Chapter V: Out of Chaos

“Let us make new propellers,
Go past old spent stars
And find blue moons on a new star path.

“Let us make pioneer prayers.
Let working clothes be sacred.
Let us look on
And listen in
On God’s great workshop
Of stars ... and eggs ...”
+Carl Sandburg.+[14]

At the time of a recent presidential election, a straw vote was taken by the faculty of a midwestern college, which included the straw vote of thirty-five of the professors. Seven voted for Cox, twenty-five for Harding, and three for Debs.

Shortly afterwards an agitated citizen met one of the vote tellers on the street.

Said the citizen, “Is it so that three of the teachers voted for Debs?”

“Yes,” said the teller, “I counted the votes, and I know that three of the teachers voted for Debs.”

“Are they going to let them stay?” asked the agitated citizen.

“Twenty-five voted for Harding,” came the reply, “and they are going to let them stay.”

And with the years do not the implications, both ways, of that answer seem to have increased rather than diminished?

Here is Billy Sunday denouncing, in some of the mildest of his phrases, the radical,--in this particular case Eugene Victor Debs: “I’m dead against the radical in whatever form he may appear. He’s the bird I’m after. America, I call you back to God!”

And then this is the way Billy Sunday goes on to call America back to God: “These radicals would turn the milk of human kindness into limburger cheese and give a pole cat convulsions. If I were the Lord for about five minutes, I’d smash the bunch so hard--” but the remainder is too coarse to repeat.

So much for the generous and sensitive English of a reactionary Billy Sunday!

Here is the Radical Debs speaking in condemnation of the Bolshevistic use of power in the execution of the Czar and his family: “I recoil with horror and shame that such savagery should be committed in the name of Socialist justice that has for its aim and purpose the setting up of the higher standards of human conduct. I can find no extenuating circumstances that would allow me to take the life of my bitterest enemy.... We shall not wrest any justice or kindness out of life by emulating the practices of those whose barbaric method we now denounce.”

In one respect--possibly in several--society to-day is scientifically in advance of that public which some four hundred years ago killed Galileo because he performed a scientific experiment. And it does not make torches out of Christians for festal reasons on our “Roman” holidays.

But what happens when there is any attempt to perform a political experiment? What happens when men seek to educate other men by means of the soap box and literature in the possibilities of what they think would be better ways and better forms of government? The unstated reply to this question is the story of the end and the beginning at Sacco-Vanzetti Defense Headquarters.

The future will see that this case was a free-speech case. The present denies this. Are men to make progress in freedom of religious thought and speech? Are men to make progress in scientific ways, go forward in science, but in politics, in government, have no freedom? Who stood over Pasteur to tell him what he should do with his microscope? And yet over three hundred years ago men killed Galileo because he tried to perform experiments with falling bodies.

Some two thousand years ago the Roman people said, “It is more expedient that one man should die than the people should perish through the corrupting influence of Jesus.”

A few hundred years earlier the multitude had put Socrates to death because he had said he did not believe in the gods the city believed in. In science, using scalpel and microscope, test tube and spectroscope, men are permitted to go forward. In government, in political science, is society to condemn all those men and women to prison in whom the spirit of research lives?[15]

These are some of the questions being asked by intelligent minorities everywhere. And it is not impossible that as the result of those thirteen days in Boston intelligent minorities, whether liberal or conservative, were strengthened in purpose and confirmed in determination to see that at all costs should be tried the experiment of a free people governing themselves by means of free assemblage, free discussion, and legislation that should be just to all,--what Dr. Holmes has described as “the new mobilizing of conscience for the work ahead.”

“But,” the Popular Mind says, “the radical is dangerous.”

Is he? What, anyhow, is the Radical?

James Harvey Robinson writes in _The Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods_: “Some mysterious unconscious impulse appears to be a concomitant of natural order. This impulse has always been unsettling the existing conditions and pushing forward, groping after something more elaborate and intricate than what already existed. This vital impulse, _élan vital_, as Bergson calls it, represents the inherent radicalism of nature herself. This power that makes for salutary readjustment, or righteousness in the broadest sense of the term, is no longer a conception confined to poets and dreamers, but must be reckoned with by the most exacting historian and the hardest-headed man of science.”

