Boston a novel
statements he made got him into trouble; the Speaker of the House
sued him for slander and won a verdict--only to have it upset by the
Supreme Court. But Fuller got the advertising and on the basis of
it became Chief Executive of the Commonwealth--the great master of
millions condescending to play the game of democratic politics. The
procedure consisted of going about shaking hands with grimy workingmen
who thought he was still the bicycle repairer of thirty years ago.
Hale and hearty, full of animal magnetism, with a rough exterior and a
“golden heart,” he kept the admiration of the “plain people.” To the
starving strikers of Fall River he began a campaign speech, “I am not a
politician”--and they believed him. “I am no orator,” he would say--and
doubtless meant it, not knowing that this was a device explained in
every treatise on oratory.
A typical specimen of the “strong man” in American affairs; a competent
executive, a driver of other men, but utterly devoid of ideas, and
incapable of thinking except in current tags. He had known all his
life what he wanted, and had gone after it and got it. To a salesman
of Packard automobiles, the human race is sharply divided into two
parts: those who have the money to buy Packard automobiles, and those
who have not. To the former, “Allie” Fuller would come forward smiling
and voluble, his mentality concentrated upon flattery and “service.”
To that far greater number whose costume and manners make clear that
they have not the price of a Packard car and never will have it, the
attitude is one of indifference, except just prior to election day.
This supersalesman of automobiles was as cold as marble; utterly
selfish, and lacking not merely in the finer feelings, but even in
the common every-day kindness, of which politicians often have too
much. No friend, no matter how intimate, ever got a discount on a car.
In politics he granted no quarter; he gave the punishment and took
none. In business he was the modern slave-driver with a fountain-pen
instead of a whip. When, after the war, the workers in his repair
and body-factory came to him, pleading humbly that on account of the
increase in the cost of living they could not get along on a wage of
twenty-five dollars a week, he gave them a brutal refusal. There was
a strike, which was embarrassing to an ambitious politician in later
years. But no diminution of that two million dollar a year income!
Such is the way by which “strong” men build up fortunes; and then they
sit on the heap, regarding with instant instinctive hostility any one
who suggests that there is any other ideal in life, or any other duty.
And now such a man was called upon to decide the issue of life or death
for Nicola Sacco, who had stood up in court and said: “I know the
sentence will be between two classes, the oppressed class and the rich
class, and there will be always collision between one and the other.”
He was to decide the issue of life or death for Bartolomeo Vanzetti,
who had stood up in the same court and said: “I have refused myself of
what are considered the commodity and glories of life, the prides of a
life of a good position, because in my consideration it is not right to
exploit man.”
II
The Madeiros confession, the Letherman and Weyand confessions, Judge
Thayer’s decision, with its tone of raving--all these had brought a new
element into the Sacco-Vanzetti case. So-called “decent” people--that
is, people who had money, but nevertheless believed in fair play--were
shocked by a too-obvious demonstration of class justice. One by one the
few daily newspapers in America which profess a trace of liberalism
were persuaded to investigate the case, and one by one they took up the
campaign for a new trial.
The Springfield _Republican_, the only liberal daily in New England,
pleaded the cause. The Boston _Herald_ published an editorial, which
won the Pulitzer prize for the best newspaper editorial of 1926. “As
months have merged into years, and the great debate over the case has
continued, our doubts have solidified slowly into convictions, and
reluctantly we have found ourselves compelled to reverse our original
judgment.” That gave a terrible shock to Boston conservatism; for
substantial persons who didn’t read the _Globe_ in the morning read
the _Herald_, and such an editorial interfered with the digestion of
cod-fish balls. A friend of Governor Fuller’s met him on his way to the
State House that morning and said, “Have you seen that the _Herald_ has
come out for a new trial for those wops?” Said His Excellency, “What?
Has the _Herald_ fallen for that bunk?”
Now had come the death sentence; and all those energies of protest
which had been centered upon the courts were turned upon the Chief
Executive. “Write to Governor Fuller! Wire to Governor Fuller!” said
the bulletins and appeals of the defense committee. The State House was
inundated by a flood of mail. It came, literally by the bushel-basket
full, several times every day. The best brains of the world, the finest
and most sensitive spirits, laid aside their work and composed appeals,
of a sort which they imagined might stir the conscience and influence
the judgment of the chief executive of a great Commonwealth. They spent
money upon telegrams and cablegrams, they wrote letters for which a
collector of autographs would have paid large sums of money; and what
became of the product of their efforts?
The defense committee received a letter addressed to the Governor,
signed by a dozen or more labor members of the British Parliament,
asking him to do what he could to bring about a new trial. Gardner
Jackson, Amherst graduate and a presentable person, was selected to
deliver the document, and he took the precaution to take along the
State House reporter for the Boston _Globe_, to introduce him.
His Excellency was not in, and they met his efficient private
secretary. To him Jackson handed the letter from the members of
Parliament, and the secretary took one glance at it, and burst out:
“Oh, those God-damn crooks! Do you think we pay any attention to this
stuff? It comes in here by the barrelful and we immediately chuck it
into the fire.” Then he turned upon the reporter, demanding, “What do
you mean by bringing this fellow up here on a matter like this? First
thing you know, those God-damn wops will be getting out and coming
to live near you in Brookline. How would you like that?” It was a
witticism, and the secretary laughed loudly, and threw the letter back
at Gardner Jackson.
Such was the agent through whose hands would pass everything which
came to the Governor on the case. When documents of great urgency were
entrusted to him, and it was discovered several days later that the
Governor had never seen nor heard of them, the defense committee would
be infuriated, and would blame the secretary for failure of their
hopes. But Joe Randall would laugh--he was furnishing labor papers with
news on the case, and was up at the State House at all hours of the day
and night, meeting the other reporters and hearing the gossip. “Don’t
fool yourself, Nonna!” said he--cynical young “Red.” “The secretary
forgets what Fuller doesn’t want to have remembered. He is paid two
salaries to serve as the goat, and have us blame him instead of his
boss!”
Alas for blue-blood ladies, who left the refinements of an exclusive
home, and mixed themselves in the public affairs of capitalist society!
Cornelia Thornwell was now seventy-two years of age, and her hair was
snow-white, and her step no longer firm--she had to be helped upstairs
now and then. And here she was, forced to measure her wits against
a supersalesman of automobiles and his entourage. Startling were the
tales which Joe Randall brought home about the goings on of the “State
House gang.” Down underneath the beautiful golden dome there was a
cellar, stocked with liquors confiscated by the state police; and the
heads of this “gang” were presenting the stuff or selling it to all
and sundry, including the state legislators. Still more dreadful, to
the mind of an old-fashioned lady, some of this crowd were using the
state police boat, the _Lotus_, for what the newspaper slang termed
“orgies”--drunken parties with women. All the reporters knew about
it--but the friends of Sacco and Vanzetti had to wait until nine months
after the wops were in their graves, before a disgruntled employee at
the State House spilled the Boston beans to some prying clergymen, and
an investigation was forced.
III
Cornelia Thornwell belonged to the little group of those who have
a right to know. Therefore she went to her son-in-law, Henry Cabot
Winters, and asked him to find out for her the Chief Executive’s real
attitude toward the Sacco-Vanzetti case, and what he intended to do.
It was only a month after the Jerry Walker victory, and Henry was
his old genial self again, pleased to have a call from his Bolshevik
mother-in-law. He reported his relations with the Governor to be fairly
good; he had not joined with Rupert in his row--the canny Rupert had
warned him not to, for in the game of politics you can never tell at
what hour your deadly enemy may become your best friend.
The great lawyer would go up to the State House, and not merely find
out, but put in a word for some form of executive clemency, as a matter
of political tactics. So much Cornelia had been able to accomplish
by twelve years of radical propaganda in her family! She was deeply
grateful, and went home and prepared a fine dinner for her son-in-law,
with ribs of spring lamb, and new potatoes and green peas, and
strawberries from Georgia.
But alas, the news which Henry brought completely spoiled the dinner
for them both! Cornelia hardly ate a mouthful, and Henry made a poor
pretense. “I’m sorry, Mother,” he said, “but you’ve got to steel
yourself to the worst. There is no chance of saving your two boys.”
Cornelia went white, and her soft brown eyes were wide with horror.
“Henry, why?”
“Well, the police have got to Fuller, and he’s heard all the worst
about your anarchists. I don’t think there’s any power in the world
that can change his opinion.”
“What has he heard, Henry?”
“All the things I’ve told you before: that they were dynamiters, and
were hiding dynamite on the night of their arrest.”
“But, Henry, they weren’t even accused of that!”
“I know--not publicly; but it’s the real reason they were prosecuted,
and the reason they were convicted, and Fuller has got it fixed in his
mind. ‘Bad actors,’ he calls them.”
“Then he’s going to execute men for one crime, because he’s heard
rumors they committed another!”
“As a matter of fact, Mother, he is equally convinced they were
bandits, too. He’s been told that the money went to Italy, to make a
revolution there. They’ve even told him rumors about having found maps
in Lee Swenson’s trash-basket, showing where the treasure was buried.”
“My God, Henry! That was a joke!”
“I know, so you told me--but it was a poor time for joking. The police
are using everything they have. It seems there’s a woman in Milton
who told Mike Stewart that Vanzetti made the bomb that blew up Judge
Hayden’s house.”
“Henry, that is the talk of lunatics!”
“No, Mother, it’s the talk of the police, and the Governor regards
himself as the head of the force, and he stands by it. They have told
him that two of the crowd blew themselves up with a bomb they were
making in Bellingham--the Galleani formulas didn’t work right.”
“You keep talking about bombs, Henry.”
“I’m telling you what was told me. Fuller says that both your boys were
regular terrorists, and had a criminal record. He insists that Vanzetti
was a convicted bandit before he came to trial at Dedham. He has got it