Boston a novel
America a vassal of what the orators called the “Bolshevikis,” or
sometimes, like Judge Webster Thayer, the “arnychists.”
BOSTON
_A Novel by_
UPTON SINCLAIR
VOLUME II
UPTON SINCLAIR
STATION A
PASADENA, CALIFORNIA
COPYRIGHT · 1928 · BY
UPTON SINCLAIR
MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
First and Second Printings
before publication
CHAPTER XIII
TRIAL BY JURY
I
“Court!” shouted the bailiff, and pounded on the floor with his
“wand.” It was the court-room at Dedham, in Norfolk County, instead of
Plymouth, so it was a different bailiff, but he looked exactly like the
other, and so did his wand and uniform. There entered the same thin,
shrunken old gentleman with white mustache and face like parchment,
wearing the same voluminous black silk robe. The lawyers and spectators
rose with the same show of reverence, and the bailiff pounded the
floor again and repeated the ancient formula: “Hear ye! Hear ye! All
persons having anything to do before the Honorable, the Justices of
the Superior Court, now sitting within and for the County of Norfolk,
draw near, give your attention, and you shall be heard! God save the
Commonwealth of Massachusetts!”
Also there was the same district attorney, Fred Katzmann, blond hair
and bursting red face, round, pulpy and smooth-shaven, his plump
figure and manner of elaborate cordiality to his equals and Prussian
sternness to his inferiors. There were three assistants; one of them
was a “ticquer,” like Judge Thayer, and presently they were to put on a
witness who was a “ticquer,” and there would be three of them in solemn
confrontation, all blinking away, but not keeping time. There was
Lee Swenson, his lanky western figure outtowering the rest, his face
haggard from long nights of work, his black clothes hanging loose about
his frame--but he had made the concession to Massachusetts sentiment of
getting his hair cut. There was Fred Moore, from California, alert and
aggressive; and the McAnarneys, associate counsel, two Irish Catholic
brothers, retained in a vain hope of contributing respectability to
anarchist wops accused of murder.
The court-room was crowded: a great number of “veniremen,” to be
questioned as possible jurors, and many spectators, more than could
find seats. The newspapers had been full of the case, the desperate
character of the criminals, the radical agitation concerning them,
the precautions taken by the government to protect the court. The
judge and the district attorney had a bodyguard day and night. Picked
men from several police departments of Norfolk County were on duty;
fifteen armed men scattered about the court-room, and three more at
each door. Male spectators were searched thoroughly as they entered
the court-room, and women had their handbags opened. An atmosphere of
tension, almost of war.
Vanzetti was brought by armed guards in an automobile from Charlestown
Prison, “where he is serving a sentence of from twelve to fifteen years
for the Bridgewater hold-up”--so said the papers, and the veniremen
read it and talked about it; when they became jurors, they were assumed
to be ignorant of Vanzetti’s previous conviction, and all persons who
respected the legal system of the Commonwealth would solemnly pretend
to accept this fiction. Almost in the center of the court-room was the
steel “cage,” shaped like a piano box with fancy grillwork, open in
front, a psychological device for overcoming the legal presumption that
a wop is innocent until he is proved guilty. The jurors gaze at him
locked in throughout the trial, and by the time they are ready to vote
they know him as a creature who belongs in a cage. Near the jury box
was a tall standard, with an American flag.
A stir in the audience; the bandits were coming! A side door of the
court-room opened, and there entered several policemen and then a guard
with a handcuff on his wrist, and then a wop made safe with the other
handcuff on his wrist, and another handcuff on his other wrist, and
another wop chained to that; this second wop with a handcuff on his
other wrist, and another guard chained to that: in short, four men
chained together, the two on the outside being guards and the two on
the inside being alleged bandits; all four symbolizing the fundamental
human fact, that slavery enslaves masters as well as servants. It
was glorious spring sunshine outside, and here were some hundreds of
people who might have been walking in the woods, picking mayflowers, or
sitting on the beach engaged in high philosophic discourse; but they
were crowded in between four white-washed walls, breathing foul air and
shortening their lives, fastened to their seats by manacles of hate,
fear and greed.
A few others, held by love and a sense of justice! “Society matrons
and college girls,” as the newspapers described them, they sat in
silence, watching the procedure, sometimes pretending to be busy
with their “fancy work”; doing their refined best to be unaware of
being the cynosure of all eyes. These were the “Red sympathizers,” or
“pinks,” as patriotic orators derisively called them: women who left
homes of luxury to come and meddle with the course of justice, lending
encouragement to bomb throwers and assassins, and making things harder
for brave officials. Their presence was a continual irritant to the
police, who would have liked to lock such troublemakers up, along with
their anarchist pets.
And yet, mixed with this anger was awe; for some of these were
“blue-bloods,” the wonderful, almost supernatural beings whose names
appeared in the society columns of the papers. To Judge Thayer they
represented everything in the world to which he aspired, and every
now and then he would steal a glance at Mrs. Lois Rantoul--who was
a Lowell--or at Mrs. Cornelia Thornwell or Mrs. Elizabeth Glendower
Evans, as if to see what they were thinking about him; presently his
curiosity would get the better of him, and he would invite one of them
to his chambers, and try to convince her that she was mistaken in
believing these desperate anarchists to be innocent. He, the judge on
the bench, would do that; and little by little the news of it would
spread among lawyers and judges up in Boston, who were under the
necessity of pretending to hold the dogma of judicial infallibility.
II
Between “Web” Thayer and Lee Swenson there existed an antagonism of
temperament, which showed itself the very first hour. In order to
practice in Massachusetts the lawyer should have complied with some
formality. He had not known this, and now Judge Thayer proposed to bar
him from the case. There were hasty conferences among the “blue-blood”
ladies, and they kept the telephone wires to Boston busy; with the
result that next morning when Lee Swenson renewed his application for
judicial courtesy, there were several leading lawyers of the city lined
up in a row behind him. Too bad these great ones could not have stayed
all through the trial, and restrained “Web” Thayer from making their
community a byword throughout the world!
The veniremen, fresh from two days of patriotic celebrations, sat under
the shadow of the flag and heard the black-robed old gentleman explain
to them what patriotic celebrations are for. “You must remember the
American soldier had other duties that he would rather have performed
than those that resulted in his giving up his life on the battlefields
of France, but he, with undaunted courage and patriotic devotion that
brought honor and glory to humanity and the world rendered the service
and made the supreme sacrifice. So I call upon you to render this
service here with the same spirit of patriotism, courage and devotion
to duty as was exhibited by our soldier boys across the seas.”
Such was the mood in which the men of Norfolk County approached this
trial. These were the wops who had sent bombs through the mail two
years ago--so it was whispered--and the Wall Street explosion had
been revenge for their arrest. Now, whoever voted them guilty would
never sleep safe in bed. Wives had hysterics at home, and husbands
promised to “lie out of it” at any cost; so, one after another, they
took the stand and swore to a disbelief in capital punishment, or to
an invincible conviction regarding the case. After three days a panel
of five hundred veniremen had been exhausted, and still five jurors
were lacking. Such a thing had never been known in the history of the
county, and newspapers made “streamer heads” out of the desperate
dangerousness of the situation.
It happened that on the night of June 3rd, Representative Samuel Wragg
was being made the worshipful grand master of the Masonic Lodge of the
town of Needham. Fred Katzmann, the district attorney, was a Mason,
and the slain paymaster of the shoe company had also been a Mason. His
worshipful brothers would not shrink from their duty to his memory.
The father of Representative Wragg, a deputy sheriff, appeared without
warning at the ceremony, and notified the members of the lodge to
appear in court next morning. That surely seemed to violate the law,
which specifies that in such an emergency special veniremen shall be
summoned “from among the bystanders.” But Judge Thayer overruled the
objections of the defense--just as he overruled Lee Swenson’s efforts
to question the veniremen.
One of the jurors selected over the protest of the defense was Walter
Ripley, an old man who had been chief of police of the city of
Quincy. For many years Ripley had watched juries file in and out of
court-rooms, but never had he seen one stand and salute the flag. But
now, when he was made foreman of the jury, he set a new precedent for
the Commonwealth; every time he entered the jury box, he faced the flag
and solemnly saluted it. That was his way of “telling the world.” These
anarchists--the male population of New England made an obscene word
out of it--were trying to “tear down the flag,” and he was going to
show them. On his way to court he had met an old friend in the railroad
station, and said that he was going to act as a juror in the trial of
two “guinneys.” “Damn them, they ought to hang anyway!” said Ripley,
according to the affidavit made by his friend several months later.
III
Joe Randall was attending the trial as a newspaperman, representing
some labor papers. Also there was John Nicholas Beffel, representing
the Federated Press. These two mixed with the other reporters, and
sat at lunch with them in the Dedham Inn, and so got all the “inside
dope.” This was irritating to Judge Thayer, who naturally assumed that
all the newspapermen were on his side, and was accustomed to join them
at lunch in their private dining room, and tell them what he wanted
to have published. It happened that the Italian Government had sent
a representative to attend the trial, to make sure that two Italian
citizens received fair play; this gentleman, the Marquis Ferrante,
naturally did not understand that there could be such a thing as a
“radical” newspaperman, so he talked freely to Beffel, and gave him a
carefully worded statement, intended as a broad hint to Judge Thayer.
“The Italian authorities are deeply interested in the case of Sacco
and Vanzetti, and this trial will be closely followed by them. They
have complete confidence that the trial will be conducted solely as
a criminal proceeding, without reference to the political or social
beliefs of any one involved.”
Beffel made carbon copies of this statement, and gave it to the other
men. The judge came in, and after he had finished his lunch and
was ready to leave, one of the reporters handed him a copy of the
statement. He read it, and did not fail to get its hidden meaning. His
face flushed, and with a gesture of anger he said, “Why, that fellow