Boston a novel
“Move along now, young fellow, and keep moving.” “What do you mean, am
I not under arrest?” “Move along, buddy, what do you want to get into
trouble for?” When he tried to force his way back, they held him. They
would not fight him, they would merely block his way, and see that he
didn’t get to the Common. Later on, when Joe learned that the same
thing had happened to “James’s Josiah,” he realized that it could not
have been an accident; some member of an all-powerful family had called
in a detective agency, and paid a fancy price to keep his relatives out
of jail, and his family name out of the papers!
It was Powers Hapgood who made the real fight that Sunday before the
last; Powers, with a young Italian sewing-machine repairer named
Cosimo Carvotta, who got inspired by Powers’ eloquence, and insisted
on rescuing him from the entire police force of the City of Boston.
Cosimo had upon him a pocket-knife containing a small screw-driver,
an inch long, used upon sewing-machines; he did not try to use it, but
they found it in his pocket at the police station, and it was enough to
constitute a “dirk,” and make a startling story in the papers.
As for Powers, he had a highly honorific arrest, performed by
Superintendent Crowley and a captain and a sergeant and other
majesties. “I insist on the right of free speech! The people must save
Sacco and Vanzetti! We must not allow our comrades to be murdered!
Don’t forget, Comrades--keep it up--save the men!”--thus the member
of the Dickey and the Hasty Pudding Club and the Harvard Memorial
Society, being dragged away to the police-box at the corner of Charles
and Beacon streets. “Mickey the Gunman” himself pulled the hook which
summoned the patrol-wagon, and within five minutes there were a hundred
officers at the spot, and a squadron of mounted men to drive back the
crowd.
IX
The special sitting of the Supreme Judicial Court was set for Tuesday
the sixteenth at ten o’clock. Six hours before that came a dreadful
event; some one put dynamite on the front porch of the home of one of
the Sacco-Vanzetti jurors, in East Milton, and blew out the front of
the house. Once more the authorities were certain that this had been
the work of friends of Sacco and Vanzetti; whereas the friends of Sacco
and Vanzetti were equally certain that it was the work of their worst
enemies. They called attention to the peculiar placing of the dynamite,
to make a loud noise and not hurt any one; they called attention to
its exact timing--when it would do the utmost possible harm and least
possible good to the defense.
The mystery was never solved; but the Governor took occasion to write
a letter to the juror, denouncing those who were trying to “coerce
the courts,” and at the same time assuring the victim that the cost
of repairing his home would be paid by the Commonwealth. A singular
impulse of generosity from an official who just recently had vetoed a
bill providing for compensation to state employees who had been injured
in the performance of their duties!
With the crash of this bomb echoing in their ears, the four
black-robed justices assembled. The courthouse, and Pemberton Square
around it, presented a scene of war. Benches were placed for barriers
in front of courtroom doors, and Cornelia had to exhibit the contents
of her handbag before she entered the room. She noticed that detectives
assigned the little group of “Reds” to special seats, and then stood
near them. Most of the crowd did not get in at all.
There sat in a row, behind a long raised desk, the four white-haired
old gentlemen who held the lives of Sacco and Vanzetti in their
hands. Henry King Braley, former city solicitor and mayor of Fall
River, now seventy-seven years of age; Edward Peter Pierce, recently
tried for misconduct, and convicted of very bad taste, seventy-five
years of age; James Bernard Carroll, former city solicitor of
Springfield, seventy-one years of age; and William Cushing Wait,
former city alderman of Boston, sixty-seven years of age. Braley was
a fellow-alumnus of Thayer’s, Pierce and Wait were fellow-alumni of
Katzmann’s, while Carroll was a graduate of Holy Cross, which made him
a fellow-alumnus of St. Peter. They told their fellow-alumni Arthur
Hill and Arthur Reading, that they might have all the time needed;
and then they sat, like four black-and-white images, motionless and
impassive, while Mr. Hill recited the list of the high crimes of their
fellow-alumni, Thayer and, indirectly, Katzmann.
Mr. Hill spared nothing of the story of “Web’s” prejudice and
the manifold proofs thereof. Also he asked a hearing for the new
evidence--of which more was coming in every day. He called it
“monstrous” to maintain that there was any stage in the process of
taking men’s lives when it ceased to be possible to present newly
discovered evidence to establish their innocence. “It is the bench and
bar of Massachusetts that is on trial,” he declared. “It is our entire
system of criminal law.” He might have added “our entire system of
criminal capitalism,” but his vision did not extend that far, and very
surely he could not have made it clear to four members of the Union
Club of Boston.
Then came the genial Mr. Reading, with pockets stuffed with the money
of the Decimo Club and the “L.A.W.” He asserted his solemn faith that
Judge Thayer had been just and unprejudiced; nor was he in the least
afraid of being “monstrous” in reciting the law which specified that
after sentence had been pronounced by the trial judge, no motion for a
new trial could be entertained, no matter what the new evidence might
be. The four old gentlemen mumbled a few questions to the lawyers,
impossible for the spectators to hear; and then they gathered up their
books and papers, and the session was adjourned. The friends of Sacco
and Vanzetti went home, to continue that process of waiting in which
they had become so expert in the course of seven years, three months,
and eleven days.
