragment of one of those romances which distort truth and realities; falsify history; provoke, cultivate and embellish all the morbid emotions, confusions, ignorances, prejudices and horrors; and, purposely and skillfully pervert the hearts and, still more, the minds. The characters of these morbid melodramas are always of two opposite types, one very good, the other very bad. The good ones are the good folks who are always good, always do good, are always right, and in the end always triumph. The others are always bad folk, who are always wrong, always do evil and finally pay the penalty. Just the reverse of life!

“Thus meditating, I reached the theater. Of course it was, as usual, crowded to the doors. The common people, being all heart, with little brain and less knowledge, are passionately interested in such senseless stories, and not a scene escapes them. They develop a wild and unreasoning affection for the unreal characters of the unreally good, whose hatreds and loves, risks and triumphs they share, and fervid hatred for and resentment against the unreal characters of the unreally bad gang. They lose their heads, weep, sigh, laugh, smile, fear, hope and throb, and, forgetting their cross of infamy, leave the theater more stupid than when they entered it.”

XIV

The Advisory Commission could not get to work until after the college commencements were over. But meantime the secret hearings before the Governor went on, and in the offices of the defense committee several typewriters clicked all day and most of the night, and sacks full of letters, leaflets, and pamphlets went out. The barriers set up by the capitalist press were broken down; even the great news agencies had to spread the world’s protest. The flood of letters rose higher in the Governor’s office, and while the secretary still boasted of the promptness with which he burned them, they did not fail to produce an effect--especially when reinforced by the explosion of bombs in front of United States embassies in Europe, and the crashing of window-glass in Argentina.

Cornelia wrote letters, and carried on long telephone conversations, and traveled about visiting businessmen and bankers in their offices, and wealthy ladies in their homes on Beacon Hill and Commonwealth Avenue. For the most part they listened with the patience which her age and station demanded; they promised to study the case, and often did so. Now and then they told her that while they appreciated her sincerity, they knew that she was being imposed upon by scoundrels, and that it would be wiser if she did not force them to discuss the matter.

Cornelia knew what to expect; she had watched Boston for a couple of generations, and read of it still earlier. In any moral issue, officialdom had always been on the side of reaction, and the broadcloth mob had supported it--even to the extent of putting a rope about the waist of William Lloyd Garrison and dragging him through the streets. But always there had been a small minority of choice spirits who had come out in opposition, and made the glory of the city’s history. Among these had been the oldest names and the bluest blood; and so it was now. There appeared an open letter addressed to Governor Fuller, asking a list of pertinent questions, and the signers of that letter included the best that Massachusetts had to show in every form of culture. Nor did these people stop with writing letters; they wrote their names upon checks, and gave time and thought to the case--everything that civilized human beings could do to make headway against brutal power.

The Thornwell family offered a miniature of the whole Back Bay. Cornelia crusading, and her granddaughter Betty ready to turn into a militant, and get her head broken by the police; while on the other hand the aged Abner Thornwell, oldest member and nominal head of the family, was sitting paralyzed in his wheel-chair, boiling like a steel crucible about to explode. Great-uncle Abner--so he was always referred to, because of the children--resembled his sister-in-law Cornelia in one thing, that he could not think or talk about anything but Sacco and Vanzetti; his conversation, a monologue on account of his complete deafness, resembled a verse-form with a refrain--“Burn them! Burn them!”

Abner insisted upon writing bloodthirsty letters to the Governor and to the newspapers. This would have been a scandal, because everybody knew of Cornelia’s part in the case; and since she had taken it up first, family etiquette declared it to be hers. So the Scatterbridge family, with whom the old man resided, entered into an elaborate conspiracy to suppress his letters; secretaries, chauffeurs and attendants, butlers, footmen and maids--everybody had to be warned to bring the old gentleman’s letters to Mr. James instead of mailing them! In the end the victim found out about that, and worked himself into such a fury that the family was afraid he would die on the spot. He had to be allowed to mail a letter to the Governor, and to have an acknowledgment, as his rank and station required; James having sent his secretary to explain the circumstances and see that the letter was not given to the press.

