Chapter XXII: The City of Fear (2)

Powers was nowhere to be found, and there was great alarm. For several hours nobody could find out what had become of him; then came a “tip”--he was in the “Psychopathic.” That had been the bright idea of the captain of the state police. The shortest time in which anybody could get through the “Psychopathic” mill was ten days; and meantime Boston would be “back to normalcy.” It was all for the prisoner’s good, to keep him out of danger, said the police; the most considerate lot of sluggers that ever filled their stomachs with bootleg whisky and their pockets with bootleg graft.

A weird experience for a member of the Dickey and the Hasty Pudding Club and the Harvard Memorial Society! He was a handsome, athletic young fellow, but he looked less impressive after they had stripped him of his clothes, and put him in a dirty bathrobe. They took him to one of the wards, and put him in the very bed in which Sacco had once lain! Next to him was a man who believed himself to be God; on the other side a man who sat with his head in his hands and never moved for hours. The attendants apparently desired to get Powers excited, so that they could put him “on the ice.” They would come and make provocative remarks; a woman nurse started to express her opinion of Sacco--an ugly wop, and she pounded the bed as she said it; worse than that, he was an atheist. Powers was aware of the importance of keeping cool without any ice; he answered amiably, and with his charming smile. One attendant whispered that he was in danger, and offered to phone a doctor for him. Doubtless that was the source of the “tip.”

Doctors came to examine him; all the regulation mental stuff. You believe that Sacco and Vanzetti are being framed? Are you yourself being framed? Have you a mission from God? What are your dreams? Please take this pencil and write, how much is fourteen times fourteen? If twelve is greater than ten put a dot inside the circle which is not inside the square. Did your mother have a hard time at your birth? Explain this little story, how the Pope was crowned and so the little boy died of gilt paint. If you can explain it, then it is established that you are a “nut”!

They must have found this Harvard graduate an interesting specimen, for they put him up before the whole staff that evening. They made him put on his bathrobe backwards; which he thought was to make him look crazy, but doubtless was to keep a lunatic from committing any indecency. There were forty or fifty persons, men and women; doctors, nurses and students, many flappers. They put him on the platform and asked him to explain his ideas about reforming the world; so he made them a little socialist speech, ten minutes at least. They began asking him questions: a flapper wanted to know why he thought Sacco and Vanzetti were not guilty. What did he think about the McHardy bomb--the one which had blown out the front of the juror’s home? That was a catch, of course; he would say it was a provocateur job, and then they would all know he was a “nut.”

He said it. He fitted perfectly into their categories. And yet--a singular development--he began to expand before their eyes, and before he stopped, he had smashed their categories. A distressing experience to scientific minds--to have their categories smashed! Some one had said of Herbert Spencer that “his idea of a tragedy was a generalization killed by a fact.”

Powers had many facts, all deadly. The strike-breaking agencies planted bombs all the time, nothing simpler. It was the accepted technique of class war in the mining districts; one bomb, and the militia came and broke up the strike. It had been done right here in Massachusetts, by the great Mr. William Wood, president of the American Woolen Company; it had been proved in court, the men he had hired had been sent to jail for it. Too bad that Bostonians didn’t know their own industrial history!

After this session, fifteen alienists turned in a report to the effect that the former member of the Dickey, the Hasty Pudding Club and the Harvard Memorial Society was sane; one of them added that he had better be got out of “Psychopathic” as quickly as possible, or he would make socialists of the whole staff! They held him overnight, in Sacco’s bed, and in the morning they turned him loose--the first man who had ever got through the mill in one day. A triumph for a Harvard education!

XIV

Monday noon, with the execution twelve hours away, the Governor was in session with three lawyers of national repute: Arthur Garfield Hays, Frank P. Walsh, and Francis Fisher Kane, formerly a Federal prosecutor in Pennsylvania. These three were concentrating upon the subject of the Department of Justice files. They had traveled all the way to Vermont, to interview the United States Attorney-General. They had then proceeded to Washington, to interview a subordinate, and had succeeded in getting the admission that Sacco and Vanzetti were referred to in the files; also the written statement that the files would be turned over to the Massachusetts authorities, if these authorities would request it. Now the three lawyers endeavored, in vain, to persuade the Governor to make the request.

At this same hour, Arthur D. Hill was off the coast of Maine in a steamer, searching in a fog for an island eight miles out, where lived Justice Stone of the United States Supreme Court; Elias Field, assistant counsel, was making a motion before another judge of the Superior Court of Massachusetts; Musmanno was waiting for a chance to appeal to the Governor with new arguments and affidavits of new witnesses; while Jessica Henderson and Cornelia were motoring eighty miles or more to the Governor’s summer home to make their appeal to the great man’s wife.

