Sacco & Vanzetti

The World War lasted four years and was duly chronicled as an international episode. The case of Sacco & Vanzetti is seven years old and is still an international episode. It is a tale filled with blood and tears, with Reds and bigwigs, with bombs and laws. . . . April 15, 1920. A paymaster and a guard were shot to death on the streets of South Braintree, Mass., and robbed of a payroll of $15,000 by two men who "looked like Italians." May 5, 1920. Two Italians who lived near South Braintree--Nicola Sacco, shoemaker, and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, fish peddler--were arrested as suspicious characters. The U. S. was then on a rabid radical hunt. Messrs. Sacco and Vanzetti were on the Red lists. July 14, 1921. A jury found Messrs. Sacco and Vanzetti guilty of the South Braintree murders on the following evidence: Factory-window witnesses, who had previously identified other Italians as participants in the crime, swore that Messrs. Sacco and Vanzetti were the killers. But, 20 Italians said they had purchased eels from Mr. Vanzetti at the hour of the crime, and the Italian consul in Boston swore that Mr. Sacco had been in his presence at that time. However, the police who arrested them swore that they had drawn guns. This was interpreted as "evidence of guilt." The jury was asked to do its duty as "did our boys in France"--an effective plea, considering the fact that Messrs. Sacco and Vanzetti were pacifists as well as radicals. 1921-1927. Motions for a new trial were repeatedly turned down, while radicals flung bombs at many a U. S. embassy, while liberals such as Anatole France, Romain Rolland, Henri Barbusse, Fritz Kreisler, Albert Einstein protested against the injustice being done to the fish peddler and the shoemaker. . . . Mr. Sacco went on a month's hunger strike. . . . Mrs. Louis Dembitz Brandeis, wife of the U. S. Supreme Court Justice, turned over her Dedham home to Mrs. Sacco so that she could be near her husband and cook for him while he was in the Dedham (Mass.) jail. Last week in a Dedham courtroom, there was a scene, wherein seven years of emotion simmered and boiled over. The Supreme Court of Massachusetts had finally and flatly rejected evidence for a new trial on the grounds that there had not been a "failure of justice." Judge Webster Thayer, clad in black robes, with a face as still and as pallid as an ancient cameo, entered the courtroom to sentence Messrs. Sacco and Vanzetti to the electric chair. Bluecoats fingered sawed-off shotguns. Secret service agents with crimson rosettes in their lapels posed as Reds. Women sobbed. The clerk droned: "Nicola Sacco, have you anything to say why sentence of death should not be passed upon you?" In the prisoners' box, a clean-shaven Italian, with a high forehead and a son named Dante, stood up. "Yes, sir, I, I am not an orator," said Nicola Sacco. "It is not very familiar with me, the English language. . . . I never know, never heard, even read in history anything so cruel as this court. . . . My comrade, the kind man, the kind man to all the children, you sentence him two times . . . and you know he is innocent. . . . I forgot one thing which my comrade remember me. As I said before, Judge Thayer know all my life, and he know that I am never guilty, never--not yesterday nor today nor forever." The clerk droned again: "Bartolomeo Vanzetti, have you anything to say. . . ?" The fish peddler was an orator: "Yes, what I say is that I am innocent. ... I have never stole, never killed, never spilled blood . . . but I have struggled all my life, since I began to reason, to eliminate crime from the earth. . . . What we have suffered during these seven years no human tongue can say, and yet you see me before you, not trembling, you see me looking you in your eyes straight, not blossoming, not changing color, not ashamed or in fear. . . . "We know that you [Judge Thayer] have spoke your hostility against us with friends of yours on the train, at the University Club of Boston, on the golf club of Worcester, Mass. I am sure that if the people who know all what you say against us would have the civil courage to take the stand, maybe your Honor--I am sorry to say this because you are an old man, and I have an old father-- but maybe you would be beside us in good justice at this time. . . . "I would not wish to a dog, or to a snake, to the most low and misfortune creature of the earth--I would not wish to any of them what I have had to suffer for things that I am not guilty of. . . .I am suffering because I am a radical, and indeed, I am a radical; I have suffered because I was an Italian, and indeed I am an Italian . . . but I am so convinced to be right that you could execute me two times, and if I could be reborn two other time, I would live again to do what I have done already. I have finished ; thank you." Forthwith, amid interruptions, Judge Thayer sentenced Messrs. Sacco and Vanzetti to die by "the passage of a current of electricity" through their bodies during the week of July 10, 1927. The court adjourned.

Echoes. Governor Alvan T. Fuller of Massachusetts was flooded with telegrams and petitions urging a pardon for Messrs. Sacco and Vanzetti, or at least an impartial investigation of their case. Twenty-two members of the British Parliament demanded immediate freedom for them. Breadmakers and taxi-drivers in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and laborers in many another land went on protest strikes. Heavy guards were posted at the U. S. Department of State and at Judge Thayer's home. . . . And, meanwhile, the fish peddler and the shoemaker sat in jail, fumbling with martyrdom. They have two hopes: a technicality leading to the U. S. Supreme Court, a pardon by Governor Fuller.