Boston a novel
which surely did not fit Vanzetti. So the defense lawyers felt that
they had won their case, and Mr. Thompson prepared an elaborate letter
to the Governor, thirty-three typewritten pages. The reports and the
letter were taken to the State House and delivered to the Governor’s
secretary, and everybody waited, on tiptoe with excitement, for some
word of the result. A week or two later one of the friends of the
defense, arguing with the Governor, happened to remark, “That is
disproved in the Pinkerton reports.” Said the Governor, “Pinkerton
reports? What are they?” “Those reports which were turned over to you,”
replied the amazed visitor. “I haven’t seen any such thing,” declared
the Governor, and turned to his secretary. “What’s this about Pinkerton
reports?” “Oh,” said the secretary indifferently, “something about a
cropped mustache!”
IX
Beltrando Brini was in his nineteenth year, a slender, dark-eyed youth,
preparing to enter college, and earning his living by teaching the
violin to Italian children in Plymouth. He still went now and then to
play for Bart in prison; also he was in demand to play at meetings for
the defense. He could play fine music, but the number most effective
was “Old Black Joe,” because it was the tune which Bart had helped
to teach him as a little boy. Trando would tell the story of that
ill-fated day-before-Christmas morning, when he had helped to peddle
the eels in North Plymouth; he would tell what Vanzetti’s teachings and
example had meant to him, all through his early life; after which he
would play Bart’s favorite song, “When you and I were young, Maggie,”
and tears would run down the faces of women in the audience.
Now Trando went to see the supersalesman of automobiles, and told the
story to him; but no tears appeared upon those ruddy, rounded cheeks.
It seemed that the great man had worked out a new theory for himself;
he pictured Bartolomeo Vanzetti attempting the Bridgewater crime at a
quarter to eight that winter morning, and then driving twenty miles
or more to North Plymouth, and starting in to sell eels with Trando
for an alibi. In vain did Trando insist that he and his father and his
mother and Bart’s landlady and many other persons had seen Bart from
the moment he woke, at six o’clock that morning, long before daylight;
in vain did Trando tell about Bart sending him to hunt for his rubbers.
Apparently the Governor thought that Bart had gone to Bridgewater and
attempted the hold-up while Trando was rummaging in the attic for his
rubbers!
And then Mrs. Brini, the gentle and kindly, who shed tears every
time she thought of her former boarder, and insisted, over and over:
“He is good man! He is good man!” The Governor confronted her with
the proposition that she had gathered all the witnesses at her home
and taught them what to say. In vain she explained the origin of
that tale--that the lawyer had been too lazy to go and interview the
witnesses, but had told her to have them come to her home, and he would
meet them there to consult about the case.
And then Joseph Rosen, the Jewish peddler of cloth. The defense had
to advertise for him in the _Jewish Daily Forward_. One day came a
telegram from Buffalo, he had heard about the case and would come.
Having learned more English in the course of the last six years, Rosen
could take care of himself. When he was ushered into the executive
chambers and the Governor started to question him about where he had
been six weeks ago, and could he remember what he had done on March
seventeenth last, “What’s this?” said Rosen. “More of that Katzmann
stuff?” He had not forgiven the district attorney for trying to make a
fool of him before the jury.
X
And then one of the editors of the Boston _Transcript_. The age of
miracles had come; an editor of the sacred _Transcript_ had been
persuaded to investigate the case, and had become convinced that the
men were innocent! He was so conscientious about it, his employers were
impressed, and generously let him do it on their time: they would pay
for the getting of material, even though they would not publish it!
Now this conservative and indubitably respectable gentleman proceeded
to the Governor’s office, with a brief-case full of documents and
charts. He went prepared to point out to the chief executive of his
Commonwealth the flaws in the government’s case; and he had what he
later described to his friends as the most preposterous hour of his
life. For the Governor didn’t want to have any flaws pointed out to
him, and when the editor insisted, his recourse was to interrupt with
rude and brutal ejaculations, and to snort through his nose.
But the editor went on, insisting, because it was a matter of justice,
and the New England conscience is that way. There was the matter of
the discrepancy of the trains, upon which the editor had done enough
research work and calculation to have earned him a degree at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Practically the only proof the
government had against Vanzetti in the South Braintree crime was the
identification of Levangie, gate-tender at the railroad crossing, plus
the identification of another crossing-tender, who thought Vanzetti
had pointed a gun at him and made him raise his gates, while the
bandit-car was fleeing with the loot. This latter crossing was on the
way to the Manley Woods, where, according to the “theory,” the bandits
had “thrown away” the Buick car, not far from the Coacci house.
This made what the jury had accepted as a story; but now came the
editor, showing that each of these two crossing-tenders had specified
a certain train, and the time of these trains was a matter of record,
and they didn’t fit. The Governor thought that possibly one train or
the other had not been on time; but the editor answered that there
were such things as “train-sheets.” He had the greatest difficulty in
the world convincing his Governor that a railroad has records showing
the hour at which every train passed every station, even as far as six
years back. As a matter of fact, the sheets of those trains had been
produced on the stand at the trial, and the district attorney might
have found the truth if he had wanted it.
A singular interview! The Governor would profess complete mastery of
matters concerning which it was evident that he knew very little,
and when he was corrected, would fly into a rage and demand, “What
right have you to question me?” The too-conscientious editor could
not make his arguments clear, because the Governor did not know the
elementary facts upon which the arguments rested; nor could he explain
these elementary facts, because that would offend the great man’s
dignity. He came out from the interview to report that the situation
was hopeless from the point of view of the defense. He realized, of
course, the political game that was going on: the “grand-stand play,”
in current slang. The Governor would have the whole world marveling at
his patience and open-mindedness, while in reality he was impatient of
argument, and his mind was closed.
XI
Bitter struggles in the rooms of the defense committee on Hanover
street, where radicals and conservatives fought over the question of
how to meet this desperate situation! Controversies lasting until
the small hours of the morning, and then not settled! Feuds between
respectable persons who wanted to follow the guidance of respectable
lawyers, and young socialists and communists who wanted to make mass
appeals, and have parades on the streets, and threats of a general
strike! The young radicals organized a protest meeting in Symphony
Hall, to tell Boston the facts which the Governor knew and was hiding;
but then came Thompson and Frankfurter, and forced the calling off of
that meeting, by threatening to withdraw from the case. Joe Randall and
his wife would labor all night to prepare hair-raising stories for the
newspapers; but when the reporters came to Thompson, he would wave them
away with a phrase, “Nothing for the papers to-day.” It was easy to
understand his point of view. There was no worse charge to be brought
against a lawyer by respectable Boston than that he was “trying his
case in the newspapers”; and Thompson clung to his belief that somehow
it was going to be possible to persuade respectable Boston to grant
justice to his clients.
A brilliant idea came to Betty--to collect the testimony of persons
with whom Judge Thayer had discussed Sacco and Vanzetti during the past
six years! To present respectable Boston with the profanity, vulgarity
and hatred which old Judge Fury had poured out in the presence of
everybody, from senators to club waiters! This idea was presented to
the lawyers, and at first they were horrified; but as time passed, and
the Governor’s bias became clear, they worked out a way to make it into
a legal procedure. They would appeal to the Governor on the ground of
Thayer’s prejudice; if that did not succeed, they would make a further
move in the courts on that basis, with a possible appeal to the Supreme
Court of the United States on a writ of certiorari.
So began a still hunt among those who knew but did not admire the
“worthy trial judge.” There were many such persons in high station;
but would they consent to violate the reticences which protect social
life? Appeals to their consciences were made, and a few yielded: George
U. Crocker, a former city treasurer, and member of the University
Club, where Judge Thayer had lived during the Dedham trial; Mrs. Lois
Rantoul, who was a Lowell; Robert Benchley, one of the editors of
_Life_; Elizabeth Bernkopf, a newspaper correspondent; John Nicholas
Beffel; and Prof. Richardson, of Dartmouth College, to whom the judge
had said, “Did you see what I did to those anarchistic bastards
yesterday?” What “Web” had really said was “arnychistic bastards,” but
there was no use trying to get that across to the public; nobody would
believe it, and anyhow, all persons who handled the story--reporters
and compositors and copy-readers--would decide that it was an error,
and do their duty. Prof. Richardson said he thought that “Web” had also
said “sons-of-bitches”; but of course there was no way to get that
printed in a moral community.
A picturesque little drama over the getting of the signature of Frank
P. Sibley, star reporter of that premier family-paper, the Boston
_Globe_! “Sib,” as he was known to his colleagues, was a much beloved
and slightly picturesque figure, known to everybody on the streets
of Boston--six feet tall and wearing a Windsor tie, as near to a
“Bohemian” as could survive in that frigid atmosphere. He had been the
correspondent of the _Globe_ at the Dedham trial, and had heard many
expressions of prejudice by Thayer. He had agreed to sign an affidavit,
and it was got ready; but then he discovered that he couldn’t sign it,
his managing editor wouldn’t let him! In fact, “Sib” had come to agree
with his managing editor--it was necessary for a newspaper reporter to
be impartial. Just like a judge!
A serious disappointment to the defense, for Sibley was an experienced
man, who had been covering major court cases in New England for
some twenty years; moreover, he didn’t have to rely upon his memory
of Thayer’s conduct, he had written a letter about it to the
attorney-general of the Commonwealth. There was a conference of Joe
Randall and Gardner Jackson and others who knew the newspaper game,
and there came a tip from one of the editors of the _Globe_ as to how
the issue might be forced. Let the _Globe_ hear the threat of public
exposure of the fact that it was refusing to let one of its reporters
sign an affidavit in the interest of justice. Mild blackmail, in short!
William G. Thompson was consulted, and proposed to submit the Sibley