Boston a novel
Helen Black and Ann Washington Craton--a descendant of the father
of her country--were arrested and taken to the police station and
cross-questioned for hours; the reason assigned being that they “looked
like New Yorkers.” Six Italians arrived in an automobile, and two of
them needed a shave, so they were held on a bombing charge.
Joe Randall, of course, was a marked man; the fact that he wrote
articles for newspapers and posed as a reporter only made him worse
than the other “Bolsheviks.” Detectives followed him everywhere, in
restaurants, in drug stores when he bought an ice cream soda, in barber
shops when he got a shave. He made trouble for them by insisting upon
talking with them, which was destructive of morale and against the
ethics of “shadowing.” New “dicks” were substituted, but Joe said you
could always recognize them by their blank and stupid faces; there was
no other occupation by which such low-grade persons could manage to be
well-dressed and well-fed.
Impossible to imagine anything more grotesque than the activities of
these anthropoid mentalities, trying to deal with a world of which
they had no gleam of understanding. Some of the things they did were
beyond the absurdities of musical comedy. Heywood Broun’s wife, Ruth
Hale, came to Boston at the height of the tragedy. Two sleuths of the
city spent the night in a Ford car, keeping watch on Hanover street,
opposite defense headquarters, and in the morning a newspaper man asked
them what they had been doing, and the answer was, “We had a straight
tip on a bomb-plot, and we were watching for the bombers.” “Who are
they?” asked the reporter. The reply was, “Two women from New York,
Ruth Hale and Dorothy Parker.”
VI
On Thursday, the eleventh, Justice Sanderson of the Supreme Judicial
Court allowed a bill of exceptions from his ruling to go to the Full
Court. Also Web Thayer was persuaded, for the sake of appearance, to
permit exceptions to his rulings to be carried up. So there were two
more hopes for salvation from the courts; Massachusetts was going to
lean over backwards in respecting the legal rights of two convicted
wops. Chief Justice Rugg was ill, and Crosby was in Europe; Sanderson
was barred from considering his own ruling, so there were Braley, Wait,
Carroll, and Pierce, with Braley, oldest member, presiding. He issued
a summons for a special sitting on the following Tuesday, to listen to
arguments of counsel.
Hope once more in the hearts of all believers in law and order.
Surely the ruling group was coming to its senses; it had realized the
frightful blunder it was making, and had chosen a dignified way to back
down! Patience now, and keep cool, and don’t do anything to excite
public feeling, and make it harder for the learned justices! Stop the
wild talk, and keep the New York radicals off the streets and out of
the newspapers! Above all, no disorders on the Common, nor in front of
the State House! So argued the “respectables.”
Was there really a chance? Or was it merely that those in charge of
affairs wanted it to seem that way? Quincy Thornwell came to his Aunt
Cornelia, bringing rumors: the Governor had talked with So-and-so, and
had said this and that. More important yet, Mr. Lowell was showing
signs of weakening; he was defending himself, for the first time in
his long life. One of the “middle minds” had been to see him, and he
had argued until two o’clock in the morning, trying to justify his
decision; he had been so anxious about it that he had followed his
visitor downstairs in his pajamas, and out into the garden, flashing a
torchlight into the bushes to make sure there were no bombers hiding.
Quincy Thornwell chuckled over the picture: assuredly the strangest
sight ever witnessed by the chaste nymphs who haunt the shades of the
classic elms of Harvard!
And then the learned justices of the Supreme Judicial Court, actually
giving signs of humanity! Justice Wait had made a speech, defending
the action of the court; and now here was the wife of another one,
the presiding justice, Braley, telephoning to Mrs. Jessica Henderson;
a Leach of Bridgewater she was, a highly respected person, and twice
she called up to say: “Don’t worry, my dear, everything is coming out
all right, I assure you. They are not going to let them be executed,
they will find some way out. The judge does not believe in capital
punishment.” What could have been the meaning of that? Could it be that
these old boys were fooling their own wives, in the effort to cheer
them up and keep peace in the family? Or were they using the wives to
lull the defense, and damp the dangerous agitation during the critical
days? Impossible to guess.
VII
In the Sacco-Vanzetti committee the never-ceasing struggle between
those who wanted to be judicious and those who wanted to make
propaganda. Lawyers and college professors telephoning in, or calling
to make personal pleas: “Remember this is Boston, and keep the New York
nuts out of the limelight!” But the “New York nuts” had something to
say about that, and so had the Boston newspapers. The visitors came
hiking, wearing oil-cloth placards over their shoulders, getting cursed
and nearly mobbed in each respectable town they passed through. They
came in sport-cars, with bootleg bottles in their baggage. Girls came
in pants, and men with no hats or neckties. One brought a portable
typewriter, ready for work, and when he found no room in headquarters,
he set himself up on the curbstone outside the Hotel Bellevue, and
started writing letters for Sacco and Vanzetti. The newspapers, of
course, got pictures of him at once. Also they eagerly interviewed
a young man who announced his intention of marching to Dedham jail
to rescue Sacco and Vanzetti, and was disconcerted to learn that his
campaign maps were out of date.
Such were the surface aspects of the invasion, easy to see and to
record. But there was another aspect, not so obvious to Boston
newspapermen, nor so diverting to their readers. The soul of the
demonstration, a common feeling which animated all the participants,
men and women, old and young, rich and poor, educated and ignorant:
a sense of black despair, of agonizing littleness in the face of a
colossal evil; an impotent rage, a hatred, bitter as gall, rolling
up in their minds, for this whole great city of greed masked by
bigotry--smug and polite and treacherous, cultured and correct and
deadly.
Very few of these agitators were professionals; not many of them
had any training, any party to guide and support them. They came as
individuals, hesitating and confused. They didn’t like to do what they
were doing; the women, and many of the men, felt like Lady Godiva
riding through the town naked--worse even than she, because they had no
certainty of accomplishing anything; perhaps they were making fools of
themselves to no purpose at all.
They came because American labor would not come. Vanzetti had called
for a million workers, and the million workers answered, “What the
hell?” Most of them were content for Vanzetti to die--so that American
prosperity might live; they were ready to make that sacrifice to
Moloch, precisely as the mothers and fathers of Carthage were ready
to put their infants into the red-hot iron arms of the god, so that
Carthage might live. So, instead of the million workers, came one or
two hundred poets, painters, dreamers and lovers of beauty, Greenwich
Villagers, bums, bohemians--whatever names Boston, the correct and
murderous, might choose to call them. A pitiful little group, throwing
themselves against the iron battlements of American capitalism, with
its machine-guns and poison gas bombs, its police in the front rank and
army and navy in reserve.
And for every dreamer who came, there were thousands who stayed at
home, chained by poverty, or a greater share of timidity; waiting,
waiting, with a ghastly sense of uncertainty, feeling themselves more
effectively imprisoned than Sacco and Vanzetti. Writing letters,
but not knowing if they were read; sending telegrams--like shooting
arrows into the dark! Unable to get any real news--a few bare events
each day in the papers, but no opinions, no guidance, no light. The
radio grinding out its eternal silly thumping of drums and whining of
saxophones--this greatest story in modern American history not worth a
moment’s attention!
VIII
Sunday was coming, and what was the committee going to do? Was there
to be another meeting on the Common, or should they oblige the lawyers
and wait? Agonized arguments, turning into bitter quarrels. “When did
you come into this case?” the old-timers would jeer; and to that the
answer was obvious: “A fine mess you made of it!” The communists would
rage at the members of the committee: “Do you think you own Sacco and
Vanzetti? What do you want--to put their ashes in an urn and set it on
your parlor mantel?”
Some were determined to speak on the Common, committee or no committee,
police or no police. The Socialist Labor Party had a permit not yet
confiscated, and the Sacco-Vanzetti defenders would use that; so it
was announced, and the would-be martyrs prepared placards on canvas,
which could be folded up and hidden under the clothing. Betty and
Joe refused to tell the family what they were going to do; so here
came Deborah in all her majesty, mixing with the “mob” on the Common,
walking about unable to keep her hands quiet, so agitated she was.
When it came to a test, she really did love her daughter, in spite of
so many bitter words spoken during eleven years of wrangling. After
all, it was “Boston”; conscience was conscience, and when you followed
yours, you commanded respect from others who followed theirs. When the
little group of white-faced men and women marched into the midst of
armed ruffians, Deborah’s emotions were those which had been felt by
patrician Roman matrons, when their Christian children walked into the
arena among the lions.
Police Judge Zottoli, an Italian anxious to prove his respectability,
had announced that for those arrested in future “the sky would be the
limit.” But evidently among those in authority there must have been
some wiser heads. The police had orders to disperse all gatherings, to
allow no speeches, but to do as little arresting as possible; no more
martyrs--and especially no well-dressed ones! A curious experience
for young ladies who lived on Beacon Street, within sight of this
greensward; they were made to leap out of the way of mounted troopers,
they had their placards taken away, and their arms squeezed black and
blue--but always the last word was, “Move on! Keep moving!” Were these
the traffic officers who had been helping them across street-crossings,
and knew them? Or were they detectives who had been keeping watch over
the wedding presents in fashionable homes?
The permit which the Sacco Vanzetti committee had hoped to obtain was
found to be unavailable; so those who attempted to speak would all
be outlaws. They brought soap-boxes--and the “cops” took them away
and broke them up. For Joe Randall two young martyrs upon a sudden
impulse got down and made a soap-box of their backs; on this precarious
pedestal Joe stood, and began: “Fellow-citizens of Massachusetts, we
are here to assert the fundamental principles of free speech”--and that
was all, for there were three husky “dicks” who had been following Joe
about the field, and grabbed him by the arms and pulled him from his
platform and led him away.
Joe had made one concession to his anxious grandmother-in-law, he would
not resist and get his head broken; he went quietly--and only when he
was out on Beacon Street did he discover the scurvy trick which had
been played upon him. The three huskies gave him a shove and said,