In art, at least, radicalism means that nuclear source from which spring the emotional and social evolution of art. And, one suspects, in the life of government its meaning is not so very different. When those in control of government begin to use dead forms of past experience--say, legal--because they are without sufficient force or sufficient idealism to create new forms of use to life as men must live it in the present, then follow injustice and tyranny and death. It is inevitable that selfish men should fear the change from one economic order to another. And when for over a hundred years both the philosopher and the economist have buttressed the practical individual in believing that in pursuing his own good he is benefiting the community as a whole, it is small wonder that he insists on the righteousness of his individualistic or capitalistic point of view. It is unquestionably true, not alone in political ways but also in some official “religious” ways, that the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti had been greeted with exultation. John Hays Hammond’s letter of praise to Governor Fuller will be remembered. Bishop Lawrence’s letter to Governor Fuller will not be forgotten,--the congratulations of a Bishop of Christ for the decision to kill two men. What light do those “congratulations” throw on what many had believed to be the move for investigation on the part of liberal opinion?

For the present the power lies in the hands of individualists and reactionaries, and many social radicals--as, for example, Mooney and Billings--are in prison, or they have died from the hardships of their prison experience, or have been executed. The bogy of fear--since they are not conscience free--possesses many who are in power, and they find a thousand subtle ways to infect the public mind with fear of those changes which they themselves dread.[16]

The execution at midnight on August twenty-second was no sudden and hideous grimace of fate. The preparation for this act of injustice was implicit in the history of over half a century. In an editorial in the _New Leader_ for August 13, 1927, James Oneal wrote: “There comes a time in the history of nations when various phases of their development come to a focus and signify the need of change. The old order changeth and the new order issues out of the old. The old faiths, old views, old war cries that once served mankind no longer serve. They harden into prejudice and become the handmaids of reaction and despotism. They become imbedded in law, are sanctioned by courts, and become fetters on human progress. Eventually the fetters are broken, we enter a new epoch, mankind rejoices, progress continues until a new crisis is brought because new faiths, views and war cries have again become old.”

In this connection it might be well not only to remember Douglas and Dred Scott, John Brown and Abraham Lincoln, but also _not_ to forget Mitchell Palmer and his relation to the so-called “Red Raids.” To give only one example, the Rand School books and furniture were destroyed by Palmer’s Cossacks of the law, and men and women thrown down stairs and out of windows. It might still be well to do what the _Nation_ recommended as far back as 1921: “Turn the Light on Palmer.” The files of the Department of Justice, opened on request for such a pitiable psychotic type as the wife-murderer Remus, are still to be opened to help in clearing the names of two innocent Radicals who have been put to death.

It is well _not_ to forget that in 1920 Salsedo, the friend of Sacco and Vanzetti, was found smashed to pieces on the pavement fourteen stories below the offices of the Department of Justice on Park Row where Salsedo had been held _incommunicado_. Was Salsedo tortured till he went mad and sprang out of the window? Or was he thrown out? It should be remembered that Sacco and Vanzetti were trying to get up a meeting about what Alfred Baker Lewis has called Salsedo’s “highly curious death” when they were arrested. It is well not to forget that to-day out in the Colorado coal fields, in the interests of justice (!) peaceful picketers, having not even a club as weapon, have been shot down by mounted troopers, and that women are being lassoed by these guardians of the law as steers are lassoed. It is well to remember that men and women are thrown into prison without even the formality of a warrant, as Flaming Milka was after she had been lassoed and her wrist broken by the brutal snapping of handcuffs upon her.

Lincoln, facing the issue of the Dred Scott decision, said: “I believe that government cannot endure half slave and half free.” This was said at a time when the Supreme Court had decided that negroes could not be considered as persons but only as property. That race issue now has but passed a specious color line, is stalled on the political boundary, and has gone forward--if it has!--only to rephrase itself economically as to whether wage-earners are to be considered as persons or only as property. It would seem that there has been an attempt to answer the question in Colorado and Pennsylvania by the machine gun and state police.

Dr. Cohn implies in “Some Questions and an Appeal” that the consciousness of radicalism in this country has become synonymous with the consciousness of guilt. It is possible to change the words “has become” to the words “has been made.” It is well not to forget the Lusk law whose issues, although some of them have been officially “killed,” are by no manner of means dead issues. Despite the repeated courage of expressed opinion and action on the part of Alfred Smith as Governor of New York State, if the constitutional rights of Socialists cannot be barred openly, they are still taken from them illegally at the polls and elsewhere. If there is no legal process by means of which teachers can be gagged by loyalty tests, other means as efficient, if less open, are being found. The question of the political control of all schools in the state by means of the Board of Regents may come up again, and assuredly will, if now dominant and selfish interests succeed in herding people into the war which looms so ominously on our horizon,--and not less so under the influence of President Coolidge’s 1928 Armistice Day speech. And finally, the creation and maintenance of a police for the suppression of all forms of radicalism is now a fact and not a theory, however uncodified such action may be on any book of statutes.... Back in 1923 the _Outlook_ said that Lusk’s proposal attacked “the fundamental principle of free government--liberty of speech and of the press.... His proposal enlists against great names and great memories of the past--the learning of Milton, the piety of Jeremy Taylor, the satire of Voltaire, the eloquence of Lord Erskine. It denies the axiom of liberty, that error is dangerless so long as truth is left free to combat it.”

To-day with a policy as consistent as it is fearless the _Outlook_ says in the issue of November 14, 1928: “Because in the South Braintree case, and in the Bridgewater case that preceded it, it was not only Sacco and Vanzetti but also our administration of justice that was on trial. If that has failed us then we should know it. We cannot afford to regard any miscarriage of justice as a closed case. As we value the future safety of society, our own safety and the safety of our children, we must be ready to listen and learn.”[17] For these reasons _The Outlook and Independent_ has reopened the case of Sacco and Vanzetti first by checking up on the Bridgewater hold-up, and second by checking up on the South Braintree crime. It is now at work on the latter.

In the issue of October 31, 1928, were published the signed confession of Frank Silva who states that he and three others attempted the Bridgewater hold-up, and corroborative evidence signed by James Mede who helped plan the crime although he did not take part in it. In order to substantiate the story further, Silas Bent and Jack Callahan took James Mede and Frank Silva to Boston where in an automobile they rehearsed again the crime. After their evidence was complete, Silas Bent took it to Boston to ask Mr. Thompson whether the attorneys for the condemned men were ignorant of the facts brought out in the two confessions, or whether knowing the story, they did not believe it.

In the issue of November 7, 1928, Silas Bent gives a long and valuable interview with Mr. Thompson in which the latter tells of Mr. Moore’s attempt to interest Governor Cox in James Mede’s story while James Mede was in the state prison in 1922; of a meeting with James Mede after his release from prison while Mr. Moore was still counsel; and of a meeting with James Mede in July, 1927, when he begged James Mede to make a clean breast of what he knew.

On July 12, 1927, James Mede made a complete disclosure to Governor Fuller after he had been assured that his confession would not be communicated to the state police as he feared the revocation of his license for boxing matches. After it, Governor Fuller called in Captain Blye of the state police, asking Mede to repeat his confession to Captain Blye alone, but indicating “hostility to Mede by words, tone and manner.” James Mede became terrified and refused not only to talk with Captain Blye alone but to repeat his story to the advisory committee, which had already indicated “unwillingness to consider the Bridgewater case.”