A stately home for a multi-millionaire, set far back from the boulevard, and well hidden by shrubbery. When the owner himself was there, a miniature army was on guard; twenty-six men, with several machine-guns, and seventy-five reserves in a near-by town. But apparently it was not feared that the enemy would harm the family, for now there was only one plainclothesman on watch.

The Governor’s wife received the visitors courteously, and heard them to the end. Evidently the other members of the family resented the strain being put upon her, for three different persons came, seeking to cut the session short; but Mrs. Fuller would not have it so.

Cornelia knew something about the cares of office. She had realized that possibly the jauntiness of the supersalesman was merely a mask; it was his idea of being “game,” the male courage which defies death and danger. Certainly it was not the same in his family; his wife had been ill, his son and daughter had been ill. “It has taken years from his life!” exclaimed the woman. “You can have no idea what it means. We, too, sit in the electric-chair.” Cornelia, who had lived for forty years in a home of wealth, knew the whole story--even though in Josiah’s day they had not thought about anarchists and dynamite. Somehow or other, great sums of money found a way to wreck the happiness of those who held them. Yet, no one would give them up, no one would cease the mad chase!

Cornelia poured out her story. It was one to move any woman’s heart, and the Governor’s lady sat with tears welling into her eyes. A little boy, her youngest child, played about the room and sat on the arm of Cornelia’s chair; she told him about Plymouth, and about Trando, who had made himself a violinist; about Dante Sacco, who had bidden his father farewell in the death-cell, but had not been allowed to touch him through the bars. She told the mother about the framing of witnesses, and some of the new evidence they had found. But even while she spoke, she read in the face of her listener that her errand was a vain one.

“I can do nothing but this, Mrs. Thornwell; I will have the Governor see you to-day, so that you may tell him these things.”

“I have already told him so much,” answered Cornelia. “I was hoping you would go with me to the Governor.”

“No, I could not do that; it would do no good, I assure you.”

Mrs. Fuller would telephone, and see to it that Mrs. Thornwell and Mrs. Henderson had another interview that afternoon. The Governor must be made to comprehend those circumstances which made it so doubtful whether the men were really guilty. The Governor’s lady put her arm about Cornelia as she led her out to the car; and Cornelia thought, if only the women would run the world! But no, she had seen it happen; women went into public life, and became as hard as the men. Could it be that, as Vanzetti said, there was something fundamentally immoral about the business of dominating the lives of your fellows?

XV

Three hours later they were back at the State House, having made no stop for lunch. There were larger crowds than ever in the corridors before the Governor’s chambers, more than half of them secret service men and reporters. Mrs. Fuller had kept her promise; the Governor would see the two ladies, the secretary said.

Tom O’Connor sat with them while they waited; a reporter who was now with the defense, having given up a State House job a year ago. He would tell them the news.

Delegations to see the Governor, all through that day; there had been more than nine hundred telegrams received; few of them read. Musmanno had brought more affidavits; he had had word that his application for a writ had been docketed with the United States Supreme Court. Fuller had not said what he would do. A deputation of labor men from New York had been in a while ago; Fuller had said to one of them, “I know the men are guilty, so I don’t care whether they had a fair trial or not.” “He said those same words to me,” said Cornelia; and then, “old Boston” speaking in her, “Don’t quote me, please.”

Never had there been so many sensations, piling one upon another--not in the memory of the oldest employee at the State House. The Springfield _Republican_ had published a powerful editorial, underscoring the doubts as to the men’s guilt; Seward Collins, publisher of the _Bookman_, had put up the money to insert it as a full-page advertisement in every Boston newspaper. The _Globe_ had refused the money; others had run the ad that morning, and the State House gang was furious. Then, bright and early, who should walk in but Waldo Cook, editor of the _Republican_--sixty-two years of age, and the most respected journalist in New England. He came with a deputation of editors to see the Governor, and the private secretary tackled him. “I understand, Mr. Cook, that you got twenty thousand dollars from the defense committee for that editorial.” “It’s a damned lie!” said the editor.

“I suppose they get used to taking money here in the State House,” said Cornelia; and O’Connor grinned. The Governor himself was no better than his secretary, when it came to repeating charges without evidence. He had said to one deputation that Professor Frankfurter had been paid great sums by the defense; he would go on saying this, even though he had been many times assured that it was false. He was obsessed with hatred of Frankfurter, and blamed him more than any other; he would accuse people of having read Frankfurter’s book, and if they admitted this crime, he would not hear them any longer.

XVI

The two ladies were ushered into the presence: two persistent pests who had sneaked into a man’s home, seeking to undermine his domestic peace! Nevertheless, he would be polite. He had set himself the task of remaining here until midnight, and seeing every one who came; and one person was about the same as the next.

