Boston a novel
an affidavit to the effect that his identification of Sacco was false,
and that the words, “his dead image,” had been put into his mouth by
the assistant district attorney, Mr. Harold Williams, whom the august
Commonwealth was soon to make into a superior court judge.
And then the “Goodridge motion.” Here was the star witness of the
prosecution, whose criminal record had been kept from the jury by
the perfect team-work of those expert basketball players, Messrs.
Katzmann and Thayer. Now the defense got onto the trail of the
several-times-convicted crook, and obtained all his record, the jail
sentences, the numerous wives, and the warrant for horse-stealing in
New York State, which would have meant a long sentence, as a third
conviction. Fred Moore and another man ran their quarry down in the
little town of Vassalboro, Maine, and saw his wrists held out for the
handcuffs. Moore was naïve enough to be surprised that the authorities
did not want this crook any more--neither in Maine, nor in New York,
nor in Massachusetts could the machinery of exact and impartial justice
be prodded into action. Moore, being an Irishman, and emotional, was
emphatic with his victim, and brought down upon his head a stern
rebuke from the just and upright Mr. Justice Thayer for his method of
procedure. Which was all that came of the “Goodridge motion”!
And then the “Andrews motion.” The son of “Fainting Lola” was
discovered, also living among the “Mainiacs.” He consented to come
to meet his mother, who was working as a waitress. He reminded her
of various emotional dramas in which she had played a rôle; with the
result that Lola had more hysterics, and broke down and admitted that
her testimony against Sacco had been “framed.” In the presence of two
well-known labor leaders she signed an affidavit, declaring that her
reason for swearing Sacco’s life away was that “the Commonwealth was
in possession of facts relative to the private life of the affiant
which the affiant was not desirous of having brought out on the witness
stand,” and that by threats based on that knowledge she was “coerced
and intimidated.” She named the four men who had done this; one was
Mike Stewart, inventor of the “theory,” another was Brouillard, a
police officer, the third was Mr. Harold Williams, soon to be a judge,
and the fourth was District Attorney Frederick G. Katzmann.
Another thrill ran through the little band of defenders. For Lola
Andrews had been the other star witness of the prosecution--it was she
of whom Katzmann had said with such intense solemnity to the jury,
“I cannot recall that ever before I have laid eye or given ear to so
convincing a witness as Lola Andrews.” Even the capitalist newspapers
were moved to protest now; the Boston _American_ declared that either
Lola was crazy, “or else some one in the district attorney’s office at
that time ought to be arrested and tried for attempted murder.” Upon
reading that, the police authorities of the august Commonwealth got
busy--not to arrest themselves for attempted murder, but to compel
Lola and Louis to sign new affidavits, declaring that their previous
affidavits were false, and had been obtained by threats from the
defense lawyers.
XV
The Great Novelist who makes up history was desirous of making a
perfect melodrama, and also a perfect demonstration of class justice,
out of the Sacco-Vanzetti case. To that end it was necessary to
provide an answer to the question: what would happen in the pious
Puritan Commonwealth of Massachusetts if a rich man were to commit a
murder? While Sacco and Vanzetti were in jail, awaiting trial, a poor
devil of a Swede by the name of Johnson, having a wife and two young
children, but no job, and no food in the house, and no coal in the
month of January, went into some woods on a private estate, with a saw
and wheelbarrow, for the purpose of gathering dead wood, which was
lying in profusion on the ground. The aged owner of this estate was a
Cunningham, a name of great honor in the fashionable town of Milton;
and in the pride of his name and great possessions he took a rifle and
shot the unarmed Swede. He fired without aiming; the victim had just
got over a fence, escaping. The killer was arrested and brought to
Dedham jail, and spent eight days in a cell near Sacco, and then was
politely bailed out.
Cornelia, in her thinking about Massachusetts justice, had imagined
a rich person committing murder, and had guessed that such a person
would be declared insane. But the case of Commonwealth _vs._ Cunningham
showed her that she had expected too much from the law. The blue-blood
families keep their insane members hidden away in remote wings of
old mansions, and do not permit the stigma to be put upon them in
public proceedings. For thirteen months the killer of John Johnson
did not even have to make a plea. At last he was brought to trial
in Dedham Court House, where Sacco and Vanzetti had faced the jury.
Public feeling had cooled off; and no evidence was produced to prove
that he was either an anarchist, an infidel, or a draft dodger. So
the stern Mr. Katzmann became gracious and mild; the crime was called
“justifiable homicide,” and the killer was acquitted.
Also it was necessary to the perfection of the Sacco-Vanzetti melodrama
that the victims should have continual evidence of the venality of
their persecutors. The Great Novelist arranged it that three more
times during the next six years emissaries should come to the defense,
pointing out the folly of spending so much money upon lawyers’ fees and
circulars, when the small sum of fifty thousand dollars, slipped to the
right lawyers, would set their two friends “on the street.” And lest
the young radicals should be unable to believe that these emissaries
really possessed the power they claimed, the Great Novelist caused what
was known as the “Coakley-Pelletier scandal” to break into continuous
explosion, after the fashion of Chinese firecrackers strung on a line
all the way along a city street. For months the newspapers were filled
with picturesque details about the crimes and sexual misadventures of
Boston millionaires, and the prices they had paid to politicians and
officials.
Dan Coakley was a Democratic lawyer, who had run the city of
Cambridge for some twenty years: a lively personality who had begun
life as a street-car conductor and had given up his job when the
company installed machines to register fares. He had his license as
a conductor, signed by the superintendent of the company, with the
words scrawled across it: “Discharged for neglect of duty.” It had
amused Dan to frame this document, and hang it in his law office,
while he was preparing damage suits which cost the company hundreds of
thousands of dollars. Needless to say, he was an ardent patriot; he had
paid the expenses of the Massachusetts delegation to the Democratic
convention in San Francisco, so that they might vote for the Quaker
attorney-general, who was so heroically smashing the Reds. For years,
if you wanted to get out of trouble in either Middlesex or Suffolk
County, the password was, “See Coakley.”
The district attorney of Suffolk County, which includes the city of
Boston, was “Joe” Pelletier. (All Massachusetts statesmen go by their
pet names, unless they have a great deal of money.) “Joe” likewise was
an ardent patriot, and never lost a chance to deliver an oration for
God, country, and the pope. He was National Advocate for the Knights
of Columbus, which is the political auxiliary of the Catholic Church;
he had been knighted by the pope; and it was his job to drop charges
against wealthy criminals, after they had paid proper retaining fees to
the proper lawyers.
This had been going on for so many years, under the protection of
the flag and the crucifix, that the ring had got bold, and had taken
to “framing” cases against victims. That was all right when it was a
couple of anarchist “wops,” but it was a different matter when it meant
sending women to lure rich blue-bloods into bed, and have detectives
smash in the doors and take photographs of them. The “ring” had a
regularly paid staff of women, and three apartments in the Back Bay. In
one case they had gone so far as to have the woman hidden in a closet,
unknown to the victim, and in this way they had got an enormous sum
from a terrified old railroad president--an Adams, and a “right” one!
In another case they had collected forty thousand dollars from a man on
his deathbed.
XVI
It was after the trapping of Josiah Thornwell Winters that the
blue-bloods decided to smash this “ring.” Councils were held in the
Union Club, and a citizen who had no scandals was found--the head of
the Watch and Ward Society--and persuaded to the dangerous job. Godfrey
L. Cabot was his name, and before he got through, it was a well-known
name to the readers of Boston newspapers. For of course the ring knew
what he was doing before he knew it himself, and was setting traps for
him after a fashion too fantastic for anything but reality. Mr. Cabot
got a dictaphone in Coakley’s office, and hired a spy to hire himself
to Coakley and arrange to bribe Pelletier. But presently the spy was
arrested, and Godfrey L. Cabot was indicted for hiring a man to offer
bribes. The climax of hilarity came when it was revealed that it was
Dan who had hired the spy, to get himself hired by Godfrey to come and
hire Dan to bribe Joe!
Impossible to imagine more melodrama than this scandal provided
for the readers of Boston newspapers through the better part of a
year! Underworld ladies trapped into telling their stories, with
stenographers hidden behind screens; elderly blue-bloods “railroaded”
into lunatic asylums for their money; hotel proprietors forced to part
with their property for a small part of its value; the “badger game”
and the “shakedown,” the “girl with the dimpled nose,” a “visiting
actress,” “the Egyptian mystic, Omar Kaldah”! Hardly a day without a
new millionaire in the pillory, or a “scion of wealth” relieved of his
patrimony! A series of sensational trials, with witnesses “grilled” and
“broken” by great lawyers who “thundered” and “stormed.” United States
Senator “Jim” Reed, endowed with the voice of a bull, defending his
Democratic colleague, “Joe”:
“Does this diabolical persecution spring from religious prejudice?
Is that the thing which inspires Cabot and his crew; that makes them
gather witnesses from the four quarters of the earth; that gives
protection to the criminal and the near-criminal? I do not know, but
this I boldly say, that I have never seen such digging in the catacombs
of the past, such raking of the dust of time, such malicious ingenuity,
such fixed determination as we have witnessed.”
And then the attorney-general, answering the bull-voiced senator,
and describing the “national advocate” of the Knights of Columbus in
metaphors taken from classical oratory:
“The sword of justice was placed in his hands and he made of it a
highwayman’s club. He used the scales of justice to weigh the price of
corrupt favors. He has bartered the powers of his great office to the
highest bidder. For personal ends he has protected the criminal and
oppressed the innocent. He has so far forgotten his honor and his oath
that he has brought reproach upon the fair name of the Commonwealth,
has allowed her mantle to be dragged in the mire, has debauched his
high office for his own selfish ends, and like Esau of old, has sold
his birthright for a mess of pottage.” No wonder the life of the
attorney-general was threatened, and guards had to protect his home!
Also Dan Coakley was indicted and tried. The blue-bloods employed
no less than thirty-six detectives to guard the jury; when Dan was
acquitted, the blue-bloods wished they had hired more of them. However,