Boston a novel
The few stubborn ones who insisted upon coming were troubled by both
considerations, but of course would only admit the latter. They brought
little rolls of cardboard, printed with Sacco-Vanzetti protests, to
wear over their shoulders, and made their rendezvous in a corner
drug-store, eyed suspiciously by the proprietor, because they looked
fidgety and queer, not at all “Boston.” The job had fallen mostly to
the “New York nuts.”
There was John Dos Passos, faithful son of Harvard, and John Howard
Lawson, another one of the “New Playwrights” from Greenwich Village.
There was Clarina Michelson, ready to do the hard work again, and
William Patterson, a Negro lawyer from New York, running the greatest
risk of any of them, with his black face not to be disguised. Just
up Beacon Street was the Shaw Monument, with figures in perennial
bronze, of unmistakable Negro boys in uniform, led by a young Boston
blue-blood on horseback; no doubt Patterson had looked at this, and
drawn courage from it. To uphold the high traditions of the city,
there came Betty Alvin and Joe Randall, considered a Bostonian-in-law;
also James’s Josiah, more scared of his father than of the police; and
Margaret Hatfield, whose father was a prominent Republican, treasurer
of Middlesex county. Margaret had taken the precaution to “dress the
part,” so she was safe, though she couldn’t be sure of it. Her mother
was behaving exactly like Betty’s mother, wandering about the Common
twisting her hands together, and moaning to herself, “Oh, _why_ do they
have to do it?”
V
“Come on, you sons-of-bitches, do you want to live forever?” So,
according to army tradition, a sergeant shouted to a squad, going “over
the top” in the Argonne forest. It is an idea which, with or without
the language, has animated martyrs through the ages. They have walked
to the lions, they have walked to the stake and the gallows and the
guillotine, and other forms of terror; now they walked to the clubs
and the bayonets--a little group from the corner drug-store, quaking
inside, and trembling in the knees, but setting their teeth and holding
their heads high. As it happened, none was to be seriously hurt, but
they could not know that; pain is pain, and a cracked skull, or the
hoofs of horses in your stomach, are as unpleasant as any other form.
Come on, you New York nuts, do you want to live forever?
The Common stretching before them. The mall, where the speaking should
have been, is closed by a cordon of police; no use to try it there.
They get out on the concrete walk, and then look at one another
anxiously. Are they in a good place, among the crowd? Some one says
yes, and with trembling fingers they unroll the placards and put them
over their shoulders. The bystanders see, and cheers go up. Crowds
begin to gather; they have been wandering about, waiting for something
to happen, and here it is! “Hurrah for Sacco and Vanzetti!” “Save Sacco
and Vanzetti!” At once a counter demonstration: “Down with the Reds!
Lynch them!”
The little band of martyrs walk on, seeing nothing, hearing nothing;
a trifle dizzy with the excitement--that rare mood of martyrdom, more
wonderful than drunkenness. You walk upon the air, into the clouds;
the earth and the limitations of the flesh no longer exist; you have
transcended them all, you belong to the ages, you speak to God. “Wir
sind all des Todes eigen,” sings the German poet--“we all belong to
death.” We have seen such wickedness upon earth that we choose rather
to die than to let it prevail.
“All right,” says the world, “if you want to die, we are willing!”
The lions roar; if you want to be eaten, their stomachs are made for
the purpose! Here come the police, clubs drawn. “Enough of that now!
Take off those signs and get out of here!” They try to grab the signs,
and the marchers dodge this way and that, to protect them as long as
possible; bystanders grab at the signs, others try to block the way of
the “cops.” The clubs begin to fall; a disagreeable sound, the thud of
hickory on human flesh and bone.
Here come the mounted men, riding through the throngs. “Look out
for yourself!” Women shriek; the horses charge straight ahead,
knocking people down. A strange experience for a daughter of the best
families--Betty can hardly believe it; she thinks the horse will swerve
at the last moment; then she realizes that the rider means to run her
down, and she leaps too late, the shoulder of the passing horse strikes
her and sends her spinning.
The trooper speeds on; he has spied the black face, and wants that
most of all. The Negro runs, and the rider rears the front feet of
his steed, intending to strike him down with the iron-shod hoofs. But
fortunately there is a tree, and the Negro leaps behind it; a man
can run round a tree faster than the best-trained police-mount--the
dapper and genial William Patterson proves it by making five complete
circuits before he runs into the arms of an ordinary cop, who grabs
him by the collar and tears off his sign and tramples it in the dirt,
and then starts to march him away. “Well,” he remarks, sociably, “this
is the first time I ever see a nigger bastard that was a communist.”
The lawyer is surprised, because he has been given to understand that
that particular bad word is barred from the Common; Mike Crowley was so
shocked, two weeks ago, when Mary Donovan tacked up a sign to a tree:
“Did you see what I did to those anarchistic ----? Judge Thayer.” But
apparently the police do not have to obey their own laws.
