Boston a novel
Priscilla, whom they remind of newly born mice.” Another said, “I leave
my half house to serve as a home for elderly gentlemen of good family
who can prove that they have been robbed by their relatives.” Finally,
his income from stocks and bonds of the Thornwell Mills Company was to
be used to establish a chair at some New England theological seminary
which would agree to have a course of lectures delivered every year
under the auspices of “The Ahab Adams Thornwell Foundation for the
Precise and Final Refutation of the Lyman Beecher Interpretation of the
Doctrine of Infant Damnation as Expounded in Holy Writ.” Ahab had heard
Lyman Beecher at the age of twenty-five, and had waited sixty years to
have him precisely and finally refuted.
At family funerals the hardest hearts are softened and the fiercest
prides are humbled. Betty remembered that Great-uncle Ahab had once
given her a pony, riding it all the way to her home, with his long
legs reaching to the ground. So it was a good time for her mother
to plead with her. Yes, Betty would promise to engage in no further
public disturbances until she had finished that year at Radcliffe;
and thereafter she was willing to spend a year abroad and become
cultured--could Grannie go with her? The little minx asked it quite
soberly; and Deborah, equally without trace of a smile, explained that
the family was under great obligations to Cousin Letitia Adams Quincy,
who had nursed Betty once as a little girl, while Deborah herself had
been in Europe.
Cousin Letitia was a third or fourth cousin--one of those who had
arrived too early for the funeral of Josiah, and got out and walked
about the estate for half an hour, in order not to make herself
conspicuous. Because of such behavior she was known as a perfect lady,
and now was to receive the poor relation’s ultimate reward. Deborah had
interviewed her and ascertained that she had read nothing since “The
Marble Faun”--except the “Sunday School Examiner’s Bulletin” and the
religious and genealogical pages of the _Transcript_. She was judged
immune to the contagion of redness, and the right person to chaperon
Betty’s grand tour. The girl accepted her with a meekness which would
have made Deborah suspicious, if the latter’s natural shrewdness had
not been smothered under a heavy load of self-sufficiency.
X
It was high time to get excitable young rebels out of the country; the
family realized that more and more clearly every day. For it appeared
that the signing of the armistice was not going to mean peace; not
even the signing of a treaty would mean it. Our troops were to stay
in Germany; worse yet, they were to stay in Siberia and Archangel,
and wage President Wilson’s private war upon the Russian people. The
American army and navy were to serve as a world police-force for the
capitalist system. Exactly what Cornelia had seen the Boston police do
in Plymouth, the national police were going to do all over Europe and
Asia, sometimes under our command, sometimes under British command. And
any persons at home who objected to this program would be hit over the
head with the so-called espionage act; a law enacted to punish enemy
spies, and now serving to jail American citizens for protesting against
attacks upon a friendly people without a declaration of war.
It was the White Terror. Conducted partly by mobs, and partly by
police and government agents acting as mobs, it had for its aim the
destruction of every means through which the American people might
learn how their blood and treasure were being wasted. It stopped at no
crime; the law-enforcers of city, state and nation became the leading
criminals. In New York four Russian boys and a girl, all of them
under age, attempting to distribute a circular protesting against the
invasion of Russia, were seized by the police and tortured until one of
them died; the rest were prosecuted in the federal courts and received
sentences of twenty years’ imprisonment.
Such things were happening all over the country, and made trouble
for well-meaning persons like Cornelia, who sought to argue for
constitutional methods. How could she ask her friend Vanzetti to settle
the grievances of the workers by political action, when again and again
socialist candidates were thrown off the ballot, or, when elected, were
denied their seats? How could she urge him to obey the law, when the
law-makers and law-enforcers themselves defied it? A year or two ago
Vanzetti had made to her the statement, “Capitalist is most fighting
man in whole world”; and never did the capitalist work harder to prove
that the anarchist was right.
The victims of this White Terror would strike back; and if they struck
blindly, it was the way the lesson had been taught them. May Day was an
occasion for celebration of the Russian revolution by all who believed
in it; and on the day before May Day, a package arrived by mail at the
home of a United States senator in Georgia, especially conspicuous for
his “red-baiting.” The package was opened by a Negro maid, and exploded
and blew her to pieces. That led to hurried searches, and the finding
of a score or so of bombs in the New York post-office, addressed to
various persons of prominence, and detained because they had not enough
postage paid.
May Day came in Boston, with that terrible news upon the front page of
the papers. The socialists had several meetings scheduled--and they
were a legal party, not advocating violence in any form. But this was a
distinction the newspapers and those who controlled them were anxious
to conceal. When the audience emerged from one hall, and attempted to
march down the street to another hall where there was another meeting,
they were set upon by three hundred policemen and a mob of soldiers
and sailors, thoroughly “americanized” by a year in Europe. The
socialists, and many innocent passers-by who happened to look foreign,
were chased through the streets, hunted out in stores where they sought
refuge, and pummeled and clubbed into insensibility. The police loaded
them into patrol-wagons, and then beat them over the heads while in the
wagons; they loaded them into trucks, and permitted the soldiers and
sailors to beat them--there were even cases of policemen lending their
clubs to members of the mob who thought some victim insufficiently
mishandled. They raided the second hall and beat up the audience;
the fighting went on for two or three hours, until four persons were
killed, and a hundred and sixteen dragged off to jail. Among them was a
son of Boris Sidis, of Harvard, and H. W. L. Dana, a grandson of Henry
Wadsworth Longfellow and of Richard Henry Dana.
So once more Cornelia heard the thud of hickory clubs on human flesh
and bone. This time Betty heard it too, and both of them had to run
for their lives. They got into a cab and drove home, both trembling
so that they could hardly use their hands, both white and tearful,
with a mixture of fear and rage. They spent hours of anguish together,
telephoning to find out who had been killed and who had been hurt and
who was in jail; then to get lawyers, and persons with property for
bail-bonds--all the routine so familiar to the seasoned “radical,” and
so startling to the newcomer who still believes in his country.
In the morning Cornelia would go to court, and perhaps serve as a
witness. Betty could do nothing but return to college and keep quiet,
and hope that no one would report her to her parents. She had not meant
to break her promise--but how could one know that going to a socialist
meeting was disorderly conduct?
Judge Hayden was the magistrate presiding at the trials, a majestic
gentleman, as they all tried to be. But under the strain of his intense
patriotism, he forgot his dignity, and broke loose and delivered
tirades--and not at the police for lending their clubs to be used in
beating socialists. He did not punish a single one of the assailants,
but sent the victims to jail for varying terms. “The uneducated and the
overeducated,” was one of his sneers--which sounded peculiar in Boston.
It was to be expected that when the next lot of bombs went off,
one of them should tear out the front of Judge Hayden’s home. In
Constantinople under the rule of the sultans it was said that the state
of social discontent could be ascertained from the number of fires
which occurred in the city; when the number increased unduly, some
grafting officials would be strangled, and the fires would grow fewer.
But Boston is not an easy-going place like old Turkey; Boston is a
Puritan stronghold, and its rulers are stiff-necked. The more numerous
the bombs, the more they would increase the causes of bombs. The answer
of the authorities to the bombing of Judge Hayden was to put Galleani
on a steamer and ship him back to Italy; also to plant several spies
among the Boston anarchists.
XI
This was while Betty was saying good-by to her friends, including
these same anarchists. Without a word to the family, Betty and her
grandmother stole away to visit a band of desperados who were at that
time the theme of thousands of words in the files of the Department
of Justice, the American Protective League, and the million-dollar
detective agencies. They actually spent a night in an anarchist home
in Plymouth, and listened to jokes about “bombe di pistacchio,” and
heard Vanzetti’s story of old Galleani’s parting from his wife and four
children.
This was one of the ingenious new methods of torture which the White
Terror had devised. They would grab a man in the middle of the night
and lock him up in a police cell, and badger him there until he
admitted that he did not believe in government, or that he regarded
government as an affair of violence--something they made it easy enough
to admit! They would then present the confession to the immigration
authorities, and a warrant of deportation would be signed, and the
victim would be taken secretly on board a steamer--his wife and
children left behind, with no money to follow him, and nothing but to
beg or starve.
Vanzetti had given up his “picka shov’.” His friends had urged that the
work was too hard for him, and he had invested his savings in a fish
business belonging to an Italian who was going home. “Fish-business”
sounded most impressive--until you learned that it consisted of a
hand-cart, a pair of scales, and a route. Twice a week he got a barrel
or two of fish, either from the docks or by express from Boston, and
shoved his hand-cart about, ringing a bell and calling, “Pay-shee!
Pay-shee!” He had had this same kind of business once before, said
Alfonsina, but had not been successful, because he let everybody owe
him money. This time he had promised to run it on a strictly cash
basis. Vanzetti grinned, and said that it was a “mosta good business,”
because he met all the Italian women and children in Plymouth, and they
got to know him and feel friendly, and he would say a few words about
“joostice,” and when there was to be a meeting or a “picanic,” no one
could “distriboot” circulars or sell tickets so well as he.
Trando had saved up his money and bought himself a three-quarter size
violin for ten dollars, and a bow for two and a half, and had had
several lessons and learned to play a tune. Of course he was made to
exhibit this accomplishment, with Bart serving as master, keeping the
time with an erect forefinger, cocking his head on one side and judging
critically the pitch of the notes, which were apt to vary slightly from
the normal. It was “Old Black Joe,” a very sad tune, and there were
tears in Alfonsina’s eyes at the finish--though perhaps they were tears
of pride, that this marvelous thing should be coming from her precious
little boy. Through the years that were to come Trando was to play that