In August James Mede was urged to make another attempt to save Sacco and Vanzetti. He went to the office of Captain Blye with Dr. Santosuosso, and offered to make a full confession but his information was refused. Thus, according to _The Outlook and Independent_, for five years officials in Massachusetts declined to investigate James Mede’s story. Not only did Mr. Thompson and Mr. Ehrmann know the facts regarding James Mede and Frank Silva but they urged the interview with Governor Fuller and sent both to Governor Fuller and the advisory committee a letter, dated June 15, 1927, in which was marshaled all the available evidence bearing on the relation of these two men to the Bridgewater crime. Mr. Thompson makes clear his belief that James Mede told the truth, and he states that the conviction of Vanzetti in the Bridgewater hold-up not only removed from everybody’s mind the presumption of innocence but created a presumption of guilt both against Vanzetti and his friend and associate, Sacco.

_The Outlook_ wrote, “We must be ready to listen and learn.” The men are dead but the issue of justice--that placard repeated and repeated on the walls of the Defense Committee’s offices, +JUSTICE IS THE ISSUE+--is not dead. There are many who believe that even from the technical legal point of view the case for Sacco and Vanzetti is not closed. Still more know, as well as believe, that not only has this issue of justice _not_ been killed with the two men but rather that the idea of justice has been given a new increase of life.

This power of an idea was brilliantly illustrated in the October, 1927, number of _The World To-morrow_ when under the caption of “Fathers and Sons” without a line of comment, its editors set the following last sentences side by side:

_Sacco’s Good-by to His Son_

“My son, do not cry. Be strong to comfort your mother. Take her for
walks in the quiet country, gathering wild flowers, resting beneath
shady trees, and visiting the streams and the gentle tranquillity of
the Mother Nature.

“Do not seek happiness just for yourself. Step down to help the weak
ones who cry for help. Help the persecuted, because they are your
better friends. They are your comrades who fight and fall, as your
father and Barto fought and fell, to conquer joy and freedom for all
the poor workers.”

_Gary’s Advice to His Heirs_

“I earnestly request my wife and my children and descendants that
they steadfastly decline to sign any bonds or obligations of any kind
as surety for any other person or persons: that they refuse to make
any loans except on the basis of first-class, well-known securities,
and that they invariably decline to invest in any untried or doubtful
securities or property or enterprise or business.”

The power of the ideal life has within these recent years found among others a symbolic figure in Eugene Victor Debs. Upon our entrance into the World War Debs, even as did Sacco and Vanzetti, upheld pacifism, and in September, 1918, he was charged with violation of the Espionage Act, and sent to prison.

Debs would have nothing to do with that type of Christian hypocrisy which flourishes a Sermon on the Mount in one hand while it operates a machine gun with the other. Because of his pacifism, this “radical” Gene Debs, always so fair and so gentle as an opponent, hating no one, incapable of petty hatreds, was sentenced to spend ten years in Atlanta Penitentiary.

While he was in Atlanta, he heard of the negro, Sam Moore, shunned and feared by all, and confined in the dungeon for a brutal murder. Debs asked to be taken to him; and when he was, he went up to this man whom no one dared approach and put his arm around him. Emerson has said, “The only gift is a portion of thyself.” This gift Sam Moore received from Debs, and it made a different man of that negro, changing him from one who was shunned by all into one who was trusted. And it was that same despised negro criminal who said, “Gene Debs is the only Jesus Christ I ever knew.” Sam Moore is out now, leading an upright, working life. Debs spent three years in Atlanta Penitentiary, trusted and beloved. Then on Christmas Day, 1921, President Harding released him.

This is a brief record of the activities of the man who was five times nominated for President of the United States, one of those times being while he was in prison when he polled a vote of almost a million. This is the man who addressed audiences numbering 25,000, and who led the simple, loving life of a modern Christ; and who, after two years of study, became at the age of forty-two a Socialist. For Debs socialism did not mean the doing away with capitalism; it meant, rather, capital socialized, the brutality, the devastating individualism taken from it,--a system of living in which man’s sociality, his brotherhood, would be furthered, in which there would be no bitter and separating contrasts between rich and poor.

It was this Debs who said, “While there is a lower class, I am in it; while there is a criminal element, I am of it; while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.”

