CHAPTER XIX
ACADEMIC AUTOCRACY
I
While presidents of great colleges delivered baccalaureate sermons and partook of graduation banquets, the two wops waited in jail, with the grim sentence hanging over their heads--to “suffer the punishment of death by the passage of a current of electricity through your body within the week beginning Sunday, the tenth of July, in the year of our Lord, One Thousand Nine Hundred and Twenty-seven.” A singular perversity in the Governor of a great Commonwealth, a reluctance to grant even the smallest concession to hated defenders of hated wops: he would not say whether that sentence was to be postponed, but would leave the whole world to speculate for a month, and to imagine the execution. Said the defense committee in its June bulletin: “Torture of the body practiced in the Middle Ages is nothing compared with the torture of the mind and heart upon these two innocent men and their families and friends.”
The law specified that ten days prior to the date of execution condemned men should be moved to the death cells in Charlestown prison. Since there had been no reprieve, this law applied to Sacco and Vanzetti. The authorities of Norfolk County were anxious to get rid of them, on account of the expense; and so upon the first minute of the first day of July, the sheriff and his deputies entered the cells of the two men in Dedham jail, and ordered them to dress. No reasons given, no time allowed to pack their books and papers; they were shackled, and taken out into the darkness to a waiting automobile. With a dozen armed men riding behind and before, they were taken to Boston, through the sleeping city, and lodged in the “death cells.”
No one told them what this procedure meant, and they took it to mean immediate execution. Vanzetti’s first action upon his arrival was to start writing a farewell letter to the comrades. From now on they would live in solitude, close to the electric chair. Their friends cried out in horror--foolish sentimentalists, who had not yet brought themselves to face the thought of that electric chair! But the ruling class of Massachusetts knew what it meant to do, and went ahead. Not until after the move to the death cells did the Governor condescend to postpone the date of execution for a month.
The Lowell Commission held its first session on the last day of June. They met in the Governor’s Council chamber in the State House; a large room, done in white, high-studded, Doric style, with rich mahogany furniture, and soft velvet carpets. The desks are arranged in a circle, one continuous desk, with swivel chairs; overhead, a heavy chandelier, in which the history of New England’s technical progress had been recorded: first whale oil, then coal oil, then kerosene, then gas, and now electricity.
The first meeting of the Commission was “to determine procedure,” the papers said. The first procedure determined was secrecy, and it was very determined; not merely were spectators and newspaper reporters to be excluded, but witnesses and lawyers had to agree not to discuss on the outside what they said on the inside. A bitter disappointment for the defense committee, whose one hope was the education of public opinion. “It is very bad,” said Vanzetti. “It means they kill us.”
On the fifth of July the Commission began to hear witnesses, and the friends of the defense received more shocks. The Constitution of the United States provides that every man accused of crime shall “be confronted with the witnesses against him.” But these important gentlemen were going to examine witnesses, while Sacco and Vanzetti stayed in Charlestown prison, ignorant of what was going on. Furthermore, the Commission reserved the right to exclude defense counsel from the room whenever they saw fit, and to limit cross-examination as they saw fit. When the rules of legal procedure suited the convenience of the three important gentlemen, they would apply, and when the rules were inconvenient, they would be set aside.
Joe Randall, reporting developments for labor papers in New York, was one of the crowd which haunted the State House corridors and besieged the doors of the executive chambers. So he heard gossip not meant for “radical” ears; and after the third day he came to the apartment on the north side of Beacon Hill, and sat down by Cornelia and took her hand and said, “Grannie, I’m sorry--you’ve got to brace yourself for another blow.”
Cornelia winced; her lips trembled, in spite of her best efforts. Poor old lady, she had had more than her share of blows. The young reporter’s heart ached for the pitiful shrunken figure in the big Morris chair. “What is it, Joe?”
“Your dolly is stuffed with sawdust, Grannie.”
“How do you mean?”
“I mean, your great Mr. Lowell is just another ‘Web’ Thayer.”
“Oh, no!”
“Take my word for it, and get ready for the worst. The newspaper fellows fool the public, because that is what they are paid for, but they don’t as a rule let themselves be fooled. This Commission consists of Thayer, Katzmann, and Fuller all over again--with a little touch of Rugg and Wait and the rest of the supreme court judges, for dignity. They know that the men are guilty, and their purpose is to find evidence to justify the verdict. Mark my words, Grannie, before they get through they’ll do everything that Thayer has done, even to misquoting testimony and falsifying the record. Only one difference--Mr. Lowell will see to it that they have better manners.”
“You are too optimistic,” said the sarcastic Betty.
II
If it took Cornelia two weeks to realize that these predictions were right, it was only because she could not bring herself to admit the plain meaning of events. Witnesses emerged from that “star chamber,” and kept their promise not to talk to reporters; but they talked to their friends, including the defense committee. So came pictures of three elderly gray-heads, impatient, bored and irritated--partly on account of the weather, for it was stifling summer heat, but more especially by witnesses trying to get them to believe what they considered a wicked tangle of perjuries and deceptions.
Fuller was a politician, and used to making pretenses; but none of the three commissioners had ever been anything but an autocrat, and it was impossible for them to conceal their annoyance at the efforts of men and women to persuade them that notorious dynamiters and bandits were anything else. Lowell had already made the pronouncement that Sacco and Vanzetti were not really anarchists--that was just a camouflage their friends had invented for them! And what Lowell said became the truth, for his two colleagues regarded him as on the whole the greatest man in Massachusetts, and therefore in the world.
Betty turned out to be right on the subject of his manners. He could be courtesy incarnate when he wished to; but this was not one of the times. He interrupted the defense lawyers, and badgered them like schoolboys. The fact that William G. Thompson had been a trial lawyer for thirty-six years did not save him; nor the fact that he had been a federal prosecutor, nor the fact that he had been a Harvard lecturer. Said Lowell, “I don’t know whether you are trying to reach the truth or not. I assume, of course, that you are.” Said Thompson: “I am not going to put any question to this witness or to any other witness in the case unless it is assumed by the Commission that I am here _not_ to deceive the Commission. There has been a good deal of imputation and it is very painful to me.”
A. Lawrence Lowell was an international and constitutional lawyer, but so far as concerned criminal trials he was a complete novice; yet he would show William G. Thompson how to handle witnesses, and did so. He took charge of the procedure, as he had done with everything all his life. He had a tremendous notion of his own powers, and was not there to have anybody tell him anything. His purpose was to protect the institutions of New England, now under attack by vicious radicals. The impulse to support those in authority was as automatic in this university president, as ever it had been in any of his stern forbears who had carried a hickory staff at divine worship, and cracked the knuckles of the inattentive and the polls of the somnolent. (Judge Grant often nodded at these hearings, but that may have been a device, of course.)
When “Web” Thayer made his appearance at the doors of the executive chambers, to render an accounting of his stewardship, every other person was immediately ushered out, and no one but his three fellow club-members asked him any questions, or heard his answers. Did he say why he had misquoted the Sacco-Vanzetti record in his decisions, or how he had come to invent and to cite bogus testimony? Did he admit that he had referred to his victims as “anarchistic bastards”? Did he admit that he had called them “sons-of-bitches”? The record of the hearings was silent on the subject.
When Fred G. Katzmann appeared, and Thompson tried to cross-question him, and pin him down as to some of his actions which the defense lawyer thought were not quite up to standard, even for district attorneys--then it was the business of the Commission to protect this former official. They had promised him that he would only be detained one hour, and he was impatient to get away. Exactly like Rupert Alvin, he suffered from failures of memory whenever he was in a tight corner. The defense lawyers tried to get something definite on the business of Mike Boda. The police had had Boda on April 20th, only sixteen days before they had arrested Sacco and Vanzetti; yet they made a mystery out of Boda. Was it not true that he was a very small man? And did any witness at the trial describe a small bandit? Katzmann would not be trapped. “Are you asking to test my memory? Look at the record.” It so happened that at this very hour, in a room immediately adjoining, the Governor was demanding of one of his visitors: “If Vanzetti was a good man, why did he associate with Boda?”
III
Too late, as usual, the friends of the defense began to acquire information concerning the members of this Commission. Robert Grant was one of the bitterest Italian-haters in New England. He had put it into a book, virtually labeling them a race of pickpockets. To a librarian in Washington he had expressed his violent opinion that Sacco and Vanzetti ought to be killed. To John F. Moors and Professor Morison of Harvard he had expressed disapproval of any one taking issue with the verdict at the trial, or with the subsequent decisions. Yet he considered that there was nothing in the way of his acting as an impartial arbitrator!
“Bob” Grant had begun life as a popular novelist in the genteel New England style. The rising plutocracy of America had resorted to his works to learn the circumstances under which toothpicks should not be used, and similar lessons in the conduct of a good life. He had been awarded a small-salaried position as probate judge, where he had displayed an unusual talent for sarcasm, and an air of being much too good for mundane affairs. He was now seventy-five years of age, and was retired from service on the bench, which left him free to pass judgment upon Italians. A frail, pathetic, querulous, old man, he sat in the stifling heat of midsummer, suffering greatly, sometimes closing his eyes--but that does not always mean that a judge is not paying heed. Judge Grant heeded with an air of boredom, of extreme suspicion, and discourtesy of a kind which does not come naturally, but has to be cultivated as a fine art. When he ventured an opinion, it was of an infantile nature. “Why, Mr. Thompson, you find everybody wrong! You say harsh things about Mr. Katzmann, who seems to be an estimable gentleman!”
The elderly judge’s attitude was curiously revealed in the matter of Mr. George U. Crocker, formerly treasurer of the City of Boston, who told about the behavior of Judge Thayer. Mr. Crocker had never been introduced to Thayer, but had had the judge’s acquaintance forced upon him in the University Club; Thayer had come to his table at breakfast, uninvited, and sat down and compelled Crocker to hear him scold and denounce the “arnychists,” and read passages from his decisions: “There, I guess that will hold them!” Finally Mr. Crocker had instructed the head-waiter not to permit Judge Thayer to join him at table. When Mr. Crocker told the Commission about this, Judge Grant inquired, “Mr. Crocker, do I understand that you are repeating what was said to you at a social club by a fellow member of that club?” In other words, the secrets of a gentleman’s club were more sacred than the lives of two wops!
President Stratton, of “M.I.T.,” as it was known, was the youngest of the Commission, being only sixty-eight. He came from Illinois--a great handicap in Boston, which considers Worcester the far west. He was a physicist, and had risen by competence in science--including the science of knowing the rich and what they wanted. Four years ago he had been taken into the sacred circle of the Back Bay, and now he would have needed tremendous moral courage to oppose a domineering person like President Lowell. A capable administrator but with no reflective capacity, his social opinions had been indicated by his banning a speaker against militarism from the Y. M. C. A. of his great institute.
IV
A. Lawrence Lowell had been born to that apex of greatness in Boston, which permits the fortunate one to be eccentric. He rode about Cambridge in an elderly high motor-car painted a brilliant Harvard crimson, and decorated with as much polished brass-work as a yacht. He carried his papers in an old green bag, and wore a coat-skirt which he switched as he walked; Heywood Broun, who had seen his figure in the Harvard “yard,” wrote that he “ambled sedately to a hanging.” He had a face of cold virtue, and from all persons less important than himself he exacted the most rigid conformance to propriety. He was wholly lacking in enthusiasms, and appeals to him to recognize the beauty of anarchist character froze on the speaker’s tongue. He cultivated both in writing and in speaking a style which for dullness could not be exceeded in the college world. A stiff legal mind, made wholly out of precedents, he had facility and self-esteem, and could be extremely genial when he wanted something, such as an endowment. On the other hand, if a common person said or did anything out of the ordinary, he would reveal a remarkable talent for ungraciousness.
Injustice did not exist in the world; it was a delusion contrived by cunning agitators, and they were not going to fool the mighty mind of the President of Harvard University. A characteristic moment early during the hearing, when the witness Pierce, a shoe-worker who had refused to identify Sacco as the bandit, told how he had lost his job at the factory for this refusal; he was “fired,” and one of the convicting jurymen had taken his place. Also another witness had lost his position for refusing to identify. “What does this tend to prove?” demanded the irritable Judge Grant. The answer of the lawyers was, “It proves duress.” Said Lowell, with contempt which took in lawyers, witnesses, and his own colleague: “Oh, don’t you see, they claim this was all nothing but a frame-up.”
Infallibility was his prerogative upon three different counts: as a millionaire, as a college president, and as a Lowell. There was a popular quatrain about the city of Boston, as “the home of the bean and the cod, where the Lowells speak only to Cabots, and the Cabots speak only to God.” Never for an instant did it occur to this great man to doubt that he could wade into a mass of complications and determine the truth in a month. With complete insouciance he would make statements of fact about crime and criminals, which experts knew to be nonsense. “This cannot be so” ... “they do not do that” ... and so on.
V
The fallibilities of academic autocracy were strikingly revealed in the reception accorded to an eccentric lady who was sent over by Governor Fuller to tell her story to the Commission. Let “Tootsie Toodles” be her name--it was no less melodious. The newspapers had called her a “mystery witness,” but she was no mystery to the defense--on the contrary, an open volume, ancient and much handled. She was, according to Lowell’s euphemistic phrase, “not unimpeachable in conduct”; also she was an hysterical fantast. Prior to the Dedham trial, she had come to the defense lawyer, and told an elaborate story, offering to repeat it on the witness-stand. But there was some dispute about the price, and she went to the prosecution and offered to tell a story for them. She went back and forth between the two sides, until she had ruined herself with both--they realized that she was mentally irresponsible.
Ranney, the assistant district attorney representing the government at the Lowell hearings, knew all this, and admitted the woman’s “not unimpeachable” record. He grinned at the scene; when the three old gentlemen were not watching, he made motions of wheels going round in his head--a schoolboy sign for an insane person. There came a former employer of Tootsie, Mr. Jackson, and the commission asked him, “What of her mentality?” The answer was, “She’s twelve ounces to the pound.” President Lowell of Harvard inquired, “What does that mean?” and the witness replied. “She’s not all there.” The great educator enlarged his vocabulary considerably before he got through with this adventure--it was a sort of slumming expedition for him. They brought in the former chief of police of South Braintree, who said that he had known Tootsie since she was born, and she was “what you’d call a nut.” But he was mistaken; Mr. Lowell would never have called any person or anything by a word of one syllable.
The three important gentlemen, looking for any sort of evidence to save the good name of their Commonwealth, received Tootsie--it would not be proper to say with open arms, considering her “not unimpeachable conduct”--but with that polished and perfected elegance which blue-blood gentlemen display to all ladies when they meet them socially. When Tootsie stood up, they all stood up, and bowed--it was like a court reception, or a Harvard commencement.
Her story was that she had known Sacco in the year 1908, when they had both worked in the Rice and Hutchins shoe-factory--he was a “laster,” she said. She had seen him on the street in South Braintree on April 15th, 1920, a few hours before the crime, standing near the alleged bandit car. She heard a man whom she declared to be Vanzetti say to him, “Hurry up and finish this job. I have to be back in Providence at three o’clock and dig clams.”
There were slight errors in this story. It wasn’t Providence to which Vanzetti had to get back; they don’t dig clams in Providence, so it must have been Plymouth. Also it was a slip about Sacco having been a “laster” in the Rice and Hutchins factory in 1908, for in April of that year he had landed in America, a lad of seventeen who had never seen a shoe-factory. He had gone to work carrying water to laborers in Hopedale, and it wasn’t until four years later, after his marriage, that he had learned shoe-work.
All this, of course, was known to Thompson, and he set out to establish it. His first question was: “What time did you say that Sacco first worked in the Rice and Hutchins factory, what year?”
And Tootsie, who knew what he was driving at, started up and began to scream. “What is the idea of my coming up and talking with you when I come in here to-day to have my character overhauled? Has my character got anything to do with what I saw and what I heard?”
Said Lowell, majestically: “You will oblige the Committee by answering questions. We won’t allow your character to be assailed.”
Said Tootsie, louder yet--so loud that for the first time the newspaper reporters could attend the sessions through the tightly closed doors: “My character is just as good as yours, or Sacco’s or Vanzetti’s, or any of that gang that you have got down there and what they do. I will not allow my character to be overhauled.”
Said Lowell: “Nobody is overhauling your character.”
Said Ranney, the assistant district attorney: “Answer that question.”
So Tootsie replied: “1908.” She added: “If I am wrong I will say I am wrong.” Even the members of the Commission smiled at this. But their appreciation of it was superficial; they could hardly be expected to realize that Tootsie, entirely by accident, had provided the best summing up of the Boston Brahmins to be found in the literature of the world. If I am wrong I will say that I am wrong! But don’t _you_ dare to say it!
For an hour Thompson read passages from Tootsie’s earlier statement, inconsistent with the story she was now telling; and always her answer was that the stenographer was crooked and had written the wrong answers. She became more and more excited, and screamed louder and louder, until Lowell stopped the proceedings, and Judge Grant, greatly agitated, toddled across the room, exclaiming, “I will get her a glass of ice-water.” He trembled so that he poured a part of it down her neck.
Ranney came out of the room disgusted, and told the reporters that Tootsie was “so loud” and “so unreliable” that Katzmann had refused to use her, for fear she would “break up the case.” So the reporters for once had an “inside” story. They published it, to the annoyance of the Commission, and also of Tootsie. She read, and set out forthwith for the office of the Boston _Post_, a perfectly respectable capitalist newspaper, strongly Catholic. She interviewed a reporter, and told him that the stories were all wrong, that she believed Sacco and Vanzetti to be quite innocent of the crime of which they had been convicted. The person she had seen in South Braintree was the brother of a friend of hers, who happened to look like Sacco. The _Post_ published this correction; and the defense produced the _Post_ report before the Commission, to prove what had happened.
The lawyers for the defense naturally took it for granted that the absurdity of the whole affair was obvious. But when the report of the Commission appeared, they discovered to their consternation that the three elderly gallants had accepted Tootsie Toodles as one of their reasons for sending Sacco and Vanzetti to the electric chair! Said the greatest man in Massachusetts, and therefore in the world:
“The woman is eccentric, not unimpeachable in conduct; but the Committee believe that in this case her testimony was well worth consideration.”
VI
Two things the three elderly gentlemen desired ardently to do: one, to prove that the defense at the Dedham trial had hired perjury; the other to break the alibi of Sacco in Boston on the day of the South Braintree crime. Everything which they did upon their own initiative was directed to these two ends; and it was only while this was going on that they failed to be impatient and bored. They had laid down the program that they would themselves summon no witnesses except the members of the jury, and Messrs. Katzmann and Thayer. But in the midst of the proceedings they suddenly forgot this rule, and without warning to the defense lawyers summoned to the State House two Italians, Bosco and Guadagni, who had testified at the Dedham trial that Sacco had had lunch with them on the day of the crime.
The Italians were asked to repeat their story, which owed its certainty as to date to the fact that it was the day of a banquet given to Williams, editor of the _Transcript_. Guadagni, a socialist, had been rebuked by Sacco and the others for proposing to attend an affair in honor of a militarist. Guadagni was the orator whom Cornelia had met during the Plymouth Cordage strike, a friend of Vanzetti’s from the beginning, and original organizer of the defense committee; he had become one of the editors of an Italian daily paper, _La Notizia_. A ruddy-cheeked little man with sharply-pointed black beard and mustaches, speaking English with an accent, he told the three great gentlemen of the Governor’s Commission what he remembered; and then to his astonishment he became the object of a persistent attack by the President of Harvard University, who thought he had the Italian trapped in a fraud. Ten days previously Lowell had consulted the files of the Boston _Transcript_, and found that there had been no banquet to Williams on April 15th; he had consulted the files of the _Gazzetta del Massachusetts_, an Italian weekly, and both papers agreed that the banquet to Williams had been on May 13th. Williams, now in Washington, had been consulted, and agreed that that was correct.
An unhappy moment for the two lawyers, Thompson and Ehrmann, representing the Sacco-Vanzetti defense in its later stages. They had had nothing to do with the Dedham trial, and if there had been any “framing” of witnesses, they did not know it. They had received no warning in this matter of Bosco and Guadagni, and so, of course, they were helpless. “Might there not possibly have been two banquets?” suggested Thompson; but Lowell waved that inept suggestion aside with a peculiar little gesture of the hand, a series of quick motions, characteristic of him. “Do not disturb the operations of this mighty brain,” it seemed to say. Aloud he replied, “No, no, no, it cannot be. I have investigated the matter.” The lawyer, greatly distressed, turned against his own witnesses, saying that Mr. Lowell was a man of honor, and the witnesses should admit the whole truth.
A trying situation for two humble self-educated strangers, there in the stately executive chambers under the golden dome. Said Guadagni: “If I am not crazy, there was banquet on fifteenth April. If I not tell truth I go jail.” He insisted that he would find a record of it, and Lowell waved him aside with a gesture of disgust; all these wops were alike, there was no truth in them. “Very well,” said he. “Bring the record to-morrow morning if you find it.” And the pair went crestfallen away.
VII
But next morning early they turned up at the law office of William G. Thompson, staggering under the weight of an enormous tome, the bound volume of Guadagni’s daily paper, _La Notizia_, for the year 1920. They laid it on the lawyer’s desk, open to the issue of April 16th, and translated word by word a half column account of the banquet to Williams on the previous day. The dinner had been a humble one, and the report said, “A more formal dinner will be given.” The two lawyers, who had been sunk in the depths of despair, now suddenly felt like schoolboys. “This saves the men!” exclaimed Thompson. “This is our case right here!”
The two middle-weight Italians, assisted by Gardner Jackson, lugged the huge tome to the State House with the golden dome, and sat all morning outside the tightly shut white doors. It happened to be the two-hour session with Tootsie Toodles, and they listened to the comedy, and shared the hilarity of the newspaper reporters. When Tootsie rushed out, screaming, they were ushered in, and the tome was spread out on the council table, and Guadagni offered to translate it for Lowell--thereby giving offense, and being informed that the president of Harvard University read Italian fluently. There was a long silence while the three gentlemen read, more or less fluently; and finally the President of Harvard University turned from the reading and shook hands with the two Italians. “Gentlemen, I was under an impression which I find was mistaken. I apologize.”
A stirring scene: the greatest man in Massachusetts, and therefore in the whole world, apologizing to two wops! What more could two wops want? Or two lawyers? Thompson advanced the idea that the Commission should make some acknowledgment of the fact that the alibi had been established. Trying to make something out of the incident for Sacco and Vanzetti! But the great academic brain saw the ruse. That would come in due time; that was an affair for deliberation. Lowell did go so far as to say that he would give to the Governor an adequate account of the evidence produced. But for the rest--no publicity! More quick little waves of the imperious right hand. He reminded them sternly that they were under pledge not to report anything about what happened at these sessions.
Silence! Never so long as time endures must the populace know that the University President of the Blue-bloods has been humiliated!
Some time later the defense got their copy of the stenographic record of what had taken place, and they discovered thirty-two pages of the attempt of Lowell to break down the testimony of Bosco and Guadagni, but not a single line about the apology he had been compelled to make! No reference to the dialogue that took place, nor to the argument of defense counsel! There was a brief parenthetic note to the effect that Bosco and Guadagni had brought in the files of _La Notizia_, but not a word to show that the alibi testimony had thereby been restored to credibility!
So was Joe Randall justified of his statement to Cornelia Thornwell, “Your dolly is stuffed with sawdust!” Of his prophecy that the haughtiest and most righteous blue-blood gentlemen would “doctor the record,” exactly as “Web” Thayer, the vulgarian, had done! When Cornelia heard that story, and got the full significance of it, she went away to her own room, and sank down upon the bed and sobbed. It became a sort of prayer: “Oh, God, let me die! Take me away! I am a fool, and all my people are fools!”
VIII
In the meantime, through this hot month of July, Governor Fuller was continuing the hearings in his own chamber in the same State House. “I feel myself obligated to hear anybody they send”--so he declared; and several times each week he motored up from his summer-home, escorted by two police cars. The witnesses would file through his rooms, and then go away in silence; a régime of secrecy modified by rumors and whispers. If the witness was one who had testified at either trial, the reporters would look up the previous testimony, and say that the witness had told that same story to the Governor. If the witness had said anything new that was injurious to Sacco or Vanzetti, the reporters could get it in a round-about way. Otherwise they would call it a “mystery witness.”
Each day the Governor’s impatience grew, and the pretense of impartiality wore thinner. Ladies of refinement who had attended the Dedham trial had the disagreeable experience of talking with a man who made perfectly evident his belief that they were lying. Witnesses who had one definite thing to tell would be challenged to tell some other thing, and humiliated because they could not do it. Robert Benchley, one of the editors of _Life_, came from New York to make statements about the ravings of Judge Thayer at the golf-club of Worcester; to his surprise he was challenged to point out one passage in the entire record indicating that the trial had not been a fair one. Since Benchley had never seen the record, he was “stumped”, like everyone who interviewed the Governor. But he took the Governor’s advice and studied the record; and then he took the trouble to write the Governor a letter, pointing out many passages indicating unfairness. Like everyone else who did this, he got no response.
Still stranger the experience of John J. Richards, lawyer of Providence, Rhode Island, who had been United States marshal during the war, and had arrested the Morelli gang, and had them all sent to prison. He received a telegram requesting him to call on the Governor of Massachusetts, and he came, at his own expense. He was asked, abruptly, “What do you know about the Sacco-Vanzetti case?” He replied, “I know nothing.” Said Fuller, triumphantly, “I thought so!” Richards naturally wondered why he had been invited, and suggested that possibly it might be because of what he knew about the Morellis and Madeiros. Said the Governor sharply, “That matter is closed. The Madeiros confession is an invention.” Then he proceeded to cross-question his visitor: “Are you in the employ of the Defense Committee?” Said Richards, much startled, “I am not. I know nothing of such a committee.”
Here was a former officer of the law, explaining what he believed was the truth; and the supersalesman received him as a suspected criminal. “What do you know about the South Braintree crime? Why did you wait six years to come around and tell about it? Have you ever been in South Braintree? How did they get you in on this Madeiros thing?” And so on.
Mr. Richards came out from under the golden dome in something of a daze, and went to Ehrmann’s office. Rosina Sacco happened to be there--tormented little woman, drawn and haggard, with her daughter Inez, six years old, born after her father’s arrest. Richards listened pityingly while she voiced her hopes in the Governor; afterwards he said to the lawyer, “You might as well shut up shop. Those men are as good as dead now. Fuller has no intention whatever of considering the evidence on their behalf.”
IX
An author had written from California to the Governor, pleading with him to go and meet the two alleged bandits, and judge their characters. It was the author’s idea that no one could encounter the soul of Bartolomeo Vanzetti and consider him a bandit. But the owner of the Packard Motor Car Company of New England would show the author a new line in souls. One morning the Governor left the State House, and stepped into his car with police-officers, and sped away without warning to Charlestown Prison.
Bart and Nick, as the sentences now stood, were to be executed on August 10th, and were both in strict confinement; the little walk across the prison yard which the prisoners got out of this interview was their first glimpse of daylight for nearly a month. Both of the men were on a “hungry strike”; they were going to starve themselves to death, as protest against the secrecy of the Governor’s hearings. But modern labor and suffrage agitation has established in the minds of wardens and jailers the fact that human beings do not die of starvation for a long time. Bart, on his seventh day of a fast, was able to walk cheerfully across the prison yard to the warden’s office.
The Governor and the wop sat down together--no other witness. But later on, of course, Bart told his friends about it. The Governor had a question firmly fixed in his head, and which he used as a means of “stumping” witnesses: “Why did not Vanzetti take the stand at the Plymouth trial?” He now asked this question of Vanzetti. Since the answer involved the whole story of Vanzetti’s radical beliefs, and his relations to lawyers of Catholic and capitalist mentality, he was still answering at the end of an hour.
The Governor had to leave then, because Lindbergh had come to Boston. The Governor was due at a reception, but he promised to come back and hear the rest of Vanzetti’s answer. He made his escape through the warden’s home, running quickly to avoid the picture-snapping newspapermen. They reported that he seemed greatly flustered; he knocked off his straw hat while jumping into his car. Could it be that a rabid anarchist had said something to offend the sensibilities of the owner of the Packard Motor Car Company of New England? A picturesque story, of which the newspapers would have made much more, if there had not been the flying colonel, and also a million dollar prize fight to be featured the next morning!
The great man came again, and talked with Vanzetti for two hours. Like all salesmen, he had learned to be agreeable; he wore his fixed professional smile, and shook hands with Bart at least ten times, so Bart declared. That a man could “smile and smile and be a villain still” was a thing not dreamed of in the philosophy of Bartolomeo Vanzetti, and he poured out his heart, and explained his ideas--he took the matter so seriously that he wrote a long letter adding things he had overlooked. Bart told his lawyers he was sure the Governor would not execute a man to whom he had behaved with such great courtesy. And the lawyers also found the Governor’s manner encouraging. Said His Excellency, genially, “I wanted to tell Vanzetti to eat!” And again, “Isn’t Vanzetti an attractive man!”--it might have been a schoolgirl instead of a supersalesman.
His Excellency also summoned Sacco to the warden’s office, and tried to have a conversation; but this did not come off so well. Sacco was polite, but not to be taken in by supersalesmanship. The conversation, relieved of Italian dialect, ran somewhat as follows:
“Sacco, I want to have a talk with you.”
“There is nothing for me to say.”
“But I want your version of this matter.”
“I have not asked for a pardon.”
“But I would like to hear your story.”
“What is the use? You have your tendencies, and you could not see mine.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that I am a poor man and you are a rich man, and we have nothing in common.”
“But I was a poor man once. I worked in a rubber shop at seven-fifty a week.”
“Yes, but now you are a millionaire, and your money thinks for you. I have nothing to say.”
So the interview ended. Sacco was very gentle about it, and afterwards he became a trifle remorseful. He said, “I didn’t treat him right. He outdid me in courtesy. But I wanted him to know the truth. He won’t see it the right way, and why should I let him fool himself?” Sacco was the man with a formula; and for once the formula happened to fit.
Also the Governor summoned Madeiros to the warden’s office; and here was the supersalesman handling a different line of goods. Madeiros had taken the burden of the South Braintree crime upon himself, and thereby put the ruling class of Massachusetts in an uncomfortable position. Naturally, they would pay a price to get out of it. Said the Governor--if the story of a prison employee may be credited:
“Madeiros, I understand that you are sore because you didn’t get a square deal from the government.”
“Yes, sir, that is so.”
“The district attorney double-crossed you, I understand.”
“Yes, sir, he did.”
“Well, if that is so, I might do something for you. Of course, there is nothing in this South Braintree story of yours.”
“What I told about South Braintree is the truth.”
“Oh! In that case I won’t do anything for you. You are guilty of two murders!”
X
On the 25th of July the Lowell Commission heard arguments of counsel. For five hours William G. Thompson analyzed every aspect of the case, and if his speech could have been listened to by the thinking people of America, it would have saved the lives of his clients. But the speech was heard only by three elderly autocrats, one of whom had a tendency to appear to be dozing, while another had great respect for what the third was thinking. We may imagine the third thinking as follows: “You are an able lawyer, and are performing an intellectual feat, but I do not need you to tell me what to think.”
Not all the evidence in the Sacco-Vanzetti case had been discovered; the defense would keep on finding it, up to within a few hours of the execution. But most of it was now available, and it seemed as if the Great Novelist who makes up history had been concerned to take every item of evidence produced by the prosecution at the Dedham trial, and wipe it out by a later discovery. Even to that cap picked up at the scene of the crime, which the district attorney had striven so hard to fit onto Sacco’s head, and which “Web” Thayer had striven so unjudicially to force a witness to identify as Sacco’s!
The main point about this cap had been that it had holes in the lining, and the “theory” was that the holes had been due to Sacco’s habit of hanging the cap on a nail in the factory. There had been a great amount of testimony on this point, and Katzmann had made the most of it in his speech to the jury. In his later arguments before Thayer he had gone so far as to say: “that alone was enough to warrant the conviction of the defendant Sacco.” The issue had been carried to the Supreme Judicial Court, and made the subject of a special ruling; after which Judge Thayer had made both cap and ruling the subject of special emphasis. In rejecting the last bill of exceptions, he had summed up the proposition as follows:
“In the lining of that cap there were nail-holes, which the Commonwealth claimed were made by the nail upon which this cap had been hung. Now the Supreme Judicial Court has said, in the decision of these cases, that that evidence was competent, because it tended to prove that that cap belonged to Sacco; and if the jury should find such to be the fact, then Sacco was present at the time of the shooting.”
Such had been the word of Supreme Justice on the matter of a ragged and dirty “pepper-and-salt” colored cap with earlaps! A man’s life had depended upon it, and depended upon it still! And now, before the Lowell Commission came ex-Chief of Police Gallivan of South Braintree, telling the true story, never before revealed. The cap had been handed to him by the shoe company superintendent, and the chief had carried it under the seat of his automobile for at least ten days, possibly twice as long; he had made the holes in the lining, while looking for some mark of identification; then he had passed the cap on to police officer Scott; and neither Gallivan nor Scott had been put upon the witness-stand, to tell the jury how those holes had come to be!
Why Chief Gallivan had been passed by as a witness for the prosecution was obvious enough--he was too plain-spoken a man. To the Lowell Commission he summed up the Dedham trial in one pungent formula; and if the three old gentlemen had thrown out the whole record, and confined themselves to Gallivan’s one formula, they would have earned the thanks of posterity. Said the Chief: “The Government would put on a witness and then the defense would rush in to offset it, and I guess Katzmann was just as wise; he would dig up one to offset him. The case appeared to be to see who could get the biggest crowd. In other words, to see who could tell the biggest lies.”
XI
Also the matter of Vanzetti’s revolver, which was supposed to have belonged to Berardelli, the slain paymaster. According to the “theory,” Berardelli had dropped it, and Sacco had picked it up, carried it off, and given it to Vanzetti. There was no evidence that Berardelli had had his revolver with him at the time of the shooting--he had taken it to a repair place, and there was no record to show he had got it back. No one had seen him with a revolver at the time of the crime. The sole basis of the “theory” was that Vanzetti’s revolver happened to be of the same make as the one Berardelli had owned. The prosecution had put on the stand an expert from the factory, who had been a former federal agent, and had led the jury to believe that he thought the two revolvers were identical. But now, before the Lowell Commission, he admitted that he had felt prejudice at the trial, and that his testimony had been misconstrued. Said the witness Lincoln Wadsworth:
“But I have felt that I had created the impression that there was a possibility that that was the pistol. Well, that is just a possibility.... There is just the one possibility in the number of pistols a factory of that kind happens to make. There was no distinguishing number so that you could tell that that was the pistol.”
