Boston a novel
and barking. The whole outside world was clamoring for every detail
having to do with that scene.
The interest in the case had grown, until it was like nothing in
history; great newspapers in New York, which had given several inches
to the conviction of the men, were now giving pages to the struggle for
a new trial.
Somehow the working classes of all nations had come to know about this
case, and had made it their own. They were listening to fiery orators,
taking part in parades, throwing bricks through American window glass,
setting off bombs in front of embassies and legations. To the ruling
class element of Massachusetts this was a proof of the worst they
had been told about world Bolshevism; it was a diabolical conspiracy
against the good name of the Commonwealth, and to meet it these
righteous persons summoned the spirits of their Puritan ancestors, who
had withstood persecution and torture at the hands of royal despots
and their priestly monitors. The louder the clamor on behalf of the
anarchists, the less chance that it would be heeded--so said the
stiff-necked ones.
The Governor had not come to his office; rumor had it that he was
working on his decision in an unnamed hotel. Over at the Sacco-Vanzetti
headquarters in Hanover street, a couple of rooms in a dingy office
building with time-worn floors, there were reporters and photographers,
bootleggers and poets, Italian laborers and Harvard professors, seated
on boxes, bundles of papers, tables and rickety chairs, waiting,
waiting. On the walls were posters in many languages, calling for
mass-meetings to save Sacco and Vanzetti; one in French, signed by
cabinet ministers, referring to “Calvary,” which would have pleased
Bart; one in German, saying “Justice is dead”; one from Mexico, saying
“Freedom and Justice.” Bart was right--his name had come to have a
meaning!
Cornelia Thornwell stayed in her apartment, and friends came in to keep
the watch with her and divert her mind. But no one could talk about
anything but the decision. Now and then the phone would ring, and her
heart would jump so that it hurt; when it proved to be more delay, she
would sink back in her chair, feeling faint. Creighton Hill, a young
newspaperman who was heart and soul for the defense, came in to cheer
her; the afternoon papers were full of hints of a reprieve; everybody
was hopeful. Judge Webster Thayer was in Ogunquit, Maine, and at the
Cliff Country Club that morning had made 18 holes in 84.
Waiting, waiting. Evening, and still the Governor had not come to
his office. Crowds gathered at the State House, and were driven back.
The decision would be late, said the secretary. Betty, who was at
headquarters, phoned to her grand-mother--for the tenth time, trying
to brace the tortured soul to meet the coming shock. “Joe says the
brute is holding up the decision so that we won’t be able to get in
any answer to-night. He wants the front page of the morning papers to
himself!”
So it proved. At twenty minutes past eleven at night, the last moment
when it would be possible to put the text of the decision into the
main editions of the big newspapers, and when there was no longer
a chance that any friend of the defense could prepare a reply, or
find any distracted reporter able to listen to one--at that moment
the Governor’s secretary appeared with a stack of envelopes, each
containing seven mimeographed sheets. The reporters grabbed them, and
tore them open as they ran. The word “Die” went by telegraph and cable
to five continents, and in a few minutes there were “extras” on the
streets in big cities, with streamer headlines across the front page:
“Sacco and Vanzetti Doomed to Die”--“Sacco and Vanzetti Must Die, Says
Fuller”--“Sacco and Vanzetti Guilty, and Will Die.”
III
Wonderful, wonderful was the judicial system of the Commonwealth
of Massachusetts, as portrayed in those seven mimeographed sheets!
Throughout all this complicated and difficult case it had functioned
without one single slip. The judge had been upright and impartial,
the jury had been conscientious and fair, the witnesses--for the
Commonwealth--had been clear-eyed and unafraid, the Supreme Judicial
Court had been infallible. And now came the supersalesman of
automobiles, and with his eagle eye he surveyed the procedure, seeking
a flaw. Patiently he had studied every word of the record, the later
appeals and decisions; he had interviewed jurors and witnesses, and
made sure that everything was perfect; now he mounted the rostrum and
told the civilized world about it, putting the final seal of completion
upon the performance.
One after another he took some aspect of the case, and after
mentioning the criticisms of it, disposed of them in one or two
majestic and final sentences. First, the jury. “I find that the
jurors were thoroughly honest men ... I can see no warrant for the
assertion that the jury trial was unfair.” The fact that the elderly
flag-saluting foreman of the jury had said, on his way to duty, “Damn
them, they ought to hang them anyway!”--that was a detail so trivial
that an enthusiastic supersalesman did not bother to report it.
And then “Web” Thayer. “Affidavits have been presented claiming that
the judge was prejudiced. I see no evidence of prejudice in his conduct
of the trial.” The eagle eye had inspected those passages in the record
where “Web” had connived at the job of hiding from the jury the fact
that Goodridge was an admitted thief; that had been fair. The eagle
eye had seen “Web” butting in to discredit the witness Kurlansky, the
shop-keeper who had failed to stop the district attorney and police
from “framing” the testimony of Lola Andrews; that had been fair. “Web”
had permitted the district attorney to browbeat Sacco for not knowing
what was not true about Harvard College; that had been fair. “Web” had
sneered seven times at the defense lawyers for claiming something which
they hadn’t claimed; that, too, had been fair. He had let the district
attorney tell the jury that Proctor had testified something that
Proctor had in fact refused to testify, and that the district attorney
knew he had refused to testify; that likewise had been fair. “Web”
himself had told the jury the same thing; and that had been fairest of
all.
And then the appeals for a new trial, based upon new evidence that
had been found: evidence of the foreman’s prejudice and misconduct,
of Goodridge’s criminal career and perjury upon the witness-stand;
the retractions of Lola Andrews and Louis Pelzer; the confession of
the head of the State Police that he had conspired with the district
attorney’s office to misrepresent his testimony to the jury; the new
evidence of Gould, Kelly and Kennedy, deliberately withheld from
the defense. Said the supersalesman: “I have examined all of these
motions and read the affidavits in support of them to see whether they
presented any valid reason for granting the men a new trial. I am
convinced that they do not.”
And the judge’s handling of these appeals and motions--that, too,
had been complete and marvelous perfection! Everything that he had
done--including his lying about the affidavits, and saying that they
said what they didn’t say; his misrepresentation of Supreme Court
decisions, his misquoting of testimony, his making up of passages which
he said were in the testimony, but which were not in the testimony--all
that had been perfect, and “Web’s” motives in doing these things had
been as pure as the driven snow in Boston. Said the supersalesman: “I
am further convinced that the presiding judge gave no evidence of bias
in denying them all and refusing a new trial.”
The supersalesman pronounced Vanzetti guilty of the Bridgewater crime,
and stressed the fact that he had failed to take the stand in his own
behalf--although it was the perfect law of the perfect Commonwealth
that he didn’t have to take the stand if he didn’t want to, and that
his failure to do so was not to be used against him. The supersalesman
was so sure that the men were guilty that he was not content to say it
once, he said it twice about Sacco and three times about Vanzetti; he
was so sure the trial was fair that he said it five times--and added
for good measure: “The proceedings were without a flaw.” He put in
an eloquent description of the South Braintree crime, with emphasis
upon its brutality, which made fine melodrama for the newspapers; and
then he wound up in a blaze of glory, putting himself in the center
of the picture, with jury and witnesses about him. “I am proud to be
associated in this public service with clear-eyed witnesses, unafraid
to tell the truth, and with jurors who discharged their obligations in
accordance with their convictions and their oaths.”
IV
Ten or a dozen persons crowded into the little living-room of the
apartment adjoining Cornelia’s, where lived Betty and Joe. The seven
mimeographed pages had been read aloud, and passages read over again,
and marked with exclamation points and question marks. Hours passed
while the clamor and excitement continued. Nobody thought of sleep;
impossible ever to sleep in the world again--let sleep be banished from
Boston, as punishment for this atrocity! The language of some of the
younger men and women was unfit for the older ones to hear; but the
older ones realized that this was a special occasion, like nothing in
Boston history. The air of the room became gray with tobacco smoke, and
the eighteenth amendment to the Constitution was broken, along with
the laws against blasphemy and sedition; for some radicals could not
stand the strain of this ordeal, any more than could the conservatives,
without help from Italian bootleggers.
Joe was at his typewriter, banging away, with a green shade over his
eyes; preparing a story to be put on the wires for the early editions
of afternoon papers. He was making copies for other newspaper men,
hoping they would get this point and that. Now and then the company
would interrupt him--to make sure he had got some other point. Over
at defense headquarters was another indignation meeting, and there
was telephoning, back and forth, exchanging ideas and information.
Quotations had to be looked up in the record, and falsehoods nailed
down.
How they hated the supersalesman of automobiles--and how they raged
at the trick he had played upon them, whereby millions, yes, tens of
millions of people would read that statement at their breakfast tables
and on their way to work--and would not get the answer of the committee
until hours later, and then only in fragmentary form, or not at all!
The fingers of men and women trembled as they pointed out passages of
especial treachery.
Cornelia Thornwell, old-fashioned and hopelessly out of date, had
notions about the dignity and honor of the office which the great
Josiah Quincy Thornwell had once filled. It seemed to her that a
Governor of the Commonwealth, mounting the rostrum and addressing
the civilized world on an issue involving the lives of two human
beings--that such a Governor ought at least to tell the truth.
“Wouldn’t you think he’d leave out errors that can be proved by the
record?”
Said Betty, “I’d expect him to lie like Satan.”
They would fall upon the seven mimeographed sheets again. Look at this!
Look at that! Look at what he put in about Madeiros! “I give no weight
to the Madeiros confession. It is popularly supposed he confessed to
committing this crime.” What did the man mean by that sentence? He
didn’t explain it--he went on to state his reasons for distrusting
Madeiros, but not a word about what was “popularly supposed”! The words
could only mean that the popular impression was mistaken, Madeiros had
not “confessed to committing this crime.” Every reader would get that