Boston a novel
other’s arms, sobbing; and in a moment more the woman collapsed, and
one guard had to catch her, while the other brought a chair. Bart sat,
patting her gently, and for an hour they talked about all the things
which might interest a brother and sister who had parted in their
teens, and met again in their middle thirties, with only two days more
of life upon earth together.
The twelve-year-old Dante Sacco had come with Rosina and paid a last
visit to his father; a terrible ordeal for a child, to pass that
canvas-shrouded death-chair, and sit listening to a faint voice, and
peering at a wasted shadow of a man through narrow steel bars which
must not be approached. The boy and the mother went out sobbing, the
latter hardly able to walk; each one of these visits was like a spell
of illness to her. The father set himself to his last task, of writing
the promised letter to the “bimbo”; to leave him some permanent message
which he might study when he grew older. Pitiful, rambling words of a
man trying to hold his faculties in the midst of torment, and to write
in a foreign language--because the “bimbo” spoke that language, and was
going to an American school. “Much I thought of you,” wrote the father,
“when I was lying in the death-house--the singing, the kind tender
voices of the children from the playground, where there was all the
life and the joy of liberty--just one step from the wall which contains
the buried agony of three buried souls.... Yes, Dante, they can crucify
our bodies to-day as they are doing but they cannot destroy our ideals
that will remain for the youth of the future to come....
“Well, my dear boy, after your mother had talked to me so much and I
had dreamed of you day and night, how joyful it was to see you at last.
To have talked with you like we used to in the days--in those days.
Much I told you on that visit and more I wanted to say, but I saw that
you will remain the same affectionate boy, faithful to your mother who
loves you so much, and I did not want to hurt your sensibilities any
longer, because I am sure that you will continue to be the same boy and
remember what I have told you. I knew that and what here I am going to
tell you will touch your feelings, but don’t cry, Dante, because many
tears have been wasted, as your mother’s have been wasted for seven
years, and never did any good.”
XVIII
The Great Novelist who makes up history had brought it about that while
Sacco and Vanzetti were lying in the death-cells, there preceded them
to the land of shadows a great American lord of steel and finance:
Elbert H. Gary, chairman of the board of directors and chief executive
of the United States Steel Corporation, with resources of two billions
of dollars. A great Christian he had been, helping to build that
mighty university of Methodism from which Dean Wigless had assailed
Felix Frankfurter; holder of eight honorary degrees from church
universities--the most pious plutocrat who ever split his strikers’
skulls and set thousands of spies to cow their souls. Before he left
for his mansion above, he also wrote a message to his beloved ones,
giving his _vade mecum_ as a follower of the gentle Jesus. His last
will and testament it was, and all the capitalist newspapers of America
featured his exalted words:
“I earnestly request my wife and children and descendants that
they steadfastly decline to sign any bonds or obligations of any
kind as surety for any other person, or persons; that they refuse
to make any loans except on the basis of first-class, well-known
securities, and that they invariably decline to invest in any
untried or doubtful securities or property or enterprise or
business.”
At this same time two anarchist wops, one of them an avowed atheist,
the other a vague deist of the old-fashioned sort, were writing their
last words to their beloved ones, and these words also were published.
Said Nicola Sacco, with one foot in eternity:
“So, Son, instead of crying, be strong, so as to be able to comfort
your mother, and when you want to distract your mother from the
discouraging soulness, I will tell you what I used to do. To take
her for a long walk in the quiet country, gathering wild flowers
here and there, resting under the shade of trees, between the
harmony of the vivid stream and the gentle tranquillity of the
mother nature, and I am sure that she will enjoy this very much,
as you surely would be happy for it. But remember always, Dante,
in the play of happiness, don’t you use all for yourself only,
but down yourself just one step, at your side and help the weak
ones that cry for help, help the persecuted and the victim because
they are your better friends, they are the comrades that fight and
fall as your father and Bartolo fought and fell yesterday for the
conquest of the joy and freedom for all the poor workers. In this
struggle of life you will find more love and you will be loved.”
Also Vanzetti left his message for Dante to study in after years. One
day before he died he wrote a letter to a little boy whose school
friends jeered him because he was the son of a murderer. Said Bart:
“I tell you all this now, for I know well your father, he is not
a criminal, but one of the bravest men I ever knew. Some day you
will understand what I am about to tell you, that your father has
sacrificed everything dear and sacred to the human heart and soul
for his faith in liberty and justice for all. That day you will be
proud of your father, and if you become brave enough, you will take
his place in the struggle between tyranny and liberty and you will
vindicate his name and our blood.
“Remember and know also, Dante, that if your father and I would
have been cowards and hypocrites and renegades of our faith,
we would not have been put to death. They would not even have
convicted a leprous dog; not even executed a deadly poisonous
scorpion on such evidence as that they framed against us. They
would have given a new trial to a matricide and habitual felon on
the evidence we presented for a new trial.
“Remember, Dante, remember always these things: We are not
criminals; they convicted us on a frame-up; they denied us a new
trial; and if we will be executed after seven years, three months
and seventeen days of unspeakable tortures and wrongs, it is for
what I have already told you; because we were for the poor and
against the exploitation and oppression of man by man.”
CHAPTER XXII
THE CITY OF FEAR
I
“This is our career and our triumph,” Bart had proclaimed; and
assuredly never had “a good shoemaker and a poor fish-peddler” caused
such excitement in the world. On Saturday, two days before the
execution, there was an order for a general strike in Buenos Ayres; in
Berlin a protest from the trade unions, and the first radical meeting
ever held in the former House of Lords of the Kingdom of Prussia; in
London a mob of ten thousand in front of the American embassy; in
Geneva a call for the boycotting of American goods; in Russia enormous
protest meetings in every city; in Paris a hundred thousand workers
parading, carrying red flags and huge placards denouncing American
justice; tourists being greeted with shouts from thousands of throats,
“Pardon! Pardon!”--and as a rule finding it prudent to reply, “Vive
Sacco et Vanzetti!” The workers were bewildered by the spectacle of
Puritan severity, and helpless in the face of it. Pierre Leon, editing
a French communist paper, cabled to Joe Randall: “What can we do?”
Joe’s answer was: “Repudiate the debts.” But that, alas, was not an
immediate program; the best the French could do was to fail to pay them.
Only in Massachusetts itself was silence. Boston under the iron heel,
and civil rights subject to revocation. One simple rule, easy for
all to understand: do what the police tell you and keep your mouth
shut. Superintendent Crowley had requested the mayor to cancel all
the eighteen speaking permits on the Common, and thus free speech was
dumped out of the “cradle of liberty.” The defense committee was trying
to hire a hall for a last minute protest-meeting, but the police made
a round of the halls and warned the owners; if they rented to the
Reds, they would lose their license. It was a trick which “Mickey
the Gunman” had been working for several years; by means of it he had
suppressed a young Lithuanian named Bimba, who proclaimed himself an
atheist, and annoyed the Catholic priests. The police would close up
halls, on the ground that they violated fire ordinances; something
which, in an old city like Boston, a great many buildings did.
At the last minute the defense committee succeeded in finding a hall,
and on Saturday evening a pitiful meeting was held, with almost as
many “cops” as audience. A speaker started to describe what was going
to happen in Charlestown prison on Monday midnight, and a police
official stepped forward, saying, “No more of that, or we’ll shut you
up.” So the orators discussed the case in abstract terms, not saying
anything rude about governors or college presidents, nor using bad
words like “anarchistic bastards.” Paxton Hibben spoke, military and
incisive; Powers Hapgood, fiery and determined; Alfred Baker Lewis,
who seemed like a big but very serious boy; then Betty Alvin, for the
Back Bay; and--miracle of miracles--a Catholic lifting his voice for
two infidels! The members of the Boston police force rubbed their eyes
as the Reverend Francis Xavier Regan took the platform, and told the
story of Caleb Cunningham, the wealthy resident of Milton who had shot
and killed the Swede, John Johnson, for cutting wood on his land, and
had been so considerately treated by the authorities of Norfolk County.
One Catholic remembered the humble origins of his Church--even in the
diocese of His Eminence, “Big Bill”!
A call had been issued for labor union delegates to meet on that same
Saturday evening, to consider plans for a general strike. Since it was
manifestly too late, the police did not interfere. About fifty workers
attended, mostly from the Italian barbers and the Jewish needle trades;
the American workers present might have been counted on the fingers of
one hand. The American workers were out on the roads in second-hand
cars with their families, eating hot-dogs and drinking soda-pop; they
were at the movies, watching poor girls marry millionaires and poor
boys make fortunes overnight; they were shooting craps and playing
poker and drinking home brew. Assuredly they were not out on the
streets, getting their heads broken for any wops.
Michael Gold went about listening, and reporting public sentiment in
Boston. A young sailor prowling in Scollay Square, on the hunt for
women: “They ought to be burned; they insulted the flag.” A clerk
drinking ice cream soda at a fountain: “All them Italians look like
murderers to me.” A timid little groceryman expressing himself over the
counter: “Yes, maybe they are innocent, but we gotta bump ’em off, or
we’ll all be bombed in our beds.” A telephone girl, hearing an Italian
voice complaining of a wrong number: “Aw shut up, you Guinney rat, wait
till you see what we do to you on August 22nd!”
All this they had got out of their newspapers, of course. For a brief
time there had been a break in newspaper solidarity regarding the
Sacco-Vanzetti case; an editorial writer of the _Herald_ had won the
Pulitzer prize of 1926 for an editorial demanding a new trial. But now
his voice was silent. The department-stores were clamoring to have an
end to the public anxiety; business had fallen off, because women, who
do most of the shopping, were afraid to go about. The only industry
which was thriving was that of riot and bomb insurance; the companies