The witness went on to tell about his interviews with the assistant district attorney, and how the latter had failed to be interested in having the truth made clear:
“But Mr. Williams did not seem to want to have that at all, so that I just let be on it. And then in the court-room I felt sure I would have a chance to say the same thing that I have said here, but when the time came to be cross-examined I simply was not, that was all, and I went down on the records, as I thought, and still think, that while not a direct statement that that was the pistol, it might lead to the impression that that was the pistol.” And then, summing up the whole matter: “There are thousands of times more chances that it was not than that it was.”
So it went, with detail after detail; impossible to find a single one that stood the test of time! Every one of the prosecution’s “star” witnesses was ruined. Mary Splaine had told Henry Hellyer twice that she did not see the faces of the bandits, and the detective had written it down at the time--for use of the shoe company and the insurance company, and their allies, the police and the district attorney. Goodridge was a horse thief, his very name a perjury; he had sent two men to the electric chair to escape a jail-sentence, and the district attorney and the judge had refused to allow this to be brought before the jury. Pelzer had told many persons that he did not see the bandits; so had “Fainting Lola” Andrews. Both of them had made affidavits to this effect--and then taken them back, so that you might believe them either way, or neither.
Not one rag of evidence to cover the naked prejudice of three elderly autocrats! The collapse became so complete that it was a matter for jesting; there was even a haberdasher, to visit the prison and measure the left hand of Sacco! Mary Splaine had based her identification of the bandit upon his “good-sized left hand”--seen at a distance of eighty feet for a period of one or two seconds. Now came the haberdasher, testifying that Sacco’s left hand was smaller than normal. Governor Fuller’s way of meeting that detail was to take Mary Splaine out on the street and invite her to describe a man in an automobile at the proper distance. But, alas, he did this in front of the State House with the golden dome, and there was not any cobbler-shop to cut off Mary’s view at the end of one or two seconds; nor was Mary up in the second story, looking down amid the wild excitement of a bandit raid, in imminent peril of shots.
There had been a million words of the Dedham trial testimony, and few persons had ever digested it all; Cornelia Thornwell, who had been studying it for six years, knew how hard was the task. Certainly the Dedham jury had not done it, much as they might assure the Governor and his commission that they had given a fair trial. Certainly the Governor had not digested it, for when you referred to witnesses by name, Mary Splaine and Lola Andrews were about the only ones he could remember. Certainly the three old gentlemen had not done so, for they made pitiful slips and asked helpless questions. But now came a great lawyer, William G. Thompson, having sat up nights with those volumes for several years, and presenting to the Commission a summary of their contents.
For example, a study of Sacco’s sartorial career in South Braintree on the 15th of April, 1920, as presented by the government witnesses. At half-past eleven Lola Andrews had talked with him lying under an automobile, wearing a dark suit. Five minutes later, a hesitating witness thought he had seen him in front of a drug-store, dressed “respectably.” Less than an hour later, according to another uncertain witness, he was smoking a cigarette in the depot, wearing dark “ordinary wearing apparel” and a soft black hat. When he actually shot Berardelli, he had changed into dark green pants and a brown army shirt, according to Pelzer. A few seconds later, he passed within Mary Splaine’s vision, having changed to a gray woolen shirt, and wearing no hat or coat at all; but having lost a cap at the scene of the murder, although he had made his first appearance in a soft felt hat. A few yards further on, Sacco had resumed his dark suit--if one could believe the witness Goodridge.
There were many thousand words like that in Thompson’s argument; and who could dispute the lawyer’s final statement, that Sacco and Vanzetti had “never had the kind of trial required by English tradition and by American constitutional law as a prerequisite to taking away their lives”?
XII
Anguish in the hearts of all friends of the defense; they knew that the decision was going against them--even while they would not admit it to themselves. Pitiful the plight of hard-working and law-abiding lawyers, who had made all the proper moves, and won the chess-game a dozen times over--and now their opponents would dump the board and throw the chessmen into their faces! While Vanzetti sat in his cell and wrote memories of his mother, and Sacco composed a farewell letter to his son, men and women whose hearts were too tender for this grim world thought up frantic new schemes to move public opinion, and raced about like ants in a nest which has been stepped on.
Jessica Henderson motored Cornelia Thornwell to New Haven, where lived Mrs. Berardelli, the widow of the slain guard. With them went Musmanno, and a Mrs. Florence, who had testified at the Dedham trial, that Mrs. Berardelli had said to her that the hold-up would never have succeeded if her husband had had his gun with him. (It was the gun Vanzetti was supposed to have picked up after the murder.)
The group now appealed to the woman’s sympathies, and she agreed that it would not help either her dead husband or his widow and orphans to take the lives of two men who might possibly be innocent. She consented to send a telegram to the Governor, appealing for clemency. “Write it now,” said Mrs. Florence; but the woman said for Mrs. Florence to write it, she would be satisfied with whatever they sent. So Mrs. Florence and the party drove to the nearest railroad depot, and wrote a message and sent it, and it made a front-page story in the newspapers next morning.
But it took the enemy only a few hours to counter that move. They came to the woman and frightened her, and the Boston newspapers carried a story to the effect that the telegram had been sent, not by Mrs. Berardelli, but by an unknown woman from a railroad depot. The ladies made another trip to New Haven--but only to discover that Mrs. Berardelli wouldn’t “have anything more to do with it.” Returning to Boston, the ladies called upon the Associated Press representative, explaining the circumstances, and asking him to correct the error. The response of the Associated Press was to put on the wires all over the country the statement that Mrs. Berardelli declared she had never seen the telegram which had been sent in her name. It happened to be strictly the fact; but it wasn’t quite the truth!
Edward Holton James was a New Englander of the old sort; he lived in Concord, just across the field from the home of Emerson, which possibly had affected his mind. He was a nephew of Henry James, the novelist who wrote like a philosopher, and of William James, the philosopher who wrote like a novelist. His wife was a Cushing, and wealthy, so he had everything that a citizen of Concord could have to make him respectable; but it didn’t keep him out of jail.
Mr. James had spotted certain flaws in the “theory.” He had noted the fact that the so-called “bandit-car” with the bullet-hole through the door had been in the hands of the police for hours before any of the numerous examinations had revealed the conspicuous bullet-hole; also he had measured the “Coacci shed,” and proved that you couldn’t drive two cars into it, as the “theory” required. Now he went down to South Braintree to reproduce the events of the hold-up, and prove that some of the witnesses could not have seen what they claimed. But the selectmen of South Braintree were not going to let the streets of their town be used for Bolshevik propaganda if they knew it, and they arrested Mr. James, in spite of both his ancestry and his money.
And then a little later Beltrando Brini had a bright idea: if the story he had told at the Plymouth trial was fiction, then he was a perjurer. He had told the story to the Governor, and had not been believed; so he drafted a letter to the Governor, asking to be arrested, and he took it about among the other alibi witnesses, and fourteen of them signed it, including Bosco and Guadagni, the two editors. Trando delivered it at the State House, and when no policeman came for him, he went back, with his mother and half a dozen of the other witnesses. It was near the end of the case, and the corridors were crowded with detectives and secret service men, with swarms of reporters--a sensational scene. The Governor was not in, said the secretary; and took the youth off into a room by himself for a “grilling.” Who had sent him, and what was this scheme for publicity? “This hurts you more than it helps.” And when Trando undertook to explain, “Don’t try to make a stump speech; the place for that is the Common.”
Said Trando, “I tried to speak on the Common yesterday, and I was stopped.”
“Don’t try to be a hero!” sneered the secretary. Heroes were not wanted at the State House, and Trando could not get arrested. Too bad he did not know about the room full of booze in the cellar! If he had told about that, he might have got his desire. As it was, he went away with tears in his eyes, his mother sobbing on his arm.
XIII
And yet there were moments of hope. Impossible to believe that a great business man and statesman could be such a hypocrite! Members of the defense committee came to see him, having heard the wild rumors, started from the State House, as to the millions that had been raised and expended for bribes. They offered to put their records at the disposal of the Governor; they had raised some $325,000 in seven years, and had vouchers for it all--bundles and bales of them stacked in a closet. Gardner Jackson and Mary Donovan had worked for nearly two years without a cent. The Governor was surprised to hear it--he had been given to understand that they got fifty percent of every thing they raised. Little Joe Moro, the secretary, had worked for thirty dollars a week, and the only other wages paid in the office were for typists. The Governor was cordial, he seemed to like Joe immensely, shook hands with him several times--he was a good fellow, and everything was all right, don’t worry!
But that was in the privacy of his office, the tricks of a supersalesman; molasses catches more flies than vinegar. Publicly the Governor said nothing, and the rumors continued to fly. Professor Frankfurter had got fifteen thousand dollars from the New York _World_ for writing an editorial; he had got one hundred and fifty thousand from the committee for writing the _Atlantic Monthly_ article. The very dignified editor of the Springfield _Republican_ was accused of having received twenty thousand dollars from the committee for one famous editorial. The “State House crowd” lived in such an atmosphere of cash payment that they could not imagine how gentlemen felt about such matters.
Also they lived in an atmosphere of terror. It seemed as if there were as many detectives as real workers under the golden dome. Assuredly, there were more spies than there were friends of the defense; one of them put on a Windsor tie and got himself regularly arrested with the pickets. Every one who had anything to do with the case was shadowed; servants would be offered money for the contents of trash-baskets. All officials having to do with the case, the Supreme Court judges and later on even the jurors, had guards on their homes day and night, and wives trembled every time their husbands went outdoors.
There was fear; and there were newspapers printing headlines and selling editions, making every bomb-scare into a gold mine. Relatives of the Johnson family, the garage people who had testified against Sacco and Vanzetti, had had their rear porch blown up while they were in bed. That made a newspaper story, and helped to damn Sacco and Vanzetti. The police decided that it was a bootleggers’ quarrel; but that fact was not revealed--the bootleggers being such liberal paymasters of the police. A threatening letter was mailed to one of the witnesses, and this turned out to be a prank of some boys; the newspapers published the letter on the front page, and never published the true story. Such is journalism, which lives upon sensation, and prints its enormous editions with blood instead of ink.
XIV
The Lowell Commission had finished its hearings and retired into privacy to deliberate. But meanwhile the Governor went on hearing witnesses. They streamed through his office, as many as thirty in one day; all sorts of persons who claimed to have information about the case. Many came secretly, and went away, their names known only to him; they whispered into his ear, and he was supposed to sort out truth from rumor. A hundred times over, in conversations and arguments, he would show that he could not do it, that he had, in fact, no idea of the difference. “Why, I heard it right here in this room!” he would say; and that proved it true.
On the other hand, impossible to satisfy him with any evidence that proved what he did not want to believe! He had got his mind fixed on the Bridgewater conviction, which would prove Vanzetti an habitual criminal. You pointed to Vanzetti’s eighteen alibi witnesses, all decent working people, and the Governor would find it suspicious that they talked so much about eels. “But where is the express receipt showing that he got the eels?” The case seemed to hang on that, so the defense set out to look for express records in Plymouth. They discovered that the records, nearly eight years old, had been destroyed. Incidentally, they discovered that a state detective had already made an investigation, and ascertained that they had been destroyed.
They decided they would outwit him, even so. They would look for the receipts of fish-dealers who had sold the eels. Herbert B. Ehrmann, junior counsel, went to consult Vanzetti in Charlestown prison. It was hard for him to remember--he had been accustomed to buy fish from several dealers in Boston. The lawyer went according to his vague description, with Felicani for translator; they hunted at the “fish-pier” in South Boston, but found no one who remembered selling to Vanzetti. Joe Randall got another Italian--two gangs searching. At last, after visiting seven Italian fish-dealers on Atlantic Avenue, the “Guinney market,” they found one who said that “B. Vanzetti of Plymouth” had been a customer of his. Had he any records? For a year or two, yes--but seven years, eight years--no, no, giammai! He had changed his partnership in the meantime.
But they argued--could they make a search? The life of two compatriots might depend on it! Yes, there were old papers up in the loft. So up they go, among dust and cobwebs, with an electric flashlight. Old boxes of papers, in bad Italian script--sheafs of loose ledger leaves, but the earliest date is January, 1920. “For God’s sake, haven’t you got any before that?”
The Italian has got interested--it is a story! “There’s an old case, maybe stuff in that.” A big box shoved under the rafters, tightly nailed up. “Must have a hammer to open it.” Stacks and stacks of old papers: and among them blocks of American Express Company receipts, signed by the expressman, day by day as he called for shipments. And the dates--here are some for 1919--and here is December, 1919! And in the middle of the block, one reading: “B. Vanzetti, Plymouth, one barrel eels!”
Hurrah! We have it! We have them licked! The date is December 20th, which was a Saturday, the very date Bart claimed the eels had been shipped, to be sure to reach him on Tuesday, and got ready for selling the next day! And they are live eels, so the dealer says, you can tell that by the weight of the barrel! Dead eels would be heavier!
Young fellows dancing in a dusty loft! Our wops are saved! They go back to the office with shining eyes. They go to the Governor’s office. “We have found the evidence the Governor asked for.” This to the private secretary--the Governor himself is busy. “Indeed?” says the secretary. No shining in those hard eyes! “When are you going to stop bringing evidence?”
They will not trust the precious papers to him, but insist upon seeing Wiggin, the Governor’s counsel. Then they go away, and wait--and nothing happens; the next time they see the Governor, they mention the matter, and he says, “What does that prove? What evidence is there that Vanzetti ever received the shipment? I understand that the eels were never claimed; they were frozen in the depot.”
Says Joe Randall, gnashing his teeth: “It is like that fairy-story we used to enjoy when we were children--how the little tailor wooed the king’s daughter. ‘Go slay me the dragon,’ says the king--so the hero goes and slays the dragon, and comes back, but he doesn’t get the king’s daughter. ‘Go slay me the three giants,’ says the king--so he goes and slays the three giants, and comes back, but he doesn’t get the king’s daughter. ‘Go slay me the man-killing boar,’ says the king--and the longer the story, the more fun it is.”
XV
The supersalesman had evolved a regular set of formulas, by which he challenged the witnesses who came to him. Of Italians he would ask: “Are you an anarchist? Are you a friend of Sacco or Vanzetti? Are you a member of the committee? Have you any friends on the committee? Who sent you here?” To be “sent” was a sinister thing, a sign of an elaborate conspiracy in operation.
For Americans the procedure was more subtle. The first question was: “Have you read the record?” If you answered “No,” then you were disqualified. The Governor had read the record, so he said. If you answered, “Yes,” the question would be, “Where did you get it?”--for the defense had only two transcripts of the full testimony, and two or three copies of the “bill of exceptions,” usually called “the record.” If you were able to convince him that you had had access to any of these, he would say, “Have you interviewed the witnesses?” And of course that would “stump” you; how could any one interview the witnesses, when the lawyers for the defense couldn’t even get the Governor’s secretary to give them the names and addresses of the witnesses? You would answer, “No,” and the Governor would reply, “Well, I know about this case, and you don’t.”
All that mass of complications--a million words of printed testimony, and many times that much spoken into one human ear--and he really thought he could carry it all! Serene, even jaunty, he would come into his office, wearing his automatic smile, and greeting the reporters, “Good morning, boys, a fine day!” He did not ask for help, and gave no thanks when it was offered. Hjalmar Branting, a lawyer from Sweden, son of the prime minister, came over to study the case, and devoted a month to it, becoming certain that the men were innocent. He was granted an hour, and the Governor spent five minutes talking about Sacco and Vanzetti, and the rest talking about the market for automobiles in Sweden. A thrifty supersalesman, making hay even while the thunder rolled and the lightning split the sky!
The floods of mail poured in. Trucks came, bringing masses of petitions; some thirty packages, registered, from France, representing three million signatures, patiently collected at workingmen’s meetings. They were burned in the basement furnaces, at night, when the heat would not be troublesome. Messenger boys brought telegrams by the bundle; they were sorted out, one kind for the newspapers, the other for the fires. Said the private secretary: “Everybody wants those wops executed, except people who don’t know how to spell their names.” He gave out the letter of the Reverend Llewellyn E. Darling, of Grace Evangelical Church of Everett, reporting that a vote had been taken among his Sunday congregation, and it was unanimous in demanding that the convicted men should die. “We believe,” wrote this Darling Reverend, “that the source of the petitions for their release is un-American and would eventually destroy the government of the United States.” Comrade Jesus, on his golden throne above, rose up and gave three cheers for the Red, White, and Blue.
XVI
Cornelia had put off visiting the State House; she would see what happened to others, and judge the best way of proceeding. Now she asked Henry Cabot Winters to arrange an interview; and he offered to go along--a notice to a politician that she was still a member of a great family, in spite of all her vagaries. The supersalesman would be polite to her, but also he would be grim, for she was a dangerous woman. He held her to blame for a great part of the publicity which this case had obtained; he had visions of her spending secretly the Thornwell millions in an effort to get her own perverse way.
Cornelia had never met him; he had been a name to her so far. Now she sat in his chamber and studied those eyes, so cold, expressionless--a curious thing, they made you think literally of agates. His face was round, his head partly bald, his costume immaculate, his smile as it were dead. He sat with his back to the window, so that in the matter of vision he had the advantage over his visitors. A large mahogany desk; a green blotter, with a few papers, a fancy bronze ink-stand, and a little state flag on a standard for patriotism. A large room, done in white, with large white doors and heavy carpet and a fireplace never used. “I guess you have seen all this many times, Mrs. Thornwell,” he said, respectfully.
Yes, Cornelia had seen it. “When I was a little girl, the old home of John Hancock stood out there in front.” So they talked “Boston,” and perhaps she would have done better if she had talked nothing else; her social prestige was really the only thing that stood any chance. In a chair at one side sat Mr. Joseph Wiggin, the Governor’s private counsel, a Harvard man and a blue-blood, smiling and quizzical; he would have conspired with her in that kind of enterprise, if she had put it up to him in the right, “old Boston” way. To charm an automobile salesman and persuade him to make a concession as a matter of social favor, the right of an aristocratic old lady to have her feelings spared!
Cornelia set out to tell about Vanzetti, and how well she knew him, and what a fine man he was. The Governor listened, but soon tired of it. “I haven’t the time to deal with backgrounds and psychology, Mrs. Thornwell.” She tried to show him what backgrounds and psychology meant. “Consider Nick. They tell us he went out and stole sixteen thousand dollars, and then came back to his shoe factory and earned thirty-seven dollars and eighty cents!” But she was rousing his male combativeness. “They had to go on working in the factory,” he argued. “They couldn’t have afforded to change their habits.”
Cornelia was studying the bland face and the strange expressionless eyes. What sort of man was this? What motives would sway him? A business man, of a simple type, used to facing simple problems, like those of price; the proper rental for a building, or wages for an employee, easy to decide; a man of action, not a thinker. Now he had to weigh the souls of idealists, he had to estimate social forces--and they were completely beyond his comprehension. “I am a plain man, Mrs. Thornwell, not an intellectual.” She had started to tell him about Bart’s studies, the books she had seen him mastering by patient toil in the night; but she realized that this was an affront to a merchant of motor-cars who had been studying markets and prices. Neither would it do any good to praise the unselfish motives of the two social rebels. That, too, would give offense to the man of money. “These men who don’t believe in private property must be depraved,” he had said.
She told him about the two trials, and what she had learned about the various prosecution witnesses. The Governor praised these latter; “clear-eyed,” was his word. Said the old lady, “Their eyes may be clear from the outside looking in, but assuredly they were not clear from the inside looking out.” She told the long story of the prevarications and waverings of these witnesses, as proved by the records of the preliminary hearings, and by the Pinkerton reports. The Governor knew of these reports now, but he did not know what was in them, and was puzzled by details. He did not even know the names of some witnesses. She spoke of Behrsin, and the Governor said, “Cursin, who is Cursin?”
But everything polite, according to good form; he heard her to the end, giving few signs of impatience. “I will give careful consideration to what you tell me, Mrs. Thornwell. I have great respect for your sincerity, and thank you for coming to see me.” Bows and smiles all round, a pleasant hour--and utterly, utterly futile.
“The case is completely indigestible to him, he can’t hold it in his mind.” Such was the judgment of Henry Cabot Winters, legal expert, as he walked with his mother-in-law down the long marble corridors. “You have to know a great deal about it in order to know anything, and Fuller doesn’t know anything.”
“What will he do, Henry?”
“He’ll take somebody’s word for it. He’ll think he is deciding, but his mind will make itself up without his realizing it. That’s the way he’s gone through life--landing on his feet like a cat. What I’m afraid is, he has landed already, and facing the wrong way.” As he said this, the great lawyer put his arm under the old lady’s, and held her steady as they walked towards his car. “It comes to this, Mother--what I said to Rupert last night: you can make a chauffeur out of a governor, but you can’t make a governor out of a chauffeur!”