Boston a novel
into his head that Vanzetti was arrested, indicted, tried and convicted
of the Bridgewater crime, and then arrested, indicted, tried and
convicted of the South Braintree crime. It didn’t happen that way, did
it?”
“Of course not, Henry! They arrested them for both crimes. They decided
to convict Bart for Bridgewater, as a means of making things look
blacker for Nick.”
“Well, that’s what I thought, and I tried to get it across to Fuller,
but he didn’t take kindly to it. He doesn’t like to have his mind
changed.”
“Henry, you appall me! You mean he is actually as ignorant of the case
as that?”
“I don’t know so much about the case myself, Mother, but I was able to
note half a dozen mistakes he made; and you’re going to have a hard
time changing him, because stubbornness is his leading quality. He
makes a virtue of it, because he can’t think, and knows it, and resents
having to try. That’s what you’re up against, and you might as well
know it at the outset--no use fooling yourself. Go and see him, and
make sure, if you want to.”
“Will he see me?”
“He says he’ll see everybody--that’s going to be his grandstand play.
You understand, he’s a politician, and has to play the game. He will
pretend to be open-minded--but I’m telling you what’s in the back of
his head, and what will be his final decision.”
IV
Cornelia discussed the soul of this Governor, and a possible way to
move it. No use in public propaganda, mass-meetings and petitions; he
regarded them with contempt. Could he be reached by social pressure,
the snobbery of the automobile dealer, who sold high-priced cars to
high-priced customers? Henry answered that Fuller himself didn’t appear
to care for the social game; but doubtless his family would be glad to
be received. The only sign of an interest in culture on Fuller’s part
was that he went abroad and purchased paintings. He didn’t really know
about painting, and would not have dared to buy the work of Americans,
for fear of playing the fool. But “old masters” were standard, as safe
as corner real estate on Tremont Street; so he would pay a quarter
of a million dollars for a Van Dyke, and put it in his drawing-room,
and that would make a great stir in the papers. But it hadn’t had
any effect socially, as Cornelia knew; to the inner circle of Boston
exclusiveness, Fuller was His Excellency during office hours, but at
tea-time and in the evening he was a dealer in motorcars.
“Too bad that Alice is so spiritualized,” said Henry. “She might give
them a dinner.” Alice, he added, was now receiving the ministrations of
a Yogi “master,” being subjected to the most esoteric rite of healing,
which consisted of blowing into her ear.
Cornelia got out her address-book, which had secret marks, indicating
degrees of responsiveness to subversive propaganda. She and her
son-in-law compiled a list, and laid out a program upon which
blue-bloods should be asked to concentrate--to persuade the Governor to
appoint some sort of commission to investigate the case, and give it an
informal new trial. If, as Henry believed, the supersalesman himself
was hopeless, the strategy was to get him committed to an arrangement
whereby the final decision would rest with more open-minded persons.
The little old lady had an inspiration: instead of appealing directly
to the Governor, they would concentrate their energies upon Bishop
Lawrence of the Episcopal Church, blood-brother to all blue-bloods,
and official delegate of the Prince of Peace on earth. Persuade the
Bishop to appeal to the Governor for an impartial commission! To make
a thorough job of it, why not determine the commission in advance,
and make certain of getting competent and high-minded persons? Why
not? agreed Henry; so they proceeded to discuss names. Cornelia worked
herself up to a pitch of excitement. “Couldn’t we ask him to appoint
Mr. Lowell?” She meant President Lowell of Harvard University. The
blue-blood ladies, while paying full homage to this great personality,
do not grant him his title, as in the case of the Bishop; by this means
they indicate the fact that the intellectual life, while important, is
a merely human affair, while the spiritual life is from God.
“He wouldn’t take the responsibility,” said Henry, “but of course it
would settle the matter if he did. Fuller wouldn’t dare go against
Lowell and the Bishop.”
So it came about that at the office of Mr. John F. Moors, of the firm
of Moors and Cabot, investment bankers, there assembled one afternoon
a group of socially and intellectually significant persons: half a
dozen Harvard professors, and the wives of several others; Episcopal
clergymen of Boston and Concord; and such persons as Mrs. Thornwell,
Mrs. Evans and Mrs. Winslow, with Mary Donovan and Gardner Jackson to
represent the committee. They met for the purpose of working out a
method of approaching the Bishop of the Blue-bloods, and asking him to
bring it about that the University-president of the Blue-bloods should
be invited to conduct a blue-blood trial of Sacco and Vanzetti, and
thus save the good name of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts before the
civilized world.
A curious gathering: soft-voiced, gentle, noble-minded, but not
entirely efficient persons, meeting in dead secrecy, with their fingers
upon their lips, in this melodramatic neighborhood of State Street;
a group of kindly conspirators, babes in the woods surrounded by
ravenous wolves--in the form of newspaper reporters who would gobble
up their respectability with half a dozen snaps of their slavering
jaws. So careful they must be, to make exactly the right approach
to the ineffable Bishop; putting on felt-slippers and walking on
tiptoes! Not saying anything extreme to him! Not declaring that the
men were innocent, but merely that they had not been proved guilty to
impartial minds! Sparks began to fly from the eyes of Mary Donovan,
Irish ex-Catholic Joan of Arc of the labor movement. A curious contrast
between self-contained and decorous ladies of the Back Bay, and this
fiery Celtic girl, plain of garb, severe of countenance, making no
secret of her bitter scorn for liberals and their ritual.