He started at once on the aggressive. “My wife tells me that you ladies still don’t think the men had a fair trial. But you must know they had three trials--one before Judge Thayer, one before the Lowell Commission, and one which I have conducted in these rooms. I tell you that I would not ask for my own son any fairer trial than that which took place before Mr. Lowell.”

Said Cornelia: “It is the first principle of our law that the accused shall be confronted by the witnesses against them. But Sacco and Vanzetti did not see many of the witnesses who appeared before Mr. Lowell.”

“Surely you must realize the absurdity of such a proposition! How could those desperate anarchists have been brought every day to the State House?”

“All right, if it is too much trouble to conform to the principles of our law, let us follow our convenience--but then don’t claim that it is a fair trial.”

“The men were represented by the best counsel.”

“Even the counsel were barred sometimes; they were not present at Judge Thayer’s examination; they were limited in questioning Katzmann. Worse than that--they don’t even know the names of all the witnesses. I understand that Mr. Lowell is saying that he had ‘confidential information.’ He is telling that to all his friends; and what place have secret whispers in a fair trial? You say that the trial before Judge Thayer was fair--yet the Lowell report admits that Judge Thayer committed ‘a grave breach of official decorum.’”

“That was after the trial, Mrs. Thornwell.”

“It was while he still had the various motions before him. He was still the judge of the case, and the sole judge, right up to the time he pronounced sentence last April, and automatically excluded any other judge from acting. Are not men entitled to have new evidence considered before an unprejudiced judge? And who else has considered that evidence?”

“I have, Mrs. Thornwell; and I think that I have common sense, even if I haven’t legal training.”

“Pardon me, Governor, but we have suffered much from inability to get you to consider new evidence. We brought you the express receipt for eels, but we are told that you say you know Vanzetti never got them. We bring you the Pinkerton reports, but we don’t know if you know what is in them. They cancel Mary Splaine, but you still go on citing Mary Splaine. We bring you the son of Lola Andrews, and he tells you that his mother is not to be trusted, but you go on trusting her. You tell Musmanno that you don’t believe Vanzetti ever sold fish, and Musmanno brings you an affidavit from Carbone, the wholesaler from whom Vanzetti bought fish in Plymouth regularly. We bring you all sorts of affidavits, but nothing does the least good, because you have some secret information that we are not permitted to know about, and that determines the whole matter for you. What is it, Governor--tell us now, instead of too late. Believe me, the world is going to know some day!”

Thus the little old white-haired woman; and with elaborate and patient courtesy the sorely tried statesman assured her that she had fallen victim to the machinations of dangerous and depraved persons. He had the duty of deciding this case, not she; and when he made promises to witnesses in fear of their lives, he would keep those promises. When she broke down and wept, and Mrs. Henderson began to plead for mercy, he said that Massachusetts was in the grip of a crime wave, and that to pardon guilty men would set a dangerous precedent. He had refused to pardon the “car-barn bandits,” even though they were native Americans, one of them a World War veteran. No, he was not troubled by the clamor from outside, the pleadings of what people said were “great minds”; they might be great in their own line, but they didn’t know about the Sacco-Vanzetti case. This clamor would pass quickly. When Cornelia started to argue against capital punishment, his answer was: “You and I both sleep better in a state which has capital punishment.”

Cornelia gazed at him, with a look of dismay. She could not reply to such words. Men had killed their fellows for fear and for hate, for piety and for glory, for exercise, for sport, for food; but here for the first time in recorded history they killed for a soporific! The little old woman stood up, trembling.

“Governor Fuller, answer me this: What are you going to do when we find the real criminals? Somewhere in the world are two men who really did the Bridgewater job; somewhere are four, or five, who did the South Braintree job. And rest assured, we are going to find them--we are never going to rest until we have found them--and then, how will you be able to face life? What will all you gentlemen do--judges and governors and college presidents--knowing that you sent two innocent men to their death? What will there be in the world for you--but insanity or suicide?”

He did not answer, and she went out, with despair plainly written upon her aged face, for all the newspapermen to see and record. In the corridor they told her the news, right hot off the wire--Arthur Hill had telephoned to his office, Justice Stone had turned down his request. The lawyer was up in Maine, and could not get back to Boston until morning, so his work was at an end.

What had Mrs. Thornwell to say to that? What was she going to do? The reporters gathered about, eager for more story. A marvelous melodrama this was to them--a whole day packed full of thrills! Melodrama at the State House, with millionaires and blue-bloods and “headliners” of all sorts in a fourteen-hour stream! All over the city, with two hundred persons arrested, and tens of thousands looking on; with poets and hoboes, “Reds” and “scions of wealth,” famous lawyers and judges, playing their lively parts! All over the world, with bombs exploding and plate glass shattering, mobs yelling and cavalry charging! And at the end death waiting, in the aspect of a chair with widespread, capacious arms, gaping for its victims! Monday, August 22nd, 1927, a date never to be forgotten in the history of the world!