Boston a novel
“Oh, you brute! How dare you!” And when he turned and came at her,
there was a moment before she realized that she was no longer a lady,
able to give orders to a policeman. Only when he thrust his club into
the abdomen of a woman in front of her, and sent the woman reeling
into a snow-bank, did Cornelia realize her danger, and turn and run.
Yes, she, the widow of an ex-governor of the Commonwealth--she who had
lived for forty years in a palace, and been waited upon by servants and
honored by all the world--she ran! And in good earnest, as fast as she
knew how, because the “brute” had heard her cry, and meant to get her
if he could. That she escaped was only because her friend Brini and
others crowded in and took the blows. Incidentally they took the club
from the policeman, and got away with it, and were very proud of the
souvenir!
But that did not comfort Cornelia. The ignominy of her experience had
brought tears of rage into her eyes; she would never forget it, and
for the rest of her life she would be an illustration of the fact,
well-known in the labor movement, that members of the leisure class
who take an interest in the cause are apt to become more radical than
the workers themselves. Of two thousand participants in the Plymouth
cordage strike, only one had ever thought of a policeman as a servant
to whom she might give orders.
Cornelia had been born in Massachusetts, and had lived all her life
there. She had really believed about her state, or commonwealth, as
it prefers to call itself, all the fine things its leaders and rulers
had told her. She had listened to orations about Pilgrim fathers and
New England town-meetings, the cradle of liberty and the hub of the
universe and all the rest. Here she was only forty miles from Boston,
for practical purposes in its suburbs; within sight of Plymouth rock, a
shrine so sacred that it had a miniature temple built over it; and to
her consternation she found herself with no rights that any policeman
or private detective was bound to respect. Unless, of course, she chose
to declare herself, to cease to be a cordage worker on strike, and
become a member of the ruling caste! She went to a police-court, and
heard workers testify as to unprovoked assaults, and heard a judge give
the police a mild rebuke for their conduct; and then she went back to
the picket-line, and saw the same thing going on, precisely as if no
judges or courts existed.
And here was the significant thing--out of several thousand people, she
was the only one who was surprised! The rest, no matter how angry and
excited they became, always mentioned that much worse had happened at
Lawrence and Lowell and Fall River and Milford and a string of other
places! “My gosh, what you t’ink?” said Alfonsina Brini. “You t’ink dey
let worker win strike if can help?” And when Cornelia wanted to know
if the police belonged to the cordage company, her landlady’s response
was, “Who else is it for belong?”
IV
Cornelia, of course, had been on the inside of her city’s affairs, and
she knew the history of the Boston police force. The Irish-Catholics
had carried an election and captured the city; whereupon the old New
England element had passed a state law, taking control of the police
away from Boston, and vesting it in the governor of the Commonwealth,
who was still an Anglo-Saxon gentleman. It was the practice to
rent out this force to neighboring towns; and they had developed a
strike-breaking department, subject to call by all manufacturers and
mill-owners. The force worked hand in glove with the private detective
agencies, exchanging records and information. So had been evolved
a complete technique of labor-smashing; and all in darkness--the
newspapers proceeding upon the principle that what the public didn’t
know wouldn’t hurt it.
Cornelia Thornwell, watching this system in operation, found herself
crying out in bewilderment. How could the rich, her kind of people,
be so blind? How could they overlook the consequences of teaching
the workers such contempt for law? What was the use of talking about
Americanization, when, in a time of crisis, you denied every right of
citizens, and even of human beings? You herded them like cattle, you
beat them like dogs--and then you were surprised and shocked if they
turned and bit you in the back of the leg! Before this month’s strike
was over, Cornelia had come to feel that she would never blame these
working people for anything they might do.
The case of Vanzetti was before her day by day. This dreamer-idealist
was so built that he suffered more with other people’s pains than with
his own. When he half-carried a shuddering body off the picket-line,
and washed a torn and bloody scalp with a basin of water and a rag,
the tears ran down his cheeks, and his hands shook. And then, that
evening, he turned up at the Brini home with a gun! He, the apostle
of brotherhood--the tender-hearted one who had refused to let a sick
kitten be killed--he was getting ready to kill policemen! To be sure
it was not a very efficient weapon, a five-chambered revolver of an
old type, much rusted; and Cornelia could see from the way her friend
handled it that he hardly knew which end was which. When she tried
to dissuade him from his course, Mrs. Brini laughed and told her not
to worry, Bart would not shoot anybody; he had once gone hunting
with another young fellow, who had shot a bird, and Bart had been so
affected by the sight of the dying creature that he had been unhappy
for days, and had never gone hunting again.
“But if he’s not going to use it, why carry it?” protested Cornelia.
“If they catch him with it, they’ll send him to jail surely.”
To which Vanzetti made answer, “When I go jail for worker, I helpa
cause.” Which seemed to Cornelia a dark and obscure saying. How could
it help the cause of the workers, for a poor Italian ditch-digger, whom
nobody had ever heard of, to be sent to jail?
V
The real meaning of the gun was the coming of Galleani. The anarchists
were determined that the fallacious arguments of the “riformistas”
must be answered, and they had summoned their great leader and teacher
to state their side. There was opposition to this among the other
strike-leaders, and at first they refused to have the Galleani meeting
in their hall; they were trying to avoid provocation, not wanting the
newspapers to portray them as extremists. It was only after Galleani
had promised to tone down his utterances and to avoid incitement to
violence that they agreed to let him be heard.
He came to the Brini home the afternoon of the meeting, so Cornelia
got a good look at him: a benevolent and paternal figure, who might
have been dressed up for Santa Claus; broad-shouldered and stout,
dressed in a long frock coat like a clergyman, with an “alderman” in
front, and bushy white whiskers spread above it. He was at once hero
and granddaddy to the Italian workers; they would gaze at him in awe
and call him “Maestro,” and then they would feed him on cakes and wine,
and pat him on the sleeve, and call him “Nonno.” He was their thinker,
their great student, who read everything and knew everything, and told
them about it once a week in their paper, “La Cronaca Sovversiva,” the
“Revolutionary Chronicle,” which had a circulation of ten thousand, the
fighting organ of the Italians of New England. Its elderly editor lived
in honorable poverty, supporting a wife and four children upon a salary
of eight dollars a week, eked out by gifts from those who had more. His
overcoat was frayed, and fastened at the neck with a large safety-pin,
but that did not keep him from being a very dignified gentleman.
In his train came a bodyguard of a score or so of Italian workers, some
of them not yet out of their teens, but all in grim earnest. There were
rumors that the police meant to break up the meeting and arrest the
orator, and these young fellows were here to see about it--every one
with a gun in his overcoat pocket, and some with two, and a dirk for
good measure. Among them was a Jewish lad out of the slums of New York,
at that time employed on a Boston newspaper, and later to be known as
Michael Gold. He saw a dingy New England town, with dirty snow trodden
underfoot and gray clouds overhead turning soon to night, and--so
it seemed to the visitor--not less than a million of policemen. The
little band of rebels came like Daniel into the lion’s den; they were
determined to fight, rather than let their leader be taken. Fortunately
no trouble occurred--else America might have exchanged a proletarian
playwright, a very scarce article, for a revolutionary martyr, of whom
it has had far too many.
Cornelia went with her Italian friends to the meeting. She could not
understand what the orator was saying, but she enjoyed the powerful
vibrant voice, and shared the thrill of the audience; afterwards her
friends would tell her what had been said, for as long as she cared to
listen. Luigi Galleani advised them to build up their moral forces,
opposing to the brutality of the police their iron will to brotherhood
and solidarity. He told them that they were the sole creators of
wealth, and that some day, not so far away, they would take possession
of their own. He told them to beware of self-styled leaders, persons
who set themselves over the masses and presumed to control them. He
told them to free their minds from superstition, reverence for gods
and priests and judges and policemen; for they themselves were their
own gods, their own judges, and the enforcers of their law; that was
right which their conscience and sense of brotherhood justified to
them. Once as a girl in Boston Cornelia had attended a lecture by
a certain well-known Mr. Emerson; she had heard about a queer New
England recluse, Mr. Thoreau, author of a pamphlet entitled, “On the
Duty of Civil Disobedience.” So there was nothing strange to her in
these high-sounding ideas; the only trouble was, that the higher they
sounded, the more difficult it was to bring them down to earth. One
and all, the leaders in this strike preached solidarity, but they were
not able to achieve it among themselves, and so their followers were
scattered and their energies wasted.
VI
The state board was pleading with the workers to accept a ten per cent
raise; and some wanted to say yes, and others no, and some said it was
a trap, because the company had not offered ten and surely the offer
should come before the acceptance! There was more wrangling in the
meetings, and Vanzetti would leap upon the table and shout, “Traditore!
Trait’!” and others would outshout him and drag him down. He would come
home, heartsick, declaring that the spokesman for the Portuguese had
sold out to the companee, and all the sufferings of the strikers were
going for nought.
The strike had lasted a full month, and the workers’ money was
exhausted, and some were sneaking back to work, and the rest were
desperate with fear. The police had come and broken up their meetings
and closed their hall, and what more could they do? The Italians met
secretly, here and there, to decide whether they should trust the
board. All but a few extremists wanted to give up, and it was plain
that these few could never get jobs with the cordage company anyhow.
Cornelia, exhausted by the long ordeal, went home and crept into bed,
and was just falling asleep, when she was disturbed by loud voices
in the house. It was Vanzetti and Culla, with Brini trying to pacify
them. Cornelia was going to sleep in spite of the noise; but suddenly
she heard Vanzetti shout, “Spee-a! Spee-a!” Culla yelled something in
reply, and there was a scuffle and a crash, and Cornelia leaped out of
bed and rushed into the little parlor, to see Vanzetti lying on the