Boston a novel
Next to him was a man who believed himself to be God; on the other
side a man who sat with his head in his hands and never moved for
hours. The attendants apparently desired to get Powers excited, so that
they could put him “on the ice.” They would come and make provocative
remarks; a woman nurse started to express her opinion of Sacco--an ugly
wop, and she pounded the bed as she said it; worse than that, he was an
atheist. Powers was aware of the importance of keeping cool without any
ice; he answered amiably, and with his charming smile. One attendant
whispered that he was in danger, and offered to phone a doctor for him.
Doubtless that was the source of the “tip.”
Doctors came to examine him; all the regulation mental stuff. You
believe that Sacco and Vanzetti are being framed? Are you yourself
being framed? Have you a mission from God? What are your dreams? Please
take this pencil and write, how much is fourteen times fourteen? If
twelve is greater than ten put a dot inside the circle which is not
inside the square. Did your mother have a hard time at your birth?
Explain this little story, how the Pope was crowned and so the little
boy died of gilt paint. If you can explain it, then it is established
that you are a “nut”!
They must have found this Harvard graduate an interesting specimen, for
they put him up before the whole staff that evening. They made him put
on his bathrobe backwards; which he thought was to make him look crazy,
but doubtless was to keep a lunatic from committing any indecency.
There were forty or fifty persons, men and women; doctors, nurses and
students, many flappers. They put him on the platform and asked him
to explain his ideas about reforming the world; so he made them a
little socialist speech, ten minutes at least. They began asking him
questions: a flapper wanted to know why he thought Sacco and Vanzetti
were not guilty. What did he think about the McHardy bomb--the one
which had blown out the front of the juror’s home? That was a catch, of
course; he would say it was a provocateur job, and then they would all
know he was a “nut.”
He said it. He fitted perfectly into their categories. And yet--a
singular development--he began to expand before their eyes, and
before he stopped, he had smashed their categories. A distressing
experience to scientific minds--to have their categories smashed!
Some one had said of Herbert Spencer that “his idea of a tragedy was a
generalization killed by a fact.”
Powers had many facts, all deadly. The strike-breaking agencies planted
bombs all the time, nothing simpler. It was the accepted technique of
class war in the mining districts; one bomb, and the militia came and
broke up the strike. It had been done right here in Massachusetts, by
the great Mr. William Wood, president of the American Woolen Company;
it had been proved in court, the men he had hired had been sent to
jail for it. Too bad that Bostonians didn’t know their own industrial
history!
After this session, fifteen alienists turned in a report to the effect
that the former member of the Dickey, the Hasty Pudding Club and the
Harvard Memorial Society was sane; one of them added that he had better
be got out of “Psychopathic” as quickly as possible, or he would make
socialists of the whole staff! They held him overnight, in Sacco’s bed,
and in the morning they turned him loose--the first man who had ever
got through the mill in one day. A triumph for a Harvard education!
XIV
Monday noon, with the execution twelve hours away, the Governor was in
session with three lawyers of national repute: Arthur Garfield Hays,
Frank P. Walsh, and Francis Fisher Kane, formerly a Federal prosecutor
in Pennsylvania. These three were concentrating upon the subject of
the Department of Justice files. They had traveled all the way to
Vermont, to interview the United States Attorney-General. They had then
proceeded to Washington, to interview a subordinate, and had succeeded
in getting the admission that Sacco and Vanzetti were referred to in
the files; also the written statement that the files would be turned
over to the Massachusetts authorities, if these authorities would
request it. Now the three lawyers endeavored, in vain, to persuade the
Governor to make the request.
At this same hour, Arthur D. Hill was off the coast of Maine in a
steamer, searching in a fog for an island eight miles out, where
lived Justice Stone of the United States Supreme Court; Elias Field,
assistant counsel, was making a motion before another judge of the
Superior Court of Massachusetts; Musmanno was waiting for a chance
to appeal to the Governor with new arguments and affidavits of new
witnesses; while Jessica Henderson and Cornelia were motoring eighty
miles or more to the Governor’s summer home to make their appeal to the
great man’s wife.
A stately home for a multi-millionaire, set far back from the
boulevard, and well hidden by shrubbery. When the owner himself was
there, a miniature army was on guard; twenty-six men, with several
machine-guns, and seventy-five reserves in a near-by town. But
apparently it was not feared that the enemy would harm the family, for
now there was only one plainclothesman on watch.
The Governor’s wife received the visitors courteously, and heard them
to the end. Evidently the other members of the family resented the
strain being put upon her, for three different persons came, seeking to
cut the session short; but Mrs. Fuller would not have it so.
Cornelia knew something about the cares of office. She had realized
that possibly the jauntiness of the supersalesman was merely a mask;
it was his idea of being “game,” the male courage which defies death
and danger. Certainly it was not the same in his family; his wife
had been ill, his son and daughter had been ill. “It has taken years
from his life!” exclaimed the woman. “You can have no idea what it
means. We, too, sit in the electric-chair.” Cornelia, who had lived
for forty years in a home of wealth, knew the whole story--even though
in Josiah’s day they had not thought about anarchists and dynamite.
