Workers’ LibertyWorkers’ Liberty Reason in revolt Vol 3 No 53 March 2016 Published with...

Workers’ LibertyReason in revolt

Published with Solidarity 397Vol 3 No 53 March 2016

Top: Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti. Below: their death masks, printed on the front cover of LaborDefender, bulletin of the international campaign to save these class-war prisoners

Labour’smartyrs:the storyof SaccoandVanzettiBy James P Cannonand Max ShachtmanThis is the famous last speech of BartolomeoVanzetti, the class-war prisoner who, alongsideNicola Sacco, both of them anarchists, died in theelectric chair in August 1927, framed by the USauthorities. This speech, despite its brokenEnglish, is so beautiful and moving that it fallsnaturally into verse form.No-one has ever expressed more splendidly and

with such stirring, simple language the aspirationsand hopes of all those who fight for a better world.Once read, these words form part of everysocialist’s heritage. This typographicalarrangement of Vanzetti’s speech first appeared inLabor Action, an American socialist weekly.

I have talk a great deal of myselfbut I even forget to name Sacco.Sacco too is a worker,from his boyhood a skilled worker, lover of workwith a good job and pay,a bank account, a good and lovely wife,two beautiful children and a neat little homeat the verge of a wood, near a brook.Sacco is a heart, a faith, a character, a man;

a man, lover of nature, and mankind.A man who gave all, who sacrifice allto the cause of liberty and to his love for mankind:money, rest, mundane ambition,his own wife, children, himselfand his own life.Sacco has never dreamt to steal, never to

assassinate.He and I have never brought a morselof bread to our mouths, from our childhood to

todaywhich has not been gained by the sweat of our

brows.Never...Oh yes, I may be more witfull, as some have put it;I am a better babbler than he is, but many, man

timesin hearing his heartfull voice ringing forth sublime,in considering his supreme sacrifice, remembering

his heroismI felt small at the presence of his greatnessand found myself compelled to fight backfrom my eyes the tears,and quench my heart

troubling to my throat to not weep before him:this man called thief and assassin and doomed.But Sacco’s name will live in the hearts of the peopleand in their gratitude when Katzmann’s bonesand yours will be dispersed by time;when your name, his name, your laws, constitutionsand your false god are but a dim rememberingof a cursed past in which man was wolfto the man...If it had not been for these thingI might have lived out my lifetalking at street corners to scorning men.I might have die, unmarked, unknown, a failure.Now we are not a failure.This is our career and our triumph. Neverin our full life could we hope to do such workfor tolerance, for justice, for men’s understandingof man, as now we do by accident.Our words, our lives, our pains — nothing!The taking of our lives — lives of a good shoemaker

and a poor fishpeddler —all! That last moment belongs to us —that agony is our triumph.

The working-class victims of bourgeois repression and deliberate murder are legion.The murder of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, who were burned alive in theelectric chair in Massachusetts, on August 23, 1927, was a cold-blooded crimecommitted by the American capitalist class in the full sharp glare of world wideattention and protest. Mass demonstrations were organised in every city in the world where Communist

and Socialist movements existed. Protests and demands for clemency were made bymany well known writers and politicians. These included British working-class leaderGeorge Lansbury, whose indignant exposition of the case serves as an introduction tothis pamphlet. There were riots in European cities when news came through that, aftersix years under sentence of death, Sacco and Vanzetti had finally been killed.. Both of them were Italian American anarchists. Both were brave, dignified and class-

conscious men. They saw what was happening to them with the eyes of working-classmilitants. They commented publicly at each turn in the legal-political murder process

that had them in its grip. Vanzetti was a man of uncommon eloquence. They becameknown as people, not just as far-away symbolic figures, to millions all over the world. The authors of this collection, James P Cannon and Max Shachtman, were central

organisers of the campaign to save Sacco and Vanzetti. Cannon was National Secretaryof International Labor Defense, the US section and the hub of the internationalcampaign to save them. The young Max Shachtman edited its monthly journal, LaborDefender.An arm of the Communist movement, International Labor Defense operated as a non-

factional defender of all working class victims of class justice and bourgeoisvengeance, whether they were Communists or its declared political opponents. Theworld wide campaign for the anarchists, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, wasconducted in that fine spirit, and exemplified it.

S. M.

By George Lansbury*The United States government is on trialfor murder. The indictment is that in orderto conceal the secret murder by its policeof an Italian worker, Andrea Salsedo, it isnow judicially murdering two other Italianworkers, Nicola Sacco and BartolomeoVanzetti.

First of all, the facts. In the spring of 1920,war passion and panic that had been workedup to even a higher pitch in America thanelsewhere, and had not there worked itselfoff in war exhaustion, was diverted by theGerman collapse and the Russian revolutionfrom the “Boche” to the “Bolshie.” And thecruel hounding of pacifists or pro-Germansbecame an even more cruel harrying of Redsand Russians. But as Red Russians werefound to be rare, justice was ready to be sat-isfied with any foreigner at all suspected of“radical” opinions. All of which is nothingnew or peculiar; for a century ago, after theNapoleonic wars, we had in England thesame persecutions; even the same perversionof legal proceedings. Though in fighting theworkers today our authorities have at leastlearned how better to preserve appearances.

In May, 1920, then the United States Attor-ney-General, Mitchell Palmer, was conduct-ing a grand offensive of “Red Drives,” raids,and wholesale arrests, with the help of the ca-sual informers, frame-ups, agents provoca-teur, etc. And when we find Mr. Palmer, aQuaker, appointed by President Wilson, con-ducting such a campaign, small wonder thatthe American police, never distinguished forpeaceful persuasion or international senti-ment, treated every foreign-born worker sus-pected of radical views as a suitable subjectfor the “third degree.”

In consequence, one of their victims,Salsedo, a labour leader, was found one daydead on the pavement under the window ofthe room in the private prison of the NewYork secret police. Every effort was made tohush up the scandal by deportation and ter-rorism. But one fellow prisoner, Klia, before

being sent out of the country, succeeded ingetting out an affidavit that Salsedo and hehad been tortured and threatened with death,to make them confess to charges of conspir-acy. The torments to which he was subjectedwere such that, it is believed, he voluntarilyleaped from this fourteenth story window tocertain death. Scandal was such that even themost patriotic pressmen and 100 per centpoliticians could not afford to ignore it. It be-came clear that public opinion was shocked.

But a vigorous counter-attack might stillsave the situation if the police could convinceopinion that the Italians involved were agang of criminals.

Accordingly, Sacco and Vanzetti, two so-cialist immigrants, were selected as suitablesubjects. For they were leaders in the move-ment for the defence of Salsedo, and theirconviction on a capital charge would dis-credit their cause, disgust the neutral public,and deter their own partisans. The chargewas ready to hand. For a series of “pay rollrobberies,” with violence, by a gang of motorbandits in Massachusetts had incensed pub-lic opinion, already irritated with police inef-ficiency against the swelling tide of realcrime. The difficulty was that these robberieswere clearly by professional criminals,whereas Vanzetti had nothing against him,but that he had been driven from job after jobfor being an agitator, while Sacco was a fam-ily man, a frugal liver and a skilled, trustedemployee, who had saved money.

Nevertheless, both were accused of one ofthe worst of these crimes in which a paymas-ter and his guard had been shot dead atSouth Braintree, and $15,000 robbed fromthem by a motor gang. Vanzetti was also ac-cused of another robbery at Bridgewater, andthis trial was hurried on and a conviction se-cured — the judge observing in summing upthat “although he may not have actuallycommitted the crime attributed to him, he isnevertheless morally culpable, as being theenemy of our existing institutions.”

Having thus secured a “previous convic-tion” it seemed safe to proceed with the cap-ital charge. Let it be said at once that the onlyfacts proved against them were that when ar-rested they were armed and made confusedand contradictory statements which, in viewof the police terror against all Reds, is not sur-prising. But every other evidence connectingthem with the murder — and it was insignif-icant and unsubstantial enough to start with— was overwhelmed at the trial by contrary

and more reliable testimony.The original suggestion that a friend of

Vanzetti’s owned a car like the one used bythe murderers was never even presented atthe trial. The attempt to fit the bullets used totheir revolvers failed. The police witnessesswore that Vanzetti was (a) driving the car;(b) beside the driver; (c) in the back seat; (d)that he arrived by train the day of the mur-der; (c) that he came by train the night before;no real identification was attempted; nomoney traced to the prisoners; while amongthe alibis sworn was one by an official of theItalian consulate. There was, in fact, no caseat all. It Is indeed amazing; and alarming thatby mere appeals to passion and panic a con-viction was secured from any New Englandjudge and jury.

But perhaps two quotations will give a bet-ter idea of the character of the proceedings.Thus, an examination of the record showsthat one Ripley who had gone about beforethe trial saying, “Damn them, they ought tohang, anyway,” was made foreman of thejury, and had “evidence,” i. e., revolvers andcartridges privately put in his possession toinfluence the jury in their discussion out ofcourt.

Again, the judge, in his summing up, re-ferred to the prisoners as being “conscious ofguilt as murderers, slackers and radicals.”And after an appeal to passion, panic, andprejudice, racial, social and religious, he con-cluded: “The verdicts do not rest in my judg-ment on the testimony of eyewitnesses; forthe defendants called more witnesses thanthe Commonwealth to testify that neither de-fendant was in the bandit car. The evidencethat convicted was circumstantial, andknown in law as ‘consciousness of guilt’”

Under which ruling everyone who in timesof political persecution shows fear and con-fusion on being arrested pleads guiltythereby to any charge which authority maythereafter trump up against him.

And America claims to be the true mark ofthe ancient Common Law of England. Well,perhaps it is. The good old law as adminis-tered in the Bloody Assize.

But we have not done yet. During the fiveyears that these two workers have been keptin expectation of execution, the truth hasbeen leaking out.

The three principal police witnesses haveadmitted that they lied, and a certain con-victed murderer and professional criminal,Celestino Madeiros, has confessed under

oath to the crime and cleared the accused ofcomplicity.

And still American “justice” holds thesemen under daily menace of electrocution —which, indeed, may have been executed be-fore these lines are read. Now there is noth-ing but a few treaties to prevent Americansmaking it a capital offence in their country tobe of foreign race and radical views. But thepresent methods of judicial murder in “God’scountry” are really rather out of date.It is a far more merciful and practical

way of getting rid of people whose opin-ions are not yours to shoot them out ofhand for “attempts to escape,” than totorture them for years with solemn threatsand then electrocute them for “con-sciousness of guilt as slackers and radi-cals.”

Labor Defender, October 1926

LABOUR’S MARTYRS More online at www.workersliberty.org2

Save Sacco and Vanzetti!

Labour’s martyrs: the story of Sacco and Vanzetti

* George Lansbury was a left Labour socialistwho led the Party from 1932-35. He estab-lished the socialist Daily Herald in 1912 whichopposed the First World War and supportedthe Russian revolution. He was one of the“Poplar 30”, councillors who went to jail in1921 for defying central-government-im-posed rate increases.

Guilty and Proud of it:Poplars RebelCouncillors andGuardians 1919-25By Janine Booth

The inspiring story of the“rates rebellion” in theimpoverished East Londonborough of Poplar after theFirst World War.Published by Merlin Press

The Sacco-Vanzetti case is at a turningpoint.

Legally speaking, it now rests on anotherappeal to the Massachusetts State SupremeCourt from the latest decision of Judge Thay-er refusing a new trial. But speaking from amore fundamental standpoint, that is, fromthe standpoint of the class struggle, the issuereally hangs on developments taking placewithin the Sacco-Vanzetti movement whichembraces many workers of various views.

Within this movement lately a certain in-decision and hesitation has been noticeable.This by no means signifies a change in the at-

titude of the masses toward Sacco and Van-zetti. Their faith and solidarity remain un-shaken. The waiting and uncertainty whichcharacterise the movement at the presenttime are merely the reflection of a seriousconflict over policy and methods of conduct-ing the fight.

The Sacco-Vanzetti case is no private mo-nopoly, but an issue of the class struggle inwhich the decisive word will be spoken bythe masses who have made this fight theirown. It is therefore, necessary to discussopenly the conflicting policies which arebound up with different objectives.

One policy is the policy of the class strug-gle. It puts the centre of gravity in the protestmovement of the workers of America and theworld. It puts all faith in the power of themasses and no faith whatever in the justice

of the courts. While favouring all possiblelegal proceedings, it calls for agitation, pub-licity, demonstrations — organised protest ona national and international scale. It calls forunity and solidarity of all workers on thisburning issue, regardless of conflicting viewson other questions. This is what has pre-vented the execution of Sacco and Vanzettiso far. Its goal is nothing less than their tri-umphant vindication and liberation.

The other policy is the policy of “re-spectability”, of the “soft pedal” and ofridiculous illusions about “justice” from thecourts of the enemy. It relies mainly on legalproceedings. It seeks to blur the issue of theclass struggle. It shrinks from the “vulgarand noisy” demonstrations of the militantworkers and throws the mud of slander onthem. It tries to represent the martyrdom ofSacco and Vanzetti as an “unfortunate” errorwhich can be rectified by the “right” peopleproceeding in the “right” way. The objectiveof this policy is a whitewash of the courts of

Massachusetts and “clemency” for Sacco andVanzetti in the form of a commutation to lifeimprisonment for a crime of which the worldknows they are innocent.

The conscious proletarian elements withwhom we identify ourselves unconditionally,are for the first policy. The bourgeois ele-ments, and those influenced by them, are forthe second.

The corruption and class bias of the courtsof Massachusetts are already proved to thehilt. A division of the proletarian forces willonly facilitate their murderous plans. Theyare determined to have the blood of Saccoand Vanzetti.Only the organised and united protest

movement of the masses can save them.In this movement the class consciousworkers — the militants — are the drivingforce. Let those who hamper this move-ment or endanger its unity pause lest theyunconsciously become the executionersof Sacco and Vanzetti.

3@workerslibertyWorkers’ Liberty

A case of class against class

Sacco and Vanzetti must not burn on the electric chair!

The Sacco-Vanzetti case has been a partof American labour history in the making.It is seven years now since Sacco andVanzetti have been in the shadow of theelectric chair.

I do not believe that history knows of asimilar case to this. I do not believe that wecould find anywhere a case of such pro-longed torture as the holding of the sentenceof death over the heads of men for sevenyears; and at the end of that time we cancome together for a meeting and not knowyet whether that sentence is to be executed ornot.

The cause of Sacco and Vanzetti demandsof us, of the entire labour movement, mili-tant, unhesitating and unified support. Wemay have different opinions on many prob-lems, but there is one thing that we have be-come sure of in these seven years in whichwe have said our word for Sacco andVanzetti. We have become absolutely con-vinced that the case of Sacco and Vanzetti, thecase of these two Italian workers in Massa-chusetts is not the ease of two hold-up menor bandits.

We have become convinced that it is theworking class against the capitalists. We havebecome convinced that Sacco and Vanzettiare not only innocent of this specific crimewith which they are charged, but that theyare innocent of any crime except that of beingvictims of exploitation by the capitalists ofthe masses.

Their case is a universal one indeed, and ithas gone so far that we do not need to discussit from a legal standpoint; but for those whoare interested it has been set forth by MrHolly, and we can say for others that recentlya book was published by Professor FelixFrankfurter in which he comes to the conclu-sion that there is no case against Sacco andVanzetti.

But the case of Sacco and Vanzetti has a farbigger significance than any legal procedure.

Sacco and Vanzetti began in this case as twoemployees, obscure fighters of the workingclass, but they have grown in these yearsuntil their personalities have made their im-pression not only in Massachusetts, not onlyin the United States, but all over Europe andAmerica. Sacco and Vanzetti have grown asthe great symbols of the whole labour move-ment. They stand for the upward struggleagainst oppression and exploitation, for fear-less defiance of the enemies of labour withwhich the best representatives of the work-ing class are instinct.

Everyone today knows why the bourbonsof Massachusetts arrested, imprisoned andtried Sacco and Vanzetti. Had they not beenscrupulously loyal to the cause of the work-ing class they would not now be faced withthe grim march to the death chair. Had theyremained silent while their brothers andcomrades around them suffered persecutionand oppression, had they not made the idealof the liberation of the working class theirown ideal, there would not today be a Sacco-Vanzetti case. Had they, in court, begged formercy and renounced their cause and theirpast, they would have been freed to achieveobloquy. But they did none of this.

Despite the hundreds of interminablenights and days of imprisonment, with theghastly thought of execution constantly intheir minds, they have remained as simplytrue to the workers’ cause as they were beforethis infamous frame-up was conceived in theminds of the Massachusetts re-action. Yes,their persecution has even steeled their con-victions and history has already bound theminseparably with the history of the Americanlabour movement.

After seven years they came to court forsentence, and I wish that every worker inAmerica could read the speech that Vanzettimade there. After seven years of torture andseven years of fighting by friends and com-rades with the death sentence, this man stoodup in court not as one guilty, not as oneafraid, but turned to the judge on the benchand said to him: “You are the one that isafraid. You are the one that is shrinking withfear, because you are the one that is guilty ofattempt to murder.”

Vanzetti called his witnesses there, and not

merely legal witnesses. He marshalled beforeJudge Thayer’s attention the thousands whohave decided to hold mass meetings such asours, and men of our period like AnatoleFrance, Maxim Gorki, Bernard Shaw, HenriBarbusse, Albert Einstein. He pointed to themany millions who have protested againstthe death-hunt of two labour fighters. Heturned to Eugene Victor Debs and other menin America.

Let us not forget that we should measureguilt and innocence not by formal evidencein court alone, but by higher values than that.Let us not forget that the last thing that Eu-gene Debs wrote publicly was an appeal tothe workers of America for Sacco andVanzetti, an appeal whose stirring languagearoused with renewed vigor the protect ofhundreds of thousands in this country, andbrought again the million-voiced demand forlife and freedom to these two valiant fighters,and condemnation to their persecutors.

It is hard to speak with restraint. I, likeComrade Chaplin, also had the honor ofspeaking with Vanzetti. Everyone that hasseen or spoken with him comes away withthe feeling that he has stood in the presenceof one of the greatest spirits of the time. It ishard to speak with restraint when one ispressed by the thought that the vengeful ex-ecutioners of Massachusetts are consummat-ing their hideous plan to press the switch thatwill forever remove from our ranks the per-sons of these two men who we feel are somuch a part of labour and its cause.

Our impassioned determination to mo-bilise all of our strength and power to rescueSacco and Vanzetti from the blood-lustyjailors must be communicated through theland if we are to save them from the fate thathas been prepared for them.

While I believe with the statements of Fitz-patrick that our meeting should disassociateitself from irresponsible people, let us not for-get the year 1916 when Joe Hill was killed inUtah. We must remember that when thewave of working class protest began to risein protection of Joe Hill, gangs of detectivesbegan to frame-up fake letters. After the heartof Joe Hill had been pierced by the bullets ofthe death squad, it was exposed that frame-up letters had been used. This must be a les-

son for us and for those who are the friendsof Sacco and Vanzetti.

There is no need to threaten the governoror anyone else because the protection ofSacco and Vanzetti is far stronger than anypersonal act. The protection of Sacco andVanzetti is the job of the working class of theworld, which is knocking on the door, notwith the hands of irresponsible individuals,but with the titanic fist of the workers of thewide world because they believe in the inno-cence of Sacco and Vanzetti. We say to you,our friends and our chairman, before theyturn on the switch, that the real aim is not toburn Sacco and Vanzetti in the electric chairbut to burn the labour movement in Amer-ica. If the workers of America and the work-ers of the world are determined enough andencouraged enough, we can yet save Saccoand Vanzetti. And it is in that spirit that wemeet here tonight.

We do not meet here to resign ourselves totheir fate. We meet as another stage in thefight for Sacco and Vanzetti. We believe thatthe workers assembled here will go back totheir organizations and their jobs and raiseagain the battle cry for Sacco and Vanzetti.Let us demand not only the liberation ofSacco and Vanzetti. Let us demand also theimpeachment of the monstrous judge whotried and sentenced them.Let us considerways and means of making our protest moreeffective. From this great movement, from thewords of Sacco and Vanzetti, let us draw in-spiration.

We have hope, and we have faith in theworkers of America, and in the workers ofthe rest of the world who have so often andreadily responded to the calls for solidarityand aid for Sacco and Vanzetti. Every workerin the land must be made to realise the mon-strosity and significance to the whole labourmovement of this crime. Every worker muststand shoulder to shoulder with his brothersto build a solid wall of defence for the victimsof the Massachusetts bourbons who are benton their bestial revenge.Only the great and inspiring solidarity of

the whole working class will succeed insnatching Sacco and Vanzetti from thechair of death.

A speech by James P Cannon at aSacco-Vanzetti mass meeting held inChicago on 23 May 1927. Printed inLabor Defender, June 1927

By James P Cannon, printed in LaborDefender, January 1927

Who can save Sacco and Vanzetti?

The news of the decision of the wn-preme court of Massachusetts comes tohand just as this number of the Labor De-fender goes to press.

The black-robed judges have pronouncedthe doom of Sacco and Vanzetti. Evidence offrame-up and conspiracy was piled highenough for the whole world to see, but thejudges would not look at it. The New Eng-land Bourbons want the blood of innocentmen. This was decided from the first. Onlyfools expected otherwise. Only fools put faithin the courts of the enemy. It is all plannedand decided.

The two Italian workers have been takeninto the Dedham court room, where theywere falsely convicted of murder six yearsago this summer, and there sentenced byJudge Webster Thayer of the Superior Courtto die in the electric chair at Charlestown onJuly 10 for the crime of rebellion against thecapitalists.

They will take them from their cells andstrap them securely in the chair. They willturn on the switch with the hope that whenthe deadly electric current burns and searsthe warm flesh of the two rebel workmen.There will also be consumed within theseflames the cause they symbolise.

So they have decreed and so they hope. Butthe game is not over. There is another poweryet to be considered. There is a higher courtthan that of the solemn reprobates who de-creed the death of Sacco and Vanzetti. The la-boring masses of America and the worldhave faith in Sacco and Vanzetti. It is timenow to appeal finally to the masses. It is timefor the workers to say their word.

Such slender legal resources as yet remainmust be utilised. This goes without saying,But the real hope for Sacco and Vanzetti mustnow be placed in the protest movement ofthe workers. Only the united protest move-ment of the workers can save Sacco andVanzetti from the hands of the executioners.

The defence of Sacco and Vanzetti is anissue of the class struggle. They are not crim-inals but the symbols and standard bearers ofthe militant labour Sacco and Vanzetti move-

ment. The fight for Sacco and Vanzetti is thefight of the working class.

The need of the hour is an organised,united movement of protest and solidarity ona national and international scale. The greatworld-wide movement which has stayed thehands of the executioners up till now must berevived and infused with new strength anilmilitancy. In this movement unity must bethe watchword. All partisan aims, all differ-ences of opinion and all controversial ques-tions must be put aside. All forces must beunited with-out delay on the broadest possi-ble basis for the struggle to free Sacco andVanzetti.

The agitation must be conducted with con-crete aims. The first big objective is the con-centration of the indignation and protest ofthe workers in a gigantic National Sacco andVanzetti Conference. Only through a Na-tional Conference can the forces be unitedand the resources gathered for further strug-gle.We must go forward with the organisa-

tion of this National Conference at allcosts, in spite of all difficulties and with-out delay.


The great movement of solidarity in thecampaign to save Sacco and Vanzetti forthe working class, which has developedto such splendid proportions, may be con-fronted with a new danger by the timethese words appear in the Labor De-fender.

It is the same danger that sapped thestrength, resoluteness and militancy of themovement to rescue Tom Mooney and War-ren Billings from the hangman’s noose. Itarises out of the diabolical cunning and fearof the vultures of capitalism who see theirprey staunchly defended and seek to hold itwith new snare.

This is known to us from the history of thepast. We remember the movement forMooney and Billings; how it enlisted the sup-port of the entire labour movement in thiscountry and in others, of prominent men andwomen, writers and thinkers; how the cry fora general strike to free the two frame up vic-tims found an echo among hundreds of thou-sands of workers. We know that with a wholeworld convinced of their innocence, the exe-cutioners were forced to forego murderingMooney and Billings, and instead cheated themovement for the two labour fighters out ofits victory by putting them in prison for life.

The change of the death sentence to one oflife imprisonment was the clever evasion ofthe consequences of the powerful and swiftlygrowing movement to vindicate Mooney andBillings. But although they were saved fromthe death of the sprung trap, they were con-demned to the living death of life imprison-ment and the movement for their release wasvirtually destroyed.

The workers who had rallied to Mooneyand Billings were soothed by the sinister ar-gument that imprisonment for life was, in

any event, better than execution. They weretold that we would have to be satisfied forthe while with one victory, and that the finalrelease of the two fighters would be wonlater. But after ten years there remain only afew who still keep alive the memory of theseburied men and who are pledged to continuethe work for their freedom.

The great movement for Sacco andVanzetti, which now embraces millions ofworkers, must not allow itself to be dissolvedby a similar subterfuge. It is not a fantasticpossibility that is projected here, but a prob-ability that may rapidly develop into a fact.Already the rumour is being cautiouslyspread that the governor of Massachusetts, inwhose hands the final decision on Sacco andVanzetti is placed, may commute the sen-tence of death to one of life imprisonment. Itis being spread so that the enemies of Saccoand Vanzetti may feel out the reaction to thisprospect among the defenders of the two Ital-ian rebels.

NO RETREATThey want to know if this splendid move-ment of solidarity, which has time andagain struck heavy blows at the Massa-chusetts reaction, will allow itself to bedissolved with the bait of a commutation.

They want to know if, since some retreatmust be made, they can wreak their revengeupon these rebels, who have not feared todefy them, by burying them alive and at thesame time liquidate the movement which mustfree them!

We declare that these “kind” gentlemenwho are so ready to grant a commutation ofsentence to life imprisonment, and those whoare so ready to greet such a commutation. arenot the friends of Sacco and Vanzetti. Forthese fighters, who have so bravely with-stood the tortures and nightmares of sevenyears constantly being confronted with thefrightful prospect of death in the electric

chair, who have been borne up only by theirown bravery and the knowledge of the sup-port and solidarity of the millions of theworld, a sentence of life imprisonment inmany respects worse than death, for it is atbest a living death, a death by the spirit-crushing torture of cold walls and bars.

We repeat the warning to the friends ofSacco and Vanzetti which BartolomeoVanzetti addressed to his friends almost ayear ago, in the pages of the Labor Defender,when the decision on the case had been post-poned and illusions on its outcome werebeing created:

“We see evil, not good, in the delay. Lookout, friends and comrades, let no unfoundedoptimism lure you in a restful slumbering ofconfidence that could be awakened only bya shameful and deadly, new and final van-quishment.”

The millions of workers in every part of theworld who have not ceased to fight for thecause of Sacco and Vanzetti, which has be-come the cause of the whole working class,must not be deluded by talk of commutationof sentence. The workers who have thus farby their power and solidarity prevented theexecution of the two rebels must continuetheir great fight with more consciousness anddetermination. The workers who havesnatched Sacco and Vanzetti from tho chairof death must snatch them from the cell ofdeath by slow torture. No unfounded joymust dull the sharp edge of the movement. Itmust continue to fight forward with its mil-lion-armed power until this great issue is set-tled with a great victory.

The hearts of the Massachusetts execution-ers have not softened with kindness, andtheir desire to murder our comrades has notchanged. On the contrary, they seek for newmethods of torment.

The working class must reply: Not thechair of death, but life for Sacco and Vanzetti!Not the imprisonment of death, but free-

dom to Sacco and Vanzetti!

The fatal hour draws near for ourbeloved comrades, Sacco andVanzetti.

The frame-up-witnesses and perjurershave finished their testimony. Thelawyers have finished their arguments.The august courts have rendered theirverdict. After six years of suspense andtorture the ghastly conspiracy is sched-uled to culminate very soon by a crueldeath in the electric chair.

Sacco and Vanzetti remain undauntedafter their long ordeal. They look into theface of death without fear. How heroicand inspiring they are, and what an ex-ample they set before the labour move-ment!

After the Supreme Court rendered itsdecision refusing them a new trial. Com-rade Vanzetti wrote to the InternationalLabor Defense: “I am and will remain tothe death for the emancipation of theworking class!” The two Italian rebelworkers know the issues involved in theircase better than all the clever lawyers.They know it is for the crime of solidaritythat their lives are to be sacrificed.

Comrade Vanzetti says in the same let-ter: “It is a long time that I wanted towrite to you to tell you that I appreciateyour solidarity. I am one of the old guardwho appreciate and approve the solidar-ity and have been solidarity with all.”Our brave comrade in his own manner ofexpression puts the idea clear andstraight.

Our brothers in prison have no illu-sions. They know the blood-thirsty mas-ter class of Massachusetts intends to dothem finally to death. Vanzetti says in hisletter: “They are preparing the fire onwhich to burn us alive.” Not only do theyunderstand the reason for their long suf-fering and sacrifice, with the death chairat the end of it. They know also where thepower lies that can save them.

In the hour of their desperate need theyturn to the labour movement with theirappeal. “Only the revolutionary workers,the people, can give us life and freedom,”writes Comrade Vanzetti. Let us makethese words of our imprisoned comradesring around the world. Let us make thema clarion call to the workers everywhereto raise their voices in such a mightyprotest that the monstrous conspiracywill be defeated and our comradesbrought back to “life and freedom.” Time is pressing! Precious lives are

in danger! Swell the protest! Saccoand Vanzetti must not die!

By James P Cannon, printed in DailyWorker, 20 May 1926

Withall ourstrength forSacco andVanzetti!

From the Supreme Court of the capitaliststo the Supreme Court of the labouring massesBy James P Cannon. Printed in LaborDefender, May 1927

By James P Cannon. Printed in LaborDefender, July 1927

Death, commutation, or freedom?


As this issue of the Labor Defender goesto press (August 16, 1927) the final issue inthe Sacco-Vanzetti case is impending.

The danger appears greater than ever be-fore and the lives of the heroic labour fightershang in the balance. This warning againstfalse hopes and illusions and a call to newwork and struggles must be the keynote ofevery word addressed to the masses in thesefateful days.

There is nothing in the new developments,in the short respite, to warrant their beingtaken as anything but a manoeuvre to quietthe protest movement and, by taking advan-tage of the paralysis in the movement createdby false hopes and groundless illusions, tocarry out the murderous designs of the ene-mies of the two fighters. The workers whohave fought so well for Sacco and Vanzettimust understand the danger and guardagainst it.

The most important thing now is to exam-ine the situation and to draw the necessaryconclusions. Unless this is done, the move-ment will not be able to steer clearly betweenthe rocks of illusions and passivity.

The eleventh hour reprieve for Sacco andVanzetti was brought about by the thunder-ous clamour of the labouring masses of theworld who demonstrated their internationalworking class solidarity in an imposing man-ner. It did not for a moment mean, as somenaive people believe, that the MassachusettsBourbons whose whole energy is bent oncontinuing their horrible torture of Sacco andVanzetti until they can safely destroy them inthe electric chair, have experienced anychange of heart.

On the contrary, the reprieve only enabledthem to create most dangerous illusions andto gain for themselves some relief from thearoused world’s millions.

To believe otherwise is to fall victim to justthose illusions that the reactionaries are anx-ious to spread. Not to realise that this latestaction is a manoeuvre to gain time, duringwhich to demoralise and split and weakenthe protest movement is to fail to see the fun-damental question involved.

Those who from the beginning had seenthe class issue in the case, and based their ac-tivities and confidence on the mass move-ment of the workers were entirely correct,and all events have proved this.

The strike movement, in which millionseverywhere participated, has opened a newpage in the development of the Americanworking class. Even the sporadic beginningsmade in the use of this great weapon in po-litical cause, in spite of and against the oppo-sition or indifference of the official labourleaders in most cases, is fraught with pro-found significance. It demonstrates the irre-sistible power that lies in the organisedworking class, spurred on by the spirit of sol-idarity.

The case has always been an issue of theclass struggle and not merely one of an ex-ceptional miscarriage of so-called justice. TheMassachusetts Bourbons know this well, andthey recognise the magnificent protest move-ment as a distinctly class movement againstwhich there must be, and is being, organiseda counter campaign.

First there is a new delay of a few days os-tensibly for the purpose of providing for fur-ther legal deliberations (after seven years!)but in reality to instill the masses with the il-lusion of hopes from the courts that have pre-

judged the case. It is a delay calculated to sapthe strength of the protest movement andmake it more easy for the executioners tocarry out their plans of death.

Then there is the worn-out trick of “bomb”plants, which of course never hurt anyone,and which gives Governor Fuller the oppor-tunity to express “indignation” and “regret”at such “horrible deeds” — the same Gover-nor Fuller who coldly and deliberately al-ready put the seal of approval on the burningalive of Sacco and Vanzetti. This old game of“plants” is well known in the labor move-ment. It is being played now with the aim ofdiscrediting the movement for Sacco andVanzetti by creating the impression that thefriends of the two rebels are irresponsible ter-rorists. More cunningly, it is hoped to isolatethe militant elements of the movement in thismanner, and leave the field to those groupswho put all their cards on the illusion ofSacco and Vanzetti’s chance of obtaining jus-tice from the courts.

The mass movement of the workers, whichrelies upon its organised strength, has no usefor the methods of individual terror, and doesnot agree with them. Moreover, the history ofthe labour movement in this country’s richwith incidents of the work of provocateursand we know how to correctly estimate suchtransparent fakes.

Together with this are the attempts every-where to suppress protest meetings in orderto prevent the expression of the demand ofthe workers for the liberation of Sacco andVanzetti. Thousands of police, armed withclubs, riot and machine guns, and tearbombs, were mobilised for these meetings,and hundreds of workers were arrestedthroughout the country. In Chicago alone, a

score of meetings was broken up in oneevening. The capitalists fear the protest of theworkers for they realise that therein lies thestrength of Sacco and Vanzetti.

If we add to these developments the at-tempt of a number of the capitalist-liberal el-ements who joined the movement only tobetray it at the critical moment, shown by thesuppression of Heywood Broun’s articles inthe New York World and the change of tone inother capitalist papers; and the threats ofCongressman Johnson and Secretary ofLabor Davis against all foreign-born workersfor participation in the Sacco and Vanzettimovement, we can see that the whole ma-chinery of reaction is being mobilised for thecounter-campaign which is a combination oftrickery and force, illusion and coercion. Thenew developments bring out with crystalclearness the class issue in the case, the factthat the exploiters are launching all theirforces against the movement of the workerswhich alone stands between Sacco andVanzetti and the chair of death.

We have no grounds for the belief thatthere has been the slightest change of plan bythe executioners. On the contrary they areconspiring against our comrades with thesame malice and working with feverishspeed to consummate the assassination. It istrue that the case is now before the judges ofthe Supreme Court. But this gives us nohopes for it has been there before and weknow what to expect from that source.

The working masses have a deep convic-tion of solidarity toward Sacco and Vanzetti,and they know that even the illusory respitewas granted only because of the menacingprotest of the workers. We must thereforeconfidently proceed at all costs to still further

arouse and organise the anger of the workingmen and women against the slaughter of thetwo labor fighters and assist it to take theform of huge mass demonstrations and ef-fective strikes.

That is the great task in the coming days:to put all our energy, militancy and courageup to the last minute into the strike move-ment and the mass demonstrations. We de-pend for this on the work of the men in theranks, those class conscious militants whohave been working steadily and quietly, oftenin the face of calumny, to organise and buildthe magnificent protest movement. We mustwork swiftly. All brakes on the movementmust be regarded as the greatest danger. Allillusions which paralyse the movement mustbe overcome. All agents of the bosses who tryto sabotage and discredit the protest andstrike movement must be given their propername and exposed.

Only a few fateful days remain. But thereis still time, if we are able to disperse the il-lusions that have been created, to mobilisethe power of the workers which is for us thecourt of last resort to which our appeal mustbe made. Only to the extent that we under-stand this elementary fact will our work inthe remaining days have the possibility ofsuccess.

No faith in capitalist justice and institu-tions! That is the lesson of history confirmedby every development in the Sacco andVanzetti case. Organise the protest move-ment on a wider scale and with more deter-mined spirit!

Remember the Haymarket martyrs! Re-member Mooney and Billings! Remember theother class war prisoners!Demonstrate for Sacco and Vanzetti!

Strike a blow for freedom!

By James P Cannon. Printed in LaborDefender, September 1927

A campaign of the mass movement

The Sacco-Vanzetti case is moving to itsfinal issue with express-train speed.

Events in this mighty drama are transpir-ing now as though some unseen elementalforce were driving them on. These events arefraught with significance and danger forSacco and Vanzetti. and for the cause oflabour which they represent and symbolise.

The labouring masses must penetrate thehaze of these developments, interpret themtruly and draw the right conclusion fromthem. Only on this condition will they be ableto strengthen the iron ring of solidarity andprotection around Sacco and Vanzetti.

The main developments are the following:(1) A few days delay of execution ostensi-

bly to provide opportunity for further legaldeliberation (after seven years!), but in realityto manoeuvre against the protest movementand gather more strength and courage to gothrough with their plans.

(2) A revival of the old game of bomb“plants” in order to create the impression thatfriends of the prisoners are irresponsible ter-

rorists.(3) Governor Fuller promptly issues a

statement expressing horror at a bomb ex-plosion that injured no one — the same gov-ernor who felt no horror at all in condemninginnocent men to death on the basis of an “in-vestigation” framed-up in secret session.

(4) Attempts of the police to prevent andbreak up protest meetings and demonstra-tions and to suppress the expression of theworkers against the execution. At least sev-eral hundred workers were arrested in thedifferent cities in which demonstrations ofprotest were held prior to August 10.

(5) A number of capitalistic and “liberal”elements, who “joined” the movement for atime and even tried to lead it, begin to desert,to get cold feet and to find excuses to justifythe legal murder or life imprisonment. Thesuppression of the Heywood Broun articlesby the New York World and the changed toneof other capitalist papers are cases in point.

(6) Along with these happenings go theoutspoken threats of a new drive against theforeign-born workers. Thus we see the forcesof reaction mobilizing along the whole frontwith a strategy which represents a combina-tion of trickery and force. They are organiz-ing their forces for the counter-campaign

against the mass movement of the workers,the power which stands between Sacco andVanzetti and the electric chair. They are con-spiring and working with feverish speed.

There is no ground for the belief that theyhave changed their plans. The new develop-ments bring out more than ever, and withcrystal clearness, the class basis of this fa-mous case. They show that it is a case ofworkers against exploiters — with Sacco andVanzetti, the victims elected for the holo-caust, standing out before the whole world asthe representatives of the exploited class.

The class-struggle policy in the fight forSacco and Vanzetti was right from the begin-ning and is a thousand times right now. Thepower that can save The short reprieve wasnot an act of mercy or justice. It was a trick tocreate illusions and false hopes. It would becriminally foolish to regard it in any otherway. The bomb “plants” are part of the samestrategy and are designed to demoralise anddiscredit the protest movement, to split itsranks and above all to isolate and discreditthe militants who are the organizing anddriving force in the entire movement theworld over.

Bomb-throwing and other futile acts of in-dividual terror are not the weapons of class-

conscious workers. We base ourselves on themasses and rely on the power of the massesin the fight for the liberation of Sacco andVanzetti. The police violence and suppressionagainst the protest meetings and the threat-ened drive against the foreign-born arebound up together with the other develop-ments noted above. There is no contradictionbetween them.

The exploiters are operating as a class andon a class basis, combining the tactics offraud and manoeuvre with direct attacks andviolence. In all this there is nothing new forthose who understand the class struggle andhave no illusions about the possibility of “jus-tice” and “fair play” from the courts andother institutions of the class enemy. TheSacco-Vanzetti case must be considered fromthis point of view. The power of the workersis the court of last resort to which our appealmust be made. Only to the extent that we un-derstand this elementary fact will our workin the remaining days have the possibility ofsuccess.Put no faith in capitalist justice! Organ-

ise the protest movement on a wider scaleand with a more determined spirit!Demonstrate and strike for Sacco andVanzetti!

The lives of Sacco and Vanzetti still hangin the balance and they are in greaterdanger now than ever before.

Every mention of the case should beginwith this warning to the working masses notto be fooled with false hopes and false secu-rity. What has happened, and what are theconclusions to be drawn for our guidance inthe struggle during the remaining days, ofsuspense?

Some people, no doubt, have seen in theeleventh-hour reprieve a sign of a change ofheart of the Massachusetts Bourbons whohave been moving, with such refined anddeliberate cruelty, to blot out the lives of theItalian rebel workers. Such ideas are the mostdangerous illusions. It was just to createthese illusions and thereby to get some relieffrom the thundering clamour of the world’smillions, that this latest action in the “cat andmouse” game was taken.

There is not a hint or promise in any aspectof this new development of any design ex-cept to gain time, to manoeuvre for the de-moralisation of the protest movement of themasses and to organise a counter-campaignagainst it The foremost problem of the work-ers, who see in Sacco and Vanzetti the sym-bols and banner bearers of their own classand cause, is to understand clearly the newturn of events and to shape their coursealong the right line. The militant protestmovement has halted the executioners up tillnow. As the final hour drew near, the move-ment assumed such proportions and mili-tancy and expressed itself in massdemonstrations and strikes on such a scale,as to shake the world. It was especially thelast phase of mass demonstrations andstrikes which threw the real power of themasses into the scale against the murderplans of the Massachusetts hangmen. Those

who emphasised this line of action, who un-derstood and pointed out at every turn thefundamental class issues involved in thecase, and who appealed to the mass powerof the workers, were entirely correct. Thisline is the decisive line.

The greatest hope now lies in a further de-velopment and energetic promotion of thisclass-struggle policy. The case is again beforethe black-gowned judges on another appealby the defence against flagrant errors in thetrial. It is, of course, absolutely right to ex-haust every legal possibility and technicalityin the fight. Provided that the workers haveno illusions.

We must remember that the case has beenbefore these same judges many times before,and that they live again and again put theirscat of approval on the criminally false ver-dict. We must remember that the appoint-ment of Governor Fuller’s Commissionrevealed itself as a ghastly trick to disarm theprotest movement and fortify the verdictwith more dignified sanctions. The slightestmove should be suspected as another ma-noeuvre of the same sort, designed to givethe outward appearance of still more scrupu-lous “fairness” in the process by which thetwo labour fighters arc to be burned alive.

Remember, also, that powerful influencesof the exploiting class are being brought tobear for the carrying out of the death sen-tence, and that the final issue, just because itis an issue of the class struggle, and notmerely an isolated instance of the miscar-riage of their so-called “justice”, will dependupon the power and might of the class forcesset into motion on each side. The great task,therefore, in the few fateful days remaining,up to the last minute of the last hour, is to putall energy, courage and militancy into the or-ganization of mass demonstrations andprotest strikes.

All brakes upon this movement must beregarded as the greatest danger. All illusionswhich paralyze the movement must be over-

come. All agents of the bosses who try tosabotage and discredit the protest and strikemovement must be given their proper name.While the judges of the Supreme Court pre-pare their decision on the case again, wemust appeal at the same time to the labour-ing masses of America and the whole worldwho are the highest court of all. The work-ers have a deep conviction for Sacco andVanzetti, and they have the power to compeltheir release. We must help the workers tounderstand this power, to organise it and touse it. The protest strikes already carried out,in spite of and against the misleaders oflabour, are opening up a new page in the de-velopment of the American working class.The unparalleled heroic example of Saccoand Vanzetti has inspired and called forthnew resources of courage, class solidarity

and sacrifice. The tireless work of the mili-tants has already been responsible for the or-ganization of this spirit on an astoundingscale.

Concentration of all forces and energiesalong this line, will succeed in harnessing themood of the masses to an organised demon-stration of such intensity and power that itwill compel the liberation of Sacco andVanzetti.

It will deal a powerful blow to the wholeinfamous frame-up system. It will put thecases of Mooney and Billings and other mil-itant workers long buried in the prisonsagain on the agenda of the labour move-ment. And will infuse that movement with a

new consciousness of power.


New developments, new dangersBy James P Cannon. Printed in the DailyWorker, August 1927

By James P Cannon. Printed in the DailyWorker, 18 August 1927

No illusions!

Italian workers demonstrate in solidarity with Sacco and Vanzetti


The path to freedom leads through aprison. The door swings in and out andthrough that door passes a steady pro-cession of “those fools too stubborn-willed to bend,” who will not turn asidefrom the path because prisons obstruct ithere and there.

The doors of the San Quentin penitentiaryswung outward the other day and three menstepped forth and drank in their first breathof freedom for several years. They wereworkers, members of the IWW who had justfinished a sentence under the criminal syndi-calism law.

On almost the same day, at the other endof the country, in Massachusetts, John Mer-rick began to serve his sentence imposed foractivity in a shoe workers’ strike severalyears before. A week or so later, Gorge Pap-cun, a young man who distinguished himselfin the struggle to organise the coal miners ofPennsylvania, was convicted of sedition andtook his first steps in the long tortuous pathwhich leads through technical motions andappeals to the prison.

In the state penitentiary in Massachusetts,Sacco and Vanzetti wait for the final judg-ment to be passed upon them because theyare rebels and foreigners. The United StatesSupreme Court will decide the Ruthenbergappeal in the October term. The warden ofthe Michigan state penitentiary is ready.

The mills of capitalist justice grind out vic-tims for the penitentiary. If you put your fin-ger on any corner of the map of America,whether Texas, California. Washington,Pennsylvania, Maine, Massachusetts, WestVirginia, New York, you can say with cer-tainty:

“In this state is a penitentiary which con-fines labor prisoners.”

In one sense of the word the whole of cap-italist society is a Bastille. For the great massof people who do the hard useful work thereis no such word as freedom. They come andgo at the order of a few. Their lives are regu-lated according to the needs and wishes of afew. A censorship is put upon their wordsand deeds. The fruits of their labour are takenfrom them. And if, by chance, they have theinstinct and spirit to rebel, if they take theirplace in the vanguard of the fight for justice,the prisons are waiting.

The procession that goes in and out of theprison doors is not a new one. It is the resultof an old struggle under new forms andunder new conditions. All through historythose who have fought against oppressionhave constantly been faced with the dun-geons of a ruling class. The greater the causehas been and the deeper it has been rooted inthe needs and sufferings of the masses, themore it has been menaced by the tortures ofprison cells. The number of victims takenfrom among the ranks of those who havefought for a cause has been the measure of itsgreatness, and no cause is a great one whichhas not produced fighters in its ranks whohave dared to face arrest and trial and im-prisonment.

And the fear of a ruling class and the effec-tiveness of those who struggle against themcan always be measured by the number uponwhom they wreak revenge in this way.

The class war prisoners of today, just asthose in previous periods of history, are rep-

resentatives of the most courageous and ad-vanced section of the oppressed but upward-striving class. As a rule they are individualsof particular audacity and ability who havestood out conspicuously in their environmentas leaders and militants and have thereby in-curred the hatred of the oppressors.

Even in prison they continue to serve theirclass. Read the prisoners’ letters which ap-pear every month in the Labor Defender. Seetheir dauntless spirit reflected there. See howlittle confinement has been able to tame theirspirit or to weaken their faith in the eventualtriumph of their class.

The fortitude with which they bear their ig-nominious punishment and the fidelity toprinciple which they show in almost everycase, gives them a power as an inspiring andforward-driving force in the labor movementas a whole, which cannot be over-estimated.The service they render is as great as theirsacrifice is heavy.

CLASS WAR PRISONERSThe class conscious worker accords tothe class war prisoners a place of singu-lar honor and esteem.

The class war prisoners are stronger thanall the jails and jailers and judges. They risetriumphant over all their enemies and op-pressors. Confined in prison, covered withignominy, branded as criminals, they are notdefeated for they are the banner-bearers ofthe class that is destined to triumph. They arethe representatives of an idea that will crackthe walls of every prison and crumble theminto dust.

There is a way of saying that the class warprisoners are victorious which smacks of su-perficial optimism and which offers little con-solation to men who spend long, almostforgotten years behind the gray walls of thejail. We do not mean to sneak in this sense, asthough it were an automatic process.

The victory of the class war prisoners ispossible only when they are inseparablyunited with the living labour movement andwhen that movement claims them for itsown, takes up their battle-cry, remembers itsobligation to them, and carries on their work.

The matter-of-fact attitude which shrugs itsshoulders lightly at the procession of rebelworkers passing through the prison doors,passes it off as ‘’part of the game,” lets theprisoners lie there year after year neglectedand forgotten and lets the prisoners’ helplessdependents shift for themselves, is a poison-ous and dangerous attitude indeed. That wayspells defeat for the class war prisoners andfor the things they stand for. There has beentoo much of this in the past, as many a pris-oner could tell with bitter words if he wishedto speak about it.

We believe it is one of the great tasks of themovement to make war upon this attitudeand to eliminate it entirely. There are plentyof signs already that our efforts are meetingwith success and that the claim of the classwar prisoners is beginning to occupy aprominent place on the agenda of the labourmovement.

The never-to-be-forgotten conference ofearnest militants held on 28 June last year tolaunch the International Labor Defensemarked a turning point in the struggle tounite the imprisoned fighters with the mili-tant labor movement. The conference whichfounded International Labor Defense set be-fore the organization a number of serious anddifficult tasks. In the year which has inter-vened, substantial progress has been made inall directions.

The burning issue of labour defence hasbeen raised more insistently and in a more or-ganised fashion than ever before in America.The assistance given to prisoners and theirdependents during the past, year, thoughpitifully small when measured in comparison

to their sacrifice, still is something — a sign ofremembrance and an act of practical solidar-ity. The legal defence of persecuted workershas been put on an organised basis and not asingle one has appealed to us in vain.

Our development of publicity for labor de-fence, the crowning achievement of which isthe solid establishment of the Labor De-fender, which represents and entirely newdeparture in American labour journalism,has been a fruitful and substantial work in-deed.

The ILD way, which is the way of brotherlysolidarity and unity, has made its impressiondeep and indelible on all sections of the con-scious and militant labor movement. Andmost important of all, a solid organizationhas been built up embracing many thousandsof militant workers of diverse views who areuniting in practical solidarity under the ban-ner of the ILD. This is exerting a powerful in-fluence for unity in other activities in theclass struggle.

International Labor Defense is not a sepa-rate and independent movement of itself: itis a part of the whole labor movement. It is ashield for the workers as a whole in theirdaily struggle in their battle for liberation, itkeeps the issue of liberation of the im- pris-oned labor fighters constantly before the eyesof labor, the issue which stone walls andprison bars often cause workers to forgettheir brothers and comrades.

The work of International Labor Defense isby its very nature work for the class struggleand for solidarity. Thousands of workers whoare going into activity for ILD are being ledby degrees into the mainstream of the classstruggle itself, not only as sympathisers butas participants, as active soldiers. By its workand organization ILD draws greater numbersof workers into the movement and reveals tothem, with the aid of their own experiences,more and more the role of our class govern-ment.

ILD has a great work to perform in build-ing and rebuilding the revolutionary tradi-tions of America, some of the most valuableinheritances of the working class. The FrankLittle number of our Labor Defender con-tributed to this side of our work and we plan,in November, to organise a revival, morewidespread and profound than ever before,of the militant tradition of the Haymarketmartyrs of 1887.

International Labor Defense is only in theinitial stages of its development, but itspower and potentialities have already beendemonstrated. Our great campaign for Saccoand Vanzetti reached almost, every corner ofthe American labour movement and re-sounded throughout the world. The reports

from our local secretaries show that theSacco-Vanzetti conferences which were or-ganised everywhere on the initiative and in-spiration of ILD units have embraced morethan a million workers.

The Second Annual Conference of the In-ternational Labor Defense which meets inChicago on September 5th will mark anothermilestone along the road we travel. The. lead-ing spirits of the ILD from all sections of thecountry will assemble there to review theyear’s work and to lay out the lines for thefuture.It will be a gathering of historical signif-

icance, permeated through and throughwith the ILD spirit and the ILD way, madeup of men and women who are bound forlife and death with the cause of the classwar prisoners and the movement theyrepresent.

The cause that passes through a prisonFor the Second Annual Conference of In-ternational Labor Defense. By James PCannon, Labor Defender, September1926.

Sacco and Vanzetti in the dock


Sacco and Vanzetti: Labour’s MartyrsBy Max ShachtmanNowhere can history find a parallel to thecase of the two Italian immigrant workers,Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti.

Many times before this there have beengreat social upheavals, revolutions, profoundpopular movements that have swept thou-sands and millions of people into powerfultides of action. But, since the Russian Bolshe-vik revolution, where has there yet been acause that has drawn into its wake the peo-ple, not of this or that land, but of all coun-tries, millions from every part and corner ofthe world; the workers in the metropolis, thepeasant on the land, the people of the half-forgotten islands of the sea, men and womenand children in all walks of life?

There have been other causes that had justas passionate and loyal an adherence, butnone with so multitudinous an army.

THE PALMER RAIDSIf the Sacco-Vanzetti case is regarded asan accidental series of circumstances inwhich two individuals were unjustly ac-cused of a crime, and then convicted bysome inexplicable and unusual flaw in theotherwise pure fabric of justice, it will bequite impossible to understand the firstthing about this historic fight. Nothing butthe blindness of the observer can be ex-plained by such a viewpoint.

To comprehend the profound significanceof the case and of all its developments, onemust look at this immense canvas of conspir-acy and vengeance, crime and punishment,struggle and reaction, knavery, bravery anddeath, and millions upon millions swirlingand milling around two central figures forseven years, in order to find the social back-ground and basis upon which it was painted.Only thus can the whole case be fully illumi-nated and the central, logical theme be found.

Sacco and Vanzetti are not the first — northe last — victims of capitalist class justice.During the world war alone, hundreds ofworkers were seized and thrown into prisonfor their opinions and activities in the labourmovement. Labour papers by the score weresuppressed or hounded out of existence.Many of those who escaped arrest and con-viction under the vicious Espionage Act,were dealt with by silk-hatted bands of thugswho meted out “justice” in the dark of themoon with tar, feathers, horsewhip and pis-tol.

Not a single instance of a real crime wasever proved against these victims at home ofthe war for democracy; it sufficed that theiractivities had earned the enmity of the ex-ploiters. The hysterical, jingoistic atmospherewhipped up during the war was as good atime as any to “get the agitators.”

When the war came to an end, new windswere blowing in Europe and disturbed eventhe smug “isolation” of the United States. Thehuge cauldron of Bolshevism, in which thelast of the old order of things in Russia wasbeing burned out of existence, boiled tumul-tuously and threatened to engulf the rest ofEurope in a revolutionary overflow. Convul-sive upheavals tore gaping holes in the rot-ten post-war fabric of a whole continent.

And America was not immune! The de-spised and bestialised “Hunkies”, “Slovaks”and “Wops” — and “Yankees” too! — pouredout of the steel mills in hundreds of thou-sands. Some months before, the workers ofSeattle had been masters of the city, and theMayor came to them on bended knee duringthe general strike. The labour unions hadgrown by leaps and bounds. In Chicago, the

Communist Party had been formallylaunched and proclaimed its open supportand advocacy of Bolshevism. The masters ofAmerica, fattened and sluggish with theirnewly acquired millions, locked their safes,doors and shutters, looked under their beds,and prayed that the revolution do not over-take them for at least a few months.

The stage was set for a red hunt. It was nec-essary to deflate the growing labour move-ment, to weaken its ranks and militancy, torob it of its most conscious and energeticforces. It was important to lay the basis forthe “open shop” offensive, the lowering ofthe rate of wages which had risen during theexigencies of the war situation, and to smashthe trade unions. And such a red scare wouldgive such tenth-rate political hacks as OleHanson, Calvin Coolidge and A MitchellPalmer the opportunity to pose as the sav-iours of the sacred temples of law and order.So the campaign was begun and developedunder the direction of Attorney-GeneralPalmer, whose horizon was topped by hispresidential ambitions.

The familiar machinery of provocation andmalicious propaganda was set into motion.Bombs and absurdly “desperate” leafletswere distributed in various parts of the coun-try by agents provocateurs (surely they wereagents, for the bombs never hurt any one se-riously, and the combined efforts of the entirepolice and detective forces of the countrywere unable — to this day — to fasten the re-sponsibility for them upon a single individ-ual).

Spies and provocateurs were admittedlysent into hundreds of labour organisations bythe Department of Justice. The press, the pul-pit, the schools and movies were filled withthe most obvious lies and false propagandaabout the labour movement and the radicals.Where, during the war, every good patriothad seen a German agent, he now saw adozen reds and anarchists…

Then followed the wholesale arrests anddeportations. On the night of 7 November1919, scores of labour meetings and head-quarters were raided by police and Depart-ment of Justice agents. Offices were wrecked,furniture broken, papers destroyed, men andwomen beaten and arrested. The Buford, the“Soviet Ark,” sailed with 249 deportees,many of whom were forced to leave theirfamilies behind in a destitute condition whenthey were hurriedly rushed to New York.Scores were held prisoners in various partsof the country, and some more of them werelater deported.

On the night of 2 January 1920, a new waveof raids swept over the meetings of membersof the Communist and Communist LabourParties. Almost three thousand workers werearrested. A group of prominent American at-torneys characterised the whole affair in thefollowing manner:

“Under the guise of a campaign for thesuppression of radical activities, the office ofthe Attorney General, acting by its localagents throughout the country, and givingexpress instructions from Washington, hascommitted continual illegal acts. Wholesalearrests both of aliens and citizens have beenmade without warrant or any process of law;men and women have been jailed and heldincommunicado without access of friends orcounsel; homes have been entered withoutsearch-warrant and property seized and re-moved; other property has been wantonlydestroyed; workingmen and workingwomen suspected of radical views have beenshamefully abused and maltreated.

“Agents of the Department of Justice have

been introduced into radical organisationsfor the purpose of informing upon theirmembers or inciting them to activities; theseagents have even been instructed from Wash-ington to arrange meetings upon certaindates for the express object of facilitatingwholesale raids and arrests. In support ofthese illegal acts, and to create sentiment inits favour, the Department of Justice has alsoconstituted itself a propaganda bureau, andhas sent to newspapers and magazines of thiscountry quantities of material designed to ex-cite public opinion against radicals, all at theexpense of the government and outside thescope of the Attorney General’s duties.”

In Massachusetts, the raids were particu-larly intense and numerous. Highly industri-alised, with a large proportion offoreign-born workers, and a creditable radi-cal movement, practically every importantcentre had its raiding scene. One by one, thewell-known radical workers were picked offand imprisoned or deported. Galleani, theleader of those circles to which Sacco andVanzetti belonged, was deported togetherwith a number of others.

DEATH OF ANDREA SALSEDOIn New York City, two Italian printers, An-drea Salsedo and Robert Elia, were ar-rested and held incommunicado in thePark Row building of the Department ofJustice, instead of, as in the case of theothers, being in the hands of the immigra-tion authorities.

Reports came that they were being tor-tured, that attempts were being made to ob-tain “confessions” from them implicatingthemselves and their comrades in the so-called Wall Street bomb explosion.

The little Italian labour circles in Massa-chusetts were worried. Gruesome storiesabout the third degree methods used againstthose arrested by the police had reached theirears. Already, one of the Italians deportedfrom Pennsylvania had died en route to hisnative land... or been killed. A disturbed con-ference of these Italian workers in EastBoston decided to send Vanzetti to New Yorkto learn the details about Elia and Salsedoand to report back on the situation.

Vanzetti conferred with Walter Nelles, theattorney for the two prisoners, and with hisItalian comrades in New York, and returnedto his friends with a disquieting report. Theattorney had advised the concealment of alltheir literature, for new raids were expectedand it was necessary to do this. All the com-rades were to be warned immediately, for theDepartment of Justice was intent upon newvictims and no one was safe. Fear for the fateof the two printers made it imperative thataid be organised forthwith.

Twenty-four hours later, 3 May, their fearswere cruelly realised. From a window in thePark Row building, fourteen stories high, abody hurtled to the ground and was smashedto a bleeding mass on the pavement. It wasAndrea Salsedo. Whether the torture of eightweeks of barbarous persecution had madehim seek desperately for immediate deathrather than the continuation of living hell, orthe fall was caused by the insane anger of thegovernment operatives who, having been un-successful in extorting a “confession” fromhis brave lips, sought to dispose of the evi-dence of their brutality by flinging him to hisdeath, may never be known. Either way,however, the horrible grimness of the man-gled corpse stared the country in the face.The blood-flecked body lay as a tribute to theAmerican government’s department, sar-donically named “of Justice.” The Italian

friends of Salsedo (Elia had been rushed outof the country to prevent him from speakingthe truth) were filled with consternation andhorror.

It was arranged that Vanzetti, who knewmore about the case than any of the others,should be the principal speaker at a meetingto be held in Brockton on 9 May. Circularswere to be printed, and the workers of thatdistrict notified of the meeting. At the sametime, they could be told to prepare them-selves against raids and arrests, to hide anyliterature that might be used as “evidence”for imprisonment or deportation. They de-cided to use the old automobile of MikeBoda, which was then being repaired at agarage in West Bridgewater, for the purpose.This decision probably saved Boda from oc-cupying a place with Sacco and Vanzetti onthe death chair seven years later.

For Boda was being watched by the policein connection with an attempted robberywhich was one of a series of payroll holdups,bank robberies and similar crimes that hadbeen committed throughout the district forthe past year. Boda had been boarding withone of the many friends of Sacco andVanzetti, Ferruccio Coacci. On orders fromWashington, Michael Stewart, Edgewater’schief of police, had arrested Coacci as a dan-gerous red, and, after the decision of the im-migration authorities, Stewart again seizedCoacci, who had been released on bail, andturned him over for deportation. Coacci’shouse was regarded by Stewart with suspi-cion, and he had questioned Boda. When helearned that Coacci had been employed bythe L Q White Company, whose payroll fourmen in an automobile had attempted, with-out success, to rob, and that Boda had sent hisold Overland car to a repair garage a fewdays after another one of the holdups andshootings, the idea became fixed in Stewart’smind that Boda and his friends were thecriminals.

Stewart decided to arrest Boda, but hecould not find him. He left instructions withthe garage owners to inform him the momentanyone came to take Boda’s car. On theevening of 5 May, therefore, when Sacco andVanzetti arrived at the garage by trolley fromStoughton, and were met there by Boda andOrciani, who had come with the latter’s mo-torcycle, the garage owner’s wife, Mrs John-son, hastened to a neighbour’s telephone andinformed the police that the men they soughthad arrived. Johnson himself, who was alsoworking in collaboration with the police, dis-suaded the four Italians from taking theOverland because it still had the old, worth-less state licence for the previous year, 1919.Boda and Orciani returned on their motorcy-cle, and Sacco and Vanzetti took the trolleyback to Stoughton, somewhat disturbed bythe suspicious actions of the Johnsons.

As the street car passed into Brockton, apoliceman boarded it and placed Sacco andVanzetti under arrest. With the memory ofthe recent raids in mind, and the thought ofthe pulpy, bleeding mass on the sidewalk be-fore the Park Row building, it did not occurto them for a moment that they were beingarrested for anything else but their radical be-liefs and activities. Orciani was arrested atabout the same time. Boda was not found,and has not been heard of to this day.

The theory concocted by Chief Stewart wasthat the group of Italians that frequently vis-ited Coacci’s house were the bandits whowere involved in at least two of the numberof holdups that had recently occurred. Thefirst had taken place in Bridgewater on 24December 1919, when the payroll truck of the


LQ White Shoe Company in that city was un-successfully held up by four men who, afterbeing outwitted by the truck guards in themidst of running fire, jumped into a waitingBuick automobile and fled. The other holdup,of a particularly cold-blooded nature, was therobbery of the payroll, amounting to$15,776.51, of the Slater and Morrill ShoeCompany, which was being carried throughthe main street of South Braintree by Freder-ick Parmenter, paymaster, and his guardAlexander Berardelli, both of whom werefired upon and killed by two of the banditswho seized the payroll and escaped in a gangcar occupied by three others.

Stewart triumphantly figured that the fivebandits were Coacci, who was supposed tohave escaped with the loot, Boda, Orciani,Sacco and Vanzetti. But Coacci’s trunk, whenseized by police in Italy, had in it neither theloot nor a mark of suspicion that might indi-cate his connection with the hold up. Orciani,it was found, had been at work on the datesof both the Bridgewater and South Braintreecrimes. Sacco had been at his machine in thefactory during the Bridgewater holdup, andin Boston during the South Braintree affair.Vanzetti, who was selling fish, was milesaway from the scene of both holdups.

Boda, who could not be found, and Coacci,who was in Italy, were never indicted. Or-ciani, who had a complete and unassailablealibi, was released a couple of days after hisarrest. But Vanzetti was held for both theBridgewater and South Braintree affairs, andSacco for complicity in the latter.

Stewart, proud as a peacock for his activi-ties in cooperating with the Department ofJustice in deporting Coacci, and later, in thedeportation of four Lithuanian workers, hadbeen informed by the Department that Saccoand Vanzetti were dangerous radicals; andfor this village genius it was obvious that tworadicals, who were lawbreakers by the very

nature of their evil and subversive beliefs,would at the same time most likely be guiltyof such other crimes as robbery and murder.

So did these two workers step unwittinglyinto a trap which released its prey only whenthe two tortured bodies no longer held aspark of life in them.

WHO WERE SACCO AND VANZETTI?Who were these two workers, at one timeas obscure and unknown as the millionsof their brothers in labour, whose namebecame a watchword, and whose causebecame a banner that led these millionsinto struggle?

Bartolomeo Vanzetti was born on June 11,1888 in Villa Falletto, in the hills of NorthernItaly. The Vanzettis were a respected familyof farmers. Their son was sent to the localschool, and divided his other hours betweenreading books, improving his religious train-ing and helping his father to till the soil andsell his wine. At the age of thirteen, his fatherconsidered that simple farming and book-reading would not lead Bartolomeo togreater things; so he apprenticed his son tothe owner of a pastry shop in the city ofCunco.

An apprenticeship of such a kind was byno means an unmixed blessing. Vanzettiworked every day in the week for fifteenhours with a three hour vacation twice amonth. For six years he worked in the hot,sultry atmosphere of bakeries and kitchens,going from Cuneo to Cavour, then to Turin,to Courgne, to Turin again, until he wasforced to return to Villa Falletto with an at-tack of pleurisy.

Returned to the peace of his native village,his sister and mother nursed him back tohealth, sorrowful only because Vanzetti’s re-ligious ardor had become cooled in his con-tact with the young workers and clerks of thecities where he had worked. And soon his

mother was stricken with a fatal illness anddespite the ministrations of the whole family,she died shortly afterward in the comfortingarms of her son. It was a bitter tragedy thatdrove the entire family to despair.

Young Bartolomeo, barely twenty, deter-mined to go to America. In the course of hiswork in the larger towns, he had read a gooddeal of the popular anti-clerical and radicalpamphlets which virtually brought to an endhis youthful Catholic beliefs and gave himhis first glimmerings of the socialist philoso-phy. In America, it was said, one could find anew land of freedom, progress, learning, op-portunity. He tore himself from the tearfulparting with his family, and accompanied onthe road by the whole town, he departed forthe new world.

Millions of American workers can dupli-cate the story of his voyage and the arrival inthe country of hope. The sickening steerage,overbearing and insulting officials, the con-fusion and bewilderment of the immigrant inthe midst of the roar and bustle of the me-tropolis, and then — the inevitable absorp-tion into the mammoth, blind machine ofindustrial America. Vanzetti was particularlyunfortunate. He had come to New York at atime of a “crisis.” Wages were small. Longhours predominated. One was glad to getany kind of a job rather than freeze andstarve on the streets.

He worked for eight months in hell.Twelve and fourteen hours a day, with fivehours off every other Sunday, food thatwould be spurned by a healthy dog, and fiveor six dollars a week in wages, working in ahot, dirty, stinking kitchen. He sought an-other job, unsuccessfully, and then went toHartford, Connecticut, with an Italian friend.

But Hartford presented the same bleak can-vas of misery as New York, cut to smallersize. Hungry, desperate, disillusioned, heworked before brick furnaces in Springfield;

two years of toil in Meriden’s stone pits; inpastry shops and iron foundries, diggingditches and building aqueducts — the heavy,body-breaking, thankless work of the Slovak,Hunky and Wop.

Yet with every muscle aching, he read om-nivorously of Kropotkin, Malatesta, Gorky,Reclus, Marx, Renan, Dante, Darwin, Tolstoi,Zola; history, sociology, natural science, reli-gion, poetry and “the journals of every so-cialist, patriotic and religious faction.” Helearned that class-consciousness was not aphrase invented by propagandists, but was areal, vital force, and that those who felt itssignificance were no longer beasts of burden,but human beings.

With other Italian workers in Massachu-setts he joined one of the groups that sup-ported the ideas expounded in the littleanarchist journal Cronaca Sowerstva, editedand published by Luigi Galleani. But his in-terest in the labour movement was notmerely philosophical; it was warm, active,human. And when the workers struck in thePlymouth Cordage Company against theirlow wages and miserable conditions, in 1916,Vanzetti was in the front ranks of the fight,giving leadership and encouragement. Whenthe strike was ended with the grant of a smallwage increase, all the men except Vanzettiwere taken back to work. He was blacklistedas a notorious agitator. It was no shock tohim. He had already then tasted the bitingcut of the lash of American freedom manytimes.

At the other end of Italy, in the tiny south-ern village of Torremaggiore, the family ofMichele Sacco had its home and acres richwith fruits, olive trees, and vineyards. OnAugust 20, 1891, Ferdinando Sacco (whodropped his own name and took that of hiselder brother Nicola when he died) was born.Robust and intelligent, he grew up with anintense interest in tools, machinery and trees.The older Sacco was a staunch republican,and his sons belonged to the republican orsocialist clubs of the village. Nicola, with hisolder brother Sabino, used to discuss theamazing stories about America and dreamedabout it with growing desire. When Sabinoreturned from his period of military service,the two brothers left the native hearth andfields and sailed to Boston, eager to taste ofthe realities of the image of achievements andpossibilities they had conjured up.

Nicola was constantly fascinated by thenew and intricate machines all around himand in the places where he worked. He al-most played with the steamroller at his firstjob with a road gang near Milford. In the win-ter of the year he landed, 1908, he worked inthe Hopedale pig iron mills. Then he decidedto learn a trade and he paid fifty dollars to aman to teach him how to work an edging ma-chine for shoes. His brother Sabino, unable,like the more vigorous Nicola, to stand theharsh pressure of American industry, re-turned to Italy at about this time, later to beelected socialist mayor of Torremaggiore.Nicola became a skilled shoe worker and rana machine in the mills of Milford until 1917.

Sacco continued to read the radical Italianjournals, and also joined one of the many cir-cles in which the influence of Galleani wasdominant. Out of the discussions and lec-tures he drew a clearer comprehension of thestruggle of the two colossal forces in societywhich a few years later would engage in fu-rious conflict to determine his fate and thatof his comrade.

When the thousands of bitterly exploitedSaccos and Vanzettis of the New England in-dustrial machine broke out in revolt, Nicolawas found in the ranks of the humble, un-named workers whose yeoman service stiff-ens the backbone of every struggle. In theLawrence strike of 1912, which was so vio-lently contested, Sacco helped in the collec-tion of money to feed the strikers, and todefend their arrested leaders, Joe Ettor, Gio-

Advertising a solidarity meeting in Cleveland


vannitti and Caruso. It was while acting inone of the amateur theatrical performancesheld for this purpose that he met Rosinawhom he later married. They named theirfirst child Dante.

The next year, in 1913, the textile machineworkers in the Draper Company Mill atHopedale, a town adjoining Milford, struck,and Sacco gave every bit of his spare time tothe task of aiding in the fight. Before going towork, in the morning, and as soon as he quit,in the evening, he helped to organise themass picketing, arrange the work of relief towhich he himself contributed liberally, andspread confidence among the strikers. Andthree years later, he was arrested at a demon-stration in solidarity with the strike on theMesaba Iron Range in Minnesota which wasorganised by the Industrial Workers of theWorld.

A year later war was declared against theCentral Powers by the United States. The no-torious compulsory military service act waspassed, calling upon all citizens and aliens toregister with the draft boards. Sacco andVanzetti and many of their comrades op-posed the imperialist war with all their con-viction. They considered service in the armiesof their exploiters as incompatible with theirprinciples.

Some thirty of them fled to Mexico. Saccomet Vanzetti for the first time on the train thattook them south. From that time on theirfriendship was a very close and dear one,combining a fraternal love and comradeshipwith mutual understanding and commonideas. They remained in Mexico only for ashort time, for living was difficult there de-spite their communal manners and modes;and when they received information from theUnited States that it was possible to returnwithout being drafted, and that wages werehigher and conditions somewhat better, theyslipped back across the border.

Sacco worked at a couple of odd jobs untilhe was employed in a shoe factory atStoughton. He remained there until his ar-rest. Vanzetti ended up as a fish peddler inPlymouth, forced by his poor health to re-frain from heavier labour.

Prior to their arrest, their story is that oftwo immigrant workers, buffeted about bythe sightless winds of American industriallife; two workers, more intelligent than theaverage, with a growing consciousness oftheir position, hoping and striving for anideal quite beyond the mental horizon of themoney-mad American ruling class. Suchworkers do not make good factory-fodder forthey chafe and are unruly under the chainsof wage-slavery.

Such men are dangerous, for they are filledwith a warm love and understanding of lifeand struggle. They are working class rebels,incorruptible. They have no place in the lex-icon of the satisfied ruling class. Thereforethey must be destroyed and their placestaken by the complacent, wretched, satisfiedslave.

VANZETTI’S FIRST TRIALIt is evident to those who have made evena superficial study of the case that Saccoand Vanzetti were so doggedly perse-cuted, from the very beginning, becauseof their radical beliefs, and not on thebasis of the ridiculous charges of robberyand murder.

But by the time of their arrest, it had be-come far more difficult to imprison or deportforeign-born workers simply because theyread radical newspapers or held hereticalopinions. The shocking death of AndreaSalsedo had acted like a sobering coldshower on the inflamed heads of people madwith fear of reds. In Boston, a short time be-fore, Judge Anderson had rendered his deci-sion in the Communist raid cases, sharplyattacking the brutal and arbitrary actions of

the Department of Justice.To see that Sacco and Vanzetti, who “were

bad actors ... would get what they deserved,”it was necessary to fasten some major viola-tion of the criminal code to their social opin-ions, and the Bridgewater and SouthBraintree crimes were as good as any other,particularly since the police, who were undercriticism for their failure to apprehend themalefactors, would thereby have “solved”another couple of mysteries.

But why was Vanzetti tried first for theBridgewater holdup? It is the legal custom,followed in Massachusetts also, that in theevent of one being accused of a series ofcrimes, he is tried first for the most seriousoffence. Clearly, the robbery of some $16,000and the murder of two men in South Brain-tree was of a far more criminal nature thanthe attempted holdup in Bridgewater. Whywas all precedent overthrown, all customnullified?

Because neither Sacco nor Vanzetti hadever before been accused or convicted of asingle criminal act, and the frame-up expertswanted to poison and prejudice the atmos-phere of the South Braintree trial, in which adeath sentence was involved, by bringing be-fore the jury at least one defendant whowould by that time already have been con-victed of crime, and of such a crime as wouldalmost automatically prove his guilt in thesecond case! Subsequent developmentsproved the truth of this surmise.

Vanzetti was brought to trial a month afterhis arrest, under Judge Webster Thayer, withthe Norfolk County district attorney, Freder-ick G Katzmann acting “for the Common-wealth’ of Massachusetts.” The trial was heldin Plymouth, where Vanzetti had led thestrike against the Plymouth Cordage com-pany a few years before, and he was de-fended by a lawyer obtained for Vanzetti bya court hanger-on, John Vahey, who shame-lessly aided in the conviction of the man hewas supposed to defend.

Only the seriousness of the purpose andoutcome of the trial prevents it from beingcharacterised as a farce. Professor FelixFrankfurter, of Harvard University, said thatthe evidence of identification of Vanzetti inthe Bridgewater case bordered on the frivo-lous, reaching its climax in the testimony of alittle newsboy who, from behind the tele-graph pole to which he had run for refugeduring the shooting, had caught a glimpse ofthe criminal and “knew by the way he ran hewas a foreigner.” Vanzetti was a foreigner, soof course it was Vanzetti!

The rest of the trial was on a par with thisepisode. The attempt to hold up the pay truckhad occurred at 7.35 in the morning. As it wason its way to the shoe factory from a localbank, two men on foot began firing at thethree occupants of the truck. None of themwas injured. The truck drove out of range be-hind a trolley car, and the bandits ran to awaiting automobile which immediately dis-appeared. The prosecution maintained thatVanzetti was one of the men who fired at thetruck with a shotgun.

It is necessary to recite only a little of theprosecution’s evidence to be convinced notonly of the baselessness of the chargesagainst Vanzetti, but of something more sig-nificant. It is clear from the testimony of theprosecution witnesses that already at thattrial the wheels of the frame-up machine hadbeen set in motion.

One of the men on the pay truck, BenjaminJ. Bowles declared at the preliminary hearingthat the man with the shotgun had a mous-tache that was “short and croppy,” whereaseveryone knows that Vanzetti’s moustachewas long, thick, bushy. When it becameknown that other witnesses would testify forthe defence that this had been the appearanceof Vanzetti’s moustache for years, Bowles tes-tified at the trial that the defendant’s mous-

tache was “bushy.”Bowles was able to give a most minute de-

scription of the appearance of the man withthe shotgun, with details of the hair, eyes,face and clothes. And it must be rememberedthat Bowles, when the truck driver went topieces with terror at the first shot, helped tosteer the automobile around a street car andkeep up a running fire of shots — not againstthe man with the shotgun, but against theother bandit. Six months passed from thetime of the attack to the trial testimony. It isnot difficult to choose, in estimating the valueof Bowles’ testimony, between consideringhim a man of remarkably keen and preciseeyesight (the entire period of the attack onthe truck was but a minute or two) and accu-rate memory, or simply a monumental andmalicious liar.

Another witness of phenomenal abilitieswas Mrs. Georgina Brooks. Vanzetti, she said,was the man she saw seated in the bandits’automobile. That is not all that Mrs. Brookssaw, despite the admitted fact that she hadbeen taking treatments for one of her eyesand was able to see objects very dimly fromthe other. From a window of the railway sta-tion she reported that she saw the fire andsmoke of a gun at the spot where the attackoccurred. Even were the veracious Mrs.Brooks equipped with a portable X-ray ma-chine, it would have been difficult for her tosee any such thing, for between the scene ofthe shooting and the railway station window,there is a two-story frame house whichwould completely shut off a view of one fromthe other.

The rest of the testimony for the prosecu-tion was just as convincing.

On the other hand, eighteen witnesses,who, except for the fact that they were mostly“a bunch of Wops” were quite reputable, tes-tified without being contradicted that on De-cember 24, the day of the crime, Vanzetti hadbeen some 28 miles from Bridgewater, in Ply-mouth engaged in selling eels which form thefavourite dish of Italian Catholics for whomthat day is one of fasting when meat is pro-hibited and fish is eaten instead. In sharpcontradiction to the testimony of the prose-cution witnesses, which was halting, uncer-tain, obviously untrue, and changeable fromone hearing to another, that of the defencewitnesses was simple, straightforward andmanifestly honest.

But what was the weight and influence ofthe testimony of these foreign-born invadersof the aristocratic state of the Lowells, Cabotsand Lodges, when it was being given in thedefence of another Italian? The witty Katz-mann had intimated that these Italians sticktogether under all circumstances, and thejury knew what verdict to give irrespective ofthe confusing and uncertain details of testi-mony and legal procedure. Of what avail wasthe testimony of these honest, simple Italianfolk given in ridiculous English in behalf ofthe cheerful, well-liked fish-peddler, when hewas a goddamned anarchist who was beinggroomed for a bigger trial involving the livesof his comrade and himself?

Vanzetti, at least, knew that he was notbeing tried for any holdups. The night of hisarrest, he had been cross-examined by ChiefStewart in the Brockton police station, but notconcerning his whereabouts on the dates ofcither of the holdups. He had been asked ifhe was a radical, an anarchist, a communist,an I. W. W. And Katzmann knew who it wasthat he was prosecuting, for he had been intouch with the Department of Justice whichhad the names of both Sacco and Vanzetti ontheir list as radical agitators. And Katzmannknew his jury of reactionary farmers. Everylittle while he could cunningly inject suchquestions to defence witnesses as:

Have you ever discussed the question ofthe poor man and the rich man between you?

Have you ever discussed government the-

ories over there between you;Have you ever heard anything of his

[Vanzetti’s] political speeches to fellow work-ers at the Cordage?

And Katzman knew who was the “de-fence” attorney, Mr. Vahey, who told Vanzettithat he and Sacco would be indicted for theSouth Braintree crime; who would not allowVanzetti to take the stand in his own defencebecause he might speak his social views; Mr.Vahey, who scarcely consulted his client, whofailed to arrange for additional witnesses,who neglected even to file a bill of excep-tions; Mr. Vahey, who later became the lawpartner of Mr. Katzmann!

The admirable judicial calm and passion-ate devotion to equity of Judge WebsterThayer completed the picture. His generouscharge to the jury to disregard the secondcount — “attempt to kill” — and consideronly the first — “attempt to rob” — fell onstone, for the ardent jury brought in a verdictof guilty on both counts. Thayer understoodwhat it was all about. “The defendant’s idealsare cognate with the crime,” he said. Whichmeant that the crime had been attributed tothe defendant because he was guilty of hav-ing his ideals.

Thayer never played fast and loose withSacco and Vanzetti. He began his relation-ships with the two rebels by giving Vanzettithe maximum sentence of fifteen years inprison for a crime which he must haveknown Vanzetti never committed. He ended,after seven years of an inexorable, relentlesspursuit, trembling with sadistic joy as theswitch of death was thrown.

THE TRIALOn September 14, 1920, BartolomeoVanzetti, with a fifteen year prison term tobe served, and Nicola Sacco, were in-dicted on the charge of murder in the firstdegree, in the payroll holdup and slayingof the paymaster and guard in SouthBraintree. They pleaded not guilty.

The stage was all set for a conviction beforethe first word of testimony had been heard.Passions and prejudices were skillfullywhipped up. Darts of fear were shot into theminds of every conservative “man of Nor-folk” from whom the jury members would beselected.

The Plymouth conviction of Vanzetti wasutilised to the utmost, as had been originallyplanned. One newspaper even carried a luridstory in the first days after the opening of thetrial which announced that a band of Redswere marching on Dedham, the seat of thecourt. The first day of the trial, the entrance tothe county courthouse at Dedham wasguarded by an iron gate and a squad of po-licemen and deputy sheriffs, who allowedonly one man to enter at a time. All visitors tothe courtroom, newspaper men included,were searched for weapons. Police squads os-tentatiously equipped with riot guns werestationed on the courthouse steps for the en-tire period of the trial, posing ferociously.State troopers rode menacingly through theotherwise idyllic town. And every day thetwo defendants were taken from the court-house to their cells, shackled and guarded bytwenty-eight heavily-armed officers, whileeveryone stared with fright at the thought ofthese two desperadoes ever being released towork their mischief upon a peaceful popu-lace. . . .

Every opportunity was seized to stir theplacidity of the local public, to inflame theirimaginations, to drive them to a wild hyste-ria of fear and fury against these two enemiesof society. The atmosphere was cleverly cre-ated. Only in such a miasmatic air, poisonedwith hatred, prejudice and fright was it pos-sible to conduct this brutal burlesque of atrial and successfully accomplish the ends ofthe raw frame-up.

The jury was selected. They were all cut

out of the same bolt of cloth: staid, torpid,highly patriotic, oblivious to progress or aprogressive idea, and completely dominatedby the foreman of the jury, Walter Ripley, aformer Quincy police chief upon whom allthe eloquence of the prosecuting attorneywas wasted. Ripley had made up his mind toexecute Sacco and Vanzetti long before thefirst witness was called to take the oath.

At the prosecutor’s table sat District Attor-ney Frederick Katzmann, and on the judge’sbench sat the other prosecutor who posed asthe arbiter of the case, Webster Thayer. Thecounsel for Sacco and Vanzetti was fortu-nately led by Fred H Moore, a labour attor-ney who had made his name famous in anumber of hard-fought frame-up casesagainst workers.

The fact of the robbery and murder of Par-menter and Berardelli at South Braintree on15 April was not contested. The only questionthat had to be decided at the trial waswhether or not Sacco and Vanzetti were twoof the bandit gang which was seen to have as-saulted the two murdered men. If Sacco andVanzetti were in any part of the country otherthan South Braintree at about three o’clock inthe afternoon of 15 April 1920, then the entirebasis of the state’s charges against the twoItalian workers would forthwith disappearand the case fall to the ground. Therefore, acourt dominated by the fair and pallid ab-straction of justice, without prejudice andclass aims, would consider only evidence rel-evant to the decision of the disputed pointand hold all other contributions by witnessesor attorneys as superfluous.

Let us examine the evidence.The contention of the prosecution was that

Sacco was one of the two men in the streetwho seized the stolen payroll and killed itstwo guards, and that Vanzetti was one of thethree others of the bandit quintet who wasseated in the automobile into which themoney boxes were thrown and in which thebandits swiftly escaped. To identify Saccoand Vanzetti, the prosecution introduced anumber of witnesses. Many persons hadbeen in a position, of greater or lesser degree,to observe the principals in the crime. It isdoubtful, however, if, during the chaos andterror of the minute in which it all happened,any of the observers was able to see the ban-dits with such photographic sharpness of de-tail as to be able to describe them with a fairamount of accuracy fourteen months after-wards.

Most of the witnesses presented to thecourt by the prosecution were such obviousfrauds, and had such manifestly untrue andcontradictory) stories to tell, that under al-most any other circumstances the mass ofconflicting testimony would have resulted ina virtually automatic release of the defen-dants. There was Faulkner, who identified afellow traveller who descended at East Brain-tree from a Cochesett-Boston train asVanzetti. His memory had been considerablyrefreshed by the prosecution when it broughthim to see Vanzetti in prison. But when thedefence attorney asked a courtroom visitorwith a bushy moustache to stand up,Faulkner from the witness stand admittedthat he might have been the mysterious trav-eller.

Another identification of Vanzetti, about asdependable as Faulkner’s, was given by arailway crossing tender, Austin Reed, whosaw an automobile cross the tracks at his postabout an hour after the crime. Reed told afanciful tale about a man, whom he posi-tively identified as Vanzetti, and who had a“stubbed moustache . . . [and spoke] ... inclear and unmistakable English.” Unfortu-nately for Reed, Vanzetti’s moustache is farfrom stubby, and his English was so poor thatboth he and Sacco were forced to use an in-terpreter all during the trial!

A third marvel was a witness named Cole

who “thought at first glance that Vanzettiwas a Portuguese fellow named Tony” thathe knew, and later was positive that it wasVanzetti — his certainty resulting from theright kind of pressure and suggestion fromthe prosecutors.

Then there was the “identification” byHarry Dolbeare, a piano tuner, who Said hesaw an automobile with five passengersdriven through the streets about four or fivehours before the holdup. He identified one ofthe passengers as Vanzetti. But he could notdescribe the looks or clothes of any of theother men. The tender reed that supportedDolbeare’s testimony was the fact that he hadbeen attracted by the car when it came oppo-site to him because its occupants seemed tobe “a tough-looking bunch,” that is, a bunchof foreigners. But Dolbeare agreed that manyautomobiles containing “foreign-looking”persons passed through there to Holbrookand Randolph from the Fore River shipyards.Dolbeare was one of the two chief identifica-tion witnesses of the prosecution.

The other was Michael LeVangie, a gatetender of the New Haven railroad at theSouth Braintree crossing. He was there, hesaid, when the bandit car rushed across fromthe scene of the murder. As he was loweringthe crossing gates, he testified, the car cameup, and a man sitting beside the driverpointed a revolver at him and forced him toraise the gates and let the car pass throughbefore the oncoming train. He identifiedVanzetti as the driver himself. ProsecutorKatzmann did not flick an eyelash at this bitof testimony, despite the fact that the theoryof the state was that the driver was notVanzetti but a light-haired man wholly dis-similar to the defendant. On the contrary,Katzmann brazened it out, protected his wit-ness instead of repudiating him.

They find fault, gentlemen, with LeVangie[said Katzmann, in his summary to the jury].They say that LeVangie is wrong in sayingthat Vanzetti was driving that car, I agreewith them, gentlemen. I would not be tryingto do justice to these defendants if I pre-tended that personally so far as you are con-cerned about my personal belief on that, thatVanzetti drove that car over the crossing. . . .You must be overwhelmed with the testi-mony that when the car started it was drivenby a light haired man who showed every in-dication of being sickly... he saw the face ofVanzetti in that car, and is his testimony to berejected if it disagrees with everybody else ifyou are satisfied he honestly meant to tell thetruth? And can’t you reconcile it with thepossibility, no, the likelihood or more thanthat, the probability that at that time Vanzettiwas directly behind the driver in the quickglance this man LeVangie had of the cargoing over when they were going up over thecrossing… Right or wrong, we have to take itas it is…

But the defence was able to present as awitness a fireman on the New Haven, HenryMcCarthy, who testified that LeVangie hadtold him a few minutes after the shooting thathe had not seen any of the occupants of thecar well enough to recognise him again. Andanother, Edward Carter, who testified thatLeVangie told him the driver was of lightcomplexion. And Alexander Victorson, afreight clerk, who heard LeVangie say that itwould be hard to identify the men. And JohnL. Sullivan, who took shifts with LeVangie atthe gate crossing, and proved by his testi-mony that LeVangie was a liar.

LeVangie’s evidence was the only bit of tes-timony that the great Commonwealth ofMassachusetts could present to prove thatVanzetti was present at the scene of theholdup!

On the other hand, the defence broughtforward almost a dozen witnesses, whom theprosecution was completely unable to con-tradict or discredit, to give testimony that

proved conclusively that Vanzetti was at Ply-mouth some two score miles from SouthBraintree on 15 April.

Antonio Carbone, of Plymouth, said thathe had sold fish to Vanzetti on that date. MissLefevre Brini testified that Vanzetti had de-livered fish at her home at about 10 o’clockthat day. A peddler of woollens testified thathe met Vanzetti in Plymouth before noon on15 April, sold him some suiting, and pro-ceeded to the Brini home to show the goodsto Mrs. Brini. A half a dozen others substan-tiated this testimony in numerous ways.Rosen’s testimony built many strong bricksof defence for Vanzetti, and if he had not spo-ken the truth, it would have been compara-tively simple for the prosecution to provethat, for Rosen had sold goods to a numberof persons that day, including the wife of thechief of police of Plymouth.

SACCO IS ALSO IDENTIFIEDNow as to Sacco.

The prosecutor had been chagrined at hisinability to try Sacco with Vanzetti in theBridgewater case, and thus far both of themwith the same stick in preparation for themore serious trial for the Braintree murder.Sacco had had a perfect alibi: he had been atwork in the factory all of the day that theBridgewater affair occurred. But in the SouthBraintree case, Katzmann was able to indictand convict Sacco, not because he had anymore proof of guilt than in the Bridgewatercase, but because the circumstances weresomewhat different and the possibilities ex-isted for false and misleading testimony.

Sacco was also “identified.” The prosecu-tion sought to prove that he had shot Be-rardelli, and shot in all directions after he hadjumped into the car to flee the murder scene.To prove this, they presented a number ofwitnesses who alleged that they were eye-witnesses to the crime.

The Slater and Morrill bookkeeper, MarySplaine, if she did not have the fluoroscopicvision of the Bridgewater Mrs. GeorginaBrooks, was gifted with unusually compre-hensive eyes and a startling reflective mem-ory. At the preliminary hearing she wasunable to identify Sacco as the bandit: “I donot think my opportunity afforded me theright to say he is the man.” And when shewas shown a rogue’s gallery photograph inthe state police quarters at Boston she said,“He bears a striking resemblance to the ban-dit.” How far can her testimony be creditedwhen it transpired that the photograph,which bore “a striking resemblance to thebandit” was of a criminal who was safelysleeping in a cell at Sing Sing Prison, in NewYork, on 15 April?

But when the trial took place. Miss Splainehad duly reflected, warmed over her mem-ory, furnishing links either from a rich imag-ination or from her observation of Sacco inhis cell (she had been taken there by the po-lice to “identify” him), and she was able togive a graphic and fairly complete descrip-tion of the bandit, who, she was now posi-tive, was Sacco. It is true she could no longerrecall that, as she had testified at the prelim-inary hearing, Sacco had had a revolver in hishand. Nor did her description of his lefthand, “a good-sized hand, a hand that de-noted strength,” quite fit in with the actualityof Sacco’s hands which were smaller than theaverage. It is true, also, that it has puzzledmany — Dr. Morton Prince, professor of ab-normal and dynamic psychology at Harvard,has even said that it “was psychologically im-possible” — that she should have been ableto give so minutely detailed a description ofa man whom she saw for from only one tothree seconds, in a swiftly moving car, and atsuch an exciting time. A year after the crimeshe remembered the height and weight of theman, the length of his hair and the colour ofhis eyebrows!

Another of the company’s gifted book-keepers was Frances Devlin. A month afterthe murder, she was asked if Sacco was thebandit and answered, “I don’t say posi-tively.” With her also, either in a fervid ardorfor certainty or out of a memory mellowedand cleared by the passage of the year that in-tervened to the trial, she was able to reply,“No” to the question “Have you at any timehad any doubt of your identification of thisman?”

Then Louis Pelzer, a shoe-cutter, whoworked on the first floor of Slater and Mor-rill. He was also blessed with an unaccount-able revival of memory. A few weeks after theshooting, he said, “I did not see enough to beable to identify anybody.” At the trial, heseems to have seen enough to be able to say,“I wouldn’t say it was him [Sacco] but he is adead image of him.” It merely added to thefarcical nature of the trial when two of hisbench mates testified that Pelzer lied. Andnot a tremor from Katzmann; instead, an elo-quent presentation of a brass forehead:

He is frank enough here, gentlemen, toown he had twice falsified before to bothsides, treating them equally and alike, and hegave you his reason. ... It is of little conse-quence.

After the trial, Pelzer wobbled across thelimelight twice more; once, four months later,when he recanted his trial testimony in an af-fidavit, asserting that he had been coercedinto making his testimony for the prosecutionby the District Attorney; a second time, whenhe recanted the affidavit and said (in anotheraffidavit, by which he swore as facilely as toall his other statements) that his testimony atthe trial was hallowed truth. But perhapsthat, as Mr. Katzmann would say, is also oflittle consequence.

PROSECUTION WITNESSThe Mooney-Billings case had as two itsstar prosecution witnesses Estelle Smith,alias Moore, alias Starr, a former prosti-tute, and Homer Waters, ex-convict, gam-bler and gunman.

Mr Katzmann brought into his line-up ofwitnesses two similar paragons. One wasCarlos E Goodridge, christened ErastusCorning Whitney, convicted of grand larcenyonce, convicted again, serving three years inprison each time, horse-thief, bigamist,swindler of women, general confidence man,and fugitive from justice. The other was MrsLola Andrews, a lady of dubious characterand past, who swooned, or threatened to,every time her personal affairs were alludedto during the trial. So what was good enoughfor District Attorney Fickert in 1917 in SanFrancisco turned out to be at least as good forDistrict Attorney Katzmann in 1921 in Ded-ham.

Goodridge testified that one of the banditsin the passing murder car aimed a gun at himas it drove by the poolroom out of which hehad come when the sound of shootingreached him and into which he scurriedwhen the automobile went by. Half a yearlater, and again, at the trial, he identifiedSacco as the bandit. His employer, AndrewManganaro, testified not only to Goodridge’snotorious untruthfulness, but also to the factthat he had told him he was so frightenedthat he could not possibly remember any ofthe faces in the car. Three others, one theowner of the poolroom, who spoke withGoodridge, also shattered his false testimony.

The case of Goodridge was too obvious. Itcan be estimated with final precision when itis known that a short time before Sacco’s trial,he had been convicted of larceny and the casewas filed upon the request of District Attor-ney Katzmann so that no sentence was im-posed. Katzmann expected Goodridge to dounto him as he had done unto Goodridge.

Then the virtuous Mrs Andrews. Togetherwith a Mrs. Campbell she walked by an au-



tomobile parked near the Slater and Morrillfactory. She asserted that she asked one of themen, who was under the body fixing the car,the way to another factory. She identified himas Sacco. Mrs Campbell denied this versionof what had happened. They had asked, notthe man under the car, but a man standingnear the automobile. The reason for the “con-fusion” in the mind of this much abusedMagdalene may be found in the simple, franktestimony of a Quincy business man, HarryKurlansky:

She says, “They are bothering the life outof me.” I says, “What?” She says, “The gov-ernment took me down and want me torecognise those men,” she says, “and I don’tknow a thing about them. I have never seenthem and I can’t recognise them.”

It seems that by the time the trial rolledaround, Mrs Andrews had been sufficientlybothered to “know a thing about them,” tohave “seen them,” and to “recognise them.”The genial Katzmann said to the jury:

I have been in this office, gentlemen, fornow more than eleven years. 1 cannot recallin that too long service for the Common-wealth that ever before I have laid eye orgiven ear to so convincing a witness as LolaAndrews.

Judgement must have succumbed to gal-lantry here. For the convincing lady, after thetrial, confessed to having given perjured tes-timony. And then, like the shifty Pelzer, sherepudiated the confession.

To be merciful it can be said that those who“identified” Sacco were mistaken. To betruthful it can be said that they lied. For Saccowas not near the scene of the crime on 15April. He was in Boston for practically the en-tire day, arranging for a passport in order tovisit his native land.

His employers, Michael Kelly, and his sonGeorge, both testified to the excellent charac-ter of Sacco. They told the court that Saccohad received letters from Italy announcingthe death of his mother, and that he plannedto visit his father in Torremaggiore. They hadeven arranged to break in another man inSacco’s place, a friend of his named Henry Ia-covelli, as the original correspondence be-tween the latter and Kelly demonstrated.

On 15 April, the day of the murder in SouthBraintree, he took a train from SouthStoughton to Boston to obtain his passportsto Italy. The consular clerk testified that Saccohad been in the office to get his passports,and that the incident was fixed in his mindbecause of the passport photo brought in bySacco which was amusingly large so that hehad to go out and get one of a more propersize.

It was not denied that Sacco had been toBoston to get a passport, and since the 15 ofApril was the only day on which the absenceof Sacco from the factory is recorded, it wasquite clear that it was the day of his trip toBoston. Particularly after the evidence of anumber of persons whom he met in Bostonon that date. Professors, lecturers, bankers,editors, grocers, all friends or acquaintancesof Sacco, gave their account of the meetingwith Sacco in one place or another in Bostonon 15 April. And try as it might, the prosecu-tion was unable to shake a single one of thesewitnesses, or impugn their motives or credi-bility.

It was simple and clear. On the fatal day ofthe robbery and murder in South Braintree,Nicola Sacco was in Boston getting a passportfor a trip to Italy, and Bartolomeo Vanzettiwas in Plymouth selling fish to his cus-tomers. The attempt to identify either of themas participants in the criminal assault uponthe paymaster and his guard had completelyand thoroughly collapsed.

Especially did the prosecution realise this,and Thayer as well; for he himself ruled, afterthe first trial, in denying a motion for a newone, that these verdicts did not rest in myjudgement upon the testimony of the eye wit-

nesses, for the defendants, as it was, calledmore witnesses than the Commonwealthwho testified that neither of the defendantswere in the bandit car.

The evidence that convicted these defen-dants was circumstantial and was evidencethat is known in law as “consciousness ofguilt.”

“CONSCIOUSNESS OF GUILT”What was this consciousness of guiltupon which the persecutors of Sacco andVanzetti, filled with the realization of theweakness of their case, fell back at thelast moment?

It was based on their conduct the nightthey went to the Johnson garage for Boda’scar, their alleged conduct when arrested onthe trolley to Brockton, and their statementsto the police and district attorney after theirarrest at the Brockton police station. And yetall their actions and declarations are perfectlycomprehensible under the circumstances,perfectly logical.

It is true that they were perturbed by thesuspicious actions of Johnson and his wife.The fear of arrests, raids, torture in the inqui-sition rooms of the Department of Justice,and finally, deportation, was in the atmos-phere at that time, and what was more natu-ral than that they should be nervous andapprehensive of every unusual occurrence,especially when they thought of the horriblymangled body on the sidewalk of Park Row.

When they were arrested on the street car,the policeman testified, they made a gestureas though to draw their guns. They deniedthis vigorously. It is true that they carried theweapons. Sacco had been a night watchman,using a revolver constantly. Vanzetti carriedone, because it was dangerous to go alone onhis fish-purchasing trips when he quite oftenhad upwards of $100 on his person. Everychild knows that thousands of persons whohave not the remotest connection with ban-ditry or any form of criminality carry gunswith them for one reason or another.

But is it likely that if Sacco and Vanzettiwere the violent desperadoes who took twolives with such cold-blooded equanimity atmid-day in the centre of town, would meeklysubmit to arrest on a deserted trolley late atnight, at the hands of the fretful, nervous po-liceman, no matter how courageous and fear-less he might be?

Is it likely, further, if the contention of theprosecution were true, that Vanzetti’s re-volver was one he had taken from the deadbody of Berardelli when the latter was shotdown, that Vanzetti would be so infernallystupid — even if he were the merest tyro of abandit — as to carry on his person this fatallydamaging bit of evidence? Is it likely, finally,that Sacco, from the barrel of whose gun oneof the fatal bullets was alleged to have issued,would be equally stupid enough to continueto carry the evidence of his criminality threeweeks after the murder? Only the very naiveor very knavish will believe this nonsense, orthe fairy tale told to prove the bravery of theheroic policeman who single-handedly cap-tured two desperate, armed bandits.

It is also true that they lied and equivo-cated at the police station. And wherein isthat surprising? Chief of Police Stewart didnot ask them questions that might lead to thesolution of the South Braintree murder. In-stead he asked them if they were anarchists,communists, IWW. What possible logic isthere in the opinion that Sacco and Vanzetti,impressed with the thoughts of the hell oftorture and deportation, should tell their in-quisitors that they had intended to warn theirfriends to prepare against “Red raids” and ar-rests? For what earthly reason should Saccoand Vanzetti have answered the question ofwhom and where they had visited, andthereby hand over voluntarily to the author-ities a mailing list of victims to whom themodern lettre de cachet of Mitchell Palmer

might be sent? Is it surprising that Vanzettidenied acquaintance with Boda when heknew that Boda had lived with Coacci whowas actually deported to Italy the very nextday?

The consciousness of guilt attributed toSacco and Vanzetti was nothing but a healthyconsciousness of the class struggle and themethods of the enemies of the working class.

The summary of the trial and the evidenceis simple and clear. Why did the prosecutionhave to use as its star witnesses a convictedcriminal, a doubtful lady, and a host ofproved liars? Why was not even a penny ofthe stolen money ever found on or near thedefendants? Why, if Sacco and Vanzetti weretwo of the occupants of the murder car, werethe other three bandits never found? Whywere the defence witnesses who so com-pletely established alibis for Sacco andVanzetti ignored by the judge and prosecu-tor? Why, if this was a robbery and murdertrial, did the first questions asked Sacco andVanzetti in the Brockton police station seek todiscover their social and political opinions?

Why did the authorities follow the unusualand irregular procedure that took place afterthe arrests, when Sacco and Vanzetti were ex-hibited alone to prospective visitors for iden-tification? The regular procedure is to placethe suspected man among a group in whichhe is not the outstanding individual, and toconduct the spectator of the crime along theline of the group. For an eye-witness to iden-tify a participant in a crime out of an indis-criminate group is of some value and carriesconviction. But the prosecution witnesses notonly were brought to sec Sacco and Vanzettiby themselves, but the two victims wereforced to go through all the actions of thebandits during the holdup and shooting, tosimulate all their reported poses and move-ments, and thereby stimulate the imaginationeven of honest witnesses who had but a fleet-ing, vague view of the entire scene. Wherecan a parallel be found to such a procedure?What conclusion can be drawn from thisother than that the prosecution — and thejudge, by his failure to condemn such meth-ods — was intent, not upon finding the realcriminals, but upon convicting these two par-ticular workers irrespective of the merits ofits case, even before any evidence was pre-sented? Does not every incident of the caseso far bear the unmistakable hallmark of thatgreat American institution, the frame-up sys-tem?

If there was still any doubt of this, subse-quent developments proved it a hundredtimes over.

Finally, there is the most characteristicphase of the entire trial. Two men are on trialfor having robbed some $15,000 and mur-dered two men. Ordinarily, therefore, itwould simply be a matter of the prosecutionproving that the two men were on the sceneat the time, stole the money, and shot theirvictims dead. Ordinarily, therefore, the viewsof the defendants on anthropology, or schoolsof literature, or civil service reform, would beconsidered irrelevant to the discussion of thecrime.

But this was no ordinary trial. This was alynching bee. The creation of a prejudiced at-mosphere prior to and during the trial, poi-soning the “calm and dignified mien ofjustice,” has already been described. To in-tensify and maintain it, there was the DistrictAttorney Katzmann, like a wily savage,learned in law, and the passions and preju-dices of his jury, prodding them, goadingthem on, urging, pleading, cajoling; then dra-matically drawing a red film over their eyesuntil they were ready to roar for the sight ofblood. And Thayer, holding the defence incheck while Katzmann traduced his victims;Thayer, dropping the distilled poison of hisfinal instructions into the minds of the jury.

This was a trial for murder. Why did Katz-mann so felicitously emphasise and repeat

the fact that the defendants had fled to Mex-ico to evade the Selective Service Act? Whydid he underline their opposition to the im-perialist war, why did he incessantly ques-tion them about their political, social andphilosophical opinions? Why did he insinu-atingly ridicule their foreign accent, and thehalting or imperfect speech of many of theirwitnesses? Why was it necessary to incite thepatriotic feelings of the provincial jurymen?Why did Ripley, the foreman of the jury, enterevery court session and halt dramatically infront of the American flag to salute?

Was it for the purpose, as Thayer wouldsay, of clearing “away any mist of sympathyor prejudice from your minds and havingsubstituted there trust, a purer atmosphere ofunyielding impartiality and absolute fair-ness”?

And was it towards the same end thatThayer, in his introduction to the jury, said:

The Commonwealth of Massachusettscalled upon you to render a most importantservice . . . arduous, painful and tiresome, yetyou, like the true soldier, responded to thatcall in the spirit of supreme American loyalty.There is no better word in the English lan-guage than “loyalty.”

Or in his remarks to prospective jurymen:You must remember the American soldier

boy had other duties that he, too, wouldrather have performed than those that re-sulted in giving up his life on the battlefieldsof France, but he, with undaunted courageand patriotic devotion that brought honorand glory to humanity and the world, ren-dered the service and made the supreme sac-rifice… I call upon you to render this servicehere that you have been summoned to per-form, with the same spirit of patriotism,courage and devotion to duty as was exhib-ited by our soldier boy across the seas.

Soldier boys! Anarchism! Loyalty! Draft-dodging! Patriotism! Love of our country!Agitators, reds, radicals! The battlefields ofFrance! What relation under the sun didthese things have with the question ofwhether or not Sacco and Vanzetti had mur-dered Parmenter and Berardelli! If a Repub-lican is on trial for bigamy, does theprosecuting attorney expose his attitude to-wards the tariff? If a southern Democrat is ontrial for horse-stealing, is he questioned abouthis views on miscegenation? If a cabinetmember is on trial for peculation, is he askedwhat is his opinion of the League of Nations?If a bootlegger is arrested for violation of theVolstead act, is he examined to find his opin-ion of Harvard University as an impartialsource of education?

It was no ordinary trial. It was a lynchingbee.

Katzmann closed his speech to the jurywith this appeal:

Gentlemen of the jury, do your duty. Do itlike men. Stand together, you men of Nor-folk!

The men of Norfolk stood together. Theydid their duty like men, like gentlemen. Theydeliberated for five hours, and brought in theverdict that might just as well have beengiven without the farcical formality of theseven weeks’ trial. The verdict of guilty ofmurder in the first degree rendered againstSacco and Vanzetti on July 14, 1921, bearswith it the penalty of execution in the electricchair.

PROTESTUp to this time, the case of Sacco andVanzetti had been confined to the stifling,deadly atmosphere of the courtroom.

The capitalist press, by its alliance, andmost of the labour press by its acquiescenceor failure to understand, helped to keep to-gether the four legal walls that hemmed in atitanic conflict of the two social forces of re-action and progress. The masses, the peoplewhose historic battle was being fought for inthe persons of two obscure Italian immi-

grants, were largely ignorant of what wasgoing on. Only a few radical journals andgroups grasped the significance of the war ofthe classes that was being fought in the case.For the mass of others it was only another“crime” case.

Attorney Fred Moore, of the defence, aman who was associated with a dozenprominent labour cases, and knew everytwist and quirk of the frame-up systemagainst workers, had tried to break throughthe four legal walls. Not being handicapped,from the beginning, with any illusions as tothe course the trial would take, he had beenthe moving figure in the work to popularizethe issues of the case before the workers ofthe world. Thayer hated him; the press triedto ridicule him out of the case.

The jury verdict of guilty shook the fourlegal walls like a quake, and through the fis-sures the pent-up torrent of the struggleraced into the open fields and avenues. Lib-erated from its confinement, it swept hun-dreds of thousands in its course. One afteranother, labour organizations in the UnitedStates arrayed themselves with the defencein its demand for a new trial. Unions of theAmerican Federation of Labour, the IWW.and other independent unions, the Commu-nists, Socialists, Anarchists, recorded them-selves for Sacco and Vanzetti.

With many of these it was because they re-alised the class nature of the issues involvedin the case; that it was not merely an incidentof an accidental “miscarriage of justice” butthat the judge, jury and prosecutor werestriking as severe a blow at the labour move-ment as was struck thirty-five years before inthe trial of the Haymarket martyrs. With theothers, it was the result of the feelings andpressure from the mass, who felt, howevervaguely, a working class kinship with the twoagitators. Scores of mass meetings were heldthroughout the land, and thousands came tohear the story of this new frame-up, thebiggest since the Mooney-Billings case in SanFrancisco. The labour and radical press beganto talk about the case with interest and pas-sion.

COURT AND MASS MOVEMENTSThe labour and revolutionary press of Eu-rope and Latin America had seized uponthe issues of the case, and made themtheir own.

The Sacco-Vanzetti frame-up was a discus-sion topic wherever workers gathered.Demonstrations took place in the capitals ofEurope and the countries to the south of us.Demands were presented to American am-bassadors and consuls. The Sacco-Vanzetticase had become an international issue. TheDepartment of State and its agents wereforced to issue statements, explanations,apologies. The newspaper conspiracy of si-lence was broken down. It was no longer asimple matter of railroading two Italian Redswith perjured witnesses, prejudiced judgeand hysterical jury. Instead, a jury of con-stantly growing thousands in every part ofthe world was sitting in judgement againstthe persecutors of Sacco and Vanzetti.

The feeling that the interests of the work-ing class were being endangered in the pros-ecution of Sacco and Vanzetti kept tugging atthe class instincts of labour. The spirit of in-ternational solidarity that enables the work-ing class, alone of all classes, to transcend therigidly fixed boundaries of nations waswrapped around the two prisoners like awarm cloak to protect them from the cold-blooded plots of their enemies.

The insignificant figures of Sacco andVanzetti were growing in stature and deep-ening with meaning. And the quick, massivetread heard everywhere was that of themarch of the countless workers, vigilantlyguarding their own, conceding nothing, hov-ering like a menacing giant over the execu-tioners.

A few years later in the case, one of the af-fidavits submitted by the defence gave unim-peachable witness to the fact that Thayer,who was sitting in impartial judgement, freefrom passion and prejudice, upon Sacco andVanzetti, had referred to them as “those bas-tards down there… I’ll get them.”

How tragically ludicrous, in the face of thisfact alone, becomes a rapturous faith in thepossibilities of obtaining justice and fairnessfrom the legal institutions and tools of Amer-ican capitalism, this maddening faith thathampered and interfered with the develop-ment of the only security for freedom — theclass movement of the workers?

Knowing the attitude of Thayer — andeven without that affidavit, it was shown inhis every sneer and gesture, in every decision— surprise could be expressed only if he hadacted in a manner other than he did. After At-torney Moore’s request, in October, 1921, fora new trial on the basis of a motion that theevidence was no justification for the verdict,Thayer waited with deliberate maliciousnessuntil Christmas Eve — December 24 — togive his decision refusing to grant the newtrial.

And the subsequent motions, based onnew evidence, were denied with the samemonotonous regularity by Thayer, beforewhom they were heard. Was it expected thatThayer, who had railroaded through a con-viction against Vanzetti in the Plymouth trial,who found that the “defendants’ ideals arecognate with the crime,” who virtually in-structed the Dedham jury to find Sacco andVanzetti guilty — that Thayer would grant amotion for a new trial which would implythat his conduct over a trial was not alto-gether proper and judicious? Was a justice ofMassachusetts to be less in the eyes of menthan Caesar’s wife?

The motions for another trial presentednew evidence which merely reaffirmed andemphasised the outrageous procedure of thefirst trial, the irregularities, the lying wit-nesses, the shoddy evidence.

There were the motions based on the affi-davit of Louis Pelzer, retracting his testimonyat the trial, and a similar affidavit of Mrs.Lola Andrews. Thayer did not retreat an inch,and denied the petition.

There was the motion exposing the crimi-nal record and utter unreliability of CarlosGoodridge, the fact that he had testified onthe witness stand while a fugitive from jus-tice. Motion denied.

Then there was the affidavit of Roy E.Gould, who was within five feet of the es-caping murder car, an occupant of whichfired upon him. He had a closer view of thebandits than any other person in the case,and he was willing to testify. The prosecutionnever railed him. Gould emphatically deniedthat either Sacco or Vanzetti were among themen in the car. But he may as well have iden-tified them as the murderers, for Thayer de-nied the motion.

In his instructions to the jury Thayer spokeof the evidence submitted concerning thebullets taken from the body of the murderedmen and Sacco’s pistol.

It was his [Sacco’s] pistol that fired the bul-let that caused the death of Berardelli. To thiseffect the Commonwealth introduced the tes-timony of two witnesses, Messrs. Proctor andVan Amburg.

And Katzmann, in his summary, went asfar as to say about their testimony:

You might disregard all the identificationtestimony, and base your verdict on the testi-mony of these experts.

The greatest weight was given to Proctor’stestimony both by the prosecution and thecourt.

But when the defence moved for a newtrial on the basis of an affidavit of CaptainProctor in which he declared that he had notsaid, nor intended to say that the bullet wasfired from Sacco’s pistol, it had not the slight-

est effect upon Thayer. Proctor asserted:The District Attorney desired to ask me

that question, but I had repeatedly told himthat if he did I should be obliged to answerin the negative; consequently, he put to methis question:

Q. Have you an opinion as to whether bul-let number 3 was fired from the Colt auto-matic which is in evidence? ... A. My opinionis that it is consistent with being fired by thatpistol....

I do not intend by that answer to implythat I had found any evidence that the so-called mortal bullet had passed through thisparticular Colt automatic pistol and the Dis-trict Attorney well knew that I did not so in-tend and framed his question accordingly.Had I been asked the direct question:whether I had found any affirmative evi-dence whatever that this so-called mortalbullet had passed through this particular[Sacco’s] pistol, I should have answered then,as I do now without hesitation, in the nega-tive.

But even this damaging evidence againstthe prosecution and its case had no effect onThayer’s predetermined refusal to grant anew trial.

The same refusal was the answer to themotion for a new trial based on evidencewhich showed that Ripley, the foreman of thejury, who used, in the jury room, cartridgessimilar to those placed in evidence, for thepurpose of influencing the minds of other ju-rors, contrary to the procedure which de-mands that all evidence be openlyintroduced into the record so as to give an op-portunity to both sides to support or contro-vert it. In addition, an old friend of Ripley’s,one Daly, testified that Ripley had said tohim, speaking of Sacco and Vanzetti beforethe trial opened: “Damn them, they ought tohang anyway.”

A similar fate met the motion which wasbased on the evidence of one of the foremostmicroscopists in the country, an expert whohad been called in 165 criminal cases, whocompared the Sacco pistol with the bullettaken from Berardelli’s corpse. In the wordsof Professor Frankfurter, “a minute compari-son of the scratches on the bullet and thegrooves inside the barrel of Sacco’s pistolconclusively disproved the claim of the Com-monwealth that it was from Sacco’s pistolthat the fatal bullet was fired.”

CASE GETS A “NEW COMPLEXION”The hearing on all the motions except thevery first for a new trial which was still ar-gued by Fred Moore, was conducted forthe defence by Attorney William G.Thompson, on October 1, 1923.

Attorney Moore had tried to emphasise theclass issues that ran through every fibre of thecase, to rely upon the workers’ movementoutside in addition to fighting through thelegal red tape of the courts. His experience innumerous labour causes that he defendedhad taught him as much. A comparison of theopinion held by Felix Frankfurter, himself amild liberal with “confidence in our institu-tions and their capacity to rectify errors,” ofthe two attorneys, speaks worlds for thechanged defence situation since October 1,1923.

Moore . . . himself a radical and a profes-sional defender of radicals. In opinion, aswell as in fact, he was an “outsider.” . . .Moore found neither professional nor per-sonal sympathies between himself and theJudge. So far as the relations between courtand counsel seriously, even if unconsciously,affect the temper of a trial, Moore was a fac-tor of irritation and not of appeasement. . . .Thompson, a powerful advocate bred in thetraditions of the Massachusetts courts. Theespousal of the Sacco-Vanzetti cause by aman of Mr. Thompson’s professional prestigeat once gave it a new complexion and hasbeen its mainstay ever since ... his conviction

that these two men are innocent and thattheir trial was not characterised by those highstandards which are the pride of Massachu-setts justice.

High standards of Massachusetts justice!High nonsense!

But it is true that attempts were made togive the case a “new complexion.” There hadbeen friction between Moore and the Sacco-Vanzetti Defence Committee which wasformed immediately after the arrest. Moore,more than any of the other attorneys, hadbest understood the class forces in the case,and his position became untenable. The in-troduction of Thompson into the casemarked a turning point to a great extent inthe tactics of the Defence Committee.

Thompson would not tolerate “pressurefrom the outside,” the demonstrations andprotests of the workers, the mass movementof labour that could surround Sacco andVanzetti with a wall of iron against the at-tacks of their enemies. The defence turnedmore and more towards reliance upon thosefalse friends concerned more with the vindi-cation of “confidence in our institutions andtheir capacity to rectify errors,” and “thosehigh standards which are the pride of Mas-sachusetts justice” than with the vindicationof two unknown immigrants. More than that,it helped to discredit the honest and powerfulclass support of the toilers, the grimy and de-spised, the brothers of Sacco and Vanzetti,and leaned instead upon the “thoughtful”editorials, the “impartial fairness” and piouswishes of the liberal journals, which, like theNew York World, dug the knife deep into thehearts of Sacco and Vanzetti at the crucialmoment. It played the soft pedal to the rau-cous, determined cries of the living move-ment of the workers and strained anxiouslyfor “respectability” and polite prayers tothose honourable gentlemen who, obliviousto everything but the demand for blood, wereputting the final touches to the electric chairthat was to burn all life out of the two fight-ers. Because it failed or refused to understandthe intensely class nature of the case, the de-fence succumbed to the demands of thelawyers; it exchanged the movement of theworkers for the motions of the lawyers; itsold the class birth-right of the Sacco-Vanzetticase for a mess of liberal milk and pap.

And while this was happening, the Massa-chusetts courts continued to taunt the de-fence for its baseless faith, to jeer at the ideaof placing reliance in their possibilities forjustice by the decisions that they rendered, al-ways with the same urbanity, always withthe same disregard for facts, always drawingthe two waiting prisoners closer to the chairof death. Their words and deeds were moreeffective than all the arguments of the mili-tants in proving the futility of building thehopes of the workers on a swamp which con-tinued to suck in all the resources of themovement without changing the aspect of itscruel and slimy face.

Thayer rendered his decision on the mo-tions for a new trial on October 1, 1924. Hedenied them all. The new evidence submit-ted by the defence was of little consequence.It may have had the effect, he conceded, ofdamaging some of the witnesses and con-tentions of the Commonwealth, but it did notaffect at all the evidence that convicted thedefendants, the “evidence that is known inlaw as ‘consciousness of guilt.’ “

This was safe enough ground for Thayer.What is more airy, delicate, impalpable, aseasy of proof as of disproof, as “conscious-ness of guilt”? What more impressive and in-criminating charge can be made against twoinnocent men against whom it is impossibleto bring any real evidence, evidence thatwould bear conviction?

The defence appealed to the supreme judi-cial court of Massachusetts against Thayer’sdecisions. Eighteen months later, it handeddown its decision. It was polite, but dignified



and firm as befits harpies invested withblack-robed authority. It was without therealm of its jurisdiction to review the meritsof the case; it could decide only upon the con-duct and rulings of the trial judge. Thesupreme judicial court searched anxiously,but could not find any “abuse of judicial dis-cretion” by Webster Thayer. He had acted inaccordance with those high standards whichare the pride of Massachusetts justice. “Noerror” could be found in any of his rulings.As Massachusetts judges to a Massachusettsjudge, they spoke and wrote, and they foundthat all was as it should be. The honest advo-cate, Felix Frankfurter, found that “some ofthe Supreme Judicial Court rulings are puz-zling in the extreme.” Puzzling, we shouldsay, to those who have faith in the courts ofcapitalism, but clear as day to those who un-derstand the class struggle.

CAUGHT REDHANDEDTo those who realised from the beginningthat this was a case in which the entiremachinery of the government, from its na-tional executive department, down to itslowest court and police official in Massa-chusetts, had been set in motion to sendtwo labour agitators to their death, it wasnot a surprise when the defence pre-sented affidavits that testified to the partplayed in the frame-up by the Departmentof Justice, which initiated the arrests andaided in the conviction of Sacco andVanzetti.

Early in 1926, even before the decision ofthe supreme judicial court, the defence ob-tained three important affidavits. They wereall from men who had been connected in oneway or another with the Department of Jus-tice or private detective agencies during theanti-red hysteria, working in and aroundBoston. The affidavits illuminate the frame-up against the two Italian workers with acompleteness that leaves little more to be de-sired. They show whether the prosecution ofSacco and Vanzetti was the result of an acci-dental arrest and indictment, or of a deliber-ate assault, planned and cynical, upon thelives and freedom of two workers devoted tolabour’s cause.

The first affidavit was made by LawrenceLetherman, a post office inspector for twenty-five years, and then the local agent of the De-partment of Justice in charge of the Bureau ofInvestigation in Boston for three years. It isbetter to quote directly from the affidavitthan to summarise:

While I was Post Office Inspector I cooper-ated to a considerable extent with the agentsof the Department of Justice in Boston in mat-ters of joint concern, including the Sacco-Vanzetti case. The man under me in directcharge of matters relating to that case was Mr.William West, who is still attached to the De-

partment of Justice in Boston. I know that Mr.West cooperated with Mr. Katzmann, the Dis-trict Attorney, during the trial of the case, andlater with Mr. Williams. I know that before,during and after the trial of Sacco andVanzetti Mr. West had a number of so-called“under-cover” men assigned to this case, in-cluding one Ruzzamenti and one Carbone. . .

Before, during, and after the trial, the De-partment of Justice had a number of men as-signed to watch the activities of theSacco-Vanzetti Defence Committee. No evi-dence warranting prosecution of anybodywas obtained by these men. They were all“under-cover” men, and one or two of themobtained employment by the Committee insome capacity or other. . . . The Departmentof Justice in Boston was anxious to get suffi-cient evidence against Sacco and Vanzetti todeport them, but never succeeded in gettingthe kind and amount of evidence required forthat purpose. It was the opinion of the De-partment agents here that a conviction ofSacco and Vanzetti for murder would be oneway of disposing of these two men. It wasalso the general opinion of such agents inBoston as had any actual knowledge of theSacco-Vanzetti case, that Sacco and Vanzetti,although anarchists and agitators, were nothighway robbers, and had nothing to do withthe South Braintree crime. My opinion, andthe opinion of most of the older men in theGovernment service, has always been thatthe South Braintree crime was the work ofprofessionals.

There is or was a great deal of correspon-dence on file in the Boston office between Mr.West and Mr. Katzmann, the District Attor-ney, and there are also copies of reports sentto Washington about the case.

Letters and reports were made in triplicate;two copies were sent to Washington and oneretained in Boston. The letters and docu-ments on file in the Boston office wouldthrow a great deal of light upon the prepara-tion of the Sacco-Vanzetti case for trial, andupon the real opinion of the Boston office ofthe Department of Justice as to the guilt ofSacco and Vanzetti of the particular crimewith which they were charged.

Then there followed an affidavit of Fred J.Weyand, a subordinate of Letherman’s in theBoston Department of Justice, who was thereduring the whole period of the Palmerregime. A few excerpts from his statementshow how closely his story coincides withand substantiates Letherman’s:

Some time before the arrest of Sacco andVanzetti on May 5, 1920 — just how long be-fore I do not remember — the names of bothof them had got in the files of the Departmentof Justice as radicals to be watched. . . . Thesuspicion entertained by the Department ofJustice against Sacco and Vanzetti was thatthey had violated the Selective Service Act,

and also that they were anarchists or heldradical opinions of some sort or other. . . .

I know that at one time as many as twelveagents of the Department of Justice located inBoston were assigned to cover Sacco-Vanzettimeetings and other radical activities con-nected with the Sacco-Vanzetti case. No evi-dence was discovered warranting theinstitution of proceedings against anybody. ...I was not personally in touch with Mr. Katz-mann, the District Attorney, or his office, butMr. West was in touch with them and wasgiving and obtaining information in regardto the case.

Some time in the early part of the year1921, I was informed by Ruzzamenti that hehad been sent for by Weiss, who was then outof Government service, to come on here tohelp convict Sacco and Vanzetti-, that he hadseen Katzmann, and that an arrangementhad been made by which he was to secureboard in the house of Mrs. Sacco and obtainher confidence, and thus obtain information.. . .

Shortly after the trial of Sacco and Vanzettiwas concluded I said to Weiss that I did notbelieve they were the right men, meaning themen who shot the paymaster; and he repliedthat that might be so, but that they were badactors and would get what they deservedanyway.

Instructions were received from the Chiefof the Bureau of the Department of Justice inWashington from time to time in reference tothe Sacco-Vanzetti case. They are on file orshould be on file in the Boston office. . . .

I am thoroughly convinced and alwayshave been, and I believe that is and alwayshas been the opinion of such Boston agentsof the Department of Justice as had anyknowledge on the subject, that these men hadnothing whatever to do with the South Brain-tree murders, and that their conviction wasthe result of cooperation between the Bostonagents of the Department of Justice and theDistrict Attorney. It was the general opinionof the Boston agents of the Department ofJustice have knowledge of the affair that theSouth Braintree crime was committed by agang of professional highwaymen.

Finally, an affidavit of John Ruzzamenti,the former operative who had been sent bythe free-lance detective, Felix Weiss, to aid inthe conviction of Sacco and Vanzetti by spy-ing upon them. Ruzzamenti was sent to seeKatzmann and arrange for the work he wasto do:

. . . Thereupon the said Katzmann said tothe affiant in substance and effect that he, thesaid Katzmann, was right hard up against it5that he, the said Katzmann, had no evidenceas against the said Nicola Sacco or as againstthe said Bartolomeo Vanzetti j that they, thesaid Sacco and said Vanzetti; had not talkedand would not talk; that he had been unableto get anything out of them or out of anyother person. . . .

These affidavits served to round out thepicture considerably — to fill in some moreblack shadows. No answer was ever made tothe assertions of these agents, for none couldbe made. They were irrefutable proof of thefact that the Department of Justice had insti-gated the persecutions of the two rebels, thatit had coached Katzmann how to proceedwith the case; it proved that the evidenceagainst them had been deliberately concoctedout of whole cloth in order to rid their ene-mies of two men who could not so conve-niently be got out of the way on a charge ofrevolutionary opinions, but against whom aspurious murder charge might be leveled asa happy solution to the problem of their exis-tence and activities. It proved the initiativeand collusion of the Department of Justice inthe face of the denials by the District Attor-ney and the hypocritical “doubts” expressedby Thayer who must have known it all thetime.

Every bit of evidence fitted into thehideous mosaic of the frame-up in which thearm of class persecution was being raised todeliver the death blow to two workers. Therewas only one thing missing to completely fin-ish the picture. The murder of Parmenter andBerardelli was not denied. If Sacco andVanzetti had not killed them, who then werethe murderers? The missing evidence had al-ready been supplied, even before the testi-mony of Letherman, Weyand, Weiss andRuzzamenti.

THE MADEIROS CONFESSIONOn November 18, 1925, a young Por-tuguese criminal named Celestino F.Madeiros sent a note enclosed in a mag-azine to Nicola Sacco who was locked ina nearby cell. The note, which becomeone of the most sensational parts of therecords of the case, read:

I hear by confess to being in the SouthBraintree shoe company crime and Sacco andVanzetti was not in said crime.

Celestino F. Madeiros.Madeiros was awaiting the supreme court

decision on his appeal from a conviction ofmurder; he had killed a banker of Wrenthamin an attempted robbery. From this initialconfession, the defence collected a series ofaffidavits which completely corroborated thestory subsequently told the District Attorneyand the attorneys for the defence in lengthystatements by Madeiros. This was, briefly, thestory:

The South Braintree crime had been com-mitted by the notorious Morello gang ofProvidence, Rhode Island. They had been en-gaged in train-robbing for years, and at thetime of the crime they were already under in-dictment on federal charges. A number oftheir train-robberies had been of stocksshipped by freight from the Slater and Mor-rill factory, and they would probably have re-sorted to their old methods again in order toobtain some money for bail and legal defencewere it not for the special vigilance of policeagents who were guarding the trains. Theytherefore decided to hold up the Slater andMorrill payroll and invited Madeiros, whohad been with them before, to come along.He consented.

On 15 April, 1920, they drove to SouthBraintree in a Hudson, three Italians,Madeiros, and the driver, “a kind of slim fel-low with light hair.” In the woods theychanged cars to a Buick. Two of the Italianswere afoot to do the shooting and actual rob-bery of the payroll boxes. After the murder,they drove off rapidly, and in the Randolphwoods changed their car again for the Hud-son, to elude their pursuers, and arranged tomeet in Providence for the division of thespoils.

A later check-up by the defence accordedthe story a precise authenticity. Two of thetrial witnesses identified Joe Morello andMancini, two of the gang leaders, as the menwho had done the shooting. Another, Stevethe Pole, confirmed the Madeiros descriptionof the driver, thereby liquidating the conflictof testimony given at the trial, where a light-haired unknown and the dark-hairedVanzetti were both “identified” as the deathcar driver. Joe Morelli had a 32 Colt at thetime, and the fatal bullet was of the same cal-ibre; the other bullets coincided with the cal-ibre used in Mancini’s pistol. The Buick deathcar fitted in with the Buick driven at that timeby Mike Morelli, which disappeared after thecrime. When Madeiros, shortly after theBraintree murder, was released from a termserved in another case, he took some $2,800out of the bank for a trip West. Such a sum ofmoney is the amount each of the banditswould have received if the payroll moneythat was stolen had been evenly dividedamong them.

With these simple facts presented, it is ob-

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vious that a comparison of the theory thatSacco and Vanzetti committed the SouthBraintree murder and the theory that it wasthe Morelli gang would result in the com-plete collapse of the former. Madeiros had noselfish motives for lying. On the contrary, hisconfession could only help to bring himnearer to the death sentence, for he was atthat very moment appealing his conviction tothe supreme court which would not, in alllikelihood, look with more favour upon hiscase after a confession of that kind. He him-self said later: “I seen Sacco’s wife come uphere [to the jail] with the kids and I felt sorryfor the kids.”

The numerous affidavits, the new testi-mony, the almost daily discoveries and sen-sations which proved over and over againthe innocence of Sacco and Vanzetti served todraw new tens of thousands of people intothe struggle that was going on outside of thecourts on the side of Sacco and Vanzetti.Those who had seen the case as one in whichall that was necessary for a solution to the dif-ficulties was sufficient evidence to convincethe honourable and just courts of Massachu-setts, were highly optimistic. They joyouslyawaited the next decision of the court, confi-dent that it would vindicate the honor andconfidence in Massachusetts’s legal institu-tions, and free Sacco and Vanzetti, the twoimmigrants whose imprisonment was an in-eradicable exposure of the whole rotten sys-tem and machinery of class rule andpersecution. Those who knew the strugglefor what it was, a case of class vengeance,knew that the new evidence, by itself, wouldonly strengthen the intentions of assassins ofSacco and Vanzetti, who were becoming in-furiated by the development of the casewhich tore away every shred of pretence tojustice and impartiality with which they hadclothed themselves. For the latter, the new ev-idence created only fear and determinationto fight with the weapons of the workingclass.

MILITANTS DEMAND A PROTESTMOVEMENT

If there were any doubts in the minds ofthe militant elements of the labour move-ment as to the fate held in store for Saccoand Vanzetti — there had never beenmany doubts at any period — they wereswept aside by the decision of thesupreme judicial court of Massachusettswhich found the conduct of WebsterThayer without reproach and denied anew trial to the defence.

It brought out with awful sharpness theelectric chair to which the executioners werepreparing to strap the two innocent workers.The situation demanded heroic measures.

As soon as the decision of the supremecourt was made known, the InternationalLabor Defense issued an appeal to the work-ers of the whole world to demonstrate theirsolidarity with Sacco and Vanzetti. Organisedless than a year before, the ideas embodied inthe ILD were eagerly accepted by thousandsof workers throughout the country.

It had put forth the idea that a movementmust be created to defend all workers, irre-spective of their political or economic affilia-tions and opinions, who were persecuted bycapitalist class justice. It proposed to organisea unified, nonpartisan class defence move-ment upon which all elements in the labourmovement could find a common platform. Itproposed to change the condition of affairsunfortunately prevalent at that time in whicha new machinery of defence had to be set upby each group or section of the labour move-ment every time a worker was arrested andbrought to trial for his activity or opinions.The wastefulness, the narrowness of base, thelimitations of appeal, and the errors in work,it planned to abolish in the formation of aunited, clarified, national movement em-

bracing workers of all shades of opinion. Inits ranks could be found Communists, So-cialists, Anarchists, members of the SLP,IWW, members of the AFL, and workers un-affiliated to any of these. It was therefore nat-ural that from its inception the InternationalLabor Defense should have begun a persist-ent agitation for the liberation of the two con-demned men in Massachusetts. The ILDconsidered Sacco and Vanzetti and theircause the property of the whole workingclass, and that only the working class couldtransform this cause into a victory.

It was true that many who were not work-ers, who had nothing in common with thetwo rebels in Massachusetts, took up a cry forthem: “Justice!” They were careful liberals,gentlemen of the pulpit, kindly and well-bred ladies, worried professors, men of lawand learning, good Christian men andwomen. For five or six years they had saidnothing, and by their silence permitted thespringing of the trap that was to kill Saccoand Vanzetti. Six years in which two workershad suffered all the tortures of the damned.Now, like the Boston Herald, which had calledfor their blood, they also said:

We do not know whether these men areguilty or not. We have no sympathy with thehalf-baked views which they profess. But asmonths have merged into years and the greatdebate over this case has continued, ourdoubts have solidified into convictions, andreluctantly we have found ourselves com-pelled to reverse our original judgment.

There were still a few legal loopholes leftto Sacco and Vanzetti. This helped the liber-als. It gave them the needed excuse for in-sisting upon faith in the institutions ofcapitalism which were strangling Sacco andVanzetti. Upon it they based their demandthat action by the workers be halted and liq-uidated, that the strident voices of protest besilenced. They demanded the substitution ofthe movement of the masses by the move-ment of the lawyers.

They were influential people! They werepeople of position and faith in the ordainedprocesses and order of things. They wereconfidently content with polite statements,public discussions; they would even go to thelength of expressing indignation and sur-prise. They would contribute funds for theprosecution of the innumerable legal steps,but being essentially well-bred they wouldcountenance no “misguided action” by “ill-advised and irresponsible people.” And thismeant no action by the working class. Theliberals wanted to restore to the masses an il-lusive faith in those institutions of capitalismwhich were being destroyed by every actionof the Massachusetts bourbons.

Not only the liberals. The bureaucrats inthe trade unions, and the office boys of thebig labour leaders, the officialdom of the So-cialist Party and the New York Jewish For-ward, adopted the same position. The causeof Sacco and Vanzetti had become a livingissue in the labour movement of this country.The left wing and the militant workers hadbrought it to the fore with a steady persist-ence that won the support of hundreds ofthousands. Where they demanded resoluteaction, the conservatives proposed comfort-able resolutions which would offend no one.

This corrupting respectability began toexert a powerful pressure upon the Sacco-Vanzetti Defence Committee in Boston. Theirhighly respectable and highly-paid attorneytold them, regretfully of course, that he couldnot associate himself with the case if the com-mittee participated in demonstrative protestmovements. If this were done all other re-spectable ladies and gentlemen who had sonobly consented to give the support of theirnames and purses would have to withdraw.

The slow poison of middle-class treacherycontinued to seep into the ranks of the com-mittee, and it began to dominate its wordsand deeds. Offers sent by the militant work-

ers to the committee for united action of theworkers, asking for the plans the committeehad for such work, were not even answered.While scores of mass meetings were held inthe smallest towns of the country, meetingswhere the angry voices of labour announcedto the murderers their intention to fight fortheir comrades, in Boston, where the com-mittee was located, where the struggleshould have been the sharpest and most mil-itant, there were less meetings than in anyother city of any importance. The conspiracyof silence had resulted in a pall of ignorancebeing spread over the land; during the yearsof the fight the workers of America had notresponded in the numbers that would havehad an immediate and impressive effect; andthe committee began to lose faith in the pos-sibility of stirring the giant of labour, to losefaith in the ability of this giant to liberate itstwo children. They were led to the courts, tothe shambles, by the respectable people.

Both Sacco and Vanzetti were as oneagainst such a road to freedom, for it did notlead there. Sacco wrote to the InternationalLabor Defense, right after the decision of thesupreme judicial court:

... let us tell you sincerely, dear comrade,that for hereafter I will never fall into anothernew delusion again, if I don’t see first the dayof my freedom. Even when Mrs. Elizabeth G.Evans — that through all these struggle yearsshe has been kind to me as kind as goodmother can be, come to tell me “Nick! youagain.” No! No! Six long torment years givesme enough experience because it is a greatmasterpiece for me and to anybody else notto be disappointed any more. Poor mother!She is so sincere and faithful to the law of theman that she has forgot very early that thehistory of all the government it were alwaysand every time the martyrdom of the prole-tariat. But, however, we will stick like a goodCommunard soldier to the end of the battleand looking into the eyes of our enemy, faceto face, to tell them our last breath — which Ihad always faith — that you, the comradesand all the workers of the world solidarity,would free Sacco and Vanzetti tomorrow.

With equal clarity, Vanzetti sent an appealto the International Labor Defense on May23, 1926:

The echo of your campaign in our behalfhas reached by heart. I repeat, I will repeat tothe last, only the people, our comrades, ourfriends, the world revolutionary proletariatcan save us from the powers of the capitalistreactionary hyenas, or vindicate our namesand our blood before history. . . .

There are some who think that our case is atrial for a common crime; that our friendsshould contest our innocence but not turn thecase into a political issue, because it wouldonly damage us. Well, I could answer to themall that our case is more than a political case,is a case of class war in which our enemiesare personally interested to lose us — notonly for class purposes but for personal pas-sions, resentments, and fear. That we don’thave to wait for further proof to be positive oftheir hatred, unfairness, blood-thirsty deter-mination to deny us every right, to trampupon every reason, and to murder us, asproved by the Boston capitalist press to theState Supreme Court’s decision and its press-ing demands of our prompt execution. . . .

The truth of these words is known to all —now. But how true they rang then also, howscornfully they lashed those stupid illusionsof the liberals and put to shame their miser-able, shameful begging by the brave, inspir-ing appeal of two rebels!

Imbued with this spirit, and with the defi-ant words written on their banners, the mili-tants marched forward with their movementof protest. Unlike the socialists of the NewYork Forward stripe, who attacked and ham-pered the movement, Eugene Victor Debs,virtually from his deathbed, wrote his lastpublic appeal for Sacco and Vanzetti to be

distributed everywhere in hundreds of thou-sands of copies by the International LaborDefense. Scores of protest meetings were heldin every city and thousands of workers madetheir voices “ring with denunciation of theimpending crime.”

United action! Life and freedom for Saccoand Vanzetti! With these slogans, the Inter-national Labor Defense took the initiative inthe formation of the Sacco-Vanzetti commit-tees and conferences throughout the country.Hundreds of thousands of workers were en-rolled in this movement. Workers of all sec-tions of the labour movement joined handsin the fight for liberation. In Seattle, for ex-ample, the conference was organised withdelegates from the Central Labour Counciland numerous local unions of the AmericanFederation of Labour, Communists, IWWand a dozen other labour bodies. In Los An-geles, Socialists, Anarchists, Communists, I.W. W., A. F. of L. — all entered the conference.In New York City, almost half a million work-ers were organised into the Sacco-VanzettiEmergency Committee. In every other city ofimportance the I. L. D. and the militantsworked incessantly to build a united move-ment, until the United States was coveredfrom coast to coast with a network of Sacco-Vanzetti troops numbering between two andthree millions of workers.

Then the workers of other countries, whofrom the beginning had proved their kinshipand loyalty to Sacco and Vanzetti, were againcalled upon to act swiftly and decisively.Along the copper wires that lie in the seawent appeals from the Chicago office of theInternational Labor Defense to the labour de-fence organizations of Europe, and to the In-ternational Red Aid in Moscow which in turnappealed to its sections for demonstrations ofsolidarity. The meetings and demonstrationsin New York, Chicago, and Seattle were du-plicated on an even larger scale in Berlin,London, Rio de Janeiro and Canton. Letters,telegrams, cablegrams, messages of all kindspoured in upon the state of Massachusetts, alldemanding life and freedom for the twohumble workers whom the bourbons hadthought six years ago to try, convict and killin the dead of the night. The workers had lettheir stentorian voice be heard!

THAYER REPLIESOn October 24, 1926, Judge Thayer ren-dered his decision on the motion for anew trial made by the defence on thebasis of the affidavits of the Departmentof Justice agents, and the confession ofMadeiros which had been accompaniedby corroborative statements.

It was a decision conceived by a poisonousmind, animated by only one deadly desire,sneeringly disregardful of all reason, truthand honesty, and written on brass. TheLetherman-Weyand-Ruzzamenti evidencewas dismissed with an angry rejoinder thatthe American government would neverstoop so low as to help frame up two obscureindividuals. The evidence around theMadeiros confession was confusedly an-swered, so that every line showed how bitterThayer was at the thought that it had been in-troduced to confound his judgment and con-duct. He cleared the Morelli gang; he pointedto the nice coat of whitewash the supremecourt had given him; new evidence couldmean nothing, for Sacco and Vanzetti hadbeen legally convicted.

The tone of the document was so cynicallyand brutally partisan, so obviously disingen-uous, that even conservative newspapersswallowed hard. It bewildered the honestProfessor Frankfurter into saying

…with deep regret, but without the slight-est fear of disproof, that certainly in moderntimes Judge Thayer’s opinion stands un-matched, happily, for discrepancies betweenwhat the record discloses and what the opin-



ion conveys. His 25,000-word document can-not accurately be described otherwise than asa farrago of misquotations, misrepresenta-tions, suppressions, and mutilations… Theopinion is literally honeycombed withdemonstrable errors, and infused by a spiritalien to judicial utterance.

The defence attorney, outraged because,despite the fact that he was not a “long-haired radical lawyer from California,” hehad been virtually called insane in Thayer’sdecision, again appealed to the supremecourt. They heard him, these wise men andjust, and denied his appeal. Four days later,on 9 April, 1927, Webster Thayer called thedefendants and the attorneys for the defenceand the Commonwealth to the Dedhamcourthouse to hear him triumphantly sen-tence the two bastards to death in the electricchair.

But the criminals had something to say toThayer before the sentence of death waspassed upon them. They had eloquent burn-ing words, words of defiant courage, withwhich to sear the shrivelled skin of the Mas-sachusetts Torquemada. Sacco spoke first.

I know the sentence will be between twoclasses, the oppressed class and the rich class,and there will be always collision betweenone and the other. We fraternise the peoplewith the books, with the literature. You per-secute the people, tyrannise them and killthem. We try the education of people always.You try to put a path between us and someother nationality that hates each other. That’swhy I am here today on this bench, for hav-ing been of the oppressed class. Well, you arethe oppressor.

Then Vanzetti spoke. He marshalled beforethe heedless judge the colossal forces of theworld’s men and women who had rallied tohis cause. He called upon Eugene VictorDebs, upon the toilers of the earth ...

... the flower of mankind of Europe, thebetter writers, the greatest thinkers of Europehave pleaded in our favour. The greatest sci-entists, the greatest statesmen of Europe havepleaded in our favour.

We have proved that there could not havebeen another judge on the face of the earthmore prejudiced, more cruel and more hos-tile than you have been against us. We haveproved that. Still they refuse the new trial. Weknow, and you know in your heart, that youhave been against us from the very begin-ning, before you see us. Before you see us youalready know that we were radicals, that wewere underdogs, that we were the enemy ofthe institutions that you can believe in goodfaith in their goodness and that it was easy atthe time of the first trial to get a verdict ofguilty.

. . . This is what I say, I would not wish to adog or to a snake, to the most low and mis-fortunate creature of the earth — 1 would notwish to any of them what I have had to suf-fer for things that I am not guilty of. I am suf-fering because I am a radical, and indeed Iam a radical; I have suffered because I was anItalian, and indeed I am an Italian. I have suf-fered more for my family and for my belovedthan for myself; but I am so convinced to beright that you can only kill me once but if youcould execute me two times, and if I could bereborn two other times, I would live again todo what I have done already.

Webster Thayer rose to perform “a matterof statutory requirement.” To Nicola Saccoand then to Bartolomeo Vanzetti he pro-nounced the fatal sentence.

It is considered and ordered by the Courtthat you, Nicola Sacco, suffer the punishmentof death by the passage of a current of elec-tricity through your body within the weekbeginning on Sunday, the tenth day of July,in the Year of Our Lord One Thousand, NineHundred and Twenty-seven. This is the sen-tence of the law.

Ninety days to live! And only one morelegal hope.

In order to place the issue before GovernorFuller, who had in his power their release,commutation of sentence, or confirmation ofthe sentence, Vanzetti entered a formal state-ment of his request. The governor of Massa-chusetts took it under advisement, and alleyes turned towards him.

Fuller noisily announced that he would in-vestigate the whole matter thoroughly andjudiciously. He would go into every detailand aspect of the case. His decision would betempered with careful analysis and broad vi-sion. He even went so far as to appoint a spe-cial investigation committee composed ofthree honourable and respectable citizens,President Lowell of Harvard University, Pres-ident Stratton of the Massachusetts Instituteof Technology, and the former judge of pro-bate courts, Robert Grant, like himself, goodand Christian gentlemen. They would inves-tigate and advise him. He also would inves-tigate.

To help the governor and his commission,all of whom were impelled by a spirit of pub-lic duty and impartial justice, the defenceproduced a number of new affidavits toprove the bitter prejudice of Judge Thayer.One was from George Crocker, of the Uni-versity Club in Boston where Thayer hadstayed for a while and to whom he had readparts of his charge to the jury with the re-mark: “I think that will hold him [Moore],don’t you?” Another was from Robert Bench-ley, an editor of Life, who reported the re-marks made by Thayer to one of his clubbrethren, Loring Coes. Thayer spoke of Saccoand Vanzetti as “those bastards down there,”“trying to intimidate me,” “I will get themgood and proper,” “I would also like to hanga few dozen of the radicals.”

Statements of newspaper reporters, men ofstanding in press circles of Boston like FrankP Sibley of the Boston Globe, Elizabeth RBernkopf, who was at a number of hearingsfor the International News Service; JohnNicholas Beffel, who covered the trial for theFederated Press, and a letter from Professor LP Richardson of Dartmouth College, showedone instance after another of the violent ha-tred Thayer had of the two men upon whomhe was sitting in impartial judgment.

But the investigation of the governor andhis commission was the sheerest fraud. It wasall stage scenery, rosily decorated, behindwhich the final preparations for the executionwere being organised. It was a hollow, bittersham, an attempt to gain time against thepowerful movement of labour which wasgrowing by the hour in every land on the faceof the earth. The bucket was being stirred toapply the last coat of whitewash to WebsterThayer and the ineffable institutions of Mas-sachusetts. It was nothing but a source ofnew illusions, a criminal conspiracy to com-plete the murder of two innocent men and todemoralise and split the movement createdaround their banner.

The liberals, however, were in fine fettle.Here was an honest and independent execu-tive! Here was a man who could be ap-proached by the “right” people in the “right”way. They made Fuller’s name synonymouswith hope and justice. They had never adoubt about him, only joyous faith; and theyseverely scolded those rude, vulgar, noisyrebels who were annoying the governor andembarrassing him with their demonstrationsand incessant protests. The blithe editors ofThe Nation wrote to Fuller, to the $40,000,000owner of Packard automobile stocks, to thered-baiter who when a member of Congresscalled for the “crucifixion of the disloyal, thenailing of sedition to the cross of free gov-ernment, where the whole brood of anar-chists, Bolshevists, IWW’s andrevolutionaries may see and read a solemnwarning,” to Fuller who lied like a trooper bysaying he previously knew nothing of thewhole matter, to Fuller who was at that verymoment conducting a farcical investigation,

to the man whose commission of god-fearingcitizens was to conduct its investigation likean inquisition, in camera — to the governorof Massachusetts, they wrote:

You have won a reputation in your Statefor independence and courage… Facts withinour knowledge embolden us to belief that asan honest and fearless man you will face thegreat issues presented to you in the Sacco-Vanzetti case without shrinking and with adetermination to get at all the facts…. We sin-cerely trust that nothing will induce youmerely to commute their sentences.

These men are guilty or they are not guilty.If they are guilty commutation would indeedseem a concession to clamour (so!), if they areinnocent they cannot be set free too soon —to doom them to a life in prison would be noact of kindness. We know that their releasefrom unjust imprisonment will strengthenthe prestige of Massachusetts rather than in-jure it.

GOVERNOR FULLERHeywood Broun, the author, was able tosay a couple of months later, that Gover-nor Alvin T Fuller never had any intentionin all his investigation but to put a new andhigher polish upon the proceedings. . . .

He hoped to make it respectable — but theeditors of The Nation signed their letter to the“honest and fearless man” with the salute:“With complete faith in the integrity of yourintentions, we are, etc.”

The liberals nursed and fondled their illu-sions, but the militant workers would havenone of it. They knew, as Sacco and Vanzettiknew, that only the daily, persistent mobi-lization and action of the people, the masses,held any guarantee for vindication and free-dom. Their bitter experiences in the struggleagainst the oppressing class had taught themto look for no mercy, from that quarter. Theyproceeded to entrench themselves furtherinto the protest movement, to make its criesand slogans resound throughout the country,to increase the fear of the masses that was al-ready agitating the master class.

And the Boston Committee: Did theysound the tocsin? Did they call upon theworkers not to be deluded by this new crimeof the executioners? Did they urge upon theworkers renewed and more militant action?Did they unite the available forces to bringthe powerful pressure of the masses to bear?

On the contrary. When Thayer pronouncedsentence of death upon the two prisoners, thecommittee, obscure persons whom a quirk offate had thrown at the formal head of the vastmass movement, sent a letter to Fuller, withthe tragic dignity of gnomes, which it printedin its bulletin. They wrote:

“We feel confident that the framers of theMassachusetts constitution placed in thehands of the Chief Executive power to rectifymatters in this case with which, by the limi-tations of our legal procedure, the SupremeCourt was not able to deal. This kind ofpower has seldom been exercised becauseour courts have generally provided the bestmeasure of justice possible in fallible, humaninstitutions. But the framers of the constitu-tion in their wishes recognised that theremight be just such cases as this one. They fur-nished you a way to bring about justice forSacco and Vanzetti. We urge you to take it.

Such a procedure, we submit, will be farless likely to undermine public faith in thecourts of the Commonwealth than will thepresent grave suspicions (!) about this case ifthey are not cleared up...”

When tens of thousands of workers inAmerica were learning the important andnecessary lesson that they must rely onlyupon their organised class strength, that thecourts were merely instruments in the handsof the capitalist enemy, why did the BostonCommittee express such touching concernabout the undermining of public faith in the

courts of the Commonwealth? What infernalnonsense is it to speak in such a manner:“Our courts have generally provided the bestmeasure of justice possible in fallible, humaninstitutions”? Does this refer to the labour-hating courts that almost sent Mooney andBillings to the gallows? the California andWashington IWW, to prisons? that tried theCommunists in Michigan? or that have rail-roaded hundreds of workers to prison ordeath? or, coming right into Massachusetts,that framed up Giovannitti, Ettor and Carusoin the Lawrence strike of 1912, or that sentJohn E Merrick, like Sacco, a shoe worker, toprison on a trumped-up charge?

Why did the Committee so easily disposeof the working class soul of the case by say-ing, as late as May, 1927, that “it is a hearten-ing sign” when it pointed out that:

The press of America recognises that thiscase is not a question of political or economicviews. The sole issue at stake is justice.

Did not every intelligent worker realisethat the central feature of the case was pre-cisely that it was not one of “justice” but thatSacco and Vanzetti were being legally assas-sinated because of their political and eco-nomic views and activities, because of theirdevotion to the working class? Did anyonethink for a moment that if the two rebels hadrecanted their views and repudiated theirproud past, they would have had the slight-est difficulty in being pardoned and freed?The Committee played the game of GovernorFuller with this poppycock.

Why did the Committee, in one of itsleaflets written only a month before Saccoand Vanzetti were actually burned to deathby Fuller, Lowell, Stratton and Grant, blindthe workers with such feeble illusions as this:

We expect Justice! Because Gov. Alvin TFuller has the reputation of being a man ofcourage, honesty and independence. Becausethe Governor’s advisory committee is com-posed of men reputed to be scholarly, of highintelligence and intellectual probity, withminds unswayed by prejudice and with theirreasoning powers directing their search fortruth.

The situation called for plain speech andswift action. It called for someone who wouldcall out with the voice of a Danton: Workers,brothers, comrades! The two men whosprang from your loins, who have sufferedthe tortures of hell for seven years, are beingprepared for slaughter. The stage is set andthe executioner is ready. The black ring of theDepartment of Justice, Thayer, Katzmann,Fuller, Lowell, Grant, the manufacturers ofMassachusetts, the capitalist politicians, thereptile press, their kept courts and judges, iscomplete, and they are demanding the bloodof our comrades. Do not be fooled. Every mo-ment of respite is granted only to lull you intoignominious silence and inaction. The gover-nor and his commission are frauds. Place nofaith in them. The press which speaks sosoftly, after seven years of bloodthirsty hys-teria, caret nothing about our comrades andhates our class; place no faith in them. Work-ers! Lift your powerful arms, raise yourvoices in thundering protest! Only your soli-darity can save our brothers! Arise! Unite!Save Sacco and Vanzetti before they are mur-dered by the capitalist class!

The International Labor Defense, whichhad already begun the work of initiating andhelping in the organization of the of theSacco-Vanzetti conferences and the interna-tional protest movement, warned against thedanger to Sacco and Vanzetti, against illu-sions, against reliance upon the policy of thetimid middle-class elements. As soon as thefinal decision of the supreme court was madeknown, it called for the organization of a gi-gantic national Sacco and Vanzetti conferenceto unite the forces and resources of the entiremovement for the further struggle. It calledfor an appeal “from the supreme court of thecapitalists to the supreme court of the labour-

ing masses.”This proposal received only a cold recep-

tion from the Boston Committee. They had is-sued a statement filled with untruths,slandering the International Labor Defenseand accusing it of financial misdemeanors, anaccusation which the ILD promptly refutedby the publication of its records and photo-static copies of checks it had forwarded to theBoston Committee. The Sacco-Vanzetti con-ferences, which had become the center of themagnificent protest movement, embracinghundreds of thousands of workers, were re-ferred to by the Boston Committee as “the so-called Sacco-Vanzetti Conferences.”

ONE HUNDRED MILLIONBut the titanic tide of working classprotest swept over all petty individualsand timid supplicants.

Not in all the records of the country couldbe found a parallel to the scenes that fol-lowed. In every large city from coast to coasttens of thousands of workers gathered instreets and halls to demonstrate their soli-darity with Sacco and Vanzetti. Bitter protestresolutions were sent to Fuller in such num-bers that it was impossible for him to gothrough them all even had he been so in-clined. Scores of workers were arrested fortheir agitation and participation in the meet-ings, but the others continued indefatigablyto mobilise the power of the working class forthe two men awaiting execution in Massa-chusetts.

From other parts of the world came theprotests of additional millions. The cause ofSacco and Vanzetti was felt wherever work-ers gathered. Hardly an American consulatein Europe but that it was the scene of aprotest meeting of workers marching withthe banners inscribed with words of solidar-ity. In the streets of Morocco, at the goldmines of South Africa, in Bombay and Syd-ney, the workers added their strength to theprotest movement. All through Latin Amer-ica the working class made its voice heardlike one man.

In connection with the international protestmovement one of the most important con-

tributing factors was the unremitting work ofthe International Red Aid. The InternationalLabor Defense appealed to it for aid with aregularity justified by the prompt response.Through its sections all over the world, In-ternational Red Aid took the initiative in hun-dreds of cities in the formation of unitedcommittees of action, in the organization ofprotest meetings and demonstrations, and inobtaining the messages of protest and appealsent to Boston by scores of outstanding sci-entists, statesmen, men of letters, and promi-nent men and women of all sections ofsociety.

With a few miserable exceptions, there washardly a labour organization in the entireworld that did not join in the protest move-ment. Practically all of them adopted resolu-tions of one kind or another for Sacco andVanzetti. In addition, thousands and hun-dreds of thousands of people everywhere,not connected with the labour movement,called for the liberation of Sacco and Vanzettior for a new trial. In some countries, as inUruguay, the national congress adopted aresolution for Sacco and Vanzetti, or else themunicipal council of the capital city, as in Riode Janeiro, or as did a number of towns inSwitzerland. In the Union of Socialist SovietRepublics, virtually the entire populationdemonstrated its solidarity with the two pris-oners of capitalism thousands of miles away.

To give a list only of the individuals in alllands who joined the movement in one formor another would require a thick volume.Men like Anatole France, H. G. Wells,Bernard Shaw, Arnold Bennett, JohnGalsworthy, George Lansbury, dozens ofmembers of the British Parliament, RomainRolland, Henri Barbusse, Georg Brandes,Maximilien Harden, Paul Loebe, AndersonNexo, and hundreds of others would noteven form a small fraction of the total. Manywere animated by diversified feelings andreasons, but the bulk of the protests camefrom the toilers of the world in a spirit of in-ternational proletarian solidarity with twomembers of their class who were being tor-tured to death by American imperialism.

COUNTER-CAMPAIGNIt was a magnificent movement, extend-ing in an unbroken chain around thewhole world.

It was a movement to be reckoned withand the executioners knew this. They werepreparing to have their tools, Fuller and Low-ell and Grant, put the seal of approval upontheir assassins’ plans. Before that, however, itwas necessary to crush the protest move-ment, to demoralise it, to split it by a counter-campaign.

A statement was issued by the Interna-tional Labor Defense calling attention to thecounter-campaign that was being launchedby the reactionaries. Those who demandedthe blood of Sacco and Vanzetti were tryingto match the flood of protests being sent toFuller by labour organizations throughoutthe world by sending resolutions urging himto confirm the sentence of Thayer and hiscourts. A new anti-red hysteria was whippedup in order to prejudice opinion againstSacco and Vanzetti. The world of manufac-ture, business, banking, and all the institu-tions that upheld it, were mobilised behindFuller for a decision of death.

Plans were made to help the counter-cam-paign, plans familiar in every labour case,plans carried out with the low cunning of theprovocateur. Bombs were planted; some ofthem exploded, hurting no one of course. Butthey gave Fuller and his supporters every-where the chance to become indignant atthese “attempts at coercion.” The pressplayed its customary scoundrel’s role. Scare-heads announced the dastardly plans of theReds. Fake stories of the retaliatory actionscontemplated by the radicals were featuredand editorialised. Mass meetings of protestwere broken up by the police and detectivesquads, with riot guns, clubs and tear bombs.The proper atmosphere was being created forthe criminal deed that the Massachusettsbourbons were preparing to commit.

What was the reply of the Boston Commit-tee? Did it join its voice to this warning? Notat all! On the contrary, it continued its attacksand slanders on the militant workers andplayed into the hands of the enemy which

was manoeuvring for time in which to de-moralise the protest movement. The BostonCommittee rushed to the defence of the Mas-sachusetts bankers and their courts! TheCommittee replied:

The International Labor Defense has issueda press release filled with false statementsand insinuations. . . . We further call upon Mr.Cannon [the secretary of the I. L. D.] to issueno more false statements of fact, but to askthis committee for the true facts in the line-up of the fight when he wishes to issue newsto the press. . . . A sample of the misstate-ments issued by Mr. Cannon is that the Mas-sachusetts Bar Association and leadingemployers’ organizations have gone onrecord as upholding Judge Thayer’s deci-sions on Sacco and Vanzetti. The Massachu-setts Bar Association has not, nor has anyother bar association so far as we can learn,opposed the move for a thorough investiga-tion of this case. On the contrary, leaders ofthe bar here and elsewhere have personallyurged the Governor to institute such an in-vestigation. . . .

Why did the Boston Committee fail to takeup the burning problem raised in the I. L. D.statement — the counter-campaign of the re-action — and instead picked out one smallformality upon which to hang a slanderousattack? Was it necessary to attack the militantprotest movement in order to defend theMassachusetts Bar Association and employ-ers’ organizations, when the entire machin-ery of Massachusetts capitalism, from itslargest bankers down to its smallest shysterlawyer, were impatiently waiting to deliverthe death blow to Sacco and Vanzetti? It isknown now to all with what glee and reliefthe hound pack greeted the final decision ofFuller. The Boston Committee had suc-cumbed completely to the poisonous re-spectability which surrounded it; it wouldnot annoy the honourable gentlemen whoheld the fate of Sacco and Vanzetti withintheir claws. Its fire was directed not againstthe executions but against the militants whowere organizing the protest movement

The socialist officialdom also played theirmiserable role at the last minute. Swept bythe tide of working class pressure, they hadat first been obliged to enter into the numer-ous united conferences that were organisedin the main cities. But wherever they couldthey attempted to disrupt the movements, towithdraw their support, and form separateorganizations. During the whole campaign,the Jewish Forward and the New Leader con-ducted a series of slanderous attacks uponthe militants. Finally, at the most crucial pe-riod of the movement, in the course of a massmeeting in New York, they flew in the face oftheir old leader, Eugene Debs who had al-ways stood for unity in the movement andmilitant action, by calling upon the police tobreak up the meeting rather than to permitone of the left wing workers to speak fromthe platform to which he was being pushedby the insistent demands of the workers inthe audience. Needless to say, such an act fit-ted in well with the respectable ideas of the“liberal” press, and their denunciations of theleft wing were gleefully reprinted every-where by the gutter sheets.

(The same was true of the attacks made bythe Boston Committee upon the I. L. D. Theirstatements were eagerly seized by the reac-tionary press and given prominent space;complete silence was maintained towards theanswers of the I. L. D. While the latter spokethrough the press of the workers, the formerlaunched its slanders through the columns ofcapitalist journals.)

This action was followed by the treacher-ous move of the president of the AmericanFederation of Labour. With millions of peo-ple convinced of the innocence of Sacco andVanzetti, with Green himself knowing thatthey were not guilty of the crimes chargedagainst them, he issued a statement to the


Sacco and Vanzetti’s funeral


press asking Governor Fuller to commute thedeath sentence to one of life imprisonment.Commutation to life imprisonment meantrecognition of guilt. Commutation meant thesubsequent dissolution of the great protestmovement Commutation meant a livingdeath, burial in a prison cell, for two menwho might soon be forgotten as is, today, thetragedy of Tom Mooney and Warren K.Billings. A request for commutation of sen-tence to life imprisonment at the momentwhen millions of workers were fighting forthe vindication and freedom of Sacco andVanzetti could be interpreted as nothing buta criminal betrayal of the demand of the or-ganised labour movement of which Green isthe president. By this request, Green arrayedhimself with the enemies of the labour move-ment, with the executioners of Sacco andVanzetti. His subsequent remarks at Indi-anapolis, his attempt to dissociate the labourmovement from the cause of the two Italianworkers who were inextricably intertwinedwith it, proved to the hilt that Green and hiskind had spoken their soft words for Saccoand Vanzetti only in order to blunt the sharpedge of the living movement of labour.

Yet, not all of the soft words in the world,not all of the disgusting knee-bending andsupplication, not all the “right” people pro-ceeding in the “right” way succeeded inswaying the executioners from their aim bya hair’s breadth. Fuller conducted his inves-tigation privately; his commission followedsuit by meeting in star chamber. It transpiredlater that witnesses for the defence were bul-lied and intimidated. New witnesses werebrought in for the prosecution without thedefence having the opportunity to refutethem. The entire ridiculous proceeding wasa hollow cover for the decision that had beenmade long before, made by these scholars of“high intelligence and intellectual probity,with minds unswayed by prejudice and withtheir reasoning powers directing their search

for truth.”As the date set by Thayer for the execution

approached, the protest movement was likean immense and irresistible tide. Thecounter-campaign had not yet been fully de-veloped. It was not yet time to bring theplans of the bourbons to their murderous cul-mination. So Fuller, on the last day of June,postponed the execution date to the week ofAugust 10. And this upright gentleman con-tinued to go through the empty motion ofcontinuing his “investigation” with an en-ergy worthy of better deeds. But he remainedquite oblivious to the protests that poured inupon him against the secret meetings of hisinvestigation committee. Not even theprotest hunger strike of Sacco and Vanzetticould tear aside the black veil behind whichthe commission was preparing its fatal docu-ment. In crass anticipation of the decision ofthe honourable investigators, Sacco andVanzetti were removed to the death cells ofCharlestown prison two days before the gov-ernor made his decision public.

Towards midnight, August 3, the press wasgiven the governor’s document. There is nodoubt that hundreds of thousands, yes, mil-lions of people throughout the world did notexpect the verdict that was rendered. To themthe evidence was so clear that Sacco andVanzetti were innocent that they did not be-lieve the Massachusetts reactionaries woulddare to carry out the terrible sentence. Evento the very last minute, one might say evenas they being led from the death cells to theelectric chair, many still refused to believethat the executioners would be so callous asto fly in the face of the demands of the mil-lions. Such were the illusions created by theconstant delays, in the seven years of pro-longed “torture by hope,” and so little didmillions understand the cynical brutality ofAmerican imperialism and its disciples, thatup to the end far more people were startledby the execution than would have been sur-

prised by an eleventh-hour reprieve.It is of course impossible to find in Fuller’s

statement the faintest spark to show thatthere burned a fire of righteousness and jus-tice. It is even a cynical, careless document.The witnesses for the prosecution are cred-itable gentlemen. Fuller was told by all theliving jurymen that they considered the trialfair; and he emphasises this. Is it possible thatany of them would have denied this “fact”when they had themselves brought in theverdict of guilty? But the witnesses for thedefence are dubious individuals. The testi-mony of the clerk at the Italian consulate inBoston is worthless, because he made his af-fidavit in Italy and had left the employ of theconsulate! Madeiros’ confession? It is givenno weight by Fuller because he could not re-call every detail of that swift and hecticminute during which the crime was commit-ted. The judge? There is really nothing towarrant the assaults made upon his conduct.

Lies, insinuations, gestures, words, words,words. That was the statement of GovernorFuller who. The Nation has assured us, hadwon a reputation for courage and independ-ence, who was honest and fearless.

And the findings of his committee were nobetter. They too remained loyal to the class inwhich they had been reared, the class thatpaid them and to which they owed fealty.Old, old men, with all the incurable preju-dices of their class, men who could proceedfrom no other viewpoint than the sanctity ofthings as they are, the necessity of bolsteringup weakening structures and plastering uprunning sores.

But being men of intellectual probity, withtheir reasoning powers directing their searchfor truth, they declared that they are forcedto conclude that the judge was indiscreet inconversation with outsiders during the trial.He ought not to have talked about the caseoff the bench, and doing so was a gravebreach of decorum.

Nothing more. Merely a grave breach ofdecorum which must not happen again.What does a little scolding matter to you,Webster Thayer, when your chilling blood isbeing warmed again by the sight of these twobastards being led to the embrace of the fatalelectric wires! What if you were “indiscreet,”Webster Thayer, so long as your indiscretioncasts you nothing, while Sacco’s andVanzetti’s indiscretion in opposing the reignof you and yours has cost them life and free-dom! And does it not do you good to read therest of the commission’s report and find howclosely it conforms with all your rulings, allof them, even the most outrageous!

Not only Thayer, but every prosecutionwitness in the filthy frame-up was graduatedwith Harvard honours by Lowell and hiscommissioners. The classical comment wasmade on the testimony of one of the mostreprehensible witnesses, Lola Andrews:

The woman is eccentric, not unimpeach-able in conduct; but the committee believesthat in this case her testimony is well worthconsidering.

After all, why not?

FROM SHANGHAI TO CHICAGO!Only a few days left, but in those few daysthe working class of the entire worldstreamed out into the streets in such animpressive mass that it almost seemedthat those things that had stood for manyyears would collapse in the trembling ofthe earth.

Everything connected with the magicphrase “Sacco-Vanzetti” was seized uponand printed prominently by the press of theworld. The international proletariat roared itsprotest in different tongues but with one de-mand. The feeble piping of the few liberalswho spoke was neither heard nor listened to.The blood brothers of Sacco and Vanzetti,millions of them, strode across the stage of

19205 MAY: Nicola Sacco and BartolomeoVanzetti are arrested on a street car whilegoing from West Bridgewater to Brockton.16 AUGUST: Vanzetti is charged with at-tempting to rob a cashier in Bridgewater on24 December, 1919, and is sentenced toprison for 12 to 15 years by Judge Thayer inPlymouth.11 SEPTEMBER: Sacco and Vanzetti are ac-cused of being the chief participants in themurder that occurred in South Braintree on15 April, 1920 where, near the shoe factory ofSlater Morrill Company, Ferdinand Par-menter and his guard, Alexander Beradelli,were killed. The $15,000 payroll in their pos-session had been stolen.

192131 MAY: Sacco and Vanzetti are brought totrial again before Judge Thayer. They are in-dicted on a charge of first degree murder.14 JULY: After five hours, the jury returns averdict of guilty of murder in the first degreeagainst Sacco and Vanzetti.12 OCTOBER: The workers of Paris conducta huge protest demonstration against theverdict. Twenty workers are wounded whenthe demonstration is broken up by the police.24 DECEMBER: Judge Thayer refuses togrant a petition for a new trial.

19221 JANUARY: The defence says it has new ev-idence to prove the innocence of Sacco andVanzetti.

23 MARCH: The workers of Sofia, Bulgaria,warn the American embassy that they willnot remain silent if Sacco and Vanzetti arekilled.

192316 FEBRUARY: Sacco begins a hunger strikewhich lasts 30 days.

19241 OCTOBER: Judge Thayer denies five mo-tions of the defence to challenge the verdictof the jury in the Sacco-Vanzetti case.21 NOVEMBER: William Thompson, formerBoston district attorney, assumes charge ofthe defence. The defence enters a bill of ex-ceptions to make possible the institution of anew trial.

192610 JANUARY: Celestino Madeiros, a sen-tenced criminal, declares that he knows thatthe murder of Parmenter and Berardelli wascommitted by members of the notoriousMorell gang of Providence, Rhode Island.12 MAY: The state supreme court denies anew trial to Sacco and Vanzetti on the basisof the bill of exceptions. The court maintainsthat they were legally convicted.13 SEPTEMBER: The defence demands anew trial on the basis of the Madeiros con-fession.21 OCTOBER: Judge Thayer denies the mo-tion for a new trial.19 NOVEMBER: 20,000 workers gather inMadison Square Garden, New York, to de-mand a new trial for Sacco and Vanzetti.

192727 JANUARY: Defence attorneys argue be-

fore the judges of the state supreme courtand demand new action on the basis ofJudge Thayer’s prejudicial conduct duringthe trial of Sacco and Vanzetti.5 APRIL: The state supreme court denies allpleas for a new trial.9 APRIL: Judge Thayer decides Sacco andVanzetti shall die in the electric chair on 10July 1927.10 APRIL: International Labor Defender is-sues call for demonstrations of protestthroughout the United States, and appeals tothe labour movement of the rest of the worldfor a final movement to save Sacco andVanzetti from being murdered.23 APRIL: Governor Alvan T Fuller of Mas-sachusetts institutes his star chamber inves-tigation committee to give sanctity to thelegal execution.29 JUNE: Governor Fuller postpones the dateof execution to 10 August. The postpone-ment refers to Sacco, Vanzetti, and Madeiros.7 JULY: A quarter of a million workers strikein protest in New York. Over 25,000 attend ademonstration in Union Square.17 JULY: Sacco and Vanzetti begin a hungerstrike. In the meantime, strikes, demonstra-tions and meetings are taking place in everypart of the world, demanding the release ofSacco and Vanzetti, or the granting of a newtrial. Strikes of millions of workers are setinto motion against the planned assassina-tion. Some of the world’s leading men andwomen of letters, arts and science join theworld-wide protest movement. GovernorFuller’s office is swamped with thousandsupon thousands of letters and telegrams, andcablegrams of protest.8 AUGUST: The supreme judicial court ofMassachusetts refuses to grant a writ ofhabeas corpus in order to halt the execution.

Judge Thayer again refuses to grant a newtrial.10 AUGUST: Twenty minutes before the timeset for the execution, and while millions ofworkers throughout the world are demon-strating their hatred to the Massachusettsmurderers on the streets, Governor Fullercontinues the torture of the two martyrs byagain postponing the date of execution to 22August.11 AUGUST: Judge Sanderson decides thatthe question of a new trial must be decidedby the full court. Vanzetti ends his hungerstrike.15 AUGUST: Sacco ends his hunger strike,because he is threatened with forcible feed-ing.16 AUGUST: The defence argues before thefull supreme judicial court for a new trial,demonstrating the prejudice of JudgeThayer.19 AUGUST: The court denies the pleas ofthe defence.20 AUGUST: Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes,“liberal” member of the United StatesSupreme Court, denies the plea of the de-fence for a writ of habeas corpus. Fuller re-fuses to grant any further postponement.21 AUGUST: Louis Brandeis, another “lib-eral” member of the US Supreme Court, alsodenies the pleas of the defence attorneys.22 AUGUST: Rose, wife of Sacco, and Luigia,sister of Vanzetti approach Governor Fullerfor last minute action. He declines to act. Afew minutes after midnight: the execution.The current of death is sent through the tor-tured bodies of the two martyrs. The Puritanhyenas of Massachusetts capitalism have fi-nally made their kill.

Timeline

history for days with menacing tread, shout-ing with anger, demanding a halt to thismonstrous act of class vengeance.

Place your finger on a map of the world. Isit an obscure village in the Soviet Union? Is itthe capital of Chile? Is it at the mines in Wit-watersrand in the Union of South Africa? Is itOttawa or Montreal? Is it where the Chineseworkers are struggling for freedom? Is it inFascist Italy or Spain? Have you touched aNew Zealand port, or a suburb of Paris? Is itUnion Park, near the Haymarket statue inChicago, or Trafalgar Square in London, orthe American embassy in Tokio? Is it MexicoCity, or Munich, or Constantinople? Is it Vi-enna, or Dublin, or perhaps some forgottenisland in the Caribbean?

No matter. In any and all of them workersmarched with grim faces and threateningbanners for Sacco and Vanzetti. Czecho-Slo-vak or Colorado miners went on strike here.New York barbers and the red chauffeurs ofParis went on strike there. Here was ademonstration of Swedish workers andSwiss workers and Brazilian workers in frontof the American embassy, and they were allattacked by the police; but their lines re-formed in the name of Sacco and Vanzetti. InJohannesburg, South Africa, in Casablanca,Morocco, in the Parisian suburb of Clichy, theAmerican flag was burned as a symbol ofmonstrous capitalist justice.

It was an awe-inspiring spectacle, thispowerful picture of an enraged working classfighting for its own, desperate, maddened bythe shortness of time, the steady tramp-trampof their marching hosts sounding the onlysong of hope for the two who waited ten footfrom the death chair.

The liberals were split in two by the deci-sions of the governor and his committee. Afew of them swayed feebly on their groundand begged the governor, with compassion-ate tears in their eyes, to vindicate the sulliedhonor of Massachusetts, restore the shatteredfaith of the riotous masses. They offered himthe opportunity to join the long list of liberalidols, that they might hail him as they oncehailed so many others. The others scurriedfor cover, like rats deserting a gutted ship.

Heywood Broun wrote an unusually cleararticle for his paper, the New York World. Hespoke with sharp and bitter words.

Governor Alvin T. Fuller never had any in-tention in all his investigation but to put anew and higher polish upon the proceedings.The justice of the business was not his con-cern. He hoped to make it respectable. Hecalled old men from high places to stand be-hind his chair so that he might seem to speakwith all the authority of a high priest or a Pi-late.

What more can these immigrants fromItaly expect? It is not every prisoner who hasa President of Harvard University throw onthe switch for him. And Robert Grant is notonly a former judge but one of the most pop-ular dinner guests in Boston. If this is a lynch-ing, at least the fish peddler and his friend thefactory hand may take unction to their soulsthat they will die at the hands of men in din-ner coats or academic gowns, according tothe conventionalities required by the hour ofexecution.

And the New York World, the darling of theliberals, the “defender” of Sacco andVanzetti, their respectable spokesman whothreatened at one time to become thespokesman for the entire protest movement,discharged Heywood Broun! Why should hewrite about the case in this manner? It was allover with. The two wops were going to die.Why damage the reputation of good conser-vative Americans and furnish food to theradicals, particularly when the editorialcolumns had begun a vicious attack on themilitant workers’ movement?

The tidal wave of the international protestswept away the draperies from other liberaldemi-gods and showed their feet of clay.

There was the “insurgent” senator fromIdaho, Mr. William Borah, who in his day hadtried to send to their legal death three otherworkers, Moyer, Haywood and Pettibone. Hereplied to a plea from Jane Addams by say-ing:

It would be a national humiliation, ashameless cowardly compromise of nationalcourage, to pay the slightest attention to for-eign protests, or mob protests at home. . . .The foreign interference is an impudent andwillful challenge to our sense of decency anddignity and ought to be dealt with accord-ingly.

It is not recorded that Borah’s sense of de-cency and dignity ever felt challenged by theshameless, cowardly murder plot against thetwo innocent workers whom he thus con-demned to death.

These craven desertions helped the iron fistof American capitalism to descend withcrushing force upon the protest movement athome. Hundreds of radical and labour lead-ers and headquarters were placed under sur-veillance. Radical offices were raided in NewYork, Detroit and San Francisco. Meetingswere broken up with a systematic brutalitythat had hardly before been equalled. Teargas bombs were callously thrown into pa-rades of men, women and children. Hun-dreds were arrested throughout the country.On the night of August 10th, in Chicago, averitable reign of terror took place. Powerfulautomobiles, loaded with police armed withriot clubs and sawed-off shot guns, spedthrough the city assaulting every gatheringof more than a dozen workers.

Hall owners were intimidated into refus-ing the rental of halls for protest meetings. Totop it all, announcements were made by Sec-retary of Labour Davis that his registration-of-the-foreign-born bills would be pushed inview of the participation of so many foreign-born workers in the Sacco-Vanzetti cam-paign. A jingoist congressman demandedwholesale deportations. The yellow press de-manded a cleaning up of the reds. The blackdays of Palmerism were being repeated inevery detail, even down to the spurious in-dignation of the press and public officialsover the similarly spurious “bombs” which“Sacco-Vanzetti sympathisers” seemed to bethrowing around by basket-fulls.

The day of death was approaching. Newattorneys for the defence, for Thompson hadleft the case on August 4, rushed about fromjudge to court and from court to judge, try-ing every little legal loophole through whichto save the doomed men. An appeal waseven made again to Judge Thayer, on theground that he had been prejudiced! He de-nied the motion. . . .

August 10! And Judge Sanderson of theMassachusetts Supreme Court announcedthat his decision on an appeal to the full courtwould be given on the eleventh. The wholeworld seemed to stop breathing for hours,until the news came, half an hour before themoment set for execution, that Fuller hadgranted a reprieve until midnight of August22.

Again the warning of the militants. Butagain the creation of illusions. The execu-tioners were stalling for time. They neededmore time to break up the protest movement.But the movement was revived and strength-ened. Another tidal wave broke upon thewhole face the earth. Strikes, demonstrations,parades, meetings, resolutions. Even in theUnited States the powerful weapon of the po-litical strike was used for the first time inmany, many years by thousands of workers.But the mills of capitalist justice ground moreswiftly and the bodies of Sacco and Vanzettiwere already within an inch of being crushedby the upper and nether stones.

The brief, torturous respite served to tearaway the masks from two more prominentand respectable friends of liberalism and jus-tice. The Supreme Court Justice, Oliver Wen-

dell Holmes, the noble liberal, had already re-fused to intervene. Then he refused for a sec-ond rime on a writ of certiorari filed inWashington by the defence attorney. And hisequally noble colleague, Louis D. Brandeis,also declined to intervene. If “liberals” actedthus, it is not at all surprising that the otherwise men in robes, Taft and Harlan Stone,should have been similarly adamant.

The very last legal resource had beentapped. An effort made to disclose the files ofthe Department of Justice failed completely.An offer made to open the files upon the re-quest of Fuller or his commission was neveraccepted by them. An expert executioner wassent for from New York to throw the switch.The marble slabs were cleaned to receive thecorpses, one by one.

THE MARTYRDOMA short time before his death, Saccowrote to an anarchist friend of his:

As I wrote you before I repeat again today,only on international clamour — a protest —can free us. And yet, while we are so near thetomb, your letter amazes me with its unwar-ranted optimism, saying “You must not de-spair, dear Nicola, for though the suffering belong and weary, it is soon to end in freedom.”

How you are deluded! This is not evencommon sense, coming from you. I wouldsay nothing if such talk came from a man inthe moon, but from you, who are also in thestruggle for liberty, this is too much. Do younot know the ends to which the defenders ofthis decrepit old society will go? Under thecircumstances it pains me to see such blindoptimism in a comrade. Are you waiting tosee them kill us first so that you can build usa monument?

To Sacco’s young son Dante, Vanzetti wrotea warm, touching farewell:

Remember, Dante, remember always thesethings: we are not criminals; they convictedus on a frame-up; they denied us a new trial;and if we will be executed after seven years,four months and seventeen days of unspeak-able tortures and wrongs, it is for what I havealready told you: because we were for thepoor and against the exploitation and op-pression of the man by the man.

The whole world stood upon its feet towatch the final act of this titanic tragedy. Mil-lions wondered if some incredible miraclewould not still save these two men whosenames had become shining banners for aworld. Others waited with stony faces, sup-pressing tears and a wild desire for some in-sane action.

At seven o’clock Rosina Sacco bade herhusband a last farewell. Vanzetti shookhands with his sister Luigia who had comefrom Italy and they both wept.

Midnight struck, and young Madeiros wasled into the death chamber. In three minuteshis corpse was removed and the guardssought out Sacco.

Sacco was brought into the room. He wasstrapped to the chair. He called out: “VivaL’anarcchia!” With terrible irony he greetedthe men in the room: “Good evening, gentle-men.” At 12:19 he was dead.

Vanzetti’s turn. He spoke calmly from thechair. “I wish to tell you I am innocent andnever committed any crime, but sometimesome sin. ... I am innocent of all crime, notonly of this one, but all. . . .” For the secondtime, the hands of the frock-coated, intelli-gent and honourable gentlemen. Fuller, Low-ell, Stratton, Katzmann, Thayer and the restwere pressed again the arm of the execu-tioner to throw the switch. The blood thick-ened and choked him. It almost burstthrough his veins. The face and body weremottled purple. The throat swelled with clot-ted blood. The body gave its last jerk. He waspronounced dead at 12:26, August 23, 1927.

Two shining spirits put to death. By afiendish act of cynical class vengeance, two

heroic fighters, working class warriors wereexecuted for their devotion to the deathlesscause of labour. The millions who read thenews and wept their angry, helpless tears, feltthat out of their ranks had fallen two whowould forever remain a flaming guide, a per-manent inspiration, two of the best of the rev-olutionary proletariat, sustained for the seventorture-years by courage and noble dignityand an unbending faith in their class.

Their executioners, the miserable childrenof a black society and a dark age in whichSacco and Vanzetti burned with a steadylight, would never have been known to his-tory, but for the contemptible role theyplayed in this assassination. They are markedin the pages of history now to be spat uponand hated by the generations yet to come. Inthe words of Ben Hanford, they have cheatedoblivion by obloquy.

But Sacco and Vanzetti are immortal. Evenwhen the hatred towards their executionersis forgotten they will still be remembered.They have taken their place in the rebel fir-mament of the working class, side by sidewith Albert Parsons, August Spies, Joe Hill,Wesley Everest, and the thousands of noblefighters whom the capitalist class has mar-tyred. Honor and respect to the fallen sol-diers! Their names and spirit areimperishable!

LESSONSThe death of Sacco and Vanzetti hasbrought to an end a chapter of heroismand tragedy in the book of the workingclass.

The enemies of the two martyred workers,those who fought them openly and thosewho masqueraded as their friends, want toclose the books, to bring the “unfortunate in-cident” to a final conclusion. They want tocover the still warm bodies of the rebels theymurdered with a thick slab of shameful for-getfulness. Their hideous work is done andthey want an end to the bad business. Theywant no more recriminations and noise. Letthe dead past bury its dead, and we willmumble a few pious words of regret forthem.

But those workers whose hearts and handsresponded to the deathless appeal of Saccoand Vanzetti have no intention of closing thebooks. A part of them was burned to death inthe electric chair. They would be recreantswho would not read and reread the recordsand draw a balance. Invaluable lessons are tobe learned. There are vulnerable spots to bestrengthened, a whole strategy of the enemyto be understood, an armory of weapons toseize for the coming battles.

The deadly lightning of the electric chair il-luminated the ghastly class nature of the casefor millions of workers. For many, this essen-tial truth was apparent from the beginning.They were never dominated by the fatal illu-sion that the trial and torture of the two Ital-ian workers was merely the result ofaccidental circumstances. Those who knewthe lash of the factory, the policeman’s clubon the picket line, the leer of the judge whenhe hands down a decision enjoining a unionfrom strike action, the tremendous power ofthe kept press, the cynical conspiracies of theagents of justice in every struggle of theworking class, recognised familiar incidentsin every development of the Sacco-Vanzetticase.

The history of Sacco and Vanzetti was adramatic episode in the class struggle. Not tounderstand this today is not to understandanything. Many workers learned to find thisred thread that connected one incident so log-ically with the next, and for them it was thebeginning of wisdom, a wisdom rarelylearned in books, for it is usually burned intothe consciousness of the worker in the caul-dron of his experiences.

The Sacco-Vanzetti case tore away every



veil that covers the fact that the ruling class ofthis country, the bankers and business men,pulls the strings to which a million dignifiedpuppets dance; that theirs is really the voicethat seems to issue from the throats of presi-dents, governors, mayors, justice of thesupreme court and village magistrate, editorand reporter, soldiers and sailors, policemenand detectives, preachers and educators,false liberal and false labour leader — all ofthe well-bred, well-dressed and right-think-ing gentlemen and ladies who tortured thetwo Italian immigrants, seated and strappedthem in the chair, polished the electrodes andthrew the switch.

There was a mobilization of two classes:the capitalist class and its retainers on the oneside and the working class on the other side.The workers showed a strength and powerwhich is a warning for the future. The capi-talist class proved itself still able in this coun-try to carry out the most bloodthirsty plansagainst the working class without being suc-cessfully resisted.

The courts, the judges and executives ofMassachusetts, never had any idea of giving“justice” to Sacco and Vanzetti. Their inten-tions were at no time characterised by a de-sire to consider the abstract principles ofequity and fairness in the case. All the delays,alt the illusive legerdemain of the courts, thepompous and fraudulent going through withthe motions, was only for the purpose ofdemonstrating to naive people the thorough-ness and legal sanctity of the final decision.

The blows dealt the liberation movementfor Sacco and Vanzetti by the elements whofastened themselves on the Boston Commit-tee and dominated its policy consisted essen-tially in this: that they failed to see the case asa class issue, a part of the bitter and inex-orable international struggle between the rul-ing class and the ruled; that they nursed andfostered the illusion that it was possible to ex-tract an essence of “justice” from the mur-derers of Sacco and Vanzetti by dignified andrespectable supplication. They tried tosmother the militant protest movement andhurled the mud of slander upon the workerswho organised it. They sought to cover therough clothes of the workers’ movementwith the cap and gown of the lawyer, andsubstitute a cultured Boston accent for the vi-olent shouts of the masses in a dozentongues.

It was quite different with the masses of theworld. Their magnificent and almost un-precedented solidarity was based on a com-mon understanding of who was enemy andwho was friend. The earth-shaking rise of theworkers everywhere for Sacco and Vanzettinot only showed how much explosive is con-tained in the working class of the world, howdangerous it is for the capitalists to tamperwith these powder kegs, but it also provedthat the world proletariat pierces and con-temns the shams and pretences of the Amer-ican ruling class and its “peace” and its“justice” and its “golden opportunities.”

If anything was demonstrated by theSacco-Vanzetti case it was that labour casescannot be fought with fat volumes of legalspider webs alone but that the class charac-ter of the prosecution must be pointed outand the defence organised on that basis. Thegreat significance of the movement devel-oped in this country by the InternationalLabor Defense was that

it was essentially focused upon the class is-sues in the case. The slogan of unity for thedefence of all persecuted workers on a classbasis assumed greater clarity and more sub-stantial solidity as a result of the campaign.

The execution of Sacco and Vanzettibrought sharply to the attention of thousandsof workers the sinister meaning of the frame-up system, which is now a recognised part ofthe cardinals’ college of America’s institu-tions. The system which picks out workers

and imprisons or murders them by a false ar-rest, a spurious charge, a packed jury, a prej-udiced judge, perjured witnesses and the restof the hateful paraphernalia, has brought tomany workers the uneasy feeling that whathappened yesterday to Mooney and Billings,what happened today to Sacco and Vanzetti,is likely to happen tomorrow to the head ofhis organization, his union or political part)’— or to himself.

The hideousness and class character of theblack processional in this vicious systemwhich was revealed with such startling clar-ity in the Sacco-Vanzetti case is also a warn-ing to the labour movement that the cynicalmaster class is ready to use any and allweapons to crush it and its best fighters. Atno time has the urgent necessity for a strug-gle against the frame-up system been demon-strated with such a jolting impact as whenthe final blow was aimed at the two workersof Massachusetts.

The hundreds of thousands of Americanworkers who participated in the movementfor Sacco and Vanzetti were a living proof ofthe vast resources at the command of thelabour movement in the struggle to defenditself from attacks. These resources have byno means yet been exhausted; on the con-trary, we have only begun to sec the vast pos-sibilities for their development.

It has been proposed that the energies ofthe movement be swung into quiet channelsnow. Organisations are even being set upwhich have the aim of “proving the inno-cence of Sacco and Vanzetti.” Of course theseorganisations are influenced and dominatedby the same gentlemen and ladies who in-sisted that the masses share their illusions asto the judicial impartiality and the unstrainedquality of mercy of the courts and governors.They are the same men and women who yes-terday sought to behead the workers’ move-ment and today seek to lead it into the blacklabyrinth of post-mortem legal investigation.They want to vindicate Sacco and Vanzettiand prove them innocent!

What futile nonsense is this? What furtherproof is demanded to establish the innocenceof Sacco and Vanzetti? The workers knowthis. The masses feel, if they do not know thelegal fine points, that Sacco and Vanzettiwere killed because they were rebels againsttheir assassins, that they were loyal warriorsin the great army of labour. It is not necessaryto publish a thousand books of law to con-vince the working class of this truth.

Is it then proposed to convince the Fullersand Thayers and Katzmanns of this country?Is it proposed to convince those who nevercared a Continental whether Sacco andVanzetti were or were not a thousand milesfrom South Braintree on 15 April, 1920, thosewho were interested in murdering them be-cause they were goddamned agitators, andforeigners to boot?

Such a “vindication” of Sacco and Vanzettiis needed for and can satisfy only those con-fused people who are not animated by thewarm feeling of working class solidarity. andunderstanding, those uncertain Hamlets whoare always trembling on the fine needle pointof doubt, who find that there is much to besaid for all sides and hopelessly seek thetruth somewhere in between.

A MONUMENTThe working class must build a monu-ment to Sacco and Vanzetti. It is their taskreally to vindicate them. But not such a“vindication.”

The workers’ monument to Sacco andVanzetti must be a warm and living move-ment of labour for the defence of the victimsof capitalist class justice. It must be a militantarmy of fighters who resist the persecutionsof the bloodthirsty master class with their or-ganised might. It must be a class movementof labour defence against the frame-up sys-

tem.There are other Saccos and Vanzettis in the

United States. There is Tom Mooney, andWarren Billings. There are the Centralia vic-tims of the lumber trust who have been sen-tenced for life in Walla Walla penitentiary.There are the indicted Communists, the pris-oners of the Passaic and Needle Tradesstrikes and the dozens of other working classfighters in all parts of the country who areimprisoned or on trial for their activities inthe labour movement. They are a challengeand an appeal. They are a call to concertedaction. Theirs is the loud appeal that the hor-rible legal assassination of Sacco and Vanzettishall not be repeated.

There are the Saccos and Vanzettis to come.They are those fighters and rebels who can-not be curbed or bribed. They are those stub-born men and women of labour who struggleforward for the cause of the working class. Alively watch must be constantly maintainedby all workers against the persecution andimprisonment or death of these workers.

The Sacco-Vanzetti case showed the dan-ger of waiting for such issues to develop be-fore a movement can be created to challengethem. One of the most important lessons ofthe case was that which pointed out the needfor an organised, permanent movement forthe defence of the prisoners of the class war.

Such a movement is embodied in the In-ternational Labor Defense, which isgrounded upon the idea of non-partisan, uni-fied class defence. The building of such amovement which will be always ready to or-ganise the most obstinate resistance to therailroading of workers to prison or death isan essential task of the labour movement ofthe United States. Even in the short couple ofyears of its existence, the I. L. D. has addedsuch deeds to its words that it has proved itsright to an important place in the ranks of thelabour movement.

The International Labor Defense has actedas a unifying cement in the movement. Notonly are its ranks filled with members of allpolitical parties and labour organizations, butit has followed a broad path of non-partisanaction in defending workers of all shades ofpolitical and economic opinion. It hasbrought to the fore the issues of class versusclass which are always to be found in labourcases. It has worked to build a movement ofthe solidarity of labour, a shield of the work-ing class in every struggle.

The working class, of which Sacco andVanzetti were a vital part, fought well for thelives of the two martyred workers, but itsweakness and unpreparedness resulted in adefeat. The bitterness of this defeat must betransferred into a determination to fight up-ward toward victory.

Sacco and Vanzetti were rare spirits andtheir heroism and loyalty will be forevercherished by the militant working class. To-ward those who killed them the workingclass of the world can have only a burninghatred. For the martyrs of labour they canhave only a deep love and admiration. Thehateful memory of the Thayers and Fullers isthe black background for Sacco and Vanzettiwho will remain a glistening banner of inspi-ration for the present and the future.

A world of workers stands over their ashesand brings them garlands of honor and re-spect. They are all the blood brothers of themartyred dead and in them is the same spiritof struggle.

They are the growing army of labour thatmarches toward the destruction of the pris-ons and electric chairs of capitalism. They aremarching toward the destruction of capital-ism, which exploits and imprisons and mur-ders the best of the working class.They march forward triumphantly to-

wards that great victory which is the vic-tory of Sacco and Vanzetti and their finalvindication.

ContentsSave Sacco andVanzettiBy George Lansbury

page 2

A case of classagainst classArticles by James PCannon

Who can save Saccoand Vanzetti?

page 3Sacco and Vanzettimust not burn on theelectric chair!

page 3With all our strength forSacco and Vanzetti!

page 4A campaign of the massmovement

page 5New developments,new dangers

page 6No illusions!

page 6The cause that passesthrough a prison

page 7

Sacco andVanzetti: Labour’sMartyrsBy Max Shachtman

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Workers’ LibertyWorkers’ Liberty Reason in revolt Vol 3 No 53 March 2016 Published with...

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Transcript of Workers’ LibertyWorkers’ Liberty Reason in revolt Vol 3 No 53 March 2016 Published with...