Boston a novel
to the glory of the proletarian martyr, and walked past the statue of
Phillips Brooks, which graced one side of it. A figure of the Son of
Man, stepping out of the side of the building and laying his hand upon
the shoulder of the great Bishop of the Blue-bloods. Bishop Brooks had
been quite a radical in his day, and the wits of the city were wont
to say that the hand of Jesus was an admonitory hand, and that Jesus
was saying, “Be careful, old man, remember what they did to me, and I
didn’t say half what you are saying!”
From this ceremony Cornelia went to visit Vanzetti, who had been
certified back to Charlestown, and was shoveling coal again. She was
moved to tell him where she had been, and what she had seen, and
her thoughts on the subject. “I have been wondering, Bart, if they
should make a martyr out of you, will people be committing crimes and
hypocrisies in your name a couple of thousand years from now?”
It was an idea the prisoner took seriously; the thought of martyrdom
having become the mainspring of his lonely life. “Nonna,” said he “if
they make me martyr, I fix it, I write message it cannot be mistake. If
anybody say Vanzett’, it mean joostice, it mean freedom--it cannot mean
nothing but!”
XVII
It was Boston, pious, proper, and proud. The _Telegram_ was publishing
onslaughts upon Sacco and Vanzetti, calling for their blood because
they were “atheists.” One day the staid bankers and brokers of State
Street, proceeding about their business in front of the Old State
House, scene of the Boston Massacre, were astonished by the spectacle
of the publisher of the _Telegram_ rolling in the gutter, pummeling and
being pummeled by the Honorable James Michael Curley, until recently
mayor of the city. Next day the two champions were issuing statements
in the newspapers, each claiming to have done the more successful
pummeling. The day after that the publisher was publishing a cartoon
of the ex-mayor, showing him in prison stripes--he having “done” a few
months many years back. And then the ex-mayor was sending the publisher
to jail for criminal libel: all this in Boston, pious, proper, and
proud, thirsting for the blood of “atheists”!
CHAPTER XVII
THE MILLS OF THE LAW
I
Betty Alvin was now twenty-six years of age; old enough to know better,
as her family and friends insisted, but she continued to give her time
to the stirring up of social discontent. She and Joe had taken up
the task of founding a labor college in Boston, to teach the workers
to think for themselves, instead of for the stockholders and the
bankers. Joe was teaching a class, two evenings a week, the history of
European labor movements, and writing a book on the subject. Betty,
learned young lady, was expounding “labor theory”; trying to adhere
to a policy of working-class solidarity, and being perpetually pulled
and hauled between socialists and communists. However, they would
all excuse her, on the basis of her “bourgeois upbringing.” In the
daytime she inspected accounts and paid bills; or, when this was not
possible, sallied forth to raise money. She would visit the offices of
Irish-Catholic labor leaders, and do her best to persuade them that it
was really in the interest of unions for idle-rich girls to meddle in
their affairs, and teach them complicated theories with long foreign
names.
Hard-fisted individuals these, having fought their way in a world of
realities--which included Democratic and Republican politicians seeking
votes and promising favors; also agents of employers making presents
of boxes of cigars, and willing to lose unlimited sums at poker.
“Parlor pinks,” who mixed in the affairs of such gentry would learn a
lot of things not in the Radcliffe curriculum; they would have a hard
time deciding which leaders to educate and which to kill off. For the
sake of Sacco and Vanzetti in the shadow of the electric chair it was
necessary to be patient and tactful; to appeal to class solidarity, and
to human feelings not entirely atrophied. Thus you might get a chance
to present your case before some labor body, and have anywhere from
twenty-five to a hundred dollars voted to the defense.
Betty had now been for more than three years the lawful and duly
certified wife of Joseph Jefferson Randall--even though she insisted
upon belonging to the “Lucy Stoners,” and remaining “Betty Alvin,” not
even “Mrs.” Was it a part of the same eccentricity, that she refused to
do her duty by her family, and pass on to the ages those excellences
of which the family was so conscious? Did these modern young wives
repudiate babies altogether, and, if so, what substitute had they to
propose? Deborah never failed to make such inquiries when she met her
daughter.
Now Betty came to Cornelia: “Grannie, I guess it’s my turn.”
“How do you mean, dear?”
“Well, there’s a saying that accidents will happen in the best
regulated families, and it seems that the Lord is on the side of the
Thornwell clan.” Such was the fashion of speech of these modern,
hard-boiled young women; they would not permit themselves any of the
traditional thrills of their sex, which they called being “soppy.”
When they referred to matters ordinarily considered “delicate,” they
seemingly went out of their way to find the most offensive language,
with which the ears of their chaste grandmothers had never in a
whole lifetime been assailed. In Betty this reaction was especially
violent, as a result of having been brought up in Boston, and hearing
somebody say “Hush!” several times every day. She persisted in going
about telling all her friends, both men and women, the medical facts
about herself; refusing to put on garments ingeniously contrived for
the hiding of her shameful condition, going to her labor college and
teaching classes at a time when she was a scandal on the street.
She even told two “wops” about it, when she went to see them in jail.
They, being peasants, took it as a matter of course; they were used
to babies, as to all other kinds of young animals. Betty would even
permit Vanzetti to be “soppy”--he being in jail, and having a hard time
to keep his sanity. Poor devil, he needed something young and new and
sweet and healthy and happy to occupy his thoughts, so when Betty went
to see him, she told him how it felt when the unborn baby kicked. It
might have been one old “nonna” gossiping with another old “nonna,”
scrubbing clothes on the banks of the River Magra.
In due course the infant phenomenon arrived. It was a boy, and his name
had been determined several months before he was born--Rupert Alvin
Thornwell Randall; it would be worth millions to him some day, in spite
of his mother’s protests. The war that was to last all his lifetime
began in the first weeks; for of course his name wouldn’t be his name,
until it had been conferred upon him in Trinity Church; and here were
his mother and father declaring that he wasn’t going to be baptized!
The family brought Betty to admit that it wouldn’t do any harm; if they
chose to dress him up in an old linen robe two yards long and sprinkle
cold water on his head, she would not interfere, but certainly they
must not expect her or Joe to waste time on such foolishness. Neither
must they get the idea that this particular grandchild was going to be
permitted to visit them, and be waited upon by servants and demoralized
by the uses of luxury. Rupert Alvin Thornwell Randall was going to live
among working people, and grow up to be of some use in the world. The
grandparents did not argue that; they would have the baptism first, and
save the little one’s soul. The other issues could be fought out later!
II
Cornelia was continuing to devote her life to the Sacco-Vanzetti case.
She would get herself invited to gatherings of ladies, and tell them
the cruel story, and when they said they were “so sorry,” she would
ask just how sorry, and explain that sorrow was measured in figures
on a bank-check. She would help the defense committee to organize
entertainments and benefit performances--which, alas, sometimes
cost more than they brought in. She would visit headquarters, and
try to keep things moving, to reconcile the endless clashings of
personalities. Always there was something needing to be done, and one
could not do it, or even urge it, without antagonizing somebody. What
Vanzetti called “umane beings” had not yet evolved to a stage where
they could merge their personalities and coöperate; they had to waste
the greater part of their energies in friction. Cornelia would be so
discouraged that she would give up, and tell them to do what they
pleased; but then they would do nothing--and meantime there were Bart
and Nick on the way to execution!
The antagonism between Fred Moore and some members of the committee
had waxed with the years. It was impossible for anarchists to get
along with any lawyer; it was especially hard with this one, who was
hell-bent upon discovering the real criminals, and insisted upon
spending defense funds in tracing clews, chasing off to Atlanta
penitentiary or to Texas, sending some one to Italy or to South America
to run down a story. Moore would either have his way or quit; and in
the end his enemies made his position impossible, by undermining the
faith of his clients in him. He received a letter from Sacco, signed,
“Your implacable enemy, now and forever”; so the lawyer realized that
the days of his usefulness were over. “I have failed,” he said to
Cornelia; “and it’s a game where nothing succeeds but success.”
There was an interregnum, with no lawyer, no anything else--except two
prisoners on the way to the electric chair. Finally the committee was
reorganized; some Italians withdrew, some Americans were taken on,
and overtures were made to William G. Thompson to take charge of the
new motions and appeals. He knew how much trouble it would mean, and
set his fee at a figure which he meant to be prohibitive, twenty-five
thousand dollars. There was a problem for Cornelia and Betty and Joe!
It was solved by a curious turn of events, hardly possible in any part
of the world except Boston. A young man by the name of Charles Garland,
while a student at Harvard, had known Jack Reed, and become troubled in
his conscience. Now Reed had given his life to the Russian revolution,
and was buried under the Kremlin walls; while his friend Garland fell
heir to a million dollars. His conscience not permitting him to accept
it, he turned it over to a committee, to be expended for the benefit
of labor. So there was the “Garland fund”; and in this emergency it
was persuaded to lend twenty thousand dollars to the Sacco-Vanzetti
defense, and William G. Thompson was put in charge of the case.
A man in his early sixties, with iron-gray hair and ruddy skin, six
feet tall and broad shouldered, dry and humorous, smoking a pipe and
looking like a Yankee farmer, Thompson proved to be the boss of which
the case had been in need. He became convinced that the machinery of
justice was being used for persecution, and turned into a crusader in
defense of his clients. Before he got through, the fee he had charged
did not cover his office overhead; yet his enemies accused him of
having profited unduly, and tried to have the Bar Association proceed
against him for the offense of defending anarchists.
He had his strict ideas of propriety. This was a law-case, and was to
be tried in the courts, and everything which savored of “propaganda”
must be rigidly avoided. Which brought him, of course, into conflict
with active friends of the cause. To Joe and Betty, propaganda was the
essence of the defense; it was propaganda which had made possible the
appeals and kept the two men alive; it was propaganda which brought
in money to pay lawyers. Vanzetti’s opinion was summed up in his