Boston a novel
hours he answered the questions of his lawyers. His manner was quiet
and courteous, and his command of English remarkable; he had profited
by his year of study to drop most of his Italian peculiarities, and the
newspapers commented upon his education, so that Cornelia was proud of
her pupil. Only once did he let himself be goaded by Katzmann into a
flash of “redness”; when he had occasion to refer to the place where
some of his friends lived, working on the railroad near Springfield:
“Yes, in a shanty, you know, the little house where the Italian live
and work like a beast, the Italian workingman in this country.”
He told the jury the story of his life: his childhood in Italy, his
slavery to a pastry cook, the breakdown of his health, the death of his
mother. He told about coming to America, his work in the great rich
club in New York City--he no longer called it a “clooba”--and then in
the smart restaurant; his work in the brickyard, the stone quarry, on
the railroad, the Worcester reservoir--near the home of Judge Thayer;
then in a wire mill, then for the Plymouth Cordage Company. He told
about his going to Mexico, because he did not believe in war; he
had learned by now that he had not been liable to the draft, and he
mentioned it, but apparently without result.
He told about his fish-selling business--and the defense counsel
showed his license to dig clams, and the receipts for his fish. All
the morning of the South Braintree crime he had been selling fish in
Plymouth--in Cherry Street, Standish Avenue, Cherry Court, Suosso’s
Lane, Castle Street. A little after the noon hour he had met Rosen,
and bought from him the piece of suiting with a hole in it; Vanzetti
still had the cloth, and it was introduced in evidence. He had taken
Rosen to Mrs. Brini, because she worked in a woolen mill, and was a
judge of cloth. In the afternoon he had left his cart in the yard of
Melvin Corl, the fisherman, and had gone down to the shore, where Corl
was painting a boat, and at the actual moment of the South Braintree
murders he had been chatting with Corl. The owner of the boat-yard,
Gessi, had come along during the talk, and another man, Holmes. Later
Bart had dug clams and bait, and had gone home and had his supper at
six o’clock, and had spent the evening in Plymouth.
He told about his doings from that April fifteenth to the day of his
arrest three weeks later. He had gone to the club in East Boston, and
had been asked to go to New York to see about Salsedo and Elia. But
there Katzmann and Thayer stopped him; it was the intention of the
district attorney to argue that the defendants had no reason to be
afraid on the night of their arrest, and to tell lies to the police.
Katzmann wanted to argue that the worst that anarchists had to fear
was getting a free trip to Italy; that as Sacco was going anyhow,
the claim of fear was obviously silly. The entire ruling class of
Massachusetts was going to maintain that argument for six years; so
the jury must be kept from realizing that sixty-seven hours prior to
the arrest of Sacco and Vanzetti, their friend and comrade Salsedo had
jumped, or had been thrown to his death from the fourteenth story of
the Park Row Building in New York! The defense came back to it, again
and again, but they were blocked here and blocked there, and the real
meaning of the matter was never made clear to the jury.
It was the aim of the prosecution, not so much to refute the testimony
of Vanzetti, as to rouse the prejudices of the jurors against him;
to fill them with emotions of hatred and fear, so that they would be
incapable of thinking; to make them see an anarchist infidel draft
dodger as a depraved wretch, deserving to die many deaths. When the
time came for cross-examination, Mr. Katzmann’s first question had
nothing to do with the problem whether Vanzetti had sat in a bandit car
and pointed a shot-gun out of the rear window; it had to do with the
problem whether the jury was going to find him guilty, regardless of
whether he had sat in the bandit car or not. Said Mr. Katzmann: “So you
left Plymouth, Mr. Vanzetti, in May, 1917, to dodge the draft, did you?”
Mr. Katzmann of course knew perfectly well that Vanzetti had not been
liable to the draft; but he went on to rub in the sneer, with that
mock indignation acquired in the course of eleven years’ service for
the Commonwealth: “When this country was at war, you ran away, so
you would not have to fight as a soldier?” The district attorney was
not interested to question Vanzetti about the South Braintree crime,
and try to prove that he was there; the district attorney was not
interested in trying to break Vanzetti’s alibi; he was only interested
to prove that Vanzetti had lied to the police, and that he was
unpatriotic.
He took up the prisoner’s effort to organize a meeting, and the pitiful
circular he had drafted: “You were going to advise in a public meeting
men who had gone to war? Are you that man?” “Yes, sir,” answered Bart,
quietly, “I am that man, not the man you want me, but I am that man.”
The newspapers made much of this scene; it was what their readers were
hungry for. “A tensely dramatic moment,” said the Boston _Traveler_,
and described how the prosecutor “thundered.” Said the _American_,
“The district attorney’s voice was vibrant with emotion. It thrilled
the spectators.”
V
But it was during the cross-examination of Sacco that the great
official’s vibrations did their heaviest thundering, and the
spectators, and readers of newspapers, got their choicest thrills.
Nicola Sacco had a poor command of English, and had to call for the aid
of the interpreter-crook; also he had poor command of his emotions, and
could be jeered at and goaded, provoked into saying things that would
ruin him. The district attorney asked him seventeen hundred questions;
and more about patriotism than about anything else. Said Mr. Katzmann:
“Did you leave this country in May, 1917?”
Said Sacco: “I can’t answer in one word.”
“Please answer my questions, Mr. Sacco”--“in thundering voice,” the
newspapers said. “One week before the day of the first draft in May,
1917, did you leave this country?” There followed a long dialogue,
a scene which made Cornelia think of a deer in the forest, when a
wolverine or lynx or other fierce creature drops upon him from a tree,
and chews into his neck as he runs. That is a common event in nature;
but in this case appeared a phenomenon unknown to zoology--another
animal running alongside the fleeing deer, to keep any one from
interfering with the neck-chewing process. This creature went by the
name of a webthayer.
“Did you say yesterday you love a free country?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Did you love this country in the month of May, 1917?”
“I did not say,--I don’t want to say I did not love this country.”
“Did you love this country in that month of 1917?”
“If you can, Mr. Katzmann, if you give me that,--I could explain--”
“Do you understand that question?”
“Yes.”
“Then will you please answer it?”
“I can’t answer in one word.”
“You can’t say whether you loved the United States of America one week
before the day you enlisted for the first draft?”
“I can’t say in one word, Mr. Katzmann.”
“Did you love this country in the last week of May, 1917?”
“That is pretty hard for me to say in one word, Mr. Katzmann.”
“There are two words you can use, Mr. Sacco, yes or no. Which one is
it?”
“Yes.”
“And in order to show your love for this United States of America when
she was about to call upon you to become a soldier you ran away to
Mexico.”
That question was, obviously enough, not intended to elicit any
information of use to the jury; that question was, purely and simply,
a sneer. And Katzmann hammered and hammered upon it; eleven separate
times he repeated the word “love.” First, did Sacco run away for love
of his country? Then, did he run away for love of his wife? “Would it
be your idea of showing your love for your wife that when she needed
you, you ran away from her?”
Said Sacco: “I did not run away from her.”
Said Sacco’s lawyer: “I object.”
But the webthayer said: “He may answer,”--and added, with his usual
cunning: “Simply on the question of credibility, that is all.”
So the wolverine or lynx went on with the neck-chewing. “Would it be
your idea of love for your wife that you were to run from her when she
needed you?”
Said Mr. McAnarney: “Pardon me. I ask for an exception on that.”
The webthayer excluded the question; but obligingly indicated to the
neck-chewer how he might go on. “He had not admitted he ran away.”
So, of course, the torture was resumed. “Then I will ask you, didn’t
you run away from Milford so as to avoid being a soldier for the United
States?”
“I did not run away.”
“You mean you walked away?”
“Yes.”
“You don’t understand me when I say ‘run away,’ do you?”
“That is vulgar.”
“That is vulgar?”
“You can say a little intelligent, Mr. Katzmann.”
“Don’t you think going away from your country is a vulgar thing to do
when she needs you?”
“I don’t believe in war.”
“You don’t believe in war?”
“No, sir.”
“Do you think it is a cowardly thing to do what you did?”
“No, sir.”
“Do you think it is a brave thing to do what you did?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Do you think it would be a brave thing to go away from your own wife?”
“No.”
“When she needed you?”
“No.”
VI
The prosecutor kept at the wife question until he had got all the hate
out of it he could, and then he took up the sneer that “wops” come to
America to make money. “Is it because,--is your love for the United
States of America commensurate with the amount of money you can get in
this country per week?”
“Better conditions, yes.”
“Better country to make money, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Is your love for this country measured by the amount of money you can
earn here?”
“I never loved money.”
This went on, until the defense broke in again. Said Mr. Jeremiah
McAnarney: “No, if your Honor please. And I might state now I want my
objection to go to this whole line of interrogation.”
Said the webthayer: “I think you opened it up.”
Said the lawyer, very humbly: “No, if your Honor please, I think I have
not.”
Said the webthayer: “I think you have,”--and went on to give an
argument which for prejudice-carrying capacity exceeded anything the
fertile mind of the district attorney had been able to conceive. It was
the contention of the defendants that on the night of their arrest they
had been going with Boda and Orciani to visit some of the anarchist
comrades, and collect the dangerous literature from their homes, and
hide it until the storm of persecution had blown over. And now here was
the webthayer, elaborating an even more complicated sneer than the one
about love of country and of wife. Said he: “It seems to me you have.
Are you going to claim much of all the collection of the literature
and the books was really in the interest of the United States as well
as these people and therefore it has opened up the credibility of the
defendant when he claims that all that work was done really for the
interest of the United States in getting his literature out of the way?”
Said Mr. McAnarney: “That claim is not presented in anything tantamount
to the language just used by the Court, and in view of the record as it
stands at this time I object to this line of inquiry.”
There followed upon this a phenomenon never observed in any forest;
the wolverine or lynx desisting from his neck-chewing, and letting the
webthayer take his place on the victim’s back! The webthayer liked his
mockery so well that he repeated it five separate times, in detail, and
several other times by implication. “Are you going to claim that what