Chapter VII: Appendix: B

There is one address comment upon which it would be my wish to omit from any summary of forces working against freedom of speech. The man who gave this address in Lawrence, Massachusetts, on June 30, 1927, to the Kiwanis, is himself kind to little children. He has been thoughtful of their welfare both in legislation and control; eager for the safety of the road and for the reduction of needless human suffering. But the author of this address, which appeared first in the _Boston Traveller_ for June 30th and of which afterward some seventy-five thousand copies were printed for distribution, leaves the student of these issues no honorable choice except to analyze the speciousness of his statements.

Frank A. Goodwin begins this address, which is said to have turned the tide of public opinion--the tuning fork from which Governor Fuller took his pitch--with an implied compliment on the Lawrence handling of the strikes and the “Red murderers” who had been at that time in action. Having established an association between the character of what the Kiwanians had seen in Lawrence and Sacco and Vanzetti whom they had not seen, Mr. Goodwin then took about one hundred and fifty words out of the context of a speech by Edward H. James, the nephew of William James, which had been given at Winter Garden in Lawrence on May 27th. Mr. Goodwin refers to these words which, however bravely meant, inevitably would be prejudicial in conservative eyes, as coming from the “Socialist or Red.” Since when have Socialists and Soviets been hand in glove? If they have been, then the altogether delightful “glove” the Socialists have received in Russia has been wholesale imprisonment! This is the first of those inaccuracies with which this pamphlet teems, and on the basis of which public opinion was still further influenced.

The Socialists have themselves been time and again “broken” by the _status quo_. But in turn as a political party they have broken nothing,--not even the driest twig of government, for their ways are the slow constitutional ways of education and legislation. But now, as far as Frank Goodwin’s audience was concerned, he had tied together “Red murderers” in the Lawrence strike, a nephew of William James, socialism, Soviet Russia, and two philosophic Anarchists. Breaking all the speed laws of reasoning, Mr. Goodwin then established the guilt as murderers of Sacco and Vanzetti, sideswiping, as he did so, “pacifists and their college professor allies” in preventing murderers “from getting their just deserts.” Stepping on the gas, and traveling at the rate of a Studebaker “Sheriff,” Mr. Goodwin whizzes down on Professor Felix Frankfurter, Anita Whitney, Mooney and Billings, the American Civil Liberties Union, R-revolution (!), and a few other road obstructions.

By this time Mr. Goodwin is getting his car so well in hand that it will take almost any fence. He hurdles California, skids as he reaches “some ministers of the Gospel,” rights himself, and lands squarely in the midst of the “Lusk Investigating Committee” where he was really at home. All might have been well, but pulling out the throttle, the then Registrar of Motor Vehicles goes roaring forward onto a paragraph with the caption of “WHOSE BRAINS GUIDE.” In this little paragraph, with his careful use of words, he rolls James Maurer, tosses “the notorious Elizabeth Gurley Flynn,” Dean Roscoe Pound, and a few tender little Socialists like Morris Hillquit, Scott Nearing, Norman Hapgood, Upton Sinclair, ricochets on Professor Frankfurter, and goes smash into Roger Baldwin, William Z. Foster, and Lenin.

His Sheriff being provided with a wonder-working bumper, despite collision on he goes, though in exactly the opposite direction. Neither geography nor the direction in which Mr. Goodwin is now going is any longer a matter of importance to him. He happens to be in the Connecticut Valley but does not know it! For just ahead he has seen a group which he calls “College Professors Reds,” and he is in full flight. Mr. Goodwin shows his genuine Americanism by baiting the college professor, the worm of our national wit. What is more the “professors” here excoriated are in the leading colleges for women. But it is a long worm that has no turning, and apparently these poor down-trodden things have turned. It would seem they are making a direct assault on the human family, for Mr. Goodwin writes:

“Another obstacle is the home and the family, and a widespread
assault is now being made on the sanctity of marriage and sacred
family relations, and it is being made with great success in
the leading colleges for women, and small wonder, for we find
the presidents and professors of most of them members of the
Baldwin-Foster committee, or its allied organizations.”

Exactly what is this Baldwin-Foster Committee to which Mr. Goodwin refers with such precision? But no matter, and there you are, all tied up again and together: the “promiscuity” of our women’s colleges and college women in general, and Sacco and Vanzetti. Pulling out the choke of his trick car Mr. Goodwin rushes up over the Amherst Notch, screeching through Old Hadley, making a record run down upon the Hankins questionnaire in Northampton. He wrenches a few of this college instructor’s misguided questions altogether out of their context, thereby subverting their sociologic intention. Waving these questions indignantly, Mr. Goodwin honks out this paragraph:

“It may be interesting to note that almost 100% of the presidents and
teachers in these colleges for women have signed petitions for the
release of Sacco and Vanzetti. It might be well before long for the
various states to found and support colleges for women where decency
and morality will be taught.”

