Elizabeth Gurley Flynn. Duluth, Minnesota 1908 4- ir + £ jL 5K«a p&ftt'Ss ILL sw*UH»
Download 2.03 Mb.
|
- Navigate this page:
- 296 WORLD WAR I AND ITS AFTERMATH
- SEVEN Sacco and Vdn%etti
- 297 298 SACCO AND VANZETTI
- BOMB SCARE—PRELUDE TO MURDER
- 300 SACCO AND VANZETTI
- THE ANATOMY OF A NEW ENGLAND FRAME-UP 301
- I VISIT SACCO AND VANZETTI 303
THE CHILDREN’S CRUSADE 295 That night we held a mass meeting at Webster Hall. Between events, however, we had quite a scare. Several of the boys had disap peared. We telephoned around frantically and finally located them at a local police precinct in what was called the “Tenderloin” area, not too far from the Garden. They had started out to see the “ocean,” which they had heard was near by. It had a great fascination for these in land youngsters. We should have thought of that. But their odd appear ance, in their denim overalls and their strange twang as they asked people “which way is it to the ocean?” caused the police to take them in tow. When the relieved committee arrived to claim them, they were the center of an audience of New York police listen ing to their description of life in their part of the country and their mission. One hard-boiled cop said: “These kids say they are going to Washington to see the President to get their ‘Paws’ out of jail! What are they talking about?” It was explained to the mys tified cops who shook hands with them and wished them luck. At the meeting the tired children sat on the floor of the platform and one by one curled up asleep. Among the many speakers was Clare Sheridan, a famous British sculptor and the cousin of Winston Churchill. She was here on a lecture tour. Clare Sheridan had been to Moscow in 1920, where she had made busts of all the leaders of the Russian revolution, including Lenin. Lenin had asked her about her relationship to the then much-hated Churchill. She replied, “I also have another cousin, who was in the Irish rebellion!” Lenin replied, “It must be interesting when you three get together!” Her diary, pub lished as Mayfair to Moscow, had made a sensation in England and here because of her social position, her standing as an artist and her frank though non-political admiration of the Russian leaders. This was one of the few meetings outside her regular lectures she addressed, and she spoke with feeling and indignation about America’s political pris oners. But I remember most vividly Kate O’Hare, tall, gaunt, standing there speaking, while she held Helen Keller Hicks asleep in her arms. There were no loudspeakers then, but Kate’s powerful ringing voice filled every part of the hall. “This,” she said of the sleeping child, “is a petition they cannot throw away!” Two days later, after a stopover in Philadelphia, they reached the nation’s capital. But the President was too busy to see them. He had an appointment with Lord and Lady As- tor. However, these strong women and solemn children from the South 296 WORLD WAR I AND ITS AFTERMATH west were not easily rebuffed. They had come a long way. The Cru sade rented a house, and one of the women, Mrs. Anna Pancner, a jol ly, rosy-cheeked, Finnish woman from Detroit, whose husband was an IWW prisoner at Leavenworth, took over the cooking. The only trou ble they had in the neighborhood was due to the older boys chewing snuff and spitting out the windows. Day after day they sought an audi ence with President Harding and were refused. They visited Congress, various departments of government, were interviewed by the press. Their presence in Washington created widespread interest in amnesty. The press was largely sympathetic. Finally, they decided to picket the White House, when all else failed to move the. President. The little “Army with Banners” started their picket line on June 1, 1922, and continued daily, without a break, in the terrible heat of a Washington summer until July 19, when President Harding finally agreed to see a delegation on amnesty, the first delegation he had received since Christmas 1921. While the children were picketing, Senator Carraway of Arkansas made a caustic attack on a federal pardon issued to the banker, Charles W. Morse, and on the President’s refusal to see the Children’s Crusade. The famous report, “Illegal Practices of the Department of Justice,” signed by a group of the country’s most prominent lawyers, was issued at this time by Senator Walsh of Montana. Twelve sen tences of political prisoners were commuted, primarily including the tenant farmers. Seven families returned home in July with their men released. The President promised to review the remaining cases within 60 days. At that time it was reported he had said: “I can’t stand seeing those kids out there any longer!” There is no doubt that the Children’s Crusade highlighted the hu man and just appeal for the remaining political prisoners and hastened their release. It accomplished its particular mission. The children did not see the President and they did not see the ocean. But they did “get their Paws out of jail!” It had been a hard job and they were happy to go home. One of the most difficult tasks of the Committee was to pre vent sympathetic people from dressing the children up. But they re turned triumphant heroes to their own countryside—dressed up at last in all their new finery, with boxes and bundles of gifts, and the light of victory and love in their faces, to greet their “Paws” on their return from prison. SEVEN Sacco and Vdn%etti Bomb Scare—Prelude to Murder In April 1919a bomb scare broke into the press. Some 30 mysterious packages, addressed to prominent people around the country, with a return address of Gimbel’s, were allegedly picked up in the mail. By strange coincidence this happened on the eve of May Day. It was stat ed by the Department of Justice that they contained bombs. Again, in June 1919, a series of so-called “bomb” explosions took place in eight cities. The front porch of J. Mitchell Palmer’s residence was damaged. No one was hurt. The whole thing was characterized as a frame-up by labor circles. It was a prologue to the Palmer raids. William J. Flynn was then in charge of the Bureau of Investigation, forerunner of the FBI. He claimed that a “pink leaflet” had been found near one of the spots under investigation, and in February 1920 arrested Roberto Elia, a Brooklyn printer, and Andrea Salsadeo, a typesetter in the same shop. These two men, although threatened with deportation by the De partment of Justice, were not turned over to the Department of Labor, then in charge of deportation matters. Nor were they booked in any police court or placed in jail. They were private prisoners, practically incommunicado, held secretly and mysteriously in the office of the De partment of Justice on the 14th floor of 15 Park Row, a most unusual procedure. Only their closest friends and families knew of their impris onment and helplessly accepted it. They hired a lawyer with offices in the same building, who did nothing. Salsadeo had a group of anarchist comrades in Massachusetts who were troubled over his disappearance. Many of their group had been arrested and secretly deported as a result of the Palmer raids. They 297 298 SACCO AND VANZETTI sent one of their number to New York City to investigate. His name was Bartolomeo Vanzetti. Italian workers from other places visiting New York City often came to the office of Carlo’s paper at 208 East 12th St. I met a few, now and again, if I happened to know them per sonally. But I did not know of Vanzetti’s visit; apparently it made little impression on the New York anarchists. A long time later he told me that he had tried to find time to visit the Statue of Liberty but missed the boat. His comrades laughed at his notion, but he wanted to see the Lady with the Lamp and was quite disappointed. What he found out about Salsadeo shocked him very much. He felt that the lawyer that represented him was either scared or incompetent and decided they should raise funds to hire a better lawyer. They contacted Walter Nelles, a lawyer connected with the American Civil Liberties Union, who agreed to take the case. Salsadeo’s lawyer was later branded as a Department of Justice accomplice. Vanzetti had heard that Salsadeo had been beaten and tortured by special agents there, especially one Francisco, that he had been threatened with death and was in a state of terror and collapse. Whether he jumped from the window or was pushed out, we will never know. Those who knew, never told. But early on the morning of May 3, 1920, his crushed body was found by passers-by on the street outside the build ing. The pavement was shattered by the force of his fall. Elia was quickly deported before his story could be told. But he left a sworn deposition telling of the torture of Salsadeo, in which he stated: “I am afraid of the agents of the Department of Justice and I do not want this statement made public until I leave the country.” Vanzetti, on his return to Massachusetts, with others began to ar range protest meetings. One such meeting was scheduled for Brockton, Massachusetts, on May 5. Leaflets were distributed. They had many friends among the shoe workers there, but by now the Department of Justice was under severe criticism. Meetings on this ghastly death were not welcome to them. They had to be stopped. So on the very day of the meeting, two days after the Salsadeo tragedy, Vanzetti and his comrade Sacco were arrested on a streetcar on their way to Brockton. For the next seven years a great point was made by the state about why these two radical foreign-born workers on their way to a meeting with other comrades of theirs, to protest the violence of a powerful government agency, did not tell the truth about where they were going and whom they were going to meet. It was very natural, especially in BOMB SCARE—PRELUDE TO MURDER 799 view of the fact that all the police asked them that night was, “Are you Reds?” They had every right to anticipate deportation proceedings^ with possibly a similar fate to that of Salsadeo added. Many of their closest comrades, including Luigi Galleani, the brilliant editor of their paper, Cronaca Sovversiva, in Barre, Vermont, had been victims of the Palmer raids. Nothing much was said or done about the arrests of Sacco and Van- zetti by anyone at first. They were very humble and obscure foreign- born workers. A small Italian committee of close associates was set up in Boston. But soon they were to realize that this was a different mat ter—not a political charge but a criminal one. Sacco and Vanzetti were bundled into cars and taken around from one town to another, where they were put on exhibition. Strange people were brought in to look at them while the police queried insistently, “Are these the men?” —and insisted: “Sure, these are the guys all right!” They were told to put on certain caps, to crouch down, which was very confusing to Sac co and Vanzetti. Then, for the first time they were told they were ac cused of two murders and a robbery in nearby towns. Vanzetti was tried and quickly convicted for an attempted robbery in Bridgewater, Massachusetts, on December 24, 1919. All that saved Sacco from this trial was a time-book record in the shoe factory that showed he was at work at that hour. Sacco and Vanzetti were jointly charged with the holdup of a $15,000 payroll in the yard of the Slater and Morrill Shoe Company at South Braintree, Massachusetts, on April 15, 1920, where the paymaster and guard had both been killed. The charge was first-degree murder. This was another Mooney case, in New England. But it took time for the American people to realize it. It was not until after this first trial of Vanzetti that I heard the names of Sacco and Vanzetti. I was then secretary of the Workers De fense Union in New York City. A woman in New England who occu pied a similar post was Mrs. Marion Emerson of the New England Defense Conference. We were both busy with the struggles growing out of the Palmer raids—raising bail, feeding families, hiring lawyers. I went several times to Boston to speak on behalf of hundreds of de portees herded on Deer Island. Dr. George Galvin, a noted physician, was chairman of a huge meeting there. Just before I left New York on one of these trips, Carlo said, “Eli- zabetta, there are two Italian comrades in big trouble in Massachusetts 300 SACCO AND VANZETTI on account of Salsadeo. You investigate while you are there and may be get the Americans to help.” He gave me the address of A. Felicini who worked on a local Italian newspaper, Le Notizia, in South Bos ton. I asked Mrs. Emerson who I le irned on this trip was related to Ralph Waldo Emerson, if she knew about them. She had vaguely heard of them through the local press. She agreed to go with me to in vestigate their plight. We went into the turbulent but colorful, over crowded slums of old Boston, now a little Italy, with its crooked streets and narrow houses, in search of this unknown man on an ob scure paper. We found him, but he spoke so little English we had to wait until he found an interpreter. He was very glad to see us and ea ger to tell us everything. He called together the Italian committee, and for the first time two Americans heard the story of Sacco and Vanzetti. Thus began my seven years’ labors to help save Sacco and Vanzetti. The Anatomy of a New England Frame-Up The original Sacco-Vanzetti committee were all anarchists, author ized by the two prisoners to represent them. They were a close-knit group of friends who worked as volunteers for seven years, never taking any remuneration. They were workers, mostly highly skilled, and there was one building contractor among them. They were inclined to be su spicious of political Socialists, but they knew me because of my textile strike activities in New England eight years before; of my connection with the cases of Joe Hill and Ettor and Giovanitti and of my personal relationship with Carlo. Mrs. Emerson was a large motherly-looking woman, with mild eyes and a gentle manner, and they liked her at once. They knew of her untiring work for the many deportees on Deer Island. So they accepted us and told us all they knew of the develop ments so far. They dealt mainly with Vanzetti’s first trial, which was indeed a tragic travesty of due process, and they told us who he was. Bartolo meo Vanzetti, then 32 years old, had come to America in 1908, a strong individualist who hoped to find happiness in this great land of opportunity. One of his first jobs was as a steel worker in the mills of the American Steel and Wire Company in Pittsburgh, inferno of toil and sweat. After that he worked as a laborer in construction camps and later as a pastry cook in New York City at Moquin’s restaurant. He learned at first hand the lot of the foreign-born worker in America THE ANATOMY OF A NEW ENGLAND FRAME-UP 301 —the crowded boarding houses for single men, the back-breaking toil, the loss of identity as a man—workers in the mills, like in prison, car ried numbers. The scornful epithets of “Hunky” and “Dago” were hurled at the immigrant workers. Vanzetti lived at the time of his arrest in Plymouth, Massachusetts, site of the landing of the Mayflower and the famed Plymouth Rock. He had been employed in the Cordage Works there and had led a strike in 1916 against intolerable conditions. The demands were grant ed and all the 4,000 workers returned to work except Vanzetti, who was blacklisted by the company. He refused to let the workers make an issue of it. “I am a single man,” he said. “Lonely man!” he called himself, “I’ll get along!” So he bought a handcart and became a fish peddler. He remarked that many of Jesus’ disciples were fishermen. It was a good occupation. All the Italian people in the colony knew and loved him. Others, too, Jewish and Irish, were his customers, and spoke of him with warmth and respect. His philosophical remarks in his quaint broken English, his gentle good humor, his sad smile, endeared him to people. Eight een people came to court to testify for him—that on the afternoon and evening of December 24, 1919, Christmas Eve, he was busy in Plym outh selling eels, which are a great holiday delicacy among Italian peo ple. He could not have been in Bridgewater, 18 miles away. A 13-year old boy whom I met later, Beldrando Brini, helped Vanzetti deliver eels and thus made his Christmas money. He so testified, and good Italian Catholic housewives testified that they had bought eels from Vanzetti on that day. Seven years later, when Vanzetti faced the elec tric chair, Governor Fuller of Massachusetts said: “There has never been produced any document to show that Vanzetti was selling eels.” An immediate search of the Boston Atlantic Avenue fish dealers’ rec ords by a defense lawyer produced an American Express Company re ceipt for a barrel of live eels shipped to Vanzetti in Plymouth two days before the Bridgewater crime. Neither Governor Fuller nor his so- called investigating committee ever acknowledged this fact, the eel re ceipt. I am writing now of 1920. But the terrible importance of this will unfold as the story develops. Vanzetti’s lawyer in this first case was apparently a run-of-the-mill criminal lawyer in a small town, recommended to him by a court run ner. The papers had featured “Italian bandits” and “Italian holdup men” in sensational stories of the two crimes. Vague identifications of 302 SACCO AND VANZETTI a “foreigner with a mustache” were accepted. One youth testified that he knew the holdup man was a foreigner “by the way he ran!” One woman first identified a policeman as the bandit. Vanzetti had wanted to testify but his lawyer refused to allow him to do so when he heard he was “an anarchist.” He said in a panic, “Just keep it quiet!” No matter how much a judge instructs a jury that a defendant need not testify, it is usually held against him just the same. It would be hard to convey today the deep-seated distrust existing then among the New England Yankees of all “foreigners,” especially the Italians. It was like the Dixicrat attitude in the South to the Negro people today. They dismissed the testimony of Italian housewives and children with “They all stick together!” Vanzetti was quickly convict ed and the Bridgewater police collected the $1,000 reward. He was sentenced to prison for 12-15 years by Judge Webster Thayer. This happened in August 1920. He and Sacco were still to be tried on the murder charge. The Italian committee earnestly pleaded with us to do two things—arrange some protest meetings with English speakers to reach American workers and help them get a labor lawyer who would understand the radical viewpoint of the defendants and the possibility of a frame-up against them. This we pledged to try to do. We both reported to our committees who authorized us to proceed with such meetings. In New York we hired the Forwards Hall on East Broadway. Present at this first Sacco-Vanzetti meeting were about 25 people, mostly our own delegates. One of the speakers was Leonard Abbott, nephew of Lyman Abbott, editor of the Outlook. Leonard Abbot was then or later editor of Current Literature. He was president of a Free Speech League and connected with the Ferrer School. The other speakers were veteran anarchist, Harry Kelly, and myself. The caretaker of the hall, alarmed at the meagemess of our audience, insisted we pay the rent in advance. “You’ll never get it in a collection tonight,” he whispered to me. In Boston the meeting was held in an old opera house on Washing ton Street, a dark and dismal place. But a large crowd turned out and there was real interest in our story. Mrs. Emerson and I spoke with an Italian trade union leader. Thus the agitation among the New England and New York workers for Sacco and Vanzetti began as a small spark at first. But it eventually spread around the world. When I returned to New York City, Fred Moore, the IWW lawyer, was in town. He had just successfully defended Charles Kreiger, an IWW, in Oklahoma. At I VISIT SACCO AND VANZETTI 303 the moment he was not involved in any big case elsewhere. Carlo and I asked him to go to Boston, to meet with the Sacco-Vanzetti commit tee and investigate the case. We urged him favorably to consider un dertaking their defense. He spent a few weeks there and finally decid ed to do so. It was put up to Sacco and Vanzetti, who were delighted to accept him. They knew of his good work in Everett, Wichita and Chicago' for the IWW, and felt correctly that Fred was more than a legal advocate. He was a defender of labor. For the next few years, Fred Moore worked tirelessly. He was determined and persistent in his preparation of his cases, overlooking not even the small details. He developed a fa natical zeal built on his absolute faith that these two men were inno cent. He was determined to save them at all costs—regardless of mon ey spent, investigators hired, publicity on a huge scale. None of us fully realized then the terrible load he would be forced to carry as “an outside lawyer” from the wilds of California in the staid New England courtroom. A local lawyer from Brockton, Mr. William J. Callahan, was also retained at the same time. I Visit Sacco and Vanzetti In October 1920 Mary Heaton Vorse and I visited Nicola Sacco in the Dedham Jail. Fred Moore arranged the interview so that we could give some publicity to their plight. Mary wrote a fine article for The Nation which began, “We drove through the sweet New England towns.” It was autumn, the pungent smell of burning leaves was in the air. As jails go, it was not a bad place, Mary said—it looked like a li brary, with its large central rotunda; only men were put away on the shelves, not books. Then a handsome youth, slim, erect, with flashing eyes and a gay smile came rapidly toward us. This was Sacco. He was 30 years old. His blue shirt was clean and neat, open at the throat. He greeted me with enthusiasm. “Elizabetta—I know you. I heard you speak for Lawrence strikers!” he said. Then he greeted Fred Moore and met Mrs. Vorse who spoke a little Italian, which gladdened his heart. We all sat down. He told us of himself and his views—“The Idea,” he called it, which to him meant social justice. No government, no police, no judges, no bosses, no authority; autonomous groups of people—the people own everything—work in cooperation—distribute by needs—equality, justice, comradeship—love each other; eager Directory: files files -> Answer True False 2 points Question 2 files -> Integer programming and game theory files -> 4 Integer Programming files -> Bpa vehicle Window Repair Scenario #1 task: Procure vehicle window relacement. Objective files -> Pop Warner History files -> North Carolina Inclusion Initiative Mapping Where Children with ieps are Being Served Purpose files -> Fall 2013 Spring 2014 Program Data: Standard 1 Exhibit 4d files -> Hanban – asia society confucius classrooms network 2010 request for proposal files -> Northern England’s set-jetting locations Download 2.03 Mb. Share with your friends:
|