Boston a novel
is make crime wave. Is great reech men, spend beeg money--automobile,
gooda dress, fine lady--what you say, lusso--luxury. Poor feller, he
look, he like to live sooch life, have plenty money, plenty girl. He
say, ‘How come it reech man he get it, how come in bég-ginnin’”--Bart
accented the word on the first syllable--“how come in bég-ginnin’ he
make the money? Is reecha man honest? Is it sistema honest? He see
everywhere beeg thief get plenty money, not ever punish. He see, you
steal thousand dollar, you call-èd bandit, you steal million dollar,
you call-èd banker. Is it not true, Nonna?”
Cornelia thought of Jerry Walker and his felt-plants. “It is sometimes
true, Bart.”
“All right, is injoostice. So long you have injoostice, is crime; more
injoostice, more crime. Is like something you make in chimica--it come
all time the same way. But reech man he not like to hear sooch thing,
is better for heem call bad name, make polissman, put heem in blue
clothe, give heem big cloob, send heem out to hit poor feller on head,
put heem in jail. Big crime come, all right, get more polissman, make
thousand dollar what you call it--reward--get plenty stool-pigeon, you
onderstand?”
“Yes, I know what you mean.”
“Is always rotten feller, swear anything for money, send somebody to
jail. All polissman want is catch somebody, all newspaper want is
catch somebody, fill up jail, so reecha man is happy, is what you call
law and order. You wait, Nonna, you see--thousand dollar will make
sure--catch plenty Bridgewater bandit!”
Strange and awful are the fates that dispose of mortals--leading us
blindfolded through curtains of black fog. How could it happen that
Bart could speak such words, and no shaft of lightning split the fog,
no warning finger pierce the curtain, no voice shout in thunder-tones,
“You! You! You!” They sat chatting casually, criticizing each other’s
theories; the children laughed, bringing them pictures of the Goofy
Googles; Alfonsina washed the dinner dishes, and Vincenzo, not being
able to share in the argument, fell asleep in his chair; the gold-fish
wiggled their silken-filmy tails, and the Powers that sent the universe
on its course, benevolent or heedless, omniscient or omninescient, sent
no smallest hint of the fact that Bartolomeo Vanzetti was himself that
“poor feller” whom the thousand-dollar reward was to bring down for the
Bridgewater crime!
VIII
Cornelia went back to Boston, and found a letter from Betty:
“I have been having so many adventures, I hardly know where to
start telling. I have been experiencing very eloquent and romantic
love-making from one of the sons of ‘Archie.’ That is our nickname
for the Austrian arch-duke who came in with the Roumanian armies
and put himself on the throne, to the great dismay of the allies.
This son is tall and somber and splendidly-idle. I can understand
how it is that American husbands are found unsatisfactory. I try
to imagine Father or Uncle James making such speeches! He pays
endless compliments in carefully perfected English; but the trouble
is he doesn’t really know me at all. He is content that I am the
daughter of a rich American banker; he doesn’t guess my political
opinions, and I dare not tell him, because I might lose my job! But
it will be a good thing for His Highness to have his self-assurance
reduced. He says that American girls are made of marble, and I
smile and tell him it is his first contact with a social equal.
Then I have to explain about the Back Bay!
“Also there is an undersecretary at the legation who is eating
his heart out over me. He is quite different, rather tongue-tied,
but serious, I fear. He comes from the middle west, and doesn’t
really know me either--though of course it is possible for him to
understand how I can be virtuous though unchaperoned. I am also
causing misery to a young lady of our mission, who is in love with
the undersecretary. Apparently not all the troubles in Europe are
enough to keep people from entanglements of the heart. I think
it is rather the contrary, the general disorganization upsets
everybody, and leaves the fancy roaming.
“While I am on the subject, I might mention that I was violently
besieged by one of the Bolshevik agents before he took flight to
Switzerland disguised as a chauffeur. He told me I was not truly
a free woman at all, but a wretched little Puritan that would dry
up and blow away at an early age. I showed him Cousin Letitia, who
is still capable of being thrilled, but not of being seduced, even
by the elderly playwright Hubay. There is something inside our
marrow-bones, deeper than we realize, and stronger than our ideas.
Roger Lowell would be surprised to hear that about me! Anyhow, I
am sure there will be no love-affairs for me until I get back to
America; it would be like a romance in a morgue.
“The suffering here is dreadful beyond words. I suppose you get
news in the papers, but probably not true, because everything is
propaganda for somebody or something. It really was the charitable
Mr. Hoover who overthrew the Reds here in Hungary. I don’t know
if it is published at home, but here all his aides are proud of
it, and tell the details and boast. We are managed by a California
lawyer, one of Herbert’s intimate friends, and they not merely
blockaded and boycotted Red Hungary, but they bought some of the
labor leaders to overthrow the Bolsheviks.
“It has been like a kaleidescope; you never know when you wake up
in the morning who is governing you--till you get to the office
and hear what happened during the night. The Reds went out, and
then came the Roumanian army with ‘Archie,’ and we had to drive
him out and get a White régime--which is rapidly turning into a
dictatorship. Those poor fool labor-leaders who let themselves be
used to turn out the Reds have mostly been shot or had their skulls
cracked, and I wonder what our noble-minded Herbert thinks about
it. There ought to be some way to make the White gentlemen come sit
in the pools of blood, as we relief-workers have to do.
“It has taught me my lesson; ‘law and order’ talk will never fool
me again. It really seems as if our master-minds want to teach
labor that there can be no middle course, and no honesty or decency
in the class struggle. The Reds here fell because they were too
gentle, and let their enemies plot against them. The Russians made
a clean sweep, so they survive. And don’t let any one fool you
about the amount of killing they did; don’t let any one frighten
you with talk about the ‘mob.’ From this time on I take the dear
‘mob’ to my heart; I am only afraid of dashing young gentlemen
in gaudy uniforms, and elderly diplomats and business men in
dinner-jackets. There isn’t a country in Central Europe where the
Whites haven’t killed ten for every one the Reds have killed, and
in many cases it has been a hundred for one.
“And the worst is, Grannie, these White dictatorships are all
American-made--with guns and uniforms from our army and dollars
from our bankers. They have got an American loan here in Hungary,
and I am wondering if father is in on it. He probably won’t tell
you, but ask Uncle Quincy--he knows. If it’s true, I’ll never take
another dollar from Father--and I’ll tell him so.
“Dear Grannie, do please take care of yourself, because if anything
were to happen to you, what would I do, with not a soul to
understand me? Sometimes I get frightened, and get alone in my room
and have a good cry; because, after all, it is absurd to think that
a girl not yet twenty-one should know more than all her family put
together. You know what Great-aunt Priscilla says, so very calmly:
‘You will be wiser when you are older.’
“Maybe the ‘antis’ were right, Grannie--women are not meant to
meddle in politics! Maybe we ought to stay at home and look after
the babies, like Aunt Clara. But when we get the babies raised, the
old men step in and send them off to the battle-field, so what’s
the use? I go over and over it in my mind, and the only conclusion
is that this generation of girls must go on strike, and refuse to
have babies until the men stop killing. So I shall stick it out,
and when I come back the family will find me worse than ever.
I suppose you are having troubles enough at home; tell me all,
but write as if I did not agree with your ideas. I have a way of
getting this letter smuggled out, but your letters to me may be
opened, and I don’t want to lose my job quite yet.”
IX
Yes, Cornelia had her troubles. The day after New Year’s there burst
upon Boston and the whole country a storm known as the deportations
delirium. To the Quaker Attorney-General had come a brilliant idea; he
would win the Democratic nomination for the presidency, upon the basis
of his heroic services in deporting the Reds. The two million dollars
which Congress had voted him would be turned into a campaign fund for
the glory of Jesus Christ and William Penn.
The ingenious Quaker arranged to lure his victims into public meetings,
and have the police appear suddenly and bar the doors, and sort out
all the foreign ones, and load them into patrol wagons. The problem of
getting the Reds all over the country to come to meetings on the same
night was comparatively simple, because the government had put so many
spies into the radical organizations that they had elected themselves
to office, and were in position to call meetings whenever they pleased.
Also they had been able to vote resolutions and adopt manifestos of
such violence as to make the deportations legally possible. As Federal
Judge Anderson of Boston said when the facts came out in his court: “It
is perfectly clear on the evidence before me that the Government owned
and operated a part, at least, of the Communist Party.” It was one time
when all business men believed in government ownership!
The raids were scheduled for the night of January second, 1920, and
netted some four thousand prisoners. Twenty cities and towns in New
England contributed a thousand--including thirty-nine who had met for
the purpose of organizing a cooperative bakery. The prisoners were
lined up against the walls of police-stations, searched and beaten by
detectives, denied counsel, denied reliable translators, and sentenced
on the spot by officials of the Department of Immigration. They were
loaded into vans and taken to the immigration station in Boston, and
thence to Deer Island prison. In order to make the utmost possible
amount of campaign material for the Quaker Attorney-General, the
victims were chained together in pairs, and paraded down State Street,
past the old State House, and over the rings of cobble-stones that
mark the site of the Boston Massacre. Such a novelty brought newspaper
photographers in swarms, and the story stayed on the front page for
several days. Never such advertising for a presidential candidate.
Also the Department of Justice agents saw to it that good reading
matter was supplied for the pictures. Four bombs had been found at one
meeting, said the report; they were taken to a police station and put
into a pail of water--and apparently dissolved in the water, for they
were never heard of in court. Among the organizations raided was an
amateur dramatic society, which had rented some old guns for use in
a play; so the newspapers reported a “red arsenal.” Apart from stage
properties, the police acquired a total of four firearms: this by a
search of four thousand persons, and raiding their homes and breaking
into their trunks. Apparently they had selected for deportation the
least military group of individuals in America.