Boston a novel
who was a member of the “Fincom,” or Financial Commission--a device of
the blue-blood bankers to watch the politicians, and keep them from
stealing too large a percentage of the public funds. When Mr. Moors
publicly said there was something wrong, Quincy stopped arguing with
his aunt, and took to toddling round on his withered legs, a faithful
messenger-boy, bringing gossip from the dinner-tables of the rich.
Mrs. Jack Gardner had left Fenway Court for palaces and mansions above;
but other hostesses had taken her place, and Quincy would bring home
the funny stories which smart society liked to tell about the super
salesman of automobiles, and his old paintings and other efforts at
culture. He had proposed to appoint Harry Garfield, president of
Williams College, to the Lowell commission, but Mrs. So-and-so had
insisted that it wouldn’t do, because Harry’s grandfather had been
assassinated by an anarchist. It had really been his father, said
Quincy; but the State House wasn’t very strong on history. Cornelia
added that the assassin had not been an anarchist, but a plain lunatic,
which was different, whether the Governor would admit it or not.
“As a matter of fact,” said Quincy, “on that basis the Governor would
himself be barred from deciding, because somebody murdered _his_
grandfather.”
Cornelia took that bit of history home with her, and mentioned it to
the sarcastic Betty, who retorted: “Somebody murdered him too late!”
Cornelia shuddered, and said “Hush!”--looking about for a spy. The
thing of which she lived in hourly terror was that some lunatic might
kill somebody connected with the government--in which case it would
be all over with Sacco and Vanzetti, and perhaps with the defense
committee as well!
Another person who had been startled by developments in the case was
Betty’s mother. Impossible that Deborah should not be shaken by the
letter from Bishop Lawrence, whose prize parishioner she was--he came
to a state dinner at her home once every year. Yes, Deborah said, her
mother had had ground for the protest; but now her troubles were all
over, Mr. Lowell had the matter in charge, and would see that it was
straightened out.
There was quite a tug of war in the Alvin family, for Rupert said
thumbs down on all anarchists. But of course he wouldn’t dare to say
so publicly, in defiance of his mother-in-law and his wife. What the
great banker did was to keep out of the uproar, by pleading temporary
retirement on account of ill-health. His doctors had insisted that he
should find a “hobby,” something else to be interested in but other
people’s money. So he was taking up church architecture, designing
with his own hands a miniature English abbey, and having it built as
a private chapel on his North Shore estate. It was costing a hundred
and fifty thousand dollars, but was really an economy, so the great
banker explained; it would be a church for his friends and servants on
the estate, thus saving gasoline and tires, and later on it would be a
mausoleum.
XVI
And then the Scatterbridge family. Clara had raised her brood, who were
in schools and colleges, and asking questions; therefore the mother
was trying to understand public affairs, but finding them extremely
complicated. She accepted the pamphlets her mother gave her, but
the trouble was, she fell asleep so easily. As that was bad for her
“reducing,” she found it better to go to bridge parties. When Cornelia
told her a sad story about the wife of a shoe-worker, whose marriage
had been a sort of death in life for seven years, Clara would be deeply
touched, and would write a check to help feed and clothe the Sacco
children. Then, in course of their talk, Cornelia would learn that
Clara had just given a check to a patriotic lady who had called on her,
representing a society which was seeking to compel all foreigners to
be good, by having them registered and finger-printed by the police.
This society was sending out literature demanding death for Sacco and
Vanzetti; so Clara’s money was at work on both sides!
But no such conflict in the case of Clara’s husband. James
Scatterbridge was one of the stern ones, upon whom Cornelia could
make no impression whatever. The sarcastic Betty explained it by what
she called “economic interpretation.” A great lawyer like Uncle Henry
had to keep his mind open, because he could never tell which side
might hire him; a banker like Father didn’t have to worry, because no
matter whose money was stolen, it always came back to the bank; but an
industrialist like Uncle James was a slave-driver with a whip, and if
he didn’t hold it tight there would be no money for anybody.
James Scatterbridge would keep Abner’s stuff out of the papers, because
family dignity required it; but he would go about among the lords of
cottons and woolens and shoes and hardware and transportation, and
voice his conviction that this was the great test of our institutions,
and if we didn’t teach a lesson to the forces of disorder, the
government might as well abdicate once for all. James had a voice
that was like his annual product of a hundred million yards of cotton
sheeting being ripped all at once by a giant hand; and just now was a
great moment in his life, because he had been invited to address some
important gathering of his fellows. He had set his best advertising man
to writing a speech for him to learn, and Cornelia heard him rehearsing
it in the library, in the presence of his adoring wife and several
indigent female relatives: denouncing the rumors that the cotton
industry was going to be lost to New England, and likewise the rumors
that the “_boot_nshoe” industry was going to be lost.
James pronounced this latter as one word, with the accent on the first
syllable; and he said it several times--“I say that the _boot_nshoe
industry shall _not_ leave New England!” It was a kind of incantation,
which became effective when you said it loud enough and often enough.
Quincy Thornwell explained to Cornelia that the old families who owned
the cotton mills and shoe factories insisted on having all the money in
dividends, and left nothing to keep the plants up. James hadn’t put a
new machine into his mills in thirty years--so of course he was being
undermined by Jews who got capital in New York and cheap labor in the
Carolinas, and had no fear of blue-blood bankers conspiring to put them
out of business because they were not graduates of Harvard and members
of the Union Club!
XVII
Nemesis was waiting for James Scatterbridge, with such a tragedy as she
prepares for powerful, aggressive, absolutely certain men. His sons
were growing up; the oldest, James junior, was a member of the Harvard
class of ’27, and Cornelia failed to attend the graduation, because of
the anguish and suspense of the Sacco-Vanzetti case. The second son,
Josiah Thornwell Scatterbridge, was a sophomore at Harvard, and called
on the phone, saying that he wanted to see his grandmother; so Cornelia
invited him to lunch.
She hardly knew these children of Clara and James; to her they were
still the nursery mob that scratched rare old furniture and smeared
chocolate caramels on brocaded upholstery. They were growing up into
individuals, but she had not had time for them. Now came “James’s
Josiah”--such was his awkward designation--a shy, yellow-haired youth
with staring blue eyes--and revealed the amazing thing that had
happened. “Grandmother, I went to a meeting of the Liberal Club in
college, and heard a man tell something about your case. It sounds to
me pretty rotten, and I don’t think the family ought to leave you to do
all the work. I thought I’d ask you to give me something to read, so
that I can answer what people say.”
So there was punishment for a powerful, aggressive, absolutely certain
manufacturer of one hundred million yards of cotton sheeting per
annum! He had a son who was sensitive and open-minded, and was going
to disgrace him before the world! “James’s Josiah” took the handful of
pamphlets from his grandmother, and he did not fall asleep over them,
but read them in a day, and told his brothers and sisters what was in
them, and there were family rows, and word came to the father, who
summoned the renegade to his office.
There was a stormy scene, in the course of which the son was absolutely
forbidden to believe certain things which he could not help believing.
He explained how he could not help it--thus administering to his
father a subtle form of annoyance, which no enemy could have made
worse. There was a “bust-up” between father and son; and when Clara
heard about it, there was a near “bust-up” between husband and wife.
For Clara took the boy’s side; he had a right to think for himself,
and should most certainly not be put to work in the mills by way
of punishment. Maybe Clara’s mother was right; there was a lot of
rottenness in politics, and it was time that women began to make their
votes count. So there was the Scatterbridge family, in the same turmoil
over the Sacco-Vanzetti case as all the rest of Massachusetts!
CHAPTER XIX
ACADEMIC AUTOCRACY
I
While presidents of great colleges delivered baccalaureate sermons
and partook of graduation banquets, the two wops waited in jail, with
the grim sentence hanging over their heads--to “suffer the punishment
of death by the passage of a current of electricity through your body
within the week beginning Sunday, the tenth of July, in the year of
our Lord, One Thousand Nine Hundred and Twenty-seven.” A singular
perversity in the Governor of a great Commonwealth, a reluctance to
grant even the smallest concession to hated defenders of hated wops:
he would not say whether that sentence was to be postponed, but would
leave the whole world to speculate for a month, and to imagine the
execution. Said the defense committee in its June bulletin: “Torture
of the body practiced in the Middle Ages is nothing compared with the
torture of the mind and heart upon these two innocent men and their
families and friends.”
The law specified that ten days prior to the date of execution
condemned men should be moved to the death cells in Charlestown prison.
Since there had been no reprieve, this law applied to Sacco and
Vanzetti. The authorities of Norfolk County were anxious to get rid
of them, on account of the expense; and so upon the first minute of
the first day of July, the sheriff and his deputies entered the cells
of the two men in Dedham jail, and ordered them to dress. No reasons
given, no time allowed to pack their books and papers; they were
shackled, and taken out into the darkness to a waiting automobile. With
a dozen armed men riding behind and before, they were taken to Boston,
through the sleeping city, and lodged in the “death cells.”
No one told them what this procedure meant, and they took it to mean
immediate execution. Vanzetti’s first action upon his arrival was to
start writing a farewell letter to the comrades. From now on they
would live in solitude, close to the electric chair. Their friends
cried out in horror--foolish sentimentalists, who had not yet brought
themselves to face the thought of that electric chair! But the ruling
class of Massachusetts knew what it meant to do, and went ahead. Not
until after the move to the death cells did the Governor condescend to
postpone the date of execution for a month.
The Lowell Commission held its first session on the last day of June.
They met in the Governor’s Council chamber in the State House; a large
room, done in white, high-studded, Doric style, with rich mahogany
furniture, and soft velvet carpets. The desks are arranged in a circle,
one continuous desk, with swivel chairs; overhead, a heavy chandelier,
in which the history of New England’s technical progress had been