The “Black Maria” is in readiness, and comes with clanging bell, and
the prisoners are loaded into it--all but the “nigger bastard.” He has
to be walked to the police-station--because it would not be decent
for him to ride in the same patrol-wagon with his friend Clarina
Michelson! The others are driven off--and when they get to the La
Grange Street station-house and compare notes, they discover that they
have lost their blue-bloods! Betty is missing, and her husband, and
her cousin Josiah! Margaret Hatfield is missing! Even in the midst of
that excitement, the police have found time to consult the “social
register”! A little later they turn loose John Dos Passos--no Harvard
graduates wanted! The only ones they arrest are five workers, two named
Sansevrion, one Schulman, one Amari, and that Cosimo Carvotta against
whom they have a special grudge, on account of having lied about him in
the police court after the previous Sunday’s arrests.
VI
In the La Grange Street station they found Paula Holladay, waiting for
some company. No story of that last Sunday would be complete without
the Odyssey of Paula, who had made a parade all by herself--and a
long one! She was the founder of “Polly’s,” a Greenwich Village
café renowned in song and story; that summer she had been running a
restaurant in Provincetown, on Cape Cod. Her conscience began to gnaw
at her, and she decided to do what one woman could to express a sense
of injustice. She turned her business over to a friend, and put on a
sign reading, “Is justice dead? Save Sacco and Vanzetti,” and set out
to walk from Provincetown to Boston, a distance, as the “nut” walks, of
a hundred and twenty-five miles.
Now and then on the route, women working in their gardens would see
that sign, and follow along on the other side of the picket-fence,
saying, “I wish I had a shot-gun in the house, I’d show you what I’d
do to you!” Ladies in automobiles would stop to express the same
sentiment. But apparently the shotgun is an obsolete instrument in
Massachusetts, for Paula reached Boston with a whole skin, except for a
blister on the heel. She joined the other nuts, and learning that the
police were destroying all banners and signs, she painted her message
on a red “slicker,” or waterproof coat, and sallied forth onto the
Common thus garbed.
She was passing the bandstand, when the first “cop” spied her, and
took her in tow. A crowd gathered quickly, and there were waves of
shouting, some for, some against. The policeman’s hand began to tremble
on the woman’s arm. “Why are you so nervous?” she said--after which
he managed to control himself. Another came to his aid, and then two
mounted men, who kept her between them, safe. When she told them that
she was determined to stay on the Common, they conducted her to the
police-station. “What is the charge?” she demanded; the answer was,
“Oh, never mind that, just lock her up.”
Presently came “Mike” Crowley, having kissed the Blarney stone that
morning. “Now it would be too bad for a nice-looking young lady like
you to get into any trouble that might get her on the books here.” The
answer of Paula was, “I am neither so young nor so good-looking, and
I am not afraid to get on the books. I want to know whether I am kept
here by force without any charge.” When he wouldn’t answer, she said,
“I will find out,” and started to leave; so then he put his hand upon
her shoulder, and she was there by force. They kept her until evening,
when there were no more crowds upon the Common, and no more harm to be
done by the wearing of a red “slicker” with the question, “Is justice
dead?”
VII
The lawyers were making another attempt to open the Department of
Justice files, and they appealed to Governor Fuller for a respite until
the documents could be studied. Arthur Hill asked also for time to
permit the United States Supreme Court to consider his application. The
Governor followed his usual policy of declining to say what he would
do; so the lawyers were racing about from one country-place to another,
trying to persuade some judge to order a stay. In those last hectic
days they put the matter before a dozen different judges, representing
the Superior Court and the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, and
the District Courts and the Supreme Court of the United States.
Mr. Hill journeyed to see Justice Holmes at his place in Beverly, on
the North Shore: Oliver Wendell Holmes, son of the poet, eighty-six
years of age, respected by all liberals, because he and Brandeis
invariably wrote a minority opinion when the court made further
restrictions upon human rights in the interest of privilege. The
old gentleman now said that he did not think he had the power to
interfere, but wished them luck with some other justice who might think
differently. “Unofficially,” he said that Sacco and Vanzetti could not
have got a fair trial in 1921.
They went to Louis Brandeis, their last hope. A Jewish lawyer of great
ability, Brandeis had begun practice in Boston, and made a fortune
early, and then turned against the system, and became an advocate of
the public interest, and therefore one of the most hated men in the
city. When Woodrow Wilson had named him for the Supreme Court bench,
there had been a howl from State Street, and no voice louder than that
of President Lowell of Harvard. Nevertheless, the radical Jew had got
in; and now he had the greatest chance of his career--and missed it.
The Court was composed mainly of hard-boiled corporation lawyers,
selected by President Taft--now the Chief Justice--and by Harding and
Coolidge. Undoubtedly these men would have reversed any action that
Brandeis might have taken; but at least it would have been a gesture,
and a crown upon a great life. Cornelia spent Sunday afternoon arguing
and pleading with the justice, but in vain; telegrams came raining
upon him, in vain. He was bound, like all other judges. It so happened
that Rosina Sacco had occupied a house belonging to Mrs. Brandeis in
Dedham, and this constituted “prejudice.” The justice could not be
persuaded that prejudice in favor of mercy was different from prejudice
in favor of one interest against another. Vanzetti commented upon this
singular situation in a letter to Harry Dana--almost the last words he
wrote: