Pardon?

In the hands of "the richest man in Massachusetts" lie the lives of two Radicals. On this man who has expressed his "thorough belief" in capital punishment as "the only thing to check wanton crimes of violence" rests such hope of pardon as two men may have who are condemned to be electrocuted for murder. Believing that trial judges should be "no mere moderators or referees," but should "guide and control" inquiries, he is now asked, in effect, to reverse a judicial decision when such a reversal will be universally interpreted as reflecting upon a member of the Massachusetts judiciary. For only Alvan Tufts Fuller, Governor of Massachusetts, can by the exercise of his right of pardon save Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, convicted murderers, from having sent through their bodies, sometime during the week of July 10, 1927, a current of electricity sufficiently powerful to cause their deaths.

Many a humble Boston officeworker, snatching a hasty and economical midday lunch at a Thompson's restaurant where food is balanced on the broad-arm of a one-armed chair and 50c buys abundant calories to sustain life, has all unknowingly lunched with the Governor of his Commonwealth. For Governor Fuller, rich today, was born poor; is self-made; eats luncheons at Thompson's in preference to dining at the Copley Plaza, the Touraine, the Statler. Born 49 years ago in Maiden (suburb of Boston), Governor Fuller left school at the age of 14, taking a job in a rubber factory to help support his widowed mother. At 17 he went into business for himself, opened a bicycle repair shop. On Saturday afternoons he rode in bicycle races, became Junior Champion of the vicinity, added thus to his fame, his income. But it was in four-wheeled, not two-wheeled, vehicles that he made his fortune. Like many another far-sighted man who was young when the automobile industry was an infant, he hitched his wagon to the horseless-carriage. In 1898 he went to Europe, brought back two European-made motor cars, sold both at a profit. Then he went to Detroit, came back with a contract giving him the New England territory for the Packard car. As the Packard car prospered, as more and more motorists began to "Ask the Man Who Owns One," Alvan Tufts Fuller prospered also. Today he is rumored to be worth 40 million dollars; is considered the wealthiest of Massachusetts citizens. None of the Governor's fortune, however, has resulted from his career in public life. As a member of the Massachusetts State Legislature, of the U. S. House of Representatives, as Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts, and as Governor of Massachusetts, he has returned, uncashed, all salary checks received as salary. Thus Governor Fuller. Why, however, has his action regarding the Sacco-Vanzetti case become a matter of national, of international concern? Mr. Sacco and Mr. Vanzetti are awaiting execution for a payroll robbery, accompanied by murder, occurring in South Braintree, Mass., on April 15, 1920. A fortnight ago Judge Webster Thayer, trial judge at the time of the conviction, sentenced the two Italians to be executed sometime during the week of July 10, 1927 (TIME, April 18).

But there is more in the Sacco-Vanzetti case than is contained in a bare recital of its facts and dates. During one morning last week the first mail alone brought to Governor Fuller 57 letters, some urging intercession, others protesting against intercession for Shoemaker Sacco, for Fish-peddler Vanzetti. Twenty-two members of the British Parliament cabled Governor Fuller, demanding a new trial, viewing with horror the approaching executions of two men whose guilt they question. Last week 7,000 New Yorkers gathered in Union Square, roared "Stop the murder of Sacco & Vanzetti." In London, in Paris, in The Hague police guard U. S. embassies and consulates, fearing that European radicals will let bombs express their disapproval of Massachusetts justice. Girls of Wellesley and Barnard colleges have petitioned the Governor to intervene. And a long list of liberal intelligentsia, including Jane Addams of Hull House, Remain Rolland (French novelist), Felix Frankfurter of the Harvard Law School faculty, Albert Einstein (relativity theorist) and many another have enrolled themselves with the Sacco-Vanzetti sympathizers. But, in spite of tumult, of shouting, the outcome now rests solely with Governor Fuller. The Governor may 1) appoint a committee to review the entire proceedings, with the possible result of giving the condemned a new trial; 2) of his own responsibility, grant pardons to Mr. Sacco, to Mr. Vanzetti; 3) may let the law take its course. When, in his office beneath the Golden Dome of the State House at Boston, he sits down to consider his decision, what arguments are there that might lead him to decide in favor of the shoemaker and the fish-peddler? What is the case for Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti?

That case rests partly upon the contention that Messrs. Sacco and Vanzetti, because of their avowed Communistic principles, did not receive a fair trial owing to prejudice against their political beliefs partly upon the contention that since their conviction, important new evidence has developed sufficient to justify a retrial. Sacco-Vanzetti sympathizers, quoting from the trial records, point out 815-L-. Prosecutors Katzmann and Williams stressed the facts that Messrs. Sacco and Vanzetti had ln 1917, dodged the draft by going to Mexico, that both were Reds of the most crimson hue. Cross-examining Mr. Sacco, District Attorney Katzmann drew from him a long speech, in whose broken, halting English the law-abiding Massachusetts gentlemen of the jury heard a Communist's brief for Communism. Said Mr. Sacco after telling how he had come to thei Fm --:, believing it to be the "land of the free":

"I saw there was not what I was thinking before ... I could not afford much a family the way did have the idea before. I could not put any money in the bank; I could no push my boys some to go to school and other things ... I could see the best men, intelligent, education, they been arrested and sent to prison and died in prison for years and years without getting them out, and Debs, one of the great men in his country, he is in prison, still away in prison, because he is a Socialist ... the capitalist class they don't want our child to go to high school or college or Harvard College . . . they want the working class to be a low all the times, be underfoot, and not to be up with the head. . . . Sometimes you see the Rockefellers, Morgans ... they give five hundred thousand dollars to Harvard College, they give a million dollars for another school. Everybody say, 'Well, D. Rockefeller is a great man, the best man in the country.' I want to ask him who is going to Harvard College? What benefit the working class they will get by those million dollars they give by Rockefeller, D. Rockefeller? . . . men who is getting $21 a week or $30 a week, I don't care if he gets $80 a week ... he can't live and send his child and go to Harvard College if he wants to eat everything nature will give him. . . . We no want fight by the gun. . . . What is war? The war is not shoots like Abraham Lincoln's and Abe Jefferson, to fight for the free country . . . but they are War for the great millionaire. . . . They are War for business, million dollars come on the side." What, ask Sacco-Vanzetti adherents, must have been the effect on the jury of these fulminations against "D. Rockefeller," against "Harvard College," against wars with "million dollars come on the side"?--especially at a time (1921) when Red-hunting was a national pastime? Were Messrs. Sacco and Vanzetti convicted not of murder but of radicalism? As an illustration of prejudice, Liberals also put forward a remark alleged to have been made, before the trial, by Jury Foreman Ripley, who is said to have informed a friend that he wa; going to serve on the jury in the trial of the two "ginneys" (vulgar term for Italians) and, upon his friend's opining that they were innocent, replied, "Damn them, they ought to hang anyway." In addition to attacking the trial itself, friends of Mr. Sacco and Mr. Vanzetti also have collected new evidence to answer the question: If Messrs. Sacco and Vanzetti are innocent, who is guilty? For in November, 1925, a convict, confined in the same prison with Mr. Sacco, made a written confession of having taken part in the payroll robbery and stated that Messrs. Sacco and Vanzetti were not in the bandit-gang. Testimony of this convict (one Celestino P. Madeiros) lead to an investigation involving a group of criminals known as the "Morelli gang." Police, however, maintain that the "Morelli gang" did not commit the Braintree crime, point out that two of the group were in jail at the time, and refuse to attach much weight to the testimony given by one convict in behalf of another.

Complicated tortured, partly dimmed by the passage of seven years is the problem which Governor Fuller must analyze. As against the allegations discussed above, he will doubtless consider the facts that Mr. Sacco and Mr. Vanzetti, tried by a jury of their peers, were found guilty; that Trial Judge Webster Thayer, before whom have come repeated petitions for a new trial has steadfastly refused to consider any of the matter contained in these petitions as important enough to justify reopening th? case. The Supreme Court of Massachusetts has also refused to allow appeals taken from the verdict arrived at in Judge Thayer's court, though it should be added that in Massachusetts the Supreme Court is not allowed to pass upon facts but only upon law, could not have considered, for example, the Madeiros confession.