Boston a novel
the State House.” By stages of graft you could mount, higher and
higher, until you found yourself dealing in millions, and associating
with the great bankers, who had loaned money to state legislators
without security; these legislators had bought Elevated Railway
stock, and had then voted a bill guaranteeing dividends, thus causing
twenty-five million dollars worth of stock to jump from twenty-five
to ninety. Rupert Alvin and his Pilgrim National crowd had not even
had the inconvenience of being indicted for that crime; one rebel
legislator, Thomas A. Niland, one opponent of graft among politicians,
had hired a sandwich-man and set him to picket the Court House with
a sign, reading: “Mr. District Attorney, indict the bribe givers and
bribe takers of the Boston Elevated.”
IV
The Jerry Walker case came to trial. More than five years after his
properties had been taken from him, the manufacturer of felt got a
chance to tell his troubles to a jury, and the public to see what
happened to big bandits in the august Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
The case was tried in Dedham Court House with the round white dome and
portholes like an ocean liner; and it was destined to be appealed to
the Supreme Judicial Court, and finally decided within four weeks of
the Sacco-Vanzetti case.
The Jerry Walker trial lasted from the beginning of November, 1923,
to the end of November, 1924; the longest law-battle ever known
in the history of the Commonwealth. During that period of time
Cornelia Thornwell heard about little else when she was in touch
with her family. Two of her sons-in-law, two nephews-in-law, and two
cousins-in-law were involved, and the families ate, slept, walked, rode
and prayed with the case for the whole thirteen months. It was not
merely that fifteen millions of dollars were at stake, but the family
honor, and the safety of the country’s banking system; for if Jerry
Walker won his case, all the business men who had lost their properties
to bankers would set up similar claims. What would be the fun in
banking, if you were confined to the interest on your funds, and could
not use your control of credit to get possession of industry?
Cornelia was making it a rule to visit Sacco once or twice a month in
Dedham jail, and she would stop at the court-house and watch the great
duel of law. No guards with rifles on the steps, no gruff policemen
to search your hand-bag, no steel cage for the defendants! No; for
these were not the little bandits who break the law, these were the
big bandits who make the law. Everything quiet and dignified, in the
Harvard manner. With the exception of poor Jerry Walker himself,
everybody was Harvard--the real reason poor Jerry had lost out.
Polished gentlemen, with soft voices and slow drawls, dressed with
elegance, and always immaculate, regardless of weather and possible
weaknesses of the flesh, arguing fine points of law, and presenting
mountains of documents and miles of figures to a bewildered jury.
You would not have guessed that there was anything very special or
thrilling in process--unless you knew the sacred names, and realized
that here were the bluest of blue-bloods, the center of the center
and hub of the hub. These men who sat on hard benches listening, who
took the witness-stand to testify for days and sometimes weeks, were
the inner ring of those who held the financial and industrial power
of New England for their own. There were times when, if you had sat
with an adding machine, and tabulated the wealth owned by men in the
court-room, it would have amounted to several hundred million dollars;
if you had counted the wealth of other persons which they controlled,
and used to sway markets and support credit for their own advantage, it
would have totaled billions.
The trial would occupy a hundred and eighty-seven days of actual
hearings; more than two thousand exceptions would be taken to the
judge’s rulings, to be submitted to the higher court; the testimony
would be close to six million words, and the cost of the procedure to
the County of Norfolk would be more than two hundred thousand dollars.
Out of its great generosity of heart, the legislature went so far as
to pass a special measure, providing for the payment of nine dollars a
day to the jurymen in this case--and the bill was made retroactive! It
was in the public interest that these wholesale bandits should fight
out their fights in a court-room, instead of hiring private armies and
settling it on the streets. When the issue had been decided, these two
facts would stand out: first, that Harvard blue-bloods had the money;
and second, that their fellow-members of the Union Club had permitted
them to keep it.
V
To Cornelia Thornwell the really significant thing was this: that so
many concerned with the defense of the case were lying. The great
bankers were hiding what they had done to Jerry Walker, and their great
lawyers were sitting down with them, day after day and night after
night, framing what they were going to say. For five years Cornelia
had known that they would do this; it was so well understood in the
family that nobody was equal to the task of attempting to fool her.
There were fifteen millions of dollars at stake; and the driving power
of this sum was so colossal that it swept every barrier before it, and
truth, honor, dignity, justice, law, country, God and religion went out
like the contents of a chicken-ranch when a dam bursts at the head of a
valley.
Privately these bankers were quarreling bitterly among themselves as
Cornelia knew; the wives were cutting one another at bridge-parties,
and families were riven pro tem. But on the witness-stand every man
stood by the ship, and obeyed the orders of the captain, Rupert
Alvin. Cornelia got a new understanding of her oldest son-in-law. He
had always seemed to her a semi-comic figure, with his face and neck
of pink and purple bulges; humorless, naïve in spite of his heavy
pomposity, and pathetic while being hen-pecked by a Thornwell lady
whose family was older and greater than his. But now Cornelia observed
him as a man among men, and realized what are the qualities of a
successful bandit-leader.
They might be summed up in a single word, dependability; the gang must
know that the leader will always be there, and will never change;
that he will be the incarnation of solid, heavy, earnest greed, an
irresistible and incessant push for large sums of other people’s money.
Also, the gang must know that the leader will give them individually
a greater share than any other leader of equal greed-power. A quality
of Rupert’s that came out in the trial--he was a veritable mountain of
righteous respectability. He had only wanted a small share of the loot
for himself, and it had been necessary for his associates to insist
that he should have a large share. Said Quincy Thornwell, gossiping
with his Aunt Cornelia during the course of the revelations, “You
always have to insist that Rupert take a large share. And you always do
it. If you don’t, you are not in on the next big deal.”
Now here he was on the witness-stand, telling the story of his
relationships with Jerry Walker; the president of the Pilgrim National
Bank, who had promised poor Jerry a three-million-dollar loan at
twenty-seven per cent interest, and had “strung him along” for months,
having the plans all made, the syndicate of bankers formed, and Henry
Cabot Winters supposed to be getting the agreements ready--when as
a matter of fact Rupert had ordered that no agreements be got ready,
having no purpose but to have poor Jerry in a “jam” when his “paper”
came to maturity.
For more than a week Rupert was cross-questioned by Jerry’s little
bull-dog of a lawyer, and he was most gentlemanly and aristocratic
about his lying. He had reduced it to a formula, suitable to his
simple mind; he could remember ten thousand details which were to his
advantage, and he did remember them, promptly and exactly; but whenever
there was any detail which would have been to his disadvantage,
then he had forgotten about it. And that was all; it was charmingly
easy--he had only to say, “I do not remember.” The cross-examiner
might phrase the question in a score of different ways, he might make
any number of approaches to it, but he could never get anything from
the imperturbable Rupert except, “I do not remember.” It amused the
lawyers of Jerry Walker to go over the record, and count up the number
of matters about which Rupert’s memory had thus been adjusted to his
interests; he had managed to forget one hundred and seventy-three
different things.
Only once a bad slip! Early during the negotiations with Jerry Walker
he had put the blame on Henry Cabot Winters, and had said to Jerry,
“Henry has had his teeth in this thing once”--meaning in Jerry’s
felt-business. That was a terrible admission, and Rupert made it
elaborately, and in great detail, before his lawyers managed to
interrupt, and convey to him that it wouldn’t do. The great banker then
took the liberty of consulting his counsel; after the consultation,
he retracted his admission, and denied that he had ever said any
such thing to the plaintiff. A distressing moment; for there sat the
reporters of half a dozen newspapers, their pencils plying busily, and
the whole of State Street and the Union and Somerset Clubs waiting to
read the story that afternoon.
Then, the ordeal being over for Rupert, he went back to Boston, and
attended an assemblage of some men’s organization connected with his
Episcopal Church. Some evil person proposed that the organization
should take a stand upon the question of social justice, and Rupert
got up and moved that the resolution be tabled, and made a powerful
and impressive speech, in which he declared that the purpose of the
Episcopal Church was “spirituality,” and that it should not be lured
into controversies over mundane affairs. The Boston newspapers all
reported the discourse, and were strong for “spirituality.”
VI
Mr. Justice Thayer was rendering his decisions upon the various motions
for a new trial. The “Ripley motion,” the “Daley motion,” the “Pelzer
motion,” the “Andrews motion,” the “Goodridge motion”--he denied them
all; and he was judge, and the sole judge. He decided that his own
conduct had been proper, he decided that the new evidence was not such
as to warrant a new trial.
The one thing his victims got out of these decisions was a holiday
every time. The law required that the defendants should be present at
all stages of the proceedings; and so a miniature army would be called
out to move Nicola Sacco from Dedham Jail to Dedham Court-house, and
Bartolomeo Vanzetti would leave his cell for a whole day, and become
the delighted center of an automobile parade. He wrote Cornelia about
it, beginning with his breakfast, “a cup of coffee, three slices of
bread, two frankforts and mashed potatoes, all as cold as ice cream
could be.” Later when it was proposed to publish this narrative, Bart
was distressed, and insisted upon its being made plain that he had made
this remark playfully, because of course the prison authorities could
not prepare hot food out of hours.
“After such a breakfast, an official took me in the ‘Guard Room.’
The little chauffeur, an old officer, and the bravest one were
waiting for me. I was chained with the last one, and all four left
the room and went down to the street where the automobile was
ready. Six or seven officers stood at the door, with their right
hand near the back pocket, ready to protect me from any attack.
One must be most ungrateful man of the world for not feeling quite
reconoscent.”
And then his love of nature, the joy of escaping from darkness into
sunshine and open air: