Chapter XX: The Decision (1)

I

On July twenty-ninth it was announced that the decision would be given out on the third of August. That was a Wednesday, the day the Governor’s council met; and this fact might have significance, because, if he were going to grant clemency, the council would have to assent. Shreds of evidence like that caused hope to rise in the balance. Rumors would come, one way or the other; the Governor had said this, he had asked that.

Joe Randall never wavered in his pessimism. “Fuller has no idea but death; he never has had it for an instant, and he never will.” But some of the other newspaper men thought differently; said one: “You can’t tell me that a man so happy would send two human beings to the chair!” Others had talked with members of the council, who told, in confidence, of definite statements the Governor had made. The New York _Times_ correspondent sent his paper a detailed story to the effect that the Governor meant to postpone the execution, and ask the legislature to pass a special act providing for a new trial. The New York _World_ had the same story; the _Herald Tribune_ followed.

On the day before August third a peculiar development. Calvin Coolidge, President of the United States, was spending his summer vacation in the Rockies, catching trout with worms, and having himself photographed in ten-gallon hats and other moving picture appurtenances. He received the newspaper “boys” on his front porch and handed them a typewritten slip of paper reading, “I do not choose to run for President in nineteen twenty-eight.” This economical sentence caused a thrill in the bosoms of great numbers of public men; and enemies of Alvan T. Fuller imagined that it decided the fate of Sacco and Vanzetti. Careful newspapers like the New York _Times_ and _World_ do not often let themselves be fooled as in this case--so these suspicious ones argued; something must have changed the mind of the supersalesman on the night of the second of August, causing him to give up the idea of clemency. Could it have been a vision of himself, following the footsteps of “Cautious Cal” up the political ladder; sweeping the next Republican convention in a storm of enthusiasm for another hero who had “crushed the Reds”?

Whether there was any truth in this wild guess, none could say, except Fuller himself. But this much is certain, he desperately wanted that nomination; and it is interesting to note what happened in the following year, when the Republican convention assembled. The name of Alvan T. Fuller was put before the little group of rich men’s agents who meet in a hotel room and determine nominations for president and vice-president. The Governor’s friends set forth the heroic deed that he had done, and the storm of fervor which this deed would rouse in the bosoms of all patriots. But the politicians of 1928 remarked coldly that this was not 1920. “The Republican party cannot afford to debate the Sacco-Vanzetti case from now until the end of the campaign!” There was not a single vote for the supersalesman; and so furious was he in his disappointment that he refused to let ex-Governor Cox of Massachusetts have the nomination in his place. To Senator Butler, over the long-distance telephone wire, he said: “It will be Fuller or nobody!”

II

August third, the day of the decision. The State House press room and Governor’s office were not big enough to hold the mob of reporters, and for the first time in Massachusetts history the legislative chamber was turned over to their use, and the press gallery equipped with telegraph wires. More than eighty men, like hunting-dogs held in leash, leaping and barking. The whole outside world was clamoring for every detail having to do with that scene.

The interest in the case had grown, until it was like nothing in history; great newspapers in New York, which had given several inches to the conviction of the men, were now giving pages to the struggle for a new trial.

Somehow the working classes of all nations had come to know about this case, and had made it their own. They were listening to fiery orators, taking part in parades, throwing bricks through American window glass, setting off bombs in front of embassies and legations. To the ruling class element of Massachusetts this was a proof of the worst they had been told about world Bolshevism; it was a diabolical conspiracy against the good name of the Commonwealth, and to meet it these righteous persons summoned the spirits of their Puritan ancestors, who had withstood persecution and torture at the hands of royal despots and their priestly monitors. The louder the clamor on behalf of the anarchists, the less chance that it would be heeded--so said the stiff-necked ones.

The Governor had not come to his office; rumor had it that he was working on his decision in an unnamed hotel. Over at the Sacco-Vanzetti headquarters in Hanover street, a couple of rooms in a dingy office building with time-worn floors, there were reporters and photographers, bootleggers and poets, Italian laborers and Harvard professors, seated on boxes, bundles of papers, tables and rickety chairs, waiting, waiting. On the walls were posters in many languages, calling for mass-meetings to save Sacco and Vanzetti; one in French, signed by cabinet ministers, referring to “Calvary,” which would have pleased Bart; one in German, saying “Justice is dead”; one from Mexico, saying “Freedom and Justice.” Bart was right--his name had come to have a meaning!

Cornelia Thornwell stayed in her apartment, and friends came in to keep the watch with her and divert her mind. But no one could talk about anything but the decision. Now and then the phone would ring, and her heart would jump so that it hurt; when it proved to be more delay, she would sink back in her chair, feeling faint. Creighton Hill, a young newspaperman who was heart and soul for the defense, came in to cheer her; the afternoon papers were full of hints of a reprieve; everybody was hopeful. Judge Webster Thayer was in Ogunquit, Maine, and at the Cliff Country Club that morning had made 18 holes in 84.

Waiting, waiting. Evening, and still the Governor had not come to his office. Crowds gathered at the State House, and were driven back. The decision would be late, said the secretary. Betty, who was at headquarters, phoned to her grand-mother--for the tenth time, trying to brace the tortured soul to meet the coming shock. “Joe says the brute is holding up the decision so that we won’t be able to get in any answer to-night. He wants the front page of the morning papers to himself!”

So it proved. At twenty minutes past eleven at night, the last moment when it would be possible to put the text of the decision into the main editions of the big newspapers, and when there was no longer a chance that any friend of the defense could prepare a reply, or find any distracted reporter able to listen to one--at that moment the Governor’s secretary appeared with a stack of envelopes, each containing seven mimeographed sheets. The reporters grabbed them, and tore them open as they ran. The word “Die” went by telegraph and cable to five continents, and in a few minutes there were “extras” on the streets in big cities, with streamer headlines across the front page: “Sacco and Vanzetti Doomed to Die”--“Sacco and Vanzetti Must Die, Says Fuller”--“Sacco and Vanzetti Guilty, and Will Die.”

III

Wonderful, wonderful was the judicial system of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as portrayed in those seven mimeographed sheets! Throughout all this complicated and difficult case it had functioned without one single slip. The judge had been upright and impartial, the jury had been conscientious and fair, the witnesses--for the Commonwealth--had been clear-eyed and unafraid, the Supreme Judicial Court had been infallible. And now came the supersalesman of automobiles, and with his eagle eye he surveyed the procedure, seeking a flaw. Patiently he had studied every word of the record, the later appeals and decisions; he had interviewed jurors and witnesses, and made sure that everything was perfect; now he mounted the rostrum and told the civilized world about it, putting the final seal of completion upon the performance.

One after another he took some aspect of the case, and after mentioning the criticisms of it, disposed of them in one or two majestic and final sentences. First, the jury. “I find that the jurors were thoroughly honest men ... I can see no warrant for the assertion that the jury trial was unfair.” The fact that the elderly flag-saluting foreman of the jury had said, on his way to duty, “Damn them, they ought to hang them anyway!”--that was a detail so trivial that an enthusiastic supersalesman did not bother to report it.

And then “Web” Thayer. “Affidavits have been presented claiming that the judge was prejudiced. I see no evidence of prejudice in his conduct of the trial.” The eagle eye had inspected those passages in the record where “Web” had connived at the job of hiding from the jury the fact that Goodridge was an admitted thief; that had been fair. The eagle eye had seen “Web” butting in to discredit the witness Kurlansky, the shop-keeper who had failed to stop the district attorney and police from “framing” the testimony of Lola Andrews; that had been fair. “Web” had permitted the district attorney to browbeat Sacco for not knowing what was not true about Harvard College; that had been fair. “Web” had sneered seven times at the defense lawyers for claiming something which they hadn’t claimed; that, too, had been fair. He had let the district attorney tell the jury that Proctor had testified something that Proctor had in fact refused to testify, and that the district attorney knew he had refused to testify; that likewise had been fair. “Web” himself had told the jury the same thing; and that had been fairest of all.

And then the appeals for a new trial, based upon new evidence that had been found: evidence of the foreman’s prejudice and misconduct, of Goodridge’s criminal career and perjury upon the witness-stand; the retractions of Lola Andrews and Louis Pelzer; the confession of the head of the State Police that he had conspired with the district attorney’s office to misrepresent his testimony to the jury; the new evidence of Gould, Kelly and Kennedy, deliberately withheld from the defense. Said the supersalesman: “I have examined all of these motions and read the affidavits in support of them to see whether they presented any valid reason for granting the men a new trial. I am convinced that they do not.”

And the judge’s handling of these appeals and motions--that, too, had been complete and marvelous perfection! Everything that he had done--including his lying about the affidavits, and saying that they said what they didn’t say; his misrepresentation of Supreme Court decisions, his misquoting of testimony, his making up of passages which he said were in the testimony, but which were not in the testimony--all that had been perfect, and “Web’s” motives in doing these things had been as pure as the driven snow in Boston. Said the supersalesman: “I am further convinced that the presiding judge gave no evidence of bias in denying them all and refusing a new trial.”

The supersalesman pronounced Vanzetti guilty of the Bridgewater crime, and stressed the fact that he had failed to take the stand in his own behalf--although it was the perfect law of the perfect Commonwealth that he didn’t have to take the stand if he didn’t want to, and that his failure to do so was not to be used against him. The supersalesman was so sure that the men were guilty that he was not content to say it once, he said it twice about Sacco and three times about Vanzetti; he was so sure the trial was fair that he said it five times--and added for good measure: “The proceedings were without a flaw.” He put in an eloquent description of the South Braintree crime, with emphasis upon its brutality, which made fine melodrama for the newspapers; and then he wound up in a blaze of glory, putting himself in the center of the picture, with jury and witnesses about him. “I am proud to be associated in this public service with clear-eyed witnesses, unafraid to tell the truth, and with jurors who discharged their obligations in accordance with their convictions and their oaths.”

IV

Ten or a dozen persons crowded into the little living-room of the apartment adjoining Cornelia’s, where lived Betty and Joe. The seven mimeographed pages had been read aloud, and passages read over again, and marked with exclamation points and question marks. Hours passed while the clamor and excitement continued. Nobody thought of sleep; impossible ever to sleep in the world again--let sleep be banished from Boston, as punishment for this atrocity! The language of some of the younger men and women was unfit for the older ones to hear; but the older ones realized that this was a special occasion, like nothing in Boston history. The air of the room became gray with tobacco smoke, and the eighteenth amendment to the Constitution was broken, along with the laws against blasphemy and sedition; for some radicals could not stand the strain of this ordeal, any more than could the conservatives, without help from Italian bootleggers.

Joe was at his typewriter, banging away, with a green shade over his eyes; preparing a story to be put on the wires for the early editions of afternoon papers. He was making copies for other newspaper men, hoping they would get this point and that. Now and then the company would interrupt him--to make sure he had got some other point. Over at defense headquarters was another indignation meeting, and there was telephoning, back and forth, exchanging ideas and information. Quotations had to be looked up in the record, and falsehoods nailed down.

How they hated the supersalesman of automobiles--and how they raged at the trick he had played upon them, whereby millions, yes, tens of millions of people would read that statement at their breakfast tables and on their way to work--and would not get the answer of the committee until hours later, and then only in fragmentary form, or not at all! The fingers of men and women trembled as they pointed out passages of especial treachery.

Cornelia Thornwell, old-fashioned and hopelessly out of date, had notions about the dignity and honor of the office which the great Josiah Quincy Thornwell had once filled. It seemed to her that a Governor of the Commonwealth, mounting the rostrum and addressing the civilized world on an issue involving the lives of two human beings--that such a Governor ought at least to tell the truth. “Wouldn’t you think he’d leave out errors that can be proved by the record?”

Said Betty, “I’d expect him to lie like Satan.”

They would fall upon the seven mimeographed sheets again. Look at this! Look at that! Look at what he put in about Madeiros! “I give no weight to the Madeiros confession. It is popularly supposed he confessed to committing this crime.” What did the man mean by that sentence? He didn’t explain it--he went on to state his reasons for distrusting Madeiros, but not a word about what was “popularly supposed”! The words could only mean that the popular impression was mistaken, Madeiros had not “confessed to committing this crime.” Every reader would get that meaning, and no other meaning. The actual words written by Madeiros had been: “I hear by confess to being in the South Braintree shoe company crime and Sacco and Vanzetti was not in said crime.”

Then, an even shrewder trick--a little masterpiece of treachery, as cunningly contrived as the Proctor evasion, and Katzmann’s bogus answer to it, and “Web” Thayer’s obfuscations of both! The supersalesman summed up Sacco’s alibi--that he “claimed to have been at the Italian consulate in Boston on that date but the only confirmation of this claim is the memory of a former employee of the consulate who made a deposition in Italy,” etc. Study that sentence, all forgers, traducers and betrayers of all future time, and learn how to smile and be a villain still! The art of falsifying while seeming to tell the truth has never been carried to a higher stage--not in any form of supersalesmanship yet devised in the great empire of superproduction, or taught in the Graduate School of Business Administration of Harvard University.

Strictly and literally, it was the truth that Sacco had produced only one witness to testify that he had been “at the Italian Consulate in Boston on that date.” But Sacco had produced five other witnesses who testified that he had been _in Boston_ on that date! Affe, the grocer, had testified that Sacco had paid him a bill, and Affe had produced on the stand a notebook with a memorandum of the payment, showing the date. Bosco and Guadagni, the editors, had testified to lunching with Sacco in Boni’s restaurant on that day, and Dentamaro, department manager of a bank, and Williams, an advertising agent, had testified to joining the group and chatting. Still more to the point, several of these witnesses had testified that Sacco, in the course of the talk, had told them the purpose for which he was in Boston, to visit the consulate and get his passports! Oh, treachery and double-dealing beyond all imagining--first, the Lowell commission hushing Bosco and Guadagni to silence, and doctoring the record of the proceedings in order to keep the story from the public; and then the mighty super salesman, stepping onto the rostrum and addressing the whole civilized world, telling it that Bosco and Guadagni did not exist!

V

Cornelia lay in bed, a reaction from the long strain. The Negro maid brought her coffee and toast, but she could not eat; she lay like one dead. It was all over for her; she had done all she could, struggled all she could--so she told herself. The young people might go on, Joe might write newspaper stories, trying to rouse a heedless public; Betty might organize mass meetings and speeches on the Common, but the runaway grandmother’s race was run.

She had to lie there and bring herself to face the thought of the electric chair. Through all these seven dreadful years, she had refused to face it--a game of self-deception; but Bart and Nick had been right all along--they had known that the thought must be faced, and they had done it. They had the will, and the philosophy; they had been able to talk about it and joke. Now Cornelia must do the same thing. Remember what somebody had told her--it does not hurt, because the current destroys the brain before there is time for a sensation. And when it is over, it is really over; other persons may worry for you, but you don’t worry for yourself. Also, you are a martyr, you have accomplished something for the cause you love.

That was what she must manage to realize. Persuade herself that there was a new generation coming, that would care where this one was indifferent; that would count it as something important that two wops had denied themselves happiness so that justice might be born into the world! Think about those young persons of the future; lie here and shut your eyes, and let them come into your presence and speak to you; feel their gentle hands upon your forehead, bidding you to rest, your tense nerves to relax and your heart to stop pounding.

Cornelia lay wrestling thus; and into her mind came drifting words of comfort. “Now we are not a failure. This is our career and our triumph.” Vanzetti speaking; where had she heard him say those words? On a chair by her bedside was a scrap-book, full of letters, manuscripts, clippings. She was moved to sit up and turn the pages; here it was. Shortly after Judge Thayer had sentenced the two men to die, Cornelia had persuaded a reporter for the North American Newspaper Alliance to go to Dedham with her, and see what kind of men these alleged bandits were. Now, reading the interview, Cornelia recalled every detail of the scene; the prisoners coming down from their tier of cells, getting a glimpse of sunshine in the central hall, and lighting up with it--Nick, with his “kid’s” grin, Bart with his mature and gentle smile. The reporter, Phil D. Stong, a big fellow, rather blond German face, well-fed and well-groomed--on an expense account, as he told Cornelia, with a laugh; tender-hearted, with the sentimentality of his race--and struck dumb by the discovery of two men of this transparent sincerity and fine idealism in the shadow of the electric chair, face to face with their last enemy and not afraid of him. He had listened, while the victims did the talking; then he had gone away and tried to make a picture of the scene for the readers of a chain of newspapers.

“Both men expect to die. They say so, and the conviction is written
in grave, serene characters on Vanzetti’s face. Tears touch the
young man ‘Nick’s’ eyes for a moment, brightly, but his voice is
steady. He is married to a sweet-faced little Italian woman. They
have two children.

“In a moment, Nick, with his smooth pompadour, and his boy’s face,
is laughing with the deputy sheriff in argument about prison fare.

“Vanzetti regards one kindly, but appraisingly. A ferocious
mustache covers an expressive, smiling mouth. The stamp of thought
is in every feature; the marks of the man whom strong intelligence
has made an anchorite.”

And then a glimpse of prison life:

“Up from the shops comes a file of gray men, arms folded, faces
expressionless--a rhythm of steps and faces.

“‘They been working.’ Sacco’s fingers move nervously. ‘God, when
I cannot work I almost go crazy. My fingers used to be busy. I
beg, I argue--give me something to do--I shovel coal, anything. At
last, they give me brick to clean--after three years. You see me
now? I gain a pound a day for thirty days.’ The deputy sheriff nods
confirmation.

“‘First they give me basket to weave, like children. Better than
nothing, but not much. Then I sit alone--seven years--thousands
of days--and all for say man’s nature can be perfect--day after
day--nothing do--breathe, eat, sit up, lie down--because I think
man innerly noble--not beast--’

“Vanzetti interrupts his companion gently. He knows the two
visitors believe in the enforced regulations which restrain
fallible humanity.

“‘We’re capitalists,’ he says smiling, and pointing to the line of
workers. (Men under sentence of death are given no work.) ‘We have
home, we eat, don’t do no work. We’re non-producers--live off other
man’s work. When libertarians make speech, they calling Nick and me
names.’

“Sacco gurgles with amusement. The deputy sheriff appears
significantly. Suddenly one realizes that these men are to die in a
straight wooden chair, just as the world begins its summer holidays.

“Nick and Vanzetti see the new expression and understand. They
smile, gravely, sympathetically, as men smile at a child’s troubles.

“‘If it had not been for these thing,’ says Vanzetti, ‘I might
have live out my life, talking at street corners to scorning men.
I might have die, unmarked, unknown, a failure. Now we are not a
failure. This is our career and our triumph. Never in our full life
can we hope to do such work for tolerance, for joostice, for man’s
onderstanding of man, as now we do by an accident.

“‘Our words--our lives--our pains--nothing! The taking of our
lives--lives of a good shoemaker and a poor fish-peddler--all! That
last moment belong to us--that agony is our triumph!’

“Not declaimed, just said simply.”

VI

There were tears in Cornelia’s eyes as she finished. “Oh, beautiful! Beautiful!” And when Joe came in, later in the day, she showed him the clipping. “Those are marvelous words--those two paragraphs at the end. I wonder if you couldn’t quote them again, and get people to read them.”

Joe said that he would try it. In order to give a touch of drama, he put a headline: “Vanzetti to his Judges.” The two paragraphs were taken up and reproduced in labor papers, and became, as it were, a spiritual testament of Vanzetti, an untheological prayer which his friends carried about with them, and read while he was dying, and afterwards. Because of the title, people assumed that the words had been a part of a speech in court; but this was not so, they were spoken, quite simply and casually, to a newspaper reporter, the every-day stuff of Vanzetti’s mind.

History records that those who heard the Gettysburg address of Abraham Lincoln were ill pleased by it. They found it brief and inadequate, and gave all their praise to the flowery discourse of the great Edward Everett of Boston. But the future seldom chooses words which are flowery; it chooses those which have been wrung from the human heart in moments of great suffering, and which convey a gleam of spiritual illumination. When such words have been spoken, we discover what Paul meant when he wrote, “this mortal shall put on immortality.” School children learn them by heart, and libraries are written to interpret them; they are graven upon marble and cast in bronze; armies carry them on banners, temples arise to glorify them, and civilizations are built in their image.

Pass on, Bartolomeo Vanzetti, your work is done! You have fought the good fight, you have finished the race! Fear not the executioner, nor yet the raging slanderer--they are powerless to harm you, for you have carried out your life-purposes--including that incidental one of becoming a great master of English prose! You have spoken the noblest words heard in America in the two generations since Abraham Lincoln died! You have achieved what is called the “grand manner,” so rare in literature! That simplicity whereby men become as little children, and enter into the kingdom of heaven; that dignity which causes the critics to bow their haughty heads; that tenderness which touches the heart, that rapture which fires it, that sublimity which brings men to their knees!

In short, old Bart, you have brought the Commonwealth of Massachusetts back into the literary world again! After many years, New England has another great writer--for a short while only, until it has sent two thousand volts of electricity through his brain! What an odd freak of history, that this great one should be a despised wop! That, after all the millions spent upon education, he should not be a graduate of a college, nor even of a high school! That he should not even be able to spell correctly, nor to pronounce correctly, the language of which he is to be the glory!

What a satire upon great endowments, the huge masses of steel and stone, the deans and professors of this and that long-winded subject! As a result of their labors, there are a million persons in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts who understand the correct use of past participles, and would not say, “I might have live”; yet there is not a single one of these millions who can speak a sentence that stands a chance of living! There are ten thousand graduates of Harvard College, every one of whom knows better than to say “onderstand” or “joostice”; yet there is only a handful who understand justice, and not one who will die for it!

VII

The fears of the defense, that they could not get their answer before the public, proved to be groundless. In truth, no answer was needed--the weaknesses of the Governor’s statement were so apparent. Impossible to take the lives of two men upon the basis of such an argument! There was a cry of dismay, so shrill that it penetrated even to the sanctum of supersalesmanship. A sudden panic among the “State House gang”; something must be done, and done quickly. The academic autocrats were summoned to the defense of their Governor, and three days later there appeared what was called the “report” of Lowell, Grant, and Stratton to the Governor.

It was much longer than the earlier document, and in its heavy style bore the marks of having been composed by President Lowell. It was argumentative where Fuller’s had been assertive; it was fumbling where his had been jaunty. The feebleness and confusion of its arguments suggested the operation of aged minds. To disinterested persons, the most striking fact was that the report could be judged without knowing anything about the case. The elderly gentlemen had managed to make their ineffectiveness evident in almost every paragraph.

Suppose, for example, that you picked up your morning paper, and read what the Commission had to say about the evidence of Roy Gould, the man who had got a bullet hole through his overcoat. “He certainly had an unusually good position to observe the men in the car, but on the other hand his evidence is merely cumulative.” What would you make out of that? Assuming that you knew the meaning of the word “cumulative,” why was evidence less valid because it was that? Wasn’t it the nature of good evidence to be cumulative, and didn’t you try to make it as cumulative as possible? Try some other word in that sentence: “his evidence is merely convincing” or, “his evidence is merely conclusive”!

Then that amazing and incredible sentence, in which the three elderly Brahmins summed up their meditations on the subject of one of their victims: “On the whole, we are of the opinion that Vanzetti was guilty of murder beyond reasonable doubt.” What did the three elderly Brahmins mean by a man’s being guilty “on the whole”? Or by their being of the opinion “on the whole”? Did they mean that there was some part of them which was not of the opinion? Or did they mean that there was some part of Vanzetti which was not guilty? On the Saturday when this report was given out, the New York _Times_ made an effort to elucidate this question; and the New York _Times_ is an important newspaper, whose queries are apt to be heeded, even by blue-blood college presidents. But apparently the Commission on the whole had decided on the whole that it would be safer on the whole to take no chances on the whole. The New York _Times_ recorded that “efforts to reach members of the committee to clear up the exact meaning of ‘on the whole’ were unavailing.”

But imagine the scorn and fury of young radicals--reading that sentence, and not waiting to have the exact meaning cleared up! Said Mistress Betty, now become ferocious: “Is he going to execute Bart on the whole, or is he going to execute him completely?” She pictured the august President of Harvard University appearing before the Judgment Throne, and being informed that he was to be sent to hell on the whole, and roasted for eternity on the whole!

VIII

The three elderly blue-bloods had had a comparatively simple task laid out for them; they had been asked to decide whether Sacco and Vanzetti had had a fair trial. Was it owing to their age, or to their inexperience with criminal matters, or to their overwhelming prejudice, that they had been unable to stick to their task, but must keep confusing it with the question whether Sacco and Vanzetti were guilty? The latter they could not possibly determine; they had neither the time, nor the facilities, nor the training, nor the temperament. But their self-assurance was such that they attempted it; with the result that they fell to guessing, like everybody else, and they were so naïve as to reveal this to a horrified world.

Thus, in declining to accept the story of Madeiros, they remarked: “If he were tried, his own confession, if wholly believed, would not be sufficient for a verdict of murder in the first degree.” Just what was the significance of that? Were the old gentlemen suggesting that two birds in the hand were better than one in the bush? And then, their extraordinary statement, that the evidence of Gould was “balanced” by that of Tootsie Toodles! Joe Randall said that such “balancing” ought to be exhibited on the vaudeville stage.

The handling of the Proctor confession had come to be a test of the honesty of official persons in Massachusetts; and it proved that each new person would find some new method of dodging the truth. The three elderly blue-bloods showed themselves fully as cunning as their predecessors. Said they: “Counsel for the defendants claim that the form of the question and the answer was devised to mislead the jury.” That was a fact; and it was an instance of how to lie while stating a fact. Counsel “claimed” it; but why put the burden of the “claim” onto counsel, when counsel were merely restating the confession of Proctor? And then to go on and say: “But it must be assumed that the jury understood the meaning of plain English words.” These learned Boston gentlemen claiming that Proctor had used “plain English words,” when Proctor himself had stated that he had used obscure English words, and for the purpose of confusing the jury! Let the common sense of mankind judge whether a jury of mechanics and working people would find no obscurity in the statement that the mortal bullet was _consistent with_ having been fired by the Sacco pistol! And when both the district attorney and the judge had pretended to misunderstand it, and had told them that it meant what it did not mean!

And then to be nasty, and hint that their own high police official, who had served them faithfully for forty years, and now was dead and unable to defend himself, had made his confession because the district attorney had refused to pay him five hundred dollars for his expert testimony!

To Cornelia Thornwell this report meant the end of all things; her joy in life was gone. For prejudice and trickery on the part of a motor-car salesman she could make snobbish allowances; but in the case of A. Lawrence Lowell no such recourse was available, he was her kind of person, the best she had to offer. For years she had gone to commencements, and listened to his ponderous wisdom, and thought he was a great man; and here in a test she discovered that he had listened to all the gossip, and swallowed the whole “theory”!

She knew what would happen, if she went out among her friends to argue against this report. The friends would gaze at her in dismay. “But, my dear, _Mr. Lowell_ says they are guilty!” If she persisted, the friends would add, “But my dear, Mr. Lowell _investigated_ the case! He gave more than half his vacation to it!” Those who knew her well, including the members of the family, would say, “But Mother, you _wanted_ Mr. Lowell, and now you won’t abide by what he says!”

Impossible to make headway against such a tide! In New York men could read that report, and judge it for what it was, a revelation of the mental breakdown of a once-great civilization; but in Boston hardly any one could judge it, Mr. Lowell did the thinking of half the city. He was a god, and had descended from his throne, and devoted his mighty intellect to the affairs of two obscure wops; now for these wops and their supporters to refuse to accept his verdict was not merely blasphemy, it was ingratitude and impertinence.

IX

William G. Thompson withdrew from the case. One more lawyer had failed; one more lawyer had made enemies, and thought it would help Sacco and Vanzetti if he took himself out of the way. But each time it was made clear that the cause of the hatred was Sacco and Vanzetti, no one else; the new lawyer, whoever he might be, would be as much hated as the old one.

They took Cornelia’s advice, and went to the old stock, and retained Mr. Arthur Dehon Hill. Silver hair and rosy cheeks and a manner of complete assurance, he should have been Arthur Beacon Hill, according to Joe Randall. He was so correct that he dared to make jokes about it. Real “Old Boston,” he thought that every criminal, even an anarchist, was entitled to a fair trial, and to have a lawyer do the best for him that the legal game allowed. But to his surprise he discovered that a great many persons, even lawyers, were strongly disapproving of his conduct in defending these enemies of society.

He started work on Saturday, the sixth of August; and on the night of Wednesday, the tenth, his clients were due to die: rather a short time-limit for the mastering of a complicated case! He began with an appeal to the Governor to extend the time; and the Governor replied by silence. He filed notice of an appeal to Judge Thayer for a new trial, on the basis of newly discovered evidence, and also--delightful inspiration!--on the ground that Sacco and Vanzetti had not had a fair trial, because the trial judge had been prejudiced! Judge Thayer agreed to give up making golf-scores in Ogunquit, Maine, and appear in Dedham Court House on Monday morning, to judge whether Judge Thayer had been prejudiced against Sacco and Vanzetti!

Also Mr. Hill started an appeal before Justice Sanderson of the Supreme Judicial Court, to try to get another motion before the full bench of that Court. Some jumping about for one lawyer, especially when all the courts closed at noon on Saturday. Elias Field was helping, and also Michael Angelo Musmanno, a young lawyer who had been sent on from Pittsburgh by some Italian societies. A naïve and warm-hearted person, Catholic and conservative, he had fallen in love with an anarchist infidel and an anarchist atheist, and was bewildered by the hatred which unloving Boston felt for his clients. A hectic three weeks the young lawyer spent chasing about New England and Canada, in motor cars, and now and then in airplanes, hunting supreme court judges on vacation.

Other lawyers giving advice, some of them secretly. One was Henry Cabot Winters--hush, not a word! He would call Cornelia on the phone. “Mother, I don’t want to get mixed up in this, but you’d better tell those fellows not to overlook saving all their exceptions as basis of a writ of certiorari to the Federal courts; and tell Hill not to let ‘Web’ get a single point on him--challenge his right to hear a word, or decide any issue, on the basis that it is a prejudiced decision. And when you go to a Federal judge, don’t overlook Moore v. Dempsey 261 U.S. 86.” Cornelia would have to say, “Wait! Wait! Let me get that down!” She had been wrestling with the powers that ruled her Commonwealth for seven years, but she had not yet learned to have a pencil and pad at the telephone.

Also professors of the Harvard Law School helping--and no secret about that, but on the contrary, picturesque scandals for the Hearst newspapers! A war between the law school and rest of the university, between Frankfurter and Lowell! Lowell had been disapproving of Jews as professors, ever since eight years ago, when another of them, Laski, had made a speech to the wives of striking policemen, while Lowell was preparing to lend the students of his university for strikebreakers. Now here was Frankfurter defending two anarchists in a book, while Lowell was sentencing the incendiary pair to death.

A pretty fight, difficult to keep within the limits of academic propriety! Not so long ago, the great Lowell had dealt a strong punch to the Jewish jaw, in the shape of a program to limit the percentage of such students allowed in Harvard; he proposed to do it openly, instead of secretly, as the custom was. He gave his reasons--among them that one hundred per cent of the books stolen from the university library were stolen by Jews. When this statement was investigated, the evidence turned out to be that one Jewish student had one library book which he had forgotten.

And now here were the Harvard alumni, rallying to the aid of their blue-blood president, by refusing to contribute to the law school endowment, so long as Felix Frankfurter remained a professor; they were making a regular campaign out of this. Among those who had publicly joined it was Mr. Ranney, the new assistant district attorney from Norfolk County, who had been opposing the Sacco-Vanzetti defense before the Governor; also that blandly smiling blue-blood lawyer, Mr. Joseph Wiggin, who had been the Governor’s private counsel, present at all hearings. “You see what kind of advice Fuller is getting!” said Henry Cabot Winters.

X

Disputes at headquarters of the Sacco-Vanzetti committee; factions clashing, radicals jeering at conservatives. “Now you see! You obeyed your respectable lawyers! You were good, and didn’t make any noise, you trusted to legal precedents--and where have you got? If you had listened to us, if you had spent the money to make an appeal to labor, we could have had a general strike now, and the boys would have been saved!” But even now the conservatives wouldn’t agree. Mrs. Evans thought it necessary to bow to the Governor’s decision; while the communists wanted to make a mass appeal for a strike all over the country. Impossible to decide on a single move; and meantime the clock was ticking away the minutes and hours of the victims’ lives!

Those who believed in picketing and street demonstrations proceeded to organize and send out a call for martyrs. On Sunday afternoon there were to be mass meetings on the Common; the socialists and the communists each had a “tree,” and as usual, they announced rival meetings. Superintendent of Police Michael J. Crowley announced that he would attend both. For the first time in Boston history the entire police force of twenty-two hundred men were on what was known as “twenty-four hour duty.” All vacations were canceled, extra men were brought from other cities, the firemen were sworn in as deputies, the state constabulary were ready with armored cars, riot guns, searchlights and gas bombs. Said the sharp-tongued Betty, “The Commonwealth has told ten thousand lies, and each lie must have a club and a gun to protect it!”

Between Boston Common and the park known as the Public Gardens there extends a wide esplanade, half a mile long, lined with old elm trees; since as far back in history as the oldest citizen’s great-grandfather could remember, this had been the temple of Boston’s free speech. The trees were numbered, and every Sunday afternoon the advocates of anything would have a tree assigned to them, where they might set up a soap box and stand thereon, and say what they pleased to all who cared to listen--with only such interference as came from the voices of the orators under the other trees.

But now the government of Massachusetts had officially endorsed ten thousand lies, and staked its official existence upon them; the one thing it could not stand was to have these lies exposed to the general gaze. Under the socialist tree were women carrying banners, containing the sentence once spoken by the just and upright and utterly unprejudiced Mr. Justice Thayer. He was to speak again from the bench to-morrow morning, and tell all the world how just and upright and utterly unprejudiced he was. Now here was a banner: “Did you see what I did to those anarchistic ----? Judge Thayer.” The makers of the banner had left the bad word blank, but that did not improve matters, because there is no limit to what the human imagination may insert in a blank. People might imagine the worst of all possible expressions, so bad that it had never been printed in any newspaper. If they did imagine that, they would be right; and so it was necessary for the Commonwealth to resort to clubs and bullets.

XI

Alfred Baker Lewis, devoted young secretary of the Socialist Party, was denouncing the Governor’s decision, when Michael J. Crowley came pushing his way through the crowd, demanding to see his permit. Burly Irish-Catholic Mike, known as “Mickey the Gunman” to the striking policemen, and called even worse names by the booksellers of Boston, whose boss and master he was. For among the many duties of a superintendent of police in that pious city is to supervise the books which the literati may purchase. In the course of the past two years Mike had barred some seventy of the leading novels of the day, practically everything which an intelligent man or woman would want to read.

And so to-day; the public would be forbidden to hear every word that could interest an intelligent citizen. The Salvation Army would go on banging its drum, and the Holy Rollers would continue their contortions; but protest against legalized murder would be met with clubs, and if necessary with bullets.

“Let me see your permit,” commanded the superintendent of police; and when the orator produced it, Mike announced, “This permit is canceled and the meeting is forbidden.” When the young socialist attempted to protest, “You are not going to argue this case in public,” said the majestic Mike--just that and no more; he said it several times, so that every citizen of Boston might feel the full weight of the civic insult. “You are not going to argue this case in public!” Only in the council chamber at the State House, before elderly academic autocrats who would doctor the record when they got through, and keep the public from knowing what blunders they had made!

“This meeting will disperse!” shouted Mike, to the sixteen thousand persons crowded round him; and the blue-clad “cops” began their onslaught--“for every lie a club or a bullet!”

“Come over to our tree! We have a permit!” shouted the communists; so the crowd swarmed over there and Mike came also, and repeated his performance, confiscating another permit. But the communist was not so obedient as the socialist--he went on trying to speak, and was hauled off the soap box and surrounded by policemen, and dragged off to the waiting patrol-wagon. Three other persons they arrested--one of them Edward Holton James, of Concord, nephew of the novelist who wrote like a psychologist and of the psychologist who wrote like a novelist.

A persistent person, Mr. James; perhaps it came from living in Ralph Waldo Emerson’s back-yard. He had stood up in Germany, during the war, and said what he thought about the Kaiser. The Germans, not understanding Concord, had decided that he must be insane, so they had shipped him into Holland; whereupon he had promptly got himself smuggled back in a load of merchandise, and stood up again and said what he thought about the Kaiser, and spent three years in a fortress for it.

Now he was so naïve as to think that he owned a share of the Common, and had a right to speak there, and to refuse to be dragged off. He resisted being dragged, and went so far as to slap one of the officers--with the flat of his hand. They taught him his lesson, regardless of his blue-blood and his money; when the “cop” got him alone in the cell he gave him one on the side of the jaw, and Mr. James “passed out,” as the saying is, and when he came to he had a cracked jawbone, to keep him quiet for a while.

XII

Arthur Dehon Hill arguing before Judge Thayer in Dedham Court-house, with the round white dome and portholes like an ocean liner. Silver hair and rosy cheeks, his manner of subtle banter now replaced by burning indignation, that a judge with such a record as Web’s, and knowing in his heart such prejudice as Web’s, should be insisting upon deciding a motion involving two human lives. The lawyer invited the judge to consider how he would feel if the followers of Lenin had seized the government of Massachusetts, and were trying him according to the precedents he had set! He told Web to his face that he had been unfit to try the case from the beginning; he cited in open court what the Lowell commission had said about him--that in talking about the case off the bench he had committed “a grave breach of official decorum.” Could any man hear such words about himself, and not be affected by them? Web’s answer was that the chief justice of the Superior Court had instructed him to cut short his vacation and hear this motion. “And I am here,” said Web, in a low voice. His face was gray, his hands trembling, his eyes blinking fast. His court-house was well guarded that day.

New evidence had been discovered. A young fellow by the name of Candido di Bona had been standing on the street in South Braintree when the bandit-car went by, and now made affidavit that neither Sacco nor Vanzetti was in that car. This evidence was what the Lowell Commission would have called “merely cumulative”; there were already thirty-one persons who had made such statements, either at the trial or in later affidavits, and Web Thayer knew of them all, and intended to pay no more heed to the thirty-second than he had paid to the thirty-first. He thought that he no longer had jurisdiction; that after sentence had been passed, no judge of the Superior Court could entertain any motion. To this the lawyer argued vehemently that nothing could deprive accused men of an elemental right. “I believe that if there is new and important evidence, the courts have the power to consider it, even after sentence has been pronounced--even down to the time the men are strapped in the electric chair. I do not believe the laws intended the courts to regard these men as legally dead as soon as sentence was pronounced.”

Arthur K. Reading, Attorney General of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, had been instructed by the Governor to follow Mr. Hill in his peregrinations among the courts and make certain that he didn’t get anything. Handsome, genial, and a good fellow, Mr. Reading was a bitter foe of all Reds, and the aiders and abettors of Reds. Said he: “I have just heard the most preposterous argument that I have ever heard from an able lawyer.” He expressed his horror at “this attack on the court for which I have the highest regard.” He proclaimed that, “Ours is a government of laws.” Such reverence for laws and courts this noble gentleman had--and even while he was orating, his pockets were stuffed full of money, collected from various organizations which had been warned by Arthur K. Reading as counsel that they were in danger of prosecution by Arthur K. Reading as attorney general!

The “Decimo Club” was an ingenious organization which sold memberships to persons who hoped to get rich quickly; but the only ones who did get rich were the promoters of the club, and their legal counsel. A couple of months ago they had secretly handed a check for twenty-five thousand dollars to Mr. Reading, and immediately thereafter he had given to the newspaper reporters an interview telling them that the Decimo Club was all right. He had performed similar “legal services” for the “L.A.W.,” an automobile stock-selling scheme with curiously involved features. Altogether he had collected about ninety thousand dollars in such “fees,” and within ten months of the time that he had demanded the life of Sacco and Vanzetti, he was to be formally indicted by the House of Representatives and driven from his high office in disgrace--the first time that had happened in the history of the Commonwealth. So nemesis waits for Red-hunters!

XIII

In the meantime Cornelia Thornwell had got into action again--impossible to rest. Pleading with the Governor to grant a respite--but the Governor would not give a hint of his intentions. Calling up friends and relatives, nagging at them to “do something”--when they had no idea what to do. “Henry, do you suppose Fuller can really intend to let those boys die while proceedings are pending before the courts?”

“I’m afraid he does, Mother”--this over the telephone.

“But what can be in his mind?”

“Well, Mother, it is costing a lot of money to keep this thing going. Think of the military expenses! And then, it’s bad advertising; every day it keeps up, things look worse for Fuller and Lowell, and naturally they want it over with.”

“Do they think they can stop it by a murder?”

“I’m afraid they do, Mother--and what’s more, I’m afraid they are right. You can’t keep the case alive when the men are dead.”

“Henry, you _must_ do something for me!”

“But what can I do? I have no pull with Fuller, I don’t even drive a Packard car.” The great lawyer thought for a bit, and added: “Why don’t you try a little social pressure? Get Deborah or Alice or both of them to give him and his lady a dinner-party? I’ll come, if it will do any good.”