Those who have taken a prurient interest in the questions selected by Mr. Goodwin would do well to read the entire questionnaire. However much the keen scholar who is at the head of Smith, and Mr. Hankins himself, and other college professors, and presidents, may have regretted what seems a lack of judgment shown in a few of the questions asked, those who read the questionnaire as a whole will get, not the false perspective of Mr. Goodwin’s methods but a true perspective of the whole sociologic enquiry. And in conclusion, what in the world is the connection between a class questionnaire and the Sacco-Vanzetti frame-up?

At the top of page 11 the Sheriff had grazed Dr. S. Parkes Cadman. This was unfortunate, for now Mr. Goodwin, for reasons no one can understand, Dr. Cadman least of all, is headed directly upon the Garland Fund. He now charges Robert Morss Lovett, Lewis Gannett, Norman Thomas, Roger Baldwin (of course!), the Fellowship of Reconciliation, the Fellowship of Youth for Peace, and returns to the Federal Council of Churches and Emma Goldman. This return must surprise many, including Emma Goldman herself. Since when has her association with the Federal Council of Churches been established as even the remotest possibility? Mr. Goodwin is now going at a record-breaking pace. Two-thirds down the page, his car fairly leaps into the air, and the one-time Registrar of Motor Vehicles is heard speaking these words:

... “The time has come to stop treating this thing as a joke. An
organized minority, bent on evil, cannot be ignored, when led
by desperate, unscrupulous, able men, with unlimited money, and
particularly when aided, regardless of their motives, by those who
control our colleges, and the Federal Council of Churches.”

Mr. Goodwin, now being profoundly stirred, is at his best in such penetrating remarks as this: “An organized minority, bent on evil.” Will some of the members of the Federal Council of Churches, Dr. Cadman and Bishop McConnell, for example, please step forward and explain why they are so naughty! And after they have been heard, will a judicious selection from the Presidents of the demoralized colleges for women, President Neilson, President Woolley, President MacCracken, please explain to an anxious public why, despite the fact that no one of them is even that mildest of all “Reds,” a constitutional Socialist, they are always called “Red”? Is the _Manchester Guardian Weekly_ right when it says: “There are, perhaps, too many societies of one sort or another in the world already, but there seems to be a real need for one addition--a Society for the Protection of Good Americans from the Publicity which is Awarded to the Others.” Surely, no matter what Mr. Goodwin and some thousands among other notable groups such as the Daughters of the American Revolution owe them, by way of apology, the college presidents must understand that they owe the public a pleasant explanation for the reasons why Mr. Goodwin and others should be allowed to slander them.

But the Registrar of Motor Vehicles and his Sheriff are growing tired. Despite the fact that up and down several pages he has been scooping the Connecticut Valley, Mr. Goodwin failed to refer to Waldo Cook and the _Springfield Republican_, and none have done more valiant service for freedom of speech and justice than these two. With weariness there comes upon Mr. Goodwin the meditative spirit. He is slowing down; he is going to shut off his motor; and one of the boldest drives to demolish truth ever undertaken is almost over,--certainly since the Mitchell Palmer, Lusk and _Delineator_-Coolidge days. As he dreams, peaceful voices are heard, and he invokes the American Legion, Veterans of Foreign Wars, Spanish War Veterans, and other such non-militant (!) organizations. Reaching the last page all are found joining hands with the Daughters of the American Revolution. It is a pretty picture of accord, except for the fact that one is left wondering whether even the genial Daughters would have quite enough hands to go around....

In her series of “Blue Menace” articles which appeared in the _Springfield Republican_ from March 19 to 27, 1928,[18] Elizabeth McCausland has given clearly the factors which lie behind the so-called “blacklists” and the final outbursts of the D.A.R.: the activities of the Palmer deportation raids, the Lusk legislative committee, the Key Men of America, the Industrial Defense Association with Headquarters at Boston, the Massachusetts Public Interests League, together with the activities of many other reactionary organizations, whose use of data was often as inaccurate as it was reactionary.

Is it on the basis of such carefully compiled data as these by Mr. Goodwin that the public is to draw its conclusions with regard to the value of the service of our educational and religious organizations, and with regard to the guilt or innocence of Sacco and Vanzetti? In such material as that cited is the level of a primitive mentality, the taboos and spooks, specters and witch doctors of savages,--in short a reversion to physical levels down to which graft and greed, selfishness and sensuality, are fast taking the American public. Is it this senescence of the reasoning power that is to convince people at large that idealists--sneered at by the business interests of the country--in education and religion and government are murderers and criminals?

FOOTNOTES:

[18] Now compiled in pamphlet form under title of “The Blue Menace,” and published by the _Springfield Republican_. Price 10 cents.