XV

Between these two extremes the other members of the family were distributed here and there. Henry Cabot Winters had become quite sympathetic toward his “Bolshevik mother-in-law”; he gave it as his legal opinion that she had come out of her seven years’ struggle with unexpected glory. Regardless of whether her wops were innocent or guilty--and Henry said he had no opinion--she had proved to all the world that they had not had a fair trial. Who could have foreseen that luck would oblige her with such incidents as the making of bogus citations by “Web” Thayer, and the annihilation of poor “Dean Wigless” in the columns of the _Transcript_? Manifestly, the judicial system of Massachusetts had slipped up. While the great lawyer would not do anything about it, nor even say anything about it, he would furnish his mother-in-law with first-class legal advice free of charge.

Also Quincy Thornwell had been impressed by the interest taken in the case by men of standing in the financial world, such as John F. Moors, who was a member of the “Fincom,” or Financial Commission--a device of the blue-blood bankers to watch the politicians, and keep them from stealing too large a percentage of the public funds. When Mr. Moors publicly said there was something wrong, Quincy stopped arguing with his aunt, and took to toddling round on his withered legs, a faithful messenger-boy, bringing gossip from the dinner-tables of the rich.

Mrs. Jack Gardner had left Fenway Court for palaces and mansions above; but other hostesses had taken her place, and Quincy would bring home the funny stories which smart society liked to tell about the super salesman of automobiles, and his old paintings and other efforts at culture. He had proposed to appoint Harry Garfield, president of Williams College, to the Lowell commission, but Mrs. So-and-so had insisted that it wouldn’t do, because Harry’s grandfather had been assassinated by an anarchist. It had really been his father, said Quincy; but the State House wasn’t very strong on history. Cornelia added that the assassin had not been an anarchist, but a plain lunatic, which was different, whether the Governor would admit it or not.

“As a matter of fact,” said Quincy, “on that basis the Governor would himself be barred from deciding, because somebody murdered _his_ grandfather.”

Cornelia took that bit of history home with her, and mentioned it to the sarcastic Betty, who retorted: “Somebody murdered him too late!” Cornelia shuddered, and said “Hush!”--looking about for a spy. The thing of which she lived in hourly terror was that some lunatic might kill somebody connected with the government--in which case it would be all over with Sacco and Vanzetti, and perhaps with the defense committee as well!

Another person who had been startled by developments in the case was Betty’s mother. Impossible that Deborah should not be shaken by the letter from Bishop Lawrence, whose prize parishioner she was--he came to a state dinner at her home once every year. Yes, Deborah said, her mother had had ground for the protest; but now her troubles were all over, Mr. Lowell had the matter in charge, and would see that it was straightened out.

There was quite a tug of war in the Alvin family, for Rupert said thumbs down on all anarchists. But of course he wouldn’t dare to say so publicly, in defiance of his mother-in-law and his wife. What the great banker did was to keep out of the uproar, by pleading temporary retirement on account of ill-health. His doctors had insisted that he should find a “hobby,” something else to be interested in but other people’s money. So he was taking up church architecture, designing with his own hands a miniature English abbey, and having it built as a private chapel on his North Shore estate. It was costing a hundred and fifty thousand dollars, but was really an economy, so the great banker explained; it would be a church for his friends and servants on the estate, thus saving gasoline and tires, and later on it would be a mausoleum.

XVI

And then the Scatterbridge family. Clara had raised her brood, who were in schools and colleges, and asking questions; therefore the mother was trying to understand public affairs, but finding them extremely complicated. She accepted the pamphlets her mother gave her, but the trouble was, she fell asleep so easily. As that was bad for her “reducing,” she found it better to go to bridge parties. When Cornelia told her a sad story about the wife of a shoe-worker, whose marriage had been a sort of death in life for seven years, Clara would be deeply touched, and would write a check to help feed and clothe the Sacco children. Then, in course of their talk, Cornelia would learn that Clara had just given a check to a patriotic lady who had called on her, representing a society which was seeking to compel all foreigners to be good, by having them registered and finger-printed by the police. This society was sending out literature demanding death for Sacco and Vanzetti; so Clara’s money was at work on both sides!