Somehow or other, great sums of money found a way to wreck the
happiness of those who held them. Yet, no one would give them up, no
one would cease the mad chase!
Cornelia poured out her story. It was one to move any woman’s heart,
and the Governor’s lady sat with tears welling into her eyes. A little
boy, her youngest child, played about the room and sat on the arm
of Cornelia’s chair; she told him about Plymouth, and about Trando,
who had made himself a violinist; about Dante Sacco, who had bidden
his father farewell in the death-cell, but had not been allowed to
touch him through the bars. She told the mother about the framing of
witnesses, and some of the new evidence they had found. But even while
she spoke, she read in the face of her listener that her errand was a
vain one.
“I can do nothing but this, Mrs. Thornwell; I will have the Governor
see you to-day, so that you may tell him these things.”
“I have already told him so much,” answered Cornelia. “I was hoping you
would go with me to the Governor.”
“No, I could not do that; it would do no good, I assure you.”
Mrs. Fuller would telephone, and see to it that Mrs. Thornwell and
Mrs. Henderson had another interview that afternoon. The Governor must
be made to comprehend those circumstances which made it so doubtful
whether the men were really guilty. The Governor’s lady put her arm
about Cornelia as she led her out to the car; and Cornelia thought, if
only the women would run the world! But no, she had seen it happen;
women went into public life, and became as hard as the men. Could it be
that, as Vanzetti said, there was something fundamentally immoral about
the business of dominating the lives of your fellows?
XV
Three hours later they were back at the State House, having made no
stop for lunch. There were larger crowds than ever in the corridors
before the Governor’s chambers, more than half of them secret service
men and reporters. Mrs. Fuller had kept her promise; the Governor would
see the two ladies, the secretary said.
Tom O’Connor sat with them while they waited; a reporter who was now
with the defense, having given up a State House job a year ago. He
would tell them the news.
Delegations to see the Governor, all through that day; there had been
more than nine hundred telegrams received; few of them read. Musmanno
had brought more affidavits; he had had word that his application for
a writ had been docketed with the United States Supreme Court. Fuller
had not said what he would do. A deputation of labor men from New York
had been in a while ago; Fuller had said to one of them, “I know the
men are guilty, so I don’t care whether they had a fair trial or not.”
“He said those same words to me,” said Cornelia; and then, “old Boston”
speaking in her, “Don’t quote me, please.”
Never had there been so many sensations, piling one upon another--not
in the memory of the oldest employee at the State House. The
Springfield _Republican_ had published a powerful editorial,
underscoring the doubts as to the men’s guilt; Seward Collins,
publisher of the _Bookman_, had put up the money to insert it as a
full-page advertisement in every Boston newspaper. The _Globe_ had
refused the money; others had run the ad that morning, and the State
House gang was furious. Then, bright and early, who should walk in but
Waldo Cook, editor of the _Republican_--sixty-two years of age, and the
most respected journalist in New England. He came with a deputation of
editors to see the Governor, and the private secretary tackled him. “I
understand, Mr. Cook, that you got twenty thousand dollars from the
defense committee for that editorial.” “It’s a damned lie!” said the
editor.
“I suppose they get used to taking money here in the State House,” said
Cornelia; and O’Connor grinned. The Governor himself was no better than
his secretary, when it came to repeating charges without evidence. He
had said to one deputation that Professor Frankfurter had been paid
great sums by the defense; he would go on saying this, even though he
had been many times assured that it was false. He was obsessed with
hatred of Frankfurter, and blamed him more than any other; he would
accuse people of having read Frankfurter’s book, and if they admitted
this crime, he would not hear them any longer.
XVI
The two ladies were ushered into the presence: two persistent pests
who had sneaked into a man’s home, seeking to undermine his domestic
peace! Nevertheless, he would be polite. He had set himself the task of
remaining here until midnight, and seeing every one who came; and one
person was about the same as the next.
He started at once on the aggressive. “My wife tells me that you
ladies still don’t think the men had a fair trial. But you must know
they had three trials--one before Judge Thayer, one before the Lowell
Commission, and one which I have conducted in these rooms. I tell you
that I would not ask for my own son any fairer trial than that which
took place before Mr. Lowell.”
Said Cornelia: “It is the first principle of our law that the accused
shall be confronted by the witnesses against them. But Sacco and
Vanzetti did not see many of the witnesses who appeared before Mr.
Lowell.”
“Surely you must realize the absurdity of such a proposition! How could
those desperate anarchists have been brought every day to the State
House?”
“All right, if it is too much trouble to conform to the principles of
our law, let us follow our convenience--but then don’t claim that it is
a fair trial.”
“The men were represented by the best counsel.”
“Even the counsel were barred sometimes; they were not present at