Boston a novel
the defendant did was in the interest of the United States?” And each
time with a broader wink at the jury, a broader grin from the jury in
response. When the defense lawyer objected, “Your Honor please, I now
object to your Honor’s statement as prejudicial to the rights of the
defendants and ask that the statement be withdrawn from the jury”--then
instantly the webthayer was on the alert to protect the record and make
everything look all right. “There is no prejudicial remark made that I
know of, and none were intended. I simply asked you, sir, as to whether
you propose to offer evidence as to what you said to me.”
After which he went on to repeat the sneer and rub it in; and closed,
as usual, by telling the wolverine or lynx how to get back to the
neck-chewing: “I will let you inquire further as to what he meant by
the expression.” So, of course, Katzmann took the hint, and went on,
exactly as if there had been no interruption: “What did you mean when
you said yesterday you loved a free country?”
VII
Poor Nick! He was a talkative, eager young fellow, a propagandist;
and for fourteen months and two days they had had him behind steel
bars. He had boiled, he had seethed, he had all but exploded. And now
suddenly he saw a hope! “Give me a chance to explain,” he pleaded;
and the cunning prosecutor said: “I am asking you to explain now.”
Actually, the great Mr. Katzmann asked him to explain! The great
Judge Thayer said it would be all right for him to explain! The jury,
the spectators, everybody was ready to listen--while he told what he
thought about America, about Italy, about liberty, about the workers
and their rights, the rich and the poor, good food and vegetables,
schools, free speech, Debs, the capitalist class, Harvard College, D.
Rockefeller, Morgan, working people, war, socialism, Abraham Lincoln,
Abe Jefferson, the Irish, the Germans, the French, governments,
devilment and robbery--everything! Perhaps he could not convert them,
but at least he could make them understand him!
Forgive him if his stump-speech is long--he has all the conclusions
of a lifetime to state! Forgive him if it is jumbled--he has no time
to arrange it, he does not know at what moment they may shut him off
again and lock him up for another fourteen months! Forgive him if it is
incoherent--he is groping desperately for words in a strange tongue,
stammering, halting, starting again, tripping himself up with his
excitement, the intensity of his convictions. And meantime the bland
prosecutor stands silent, smiling--why should he trouble to work,
when his victim will hang himself with his own rope? The judge is
content, for he knows it will look well in the record--the defendant
has had a chance to express himself, no possible claim that he was
misrepresented. Most content of all are the jury-men--because they have
power to punish a wop who is insulting and defiling all their most
sacred Yankee prejudices.
Said Nicola Sacco, in defense of his life:
“When I was in Italy, a boy, I was a Republican, so I always thinking
Republican has more chance to manage education, develop, to build some
day his family, to raise the child and education, if you could. But
that was my opinion; so when I came to this country I saw there was not
what I was thinking before, but there was all the difference, because
I been working in Italy not so hard as I been work in this country. I
could live free there just as well. Work in the same condition but not
so hard, about seven or eight hours a day, better food. I mean genuine.
Of course, over here is good food, because it is bigger country, to any
those who got money to spend, not for the working and laboring class,
and in Italy is more opportunity to laborer to eat vegetable, more
fresh, and I came in this country. When I been started work here very
hard and been work thirteen years, hard worker, I could not been afford
much a family the way I did have the idea before. I could not put any
money in the bank; I could no push my boy some to go to school and
other things. I teach over here men who is with me. The free idea gives
any man a chance to profess his own idea, not the supreme idea, not to
give any person, not to be like Spain in position, yes, about twenty
centuries ago, but to give a chance to print and education, literature,
free speech, that I see it was all wrong. I could see the best men,
intelligent, education, they been arrested and sent to prison and died
in prison for years and years without getting them out, and Debs, one
of the great men in his country, he is in prison, still away in prison,
because he is a Socialist. He wanted the laboring class to have better
conditions and better living, more education, give a push his son if he
could have a chance some day, but they put him in prison. Why? Because
the capitalist class, they know, they are against that, because the
capitalist class, they don’t want our child to go to high school or
college or Harvard College. There would be no chance, there would not
be no,--they don’t want the working class educationed; they want the
working class to be a low all the times, be underfoot, and not to be
up with the head. So, sometimes, you see, the Rockefellers, Morgans,
they give fifty,--I mean they give five hundred thousand dollars to
Harvard College, they give a million dollars for another school. Every
day say, ‘Well, D. Rockefeller is a great man, the best man in the
country.’ I want to ask him who is going to Harvard College? What
benefit the working class they will get by those million dollars they
give by Rockefeller, D. Rockefellers. They won’t get, the poor class,
they won’t have no chance to go to Harvard College because men who is
getting $21 a week or $30 a week, I don’t care if he gets $80 a week,
if he gets a family of five children he can’t live and send his child
and go to Harvard College if he wants to eat everything nature will
give him. If he wants to eat like a cow, and that is the best thing
but I want men to live like men. I like men to get everything that
nature will give best, because they belong,--we are not the friend of
any other place, but we are belong to nations. So that is why my idea
has been changed. So that is why I love people who labor and work and
see better conditions every day develop, makes no more war. We no want
fight by the gun, and we don’t want to destroy young men. The mother
been suffering for building the young man. Some day need a little more
bread, so when the time the mother get some bread or profit out of that
boy, the Rockefellers, Morgans, and some of the peoples, high class,
they send to war. Why? What is war? The war is not shoots like Abraham
Lincoln’s and Abe Jefferson, to fight for the free country, for the
better education to give chance to any other peoples, not the white
people but the black and the others, because they believe and know they
are mens like the rest, but they are war for the great millionaire. No
war for the civilization of men. They are war for business, million
dollars come on the side. What right we have to kill each other? I
been work for the Irish. I have been working with the German fellow,
with the French, many other peoples. I love them people just as I
could love my wife, and my people for that did receive me. Why should
I go kill them men? What he done to me? He never done anything, so I
don’t believe in no war. I want to destroy those guns. All I can say,
the Government put the literature, give us educations. I remember in
Italy, a long time ago, about sixty years ago, I should say, yes,
about sixty years ago, the Government they could not control very much
those two,--devilment went on, and robbery, so one of the government
in the cabinet he says, ‘If you want to destroy those devilments, if
you want to take off all those criminals, you ought to give a chance to
Socialist literature, education of people, emancipation. That is why I
destroy governments, boys.’ That is why my idea I love Socialists. That
is why I like people who want education and living, building, who is
good, just as much as they could. That is all.”
VIII
July 7th was the date of this oration. Three days previously all
patriots had celebrated the Declaration of Independence, with its
opening assertion that “all men are created equal.” If the author
of that document, “Abe Jefferson,” could have been present in the
Dedham court-house, he would have been able to understand the
blundering protest of an uneducated foreigner, chained for life to an
edge-trimming machine in a shoe-factory. But not so this jury, not this
judge nor this prosecuting attorney! To them it was treason; and the
moment the orator ceased, the wolverine or lynx was on his neck again.
“And that is why you love the United States of America? She is back
more than twenty centuries like Spain, is she?”
Worse yet, the presumptuous wop had dared to insult Harvard College!
The district attorney waited until after lunch, to refresh himself
and gather his energies to deal with such insolence. “Did you say
in substance you could not send your boy to Harvard? Don’t you
know Harvard educates more boys of poor people free than any other
university in the United States of America?”
The defense lawyers objected, but were overruled, and poor Sacco had
to answer. If he had been an authority on educational statistics, his
answer would have been that Harvard was educating free something over
one hundred students, while the University of Wisconsin had educated
free in that year five thousand, eight hundred and ninety-five, and
the University of California had educated free eleven thousand, three
hundred and forty.
But alas, poor Nick was not an authority on educational statistics,
and could only say that he didn’t know; thereby confessing to a more
serious crime than first degree murder. Said the outraged Mr. Katzmann:
“So without the light of knowledge on that subject, you are condemning
even Harvard University, are you, as being a place for rich men?”
More argument, more interruptions; the defense lawyers protesting,
Judge Thayer overruling them--he and Katzmann like two skillful
basket-ball players, keeping the ball in play between them and working
it down the field to the goal. “Did you intend to condemn Harvard
College?” (Objection overruled.) “Were you ready to say none but the
rich could go there without knowing about offering scholarships?”
(Objection overruled.) “Does your boy go to the public schools? Are
there any schools in the town you come from in Italy that compare with
the school your boy goes to?” (Objection.) And then, free nursing in
the town of Stoughton! The number of children in the schools of Boston,
and what did Sacco know about it! Said Mr. McAnarney: “I object to that
answer. I object to the question and the answer.” Said Judge Thayer:
“The question may stand, and the answer also.”
To Cornelia Thornwell, watching this scene, listening to these
interminable wrangles, this was not a real procedure in a court; this
was some kind of crazy dream, a world of cross-questions and crooked
answers, another Alice in Wonderland. Yes, that was it--Cornelia was
in the home of the White Rabbit and the March Hare, the Mock Turtle
and the Queen of Hearts! “He’s murdering the time! Off with his head!”
A world where things changed their form suddenly, where they grew
enormously big and terrifying and then shrunk to littleness, so that
you had to laugh at them! A world in which a blond and genial gentleman
with bursting red pulpy face turned suddenly into a wolverine or lynx,
chewing a deer’s neck--and then into a basketball player, romping down
a field with a judge! Anything but a responsible public official,
conducting a judicial procedure involving human life!
I’ll be judge, I’ll be jury,