But no such conflict in the case of Clara’s husband. James Scatterbridge was one of the stern ones, upon whom Cornelia could make no impression whatever. The sarcastic Betty explained it by what she called “economic interpretation.” A great lawyer like Uncle Henry had to keep his mind open, because he could never tell which side might hire him; a banker like Father didn’t have to worry, because no matter whose money was stolen, it always came back to the bank; but an industrialist like Uncle James was a slave-driver with a whip, and if he didn’t hold it tight there would be no money for anybody.

James Scatterbridge would keep Abner’s stuff out of the papers, because family dignity required it; but he would go about among the lords of cottons and woolens and shoes and hardware and transportation, and voice his conviction that this was the great test of our institutions, and if we didn’t teach a lesson to the forces of disorder, the government might as well abdicate once for all. James had a voice that was like his annual product of a hundred million yards of cotton sheeting being ripped all at once by a giant hand; and just now was a great moment in his life, because he had been invited to address some important gathering of his fellows. He had set his best advertising man to writing a speech for him to learn, and Cornelia heard him rehearsing it in the library, in the presence of his adoring wife and several indigent female relatives: denouncing the rumors that the cotton industry was going to be lost to New England, and likewise the rumors that the “_boot_nshoe” industry was going to be lost.

James pronounced this latter as one word, with the accent on the first syllable; and he said it several times--“I say that the _boot_nshoe industry shall _not_ leave New England!” It was a kind of incantation, which became effective when you said it loud enough and often enough. Quincy Thornwell explained to Cornelia that the old families who owned the cotton mills and shoe factories insisted on having all the money in dividends, and left nothing to keep the plants up. James hadn’t put a new machine into his mills in thirty years--so of course he was being undermined by Jews who got capital in New York and cheap labor in the Carolinas, and had no fear of blue-blood bankers conspiring to put them out of business because they were not graduates of Harvard and members of the Union Club!

XVII

Nemesis was waiting for James Scatterbridge, with such a tragedy as she prepares for powerful, aggressive, absolutely certain men. His sons were growing up; the oldest, James junior, was a member of the Harvard class of ’27, and Cornelia failed to attend the graduation, because of the anguish and suspense of the Sacco-Vanzetti case. The second son, Josiah Thornwell Scatterbridge, was a sophomore at Harvard, and called on the phone, saying that he wanted to see his grandmother; so Cornelia invited him to lunch.

She hardly knew these children of Clara and James; to her they were still the nursery mob that scratched rare old furniture and smeared chocolate caramels on brocaded upholstery. They were growing up into individuals, but she had not had time for them. Now came “James’s Josiah”--such was his awkward designation--a shy, yellow-haired youth with staring blue eyes--and revealed the amazing thing that had happened. “Grandmother, I went to a meeting of the Liberal Club in college, and heard a man tell something about your case. It sounds to me pretty rotten, and I don’t think the family ought to leave you to do all the work. I thought I’d ask you to give me something to read, so that I can answer what people say.”

So there was punishment for a powerful, aggressive, absolutely certain manufacturer of one hundred million yards of cotton sheeting per annum! He had a son who was sensitive and open-minded, and was going to disgrace him before the world! “James’s Josiah” took the handful of pamphlets from his grandmother, and he did not fall asleep over them, but read them in a day, and told his brothers and sisters what was in them, and there were family rows, and word came to the father, who summoned the renegade to his office.

There was a stormy scene, in the course of which the son was absolutely forbidden to believe certain things which he could not help believing. He explained how he could not help it--thus administering to his father a subtle form of annoyance, which no enemy could have made worse. There was a “bust-up” between father and son; and when Clara heard about it, there was a near “bust-up” between husband and wife. For Clara took the boy’s side; he had a right to think for himself, and should most certainly not be put to work in the mills by way of punishment. Maybe Clara’s mother was right; there was a lot of rottenness in politics, and it was time that women began to make their votes count. So there was the Scatterbridge family, in the same turmoil over the Sacco-Vanzetti case as all the rest of Massachusetts!