It was this man of simple and genuine American traditions, born in an American family in an Indiana town, a Socialist, of whom the anarchist Vanzetti said in that last public speech he was to make: “There is the best man I ever cast my eyes upon since I lived, a man that will last and will grow always more near to and more dear to the heart of the people, so long as admiration for goodness, for virtues, and for sacrifice will last. I mean Eugene Victor Debs.”

Vanzetti was not to hear Aldino Felicani saying of himself and Sacco, “Ah, these are the very best men I must ever hope to know!”

It is a truism that what a man is, what he does, in his own lifetime influences his fellow men. The miracle of influence does not lie in that fact. The miracle of influence lies, rather, in the continued life of influence after the death of the individual who has exerted it. In this is found the dynamics of an idea,--directed energy released by means of an idea which controls social and moral movements, hundreds of years, thousands of years, after its release,--a poem thousands of years old to which the heart and mind of man still answer; or a Messiah whose gospel becomes more potent with the marching centuries. It is because he possesses such influence, great in a lifetime, but in death potentially greater than in life, that the idealist, whether he be liberal or conservative or radical, is, and always will be, dangerous.

The lives of Sacco, Vanzetti, and Debs define, without words, the significance, the character, and the service of the so-called “radical.” In symbol the influence of these three, and the influence of other idealists, will have more and more power as the years go on,--not greatness gone or greatness vanished, but greatness growing, widening out forever, their names already known to millions of human beings the world over, inspiring symbols of courage and of loving-kindness. And in such symbolism lies the miracle of human influence and its immortality.

In pursuit of the ideal such radicals as Debs, Sacco and Vanzetti know no fear. For them in the achievement of ideal ends no cost is too great, neither slander nor loneliness, the loss of the means of subsistence or of life itself. There is only one loss which the idealist, whether he be conservative or liberal or radical, can mourn, and that is the lost opportunity to speak for those who suffer and are wronged, as Sacco and Vanzetti did suffer and were wronged. That is why, to use the words of Powers Hapgood, hundreds of thousands in protest of one sort or another want to “stand up and be counted.” And, too, as the years go on this is why as symbol in ever-widening circles of influence the work of the Defense Committee, the courage of brave friends, as well as the martyrdom of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, over seven long years, and the conflict and defeat of those last thirteen days, will become greater and greater in men’s eyes.

Ralph Chaplin, who spent five years behind prison bars because he was and is a man of peace, has in a poem expressed this courage of the idealist:

“Mourn not the dead that in the cool earth lie--
Dust unto dust--
The calm, sweet earth that mothers all who die
As all men must;

Mourn not your captive comrades who must dwell--
Too strong to strive--
Each in his steel-bound coffin of a cell,
Buried alive;

But rather mourn the apathetic throng--
The cowed and the meek--
Who see the world’s great anguish and its wrong
And dare not speak!”

FOOTNOTES:

[14] “Good Morning, America,” by Carl Sandburg, p. 26.

[15] For brilliant discussion of political freedom _v._ “Some Problems of Progress,” by Professor H. M. Dadourian of Trinity College in _The Scientific Monthly_, edited by J. McKeen Cattell, October, 1922.

[16] As an illustration of terms to which such “fear” will stoop see Appendix A and Appendix B.... These appendices discuss a few of the recent notable forces working against freedom of speech.

[17] The series of articles bearing on the case which have been published by the _Outlook and Independent_ so far is as follows:

“Fear,” by Edna St. Vincent Millay, November 9, 1927.

_The Outlook and Independent_, October 31, 1928.
“The Truth About the Bridgewater Hold-up,” p. 1053.
“Frank Silva’s Story,” p. 1055.
“How I Found Frank Silva,” by Jack Callahan, p. 1060.
“Checking Up the Confession,” by Silas Bent, p. 1071.
“The Bridgewater Trial,” p. 1076.

_The Outlook and Independent_, November 7, 1928.
“Checking Up the Vanzetti Story,” by Silas Bent, p. 1099.

_The Outlook and Independent_, November 14, 1928.
“Bridgewater and After,” p. 1163.