Boston a novel
recorded: first whale oil, then coal oil, then kerosene, then gas, and
now electricity.
The first meeting of the Commission was “to determine procedure,” the
papers said. The first procedure determined was secrecy, and it was
very determined; not merely were spectators and newspaper reporters
to be excluded, but witnesses and lawyers had to agree not to discuss
on the outside what they said on the inside. A bitter disappointment
for the defense committee, whose one hope was the education of public
opinion. “It is very bad,” said Vanzetti. “It means they kill us.”
On the fifth of July the Commission began to hear witnesses, and
the friends of the defense received more shocks. The Constitution
of the United States provides that every man accused of crime
shall “be confronted with the witnesses against him.” But these
important gentlemen were going to examine witnesses, while Sacco
and Vanzetti stayed in Charlestown prison, ignorant of what was
going on. Furthermore, the Commission reserved the right to exclude
defense counsel from the room whenever they saw fit, and to limit
cross-examination as they saw fit. When the rules of legal procedure
suited the convenience of the three important gentlemen, they would
apply, and when the rules were inconvenient, they would be set aside.
Joe Randall, reporting developments for labor papers in New York, was
one of the crowd which haunted the State House corridors and besieged
the doors of the executive chambers. So he heard gossip not meant for
“radical” ears; and after the third day he came to the apartment on
the north side of Beacon Hill, and sat down by Cornelia and took her
hand and said, “Grannie, I’m sorry--you’ve got to brace yourself for
another blow.”
Cornelia winced; her lips trembled, in spite of her best efforts.
Poor old lady, she had had more than her share of blows. The young
reporter’s heart ached for the pitiful shrunken figure in the big
Morris chair. “What is it, Joe?”
“Your dolly is stuffed with sawdust, Grannie.”
“How do you mean?”
“I mean, your great Mr. Lowell is just another ‘Web’ Thayer.”
“Oh, no!”
“Take my word for it, and get ready for the worst. The newspaper
fellows fool the public, because that is what they are paid for,
but they don’t as a rule let themselves be fooled. This Commission
consists of Thayer, Katzmann, and Fuller all over again--with a little
touch of Rugg and Wait and the rest of the supreme court judges,
for dignity. They know that the men are guilty, and their purpose
is to find evidence to justify the verdict. Mark my words, Grannie,
before they get through they’ll do everything that Thayer has done,
even to misquoting testimony and falsifying the record. Only one
difference--Mr. Lowell will see to it that they have better manners.”
“You are too optimistic,” said the sarcastic Betty.
II
If it took Cornelia two weeks to realize that these predictions were
right, it was only because she could not bring herself to admit the
plain meaning of events. Witnesses emerged from that “star chamber,”
and kept their promise not to talk to reporters; but they talked to
their friends, including the defense committee. So came pictures of
three elderly gray-heads, impatient, bored and irritated--partly on
account of the weather, for it was stifling summer heat, but more
especially by witnesses trying to get them to believe what they
considered a wicked tangle of perjuries and deceptions.
Fuller was a politician, and used to making pretenses; but none of the
three commissioners had ever been anything but an autocrat, and it was
impossible for them to conceal their annoyance at the efforts of men
and women to persuade them that notorious dynamiters and bandits were
anything else. Lowell had already made the pronouncement that Sacco and
Vanzetti were not really anarchists--that was just a camouflage their
friends had invented for them! And what Lowell said became the truth,
for his two colleagues regarded him as on the whole the greatest man in
Massachusetts, and therefore in the world.
Betty turned out to be right on the subject of his manners. He could
be courtesy incarnate when he wished to; but this was not one of the
times. He interrupted the defense lawyers, and badgered them like
schoolboys. The fact that William G. Thompson had been a trial lawyer
for thirty-six years did not save him; nor the fact that he had been a
federal prosecutor, nor the fact that he had been a Harvard lecturer.
Said Lowell, “I don’t know whether you are trying to reach the truth or
not. I assume, of course, that you are.” Said Thompson: “I am not going
to put any question to this witness or to any other witness in the case
unless it is assumed by the Commission that I am here _not_ to deceive
the Commission. There has been a good deal of imputation and it is very
painful to me.”
A. Lawrence Lowell was an international and constitutional lawyer, but
so far as concerned criminal trials he was a complete novice; yet he
would show William G. Thompson how to handle witnesses, and did so.
He took charge of the procedure, as he had done with everything all
his life. He had a tremendous notion of his own powers, and was not
there to have anybody tell him anything. His purpose was to protect
the institutions of New England, now under attack by vicious radicals.
The impulse to support those in authority was as automatic in this
university president, as ever it had been in any of his stern forbears
who had carried a hickory staff at divine worship, and cracked the
knuckles of the inattentive and the polls of the somnolent. (Judge
Grant often nodded at these hearings, but that may have been a device,
of course.)