X
But they did not have to wait very long this time. Massachusetts took
pride in paying no heed to “outside clamor,” but here was a different
situation--a military expense of great sums every day, and enormous
losses to retail trade. It was a time for sleepy old gentlemen to
wake up and earn their keep. On Tuesday the hearing, on Friday the
decision--an unprecedented procedure!
The document was written by Justice Braley, that oldest gentleman whose
wife had more than once telephoned to Jessica Henderson, assuring her
that everything was all right, no need to worry, the judge did not
believe in capital punishment. Now the judge spoke for himself. With
the other three judges concurring, he said that the legal system of the
great Commonwealth was infallible, and the fact that it contravened
decency, humanity, and common sense was of no significance. A long
decision, highly technical, bristling with citations; the heart of it
in one dreadful sentence: “A motion for a new trial in capital cases
comes too late if made after sentence has been pronounced.” Such is
the law of the Brahmins and the Blue-bloods, which altereth not! “The
exceptions are overruled.”
Horror among so-called “liberals,” those of Boston, as well as those
who had come from outside! They had staked all their hopes upon the
courts; they had pleaded, argued, practically forced the defense
committee to obey, to let them handle it, to put their trust in the
processes of law. And here suddenly was the ghastly fact revealed in
all its nakedness--there was no law! There was only the class struggle!
Exactly as Bartolomeo Vanzetti had been saying for twelve years, ever
since Cornelia had first met him: there was a propertied class, and
there was a laboring class, and between them there was a war!
And now a battle under way, and the lines drawn, and deserters hated
and punished--if necessary, killed! The immense, rich, eager, nervous,
implacable young Empire was smashing a revolt of its slaves, crucifying
its resisting gladiators by the roadside for a warning to all the
rest! This legal decision was a searchlight, flashing suddenly upon
that bloody deed! The Sacco-Vanzetti case was no longer the casual
venality of a few local politicians, no longer the accidental malice
of one elderly legal despot; the Sacco-Vanzetti case was capitalist
government, the same in America as everywhere else in the world--the
will of a predatory class!
Once before America had been like that, when the slave power had ruled
it, and in those old days New England had had one poet with the gift
of ecstasy and prophetic rage. A fugitive slave was sent back from
Massachusetts, and Whittier, the Quaker abolitionist, pictured Liberty
marching handcuffed down the street--
_And Law, an unloosed maniac, strong,
Blood-drunken, through the blackness trod,
Hoarse-shouting in the ear of God
The blasphemy of wrong...._
_“Mother of Freedom, wise and brave,
Rise awful in thy strength,” I said;
Ah me! I spake but to the dead;
I stood upon her grave!_
XI
A dreadful ordeal for the whole prison had been that “hungry strike”
of Sacco’s. They didn’t want him to die that way--it was against the
rules, and an impropriety; also they were sorry for him, and for his
wife and child. They argued and pleaded; the wife and child argued and
pleaded, but Nick was obdurate; he would not eat. Neither would he sign
any papers for capitalist courts or governors; he would not ask for
mercy or for pardon--he was an innocent man, and would die protesting
it.
On the thirty-first day of the fast he became so weak that the prison
doctor decided to act. He brought some hot beef broth to the cell,
and reminded Nick how very painful it was to be fed by a tube through
the nose. He went so far as to take hold of Nick’s nose, and say that
he was going to pour the broth down his throat. So Nick gave up, and
drank. They had all their strength, and he had little of his.
Then came young Musmanno, devoted slave of the case, broken-hearted,
and shrinking from the job he had to do. They took him first to the
cell of Nick, who was eating something. Said the young lawyer: “You are
a brave man, aren’t you, Nick?”
It was the correct psychology; Nick said, quietly, “Yes, I think I am.”
“Well then, I must tell you that the Full Court has turned down our
appeal.”
“I expected it,” said Nick, quietly. “What are they there for?” He did
not wince; but he pushed his bowls and dishes aside and forgot them.
“Sure,” he said, “they have us, they will kill us. We will die like
men.” Then he said, “I will write a letter to Dante. You will come for
that, Musmanno, I want the bimbo to have it when he gets older, and
will be able to think about it.” “Bimbo” is an Italian endearment for a
boy; and Musmanno said he would come without fail.
He went to Vanzetti, the man of emotions, of words rather than of
actions. When Bart heard the news, his eyes opened wide like saucers,
and he sat staring before him, as if he were in a dream. He got up, and
began pacing his cell wildly, shouting in Italian. “There is nobody
more innocent in all this world!” He would not take it as a matter of
course that a man should die; he was a propagandist, and had reason
to live. “A million men! A million men!” he cried. He began to demand
that a microphone be brought to his cell, so that he might speak to the
workers of the world. Musmanno had to say that both these propositions
were equally impossible. All they could do was to make more appeals
before more judges. He was leaving for Washington that night, to file
an application before the United States Supreme Court.
The young lawyer came back late in the afternoon, but found that
Nick had not been able to work upon the letter to his son. They had