Silence! Secrecy! Hush, not a word! Even the widow of Governor
Thornwell had lost caste, because she had had her name in the
newspapers! No one who had been in the newspapers must approach the
Bishop, nor even be named to the Bishop--for fear the timid episcopal
soul might seek refuge in the recesses of the episcopal hole and
refuse to emerge. The members of the Sacco-Vanzetti committee were
“untouchables,” and merely to have it known that they desired a certain
procedure would be sufficient to render it episcopally impossible. All
were warned to silence, the meeting dispersed--and in an hour or two
the newspapermen had the whole story on the front page, each after
its own fashion. The Hearst man explained the social stratifications,
referring to the Sacco-Vanzetti committee as the “low minds,” the Moors
group as the “middle minds,” and the Bishop Lawrence group as the “high
minds”!
V
Mr. Thompson had presented an appeal for clemency from Vanzetti, and an
explanation that Sacco refused to make any appeal, but ought to have it
granted just the same. It was, perhaps, the most singular document ever
submitted to an automobile salesman in the history of the industry.
Bartolomeo Vanzetti had insisted upon writing it himself, with only
verbal revision by his lawyer. He took it as an occasion to explain his
doctrines and beliefs to the world:
“Our ideas are not new. In one form or another they have influenced
human thought in the western world, and therefore history, for at
least two thousand years. Among their modern champions are men such as
William Godwin, Shelley, Carlo Pisacane, Proudhon, Reclus, Kropotkin,
Bakunin, Tolstoi (in a sense), Flammarion, Malatesta, Galleani, and in
your country Tucker, and other great intellects and hearts. The great
philosopher Ernest Renan said that Christ was a ‘political anarchist.’”
And this to a pious Baptist, who told the newspaper reporters that
his real preference in life would be to run a Baptist Sunday-school!
A Mason, an Elk, an Odd Fellow and a Knight of Pythias--his idea of
literature the _Saturday Evening Post_! Said Vanzetti:
“Our counsel has warned us that what we have to say may deepen the
prejudice against us; but we are foremostly concerned to save what
no human power except ourselves can deprive us of, our faith and our
dignity, since we have already been deprived of almost all of what men
can deprive men.”
The Governor announced that he would consider evidence from both sides;
and so it was a question of repeating all over again the Dedham, and
later the Plymouth trial. But under what singular circumstances! Mr.
Thompson, the lawyer for the petitioners, was not allowed to make any
opening statement, to say what he expected to prove; he was allowed
to bring his own witnesses, but not to hear the witnesses of the other
side, nor even to know who they were. Sacco and Vanzetti lay in their
cells, and men came to the Governor’s private office and whispered
rumors about them, and their attorney learned about it from gossip in
the newspapers! Betty Alvin came home from her brief session in the
executive chambers and revised the “Alice in Wonderland” verses to fit
this new situation:
I’ll be judge, I’ll be jury,
Said _stupid_ old Fury;
I’ll try the whole cause and condemn you to death!
Quite literally, this supersalesman of automobiles was judge, jury,
and prosecuting attorney; and so ignorant of psychology that he really
thought he could fill all three rôles; so ignorant of law that he
really thought it was a trial he was conducting, and would be accepted
as such by the world. Or rather, if you could believe the sarcastic
young lady Bolshevik, he thought that he was so rich and great that he
didn’t give a damn what the world thought. In that point of view he had
the support of the whole prosperous mob, which gloried in defying the
opinion of mankind.
The State House swarmed with reporters. Every Boston paper had several
men on the story, and the press associations and New York papers
had their own representatives. But those who saw the Governor were
cautioned not to talk, and all but the friends of the defense obeyed.
The only news was what the Governor’s office gave out every day, and
mostly it was disguised propaganda. The private secretary had not
been quite accurate when he said that they “immediately” chucked the
mail into the fire. They first went over it, and extracted letters
which were violent in demanding death for the two wops, and these
were mimeographed and handed to the newspapermen. So the world read
the weighty sentiments of Mrs. J. E. Damon of Brockton, who attached
a small American flag to her letter, to make sure it would not be
overlooked:
“I feel very sure that you will stand firm for ‘law and order.’ ...
Foreign people will not respect our Government unless we uphold our
Judges and Supreme Court. What is this country coming to if radical
elements are allowed to do as they see fit?”
Also the sentiments of a representative of Comrade Jesus, the
“political anarchist”: the Reverend Floyd W. Johnson of the First
Presbyterian Church of Central City, Nebraska, who appealed to the
Governor of Massachusetts to “let these propagandists of un-American
policies know that there is not enough money in Russia to buy even one
district court in America.” A curious item for members of the defense
committee, who at that late hour were being visited by the relative of
an important judicial personage, and informed that it would still be
possible to work out an “arrangement”! By the payment of only fifty