When “Web” Thayer made his appearance at the doors of the executive
chambers, to render an accounting of his stewardship, every other
person was immediately ushered out, and no one but his three fellow
club-members asked him any questions, or heard his answers. Did he say
why he had misquoted the Sacco-Vanzetti record in his decisions, or how
he had come to invent and to cite bogus testimony? Did he admit that
he had referred to his victims as “anarchistic bastards”? Did he admit
that he had called them “sons-of-bitches”? The record of the hearings
was silent on the subject.
When Fred G. Katzmann appeared, and Thompson tried to cross-question
him, and pin him down as to some of his actions which the defense
lawyer thought were not quite up to standard, even for district
attorneys--then it was the business of the Commission to protect this
former official. They had promised him that he would only be detained
one hour, and he was impatient to get away. Exactly like Rupert Alvin,
he suffered from failures of memory whenever he was in a tight corner.
The defense lawyers tried to get something definite on the business of
Mike Boda. The police had had Boda on April 20th, only sixteen days
before they had arrested Sacco and Vanzetti; yet they made a mystery
out of Boda. Was it not true that he was a very small man? And did any
witness at the trial describe a small bandit? Katzmann would not be
trapped. “Are you asking to test my memory? Look at the record.” It so
happened that at this very hour, in a room immediately adjoining, the
Governor was demanding of one of his visitors: “If Vanzetti was a good
man, why did he associate with Boda?”
III
Too late, as usual, the friends of the defense began to acquire
information concerning the members of this Commission. Robert Grant
was one of the bitterest Italian-haters in New England. He had put
it into a book, virtually labeling them a race of pickpockets. To a
librarian in Washington he had expressed his violent opinion that
Sacco and Vanzetti ought to be killed. To John F. Moors and Professor
Morison of Harvard he had expressed disapproval of any one taking issue
with the verdict at the trial, or with the subsequent decisions. Yet
he considered that there was nothing in the way of his acting as an
impartial arbitrator!
“Bob” Grant had begun life as a popular novelist in the genteel New
England style. The rising plutocracy of America had resorted to his
works to learn the circumstances under which toothpicks should not
be used, and similar lessons in the conduct of a good life. He had
been awarded a small-salaried position as probate judge, where he had
displayed an unusual talent for sarcasm, and an air of being much too
good for mundane affairs. He was now seventy-five years of age, and
was retired from service on the bench, which left him free to pass
judgment upon Italians. A frail, pathetic, querulous, old man, he sat
in the stifling heat of midsummer, suffering greatly, sometimes closing
his eyes--but that does not always mean that a judge is not paying
heed. Judge Grant heeded with an air of boredom, of extreme suspicion,
and discourtesy of a kind which does not come naturally, but has to
be cultivated as a fine art. When he ventured an opinion, it was of
an infantile nature. “Why, Mr. Thompson, you find everybody wrong!
You say harsh things about Mr. Katzmann, who seems to be an estimable
gentleman!”
The elderly judge’s attitude was curiously revealed in the matter
of Mr. George U. Crocker, formerly treasurer of the City of Boston,
who told about the behavior of Judge Thayer. Mr. Crocker had never
been introduced to Thayer, but had had the judge’s acquaintance
forced upon him in the University Club; Thayer had come to his table
at breakfast, uninvited, and sat down and compelled Crocker to hear
him scold and denounce the “arnychists,” and read passages from his
decisions: “There, I guess that will hold them!” Finally Mr. Crocker
had instructed the head-waiter not to permit Judge Thayer to join him
at table. When Mr. Crocker told the Commission about this, Judge Grant
inquired, “Mr. Crocker, do I understand that you are repeating what was
said to you at a social club by a fellow member of that club?” In other
words, the secrets of a gentleman’s club were more sacred than the
lives of two wops!
President Stratton, of “M.I.T.,” as it was known, was the youngest
of the Commission, being only sixty-eight. He came from Illinois--a
great handicap in Boston, which considers Worcester the far west. He
was a physicist, and had risen by competence in science--including the
science of knowing the rich and what they wanted. Four years ago he
had been taken into the sacred circle of the Back Bay, and now he would
have needed tremendous moral courage to oppose a domineering person
like President Lowell. A capable administrator but with no reflective
capacity, his social opinions had been indicated by his banning a
speaker against militarism from the Y. M. C. A. of his great institute.
IV
A. Lawrence Lowell had been born to that apex of greatness in Boston,
which permits the fortunate one to be eccentric. He rode about
Cambridge in an elderly high motor-car painted a brilliant Harvard
crimson, and decorated with as much polished brass-work as a yacht. He
carried his papers in an old green bag, and wore a coat-skirt which he
switched as he walked; Heywood Broun, who had seen his figure in the
Harvard “yard,” wrote that he “ambled sedately to a hanging.” He had a
face of cold virtue, and from all persons less important than himself
he exacted the most rigid conformance to propriety. He was wholly
lacking in enthusiasms, and appeals to him to recognize the beauty of
anarchist character froze on the speaker’s tongue. He cultivated both
in writing and in speaking a style which for dullness could not be
exceeded in the college world. A stiff legal mind, made wholly out of
precedents, he had facility and self-esteem, and could be extremely
genial when he wanted something, such as an endowment. On the other