Elizabeth Gurley Flynn. Duluth, Minnesota 1908 4- ir + £ jL 5K«a p&ftt'Ss ILL sw*UH»
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- THE CAMPAIGN STARTS 305
- 306 SACCO AND VANZETTI
- THE CAMPAIGN STARTS 307
- THE DE FALCO AFFAIR 309
- BEFORE THE TRIAL 311
304 SACCO AND VANZETTI words like this flowed in a torrent from his lips. He hated to be idle. He wanted to be able to work—this bothered him. He said he was ready to die for “The Idea”—for the people. But not for “gunman job.” He spoke of how he had worked all his life, his hands were the skilled hands of a shoemaker, they were for work not for killing. “To steal money, to kill a poor man for money! This is in sult to me!” he said passionately. He threw back his head and ex plained: “I am innocent. I no do this thing. I swear it on the head of my newborn child!” This vehement cry, “Io innocente! You are kill ing an innocent man!” were the words he shouted at the craven jury months later. To Sacco, a cold-blooded murder of a factory employee to carry out a mercenary holdup was unthinkable. He was hurt, deeply hurt, to be accused of such a thing. One hand had remained tightly clasped during our talk. But in his anger he spread his fingers apart and a little piece of metal fell out, a Catholic sacred heart medal. He smiled with embarrassment and ex plained, “Boss’ wife, good Irish lady, she came, she cried, and she said, ‘Keep this Nick, it will save you!’ ” “I no believe,” he said, “but I no want to hurt her feelings, so I take.” I was well acquainted with this idealistic type of kind and good Italian anarchist, who might kill a king as an act of “social justice”—but not a mouse. I believed Sacco when he said, “Elizabetta, I am innocent.” I believe it now, after 34 years. So confident was he of his innocence that sunny afternoon that he had no fear. He was sure when he told his story in court he would go free. He did not know that he was approaching the valley of the shad ow of death. He feared no evil because the truth was with him. But greed, corruption, prejudice, fear and hatred of radical foreign-born workingmen were weaving a net around him. I remembered another fair young man—Joe Hill—whom I had visited a few years before, who had been put to death by executioners’ rifles. My heart was heavy, though I smiled and said “Be of good cheer. We will do our best.” Then a few days later I went with Fred Moore to the dungeon-like prison in Charlestown to see Bartolomeo Vanzetti. He was serving his sentence there. He seemed very much older than Sacco, though he really was not. He was 32 years old. He was heavier, slower in his movements, very calm and controlled. He told me of his visit to New York, and how he missed his date with Miss Liberty. He wondered if he would ever see her again. He had a whimsical kind of humor—but THE CAMPAIGN STARTS 305 much of the same unworldliness as Sacco. He was anxious, however, he told Fred Moore, that we should fight for a separate trial for Nick because of the fact that he, Vanzetti, had already been convicted of a holdup. “And wouldn’t that go against Nick?” It was a good legal point and Fred assured him that they had it in mind. Vanzetti’s social philosophy was a belief in human freedom and the dignity of man. He was a lover of Galileo and Giordano Bruno, Dante, Garibaldi and Mazzini. He would have been at home with Emerson, Thoreau or Walt Whitman. Fred Moore then arranged to take Mrs. Vorse and me to see Nick’s wife, Rose Sacco. She lived in a pleasant little New England house owned by Mr. Kelley, the owner of the nearby shoe factory where Nick worked. Her little boy of seven was named Dante. Her newborn daughter, Inez, was sleeping in her little bed. We sat in her big kitch en, with a wood-burning stove, and discussed their little family and the tragedy that had befallen it. Mrs. Sacco was beautiful, quite fair, her hair a dark red. She told us of how she and Nick took part in plays to raise money for strikes and to help “educate the people.” She told us that she had gone with Nick to Boston to the Italian consulate on April 15, 1920, the day the Braintree crime was committed. She felt sure that the employees there would remember them because they had brought a large family portrait instead of the regulation passport pic tures. And they had lunch at Boni’s restaurant, opposite the Paul Re vere house. The people there would certainly remember them, espe cially as some knew Nick very well. So she reassured herself Nick would never be tried and convicted. Of such human elements are great historical tragedies constructed —a frightened young woman, clinging to her children, smiling through her tears, visiting her young husband in jail in such a courageous spirit that warden, keepers and other prisoners turn away in embarrassment from her radiant face. The cold hand of fear was not yet on all these gallant young people who had around them the shining armor of con sciousness of innocence. The Campaign Starts After my return from visiting Sacco and Vanzetti we began, through the Workers Defense Union, to arrange public meetings and to raise money on their behalf. On October 4, 1920, we sent out as complete a 306 SACCO AND VANZETTI factual statement as was possible then—the first in English. We stated prophetically, “If convicted they will be sentenced to electrocution.” We voted a contribution of $100, which I am quite sure was the first sizeable contribution from New York. Meantime, Mrs. Vorse had gone to the American Civil Liberties Union. The minutes of their November 22, 1920, meeting read as follows: Mary Heaton Vorse reported on the cases of Sacco and Vanzetti, two young Italian anarchists on trial in Boston for highway robbery and mur der, stating that they had been indicted on questionable circumstances and because of their activity on behalf of Andrea Salsadeo, a political prisoner who committed suicide by throwing himself from the Park Row Building, New York, while being held for deportation. It was agreed that the Union should do everything possible to secure publicity for this case. At the next meeting of the ACLU on November 29, 1920, the min utes read as follows: Mr. Baldwin reported that Miss Flynn, who is in Boston on the Sacco- Vanzetti case, had requested that the Union hold a New York meeting to present the facts of their prosecution. Tentative arrangements have been made for a meeting at the People’s House Auditorium, on December 11th. The proposed meeting was approved. Meantime, while I was there, I made a speaking trip in New Eng land on their behalf, going to places with which I was long familiar, and on my return the minutes of our next Workers Defense Union meeting read as follows: Comrades E. G. Flynn and Fred Biedenkapp reported that they had loaned $200 to the Sacco-Vanzetti defense fund, to help them over their great financial difficulties. Moved and carried to donate the $200. Moved we send out special appeals and speakers for this and help them to the best of our ability. While I was in Boston on this trip, Art Shields, a young labor re porter, came there at my urgent request, seconded by Fred Moore, to write a popular pamphlet on the Sacco-Vanzetti case. He made a pains taking search of the whole story. He studied the transcript of Vanzet- ti’s first trial and catalogued the innumerable discrepancies of govern ment witnesses. He dug up the labor records of both men, their aid to the Lawrence strike and to the defense of Ettor and Giovanitti. He found that the only previous arrest of either of them was when Sacco was arrested in Milford, Massachusetts, for a speech at a mass meeting protesting against the arrest of Carlo Tresca in the Mesabi Range THE CAMPAIGN STARTS 307 strike of 1916. Sacco, although, he was a highly paid skilled work er, had aided the foundry workers of Hopedale in a strike and had participated in an insurgent shoecutters’ strike in 1918. They were both supporters of the struggling Italian radical press, of which there were a half a dozen at least, each with a different line and quarreling with each other. When the pamphlet was ready to go to press, the Boston Defense Committee asked the Workers Defense Union to publish it and under take its distribution. They wrote that they deemed it advisable to have it printed outside of Massachusetts by an “English-speaking commit tee.” We gladly accepted the task and it came off the press in March 1921. It was a 32-page pamphlet that sold for 10 cents a copy and we sold it in bundles of 100 for $7.50. It was published for us by the New York Call Printing Company, which printed the Socialist paper. We distributed 20,000 before the month was up and had to order a second edition of 25,000. It carried a financial appeal from the Sacco-Vanzet- ti Committee. Before the trial started we had issued at least 50,000. The name of the pamphlet was Are They Doomed? The cover de sign was drawn by the great people’s artist, Robert Minor, showing the Wall Street background, Trinity Church and the old Post Office Build ing opposite the tall Park Row Building. The body of Andrea Salsadeo was hurling from one of the top windows, portraying the tragedy of the cold gray dawn of May 3, 1920. It was the first analysis of the case and the grim forces behind it—which were the Department of Justice and the employing class of New England, determined to keep foreign- born workers inarticulate and unorganized. It showed the legal trick ery resorted to in frame-up cases, involving workers and unions. It compared it to the Mooney-Billings prosecution, which was then in a state of collapse, due to the splendid work of Minor and others. I left one Saturday night, March 5, 1921, to speak next morning at a Sacco-Vanzetti meeting in the Amalgamated Clothing hall in Phila delphia, to help popularize and sell the pamphlet. My friends with whom I stayed overnight, Walter Nef of the IWW and his wife, ac companied me to the meeting. Under the pretext that we had no per mit for the use of the hall, we were hustled into a small anteroom and questioned by an elderly police sergeant, who was semi-hysterical with excitement. Why had I come to disturb the people of Philadelphia? Didn’t I know that a real American (Harding) was now in the White House and would make short work of radicals like me? What business 308 SACCO AND VANZETTI had I defending anarchist murderers? He found The Nation, New Re public, World Tomorrow (edited by Norman Thomas) and an Inter national Socialist Review in my briefcase. He spotted an article on Karl Liebknecht. “For this,” he shouted dramatically, “I will put you under arrest!” Walter and I and several of the committee were arrested and the au dience was driven out of the hall. I was locked up temporarily in Moy- omansing Prison. We were finally released without trial, although it led to deportation proceedings against some of the Italians. When we were arraigned before a magistrate on the charge of disturbing the peace, a copy of Art Shields’ pamphlet was produced as evidence. Art Shields mentioned in his pamphlet that the New England Civil Liberties Committee (affiliated with the ACLU) had appointed three prominent attorneys to investigate the case. They also issued an appeal for funds to be sent to Mrs. Anna Davis, their treasurer, stating, “So far the bulk of the defense funds have been borne by Italian rank-and- file workers. Must they carry the whole burden?” Their appeal was captioned, “Shall There Be a Mooney Frame-Up in New England?” Finally, the case broke into all the Boston papers in a big way, causing the Boston Post to give a detailed history of it and of the Salsadeo death and Vanzetti’s trial. It declared: “Many well-known local peo ple have always doubted the guilt of Sacco and Vanzetti, while labor unions here and in the mill cities of Lawrence, Lowell and Fall River have declared that two men are being ‘railroaded’ by the Department of Justice.” This arose out of a strange new episode, which occurred just as the pamphlet went to press, namely the De Falco affair. The De Falco Affair There came one of those queer problems that sometimes causes one anxiously to debate—later—did we do right? Many things in cases like this force you to be constantly on guard against frame-up. For instance, a spy, named Carbone, was placed in a cell next to Sacco in the Dedham jail, with the cooperation of the sheriff and the knowledge of Prose cutor Katzman, as he subsequently admitted when the story came to light. He said, “It was done by the Federal authorities who wanted to put a man there in the hope of getting information about the Wall Street explosion”—a terrible event that happened on September 10, over four months after the arrest of Sacco and Vanzetti. This is anoth er of the great William J. Flynn’s unsolved “mysteries.” THE DE FALCO AFFAIR 309 We of the Workers Defense Union had Art Shields make a thor ough investigation of what happened there, which we issued as a pub licity statement. Shortly before the explosion, nearly a dozen witnesses saw a horse-drawn dynamite wagon with the customary red flag at the tail, an ordinary sight in those days. Thirty people were killed; 100 were injured and two million dollars’ worth of damage was done by the subsequent explosion. The horse’s body, which was important evi dence, was carted away by the police and destroyed. Six excavating jobs in the neighborhood required dynamite, then in general use for such work. One was the New Stock Exchange extension, then being built. The foreman of the blasting work there, named Clark, told the New York Post reporter that he had talked to the driver three minutes before the explosion and since he (Clark) had not ordered the explo sives, the man went to telephone his company and find out where to deliver them. Inspector Lahey of the New York Police Department said it was obviously an accident. Then came the great red-hunter, William J. Flynn and his aide, Wil liam J. Bums, and it became an “anarchist plot.” Of course, the pow der company involved was not anxious to admit responsibility; the driver had either been killed or had disappeared. Millions of dollars in damages were saved for this outfit by Mr. Flynn’s diagnosis. Inciden tally, it helped Flynn and Palmer get bigger Congressional appropria tions and put back to work some 50 operatives who had been laid off. A humorous by-product of this otherwise horrible tragedy were the headlines in the press, “Flynn Wants Tresca.” When his lawyers called Flynn, after Carlo gave a press conference, Flynn denied the stories completely. It was natural that everybody involved was suspicious when the De Falco affair developed in Boston. There was a young Italian tailor named Benny, who lived in Providence, Rhode Island, whom we all knew. A few years before, during an unemployed demonstration there, the hungry crowd had broken into a warehouse and helped themselves to its contents. Benny was identified as one of the leaders. He had es caped arrest by approaching a priest walking toward the railroad sta tion and asking to accompany him there as he “did not know the way.” Naturally, the police never suspected that an Italian Red would walk with a priest, so he safely left town. He went to the state of Washington and got a job in a custom tailor shop in Everett. (This was before the massacre which I have already described took place in 1916.) He heard many conversations among the county and compa 310 SACCO AND VANZETTI ny officials as they were being measured and fitted. When the IWW members were charged with murder he came to Seattle to see me and from then on he brought valuable information for the defense lawyers, reporting to Fred Moore. Benny eventually returned to Providence when the old charge blew over. He was a relative of an Italian woman in Boston, who was an in terpreter and runner in the Court House at Dedham, Massachusetts. Her name was Angelina De Falco. He spoke to her about his friends, Sacco and Vanzetti, and asked her for help. She offered to try. Subse quently he brought her to Felicani, the treasurer of the committee. She claimed she could secure an acquittal if they would fire their present lawyers and pay two others $50,000. The money was to be paid to Francis J. Squires, clerk of the police court in Dedham, and Percy Katzman, brother and law partner of Frederick Katzman, the district attorney. All evidence in the hands of the committee was to be surren dered to Percy Katzman, as the new defense lawyer. When the Com mittee members said $50,000 was impossible for them to raise, she reduced the figure to $40,000. She cited a recent case of an Italian wom an charged with murder who was released, as an example of how suc cessful her efforts were. The committee finally communicated the matter to Fred Moore and William J. Callahan, who were greatly disturbed. It presented them with quite a dilemma. It also caused considerable disagreement with some of the anarchist group around the committee, who had no faith whatever in the courts and public officials, and were not surprised at the De Falco proposition. They knew such deals were made all the time in all sorts of Italian cases and were inclined to take a chance. But the attorneys acted quickly and swore out a warrant in Felicani’s name, charging her with unlawfully soliciting law practice by pledging an acquittal. The Commonwealth permitted them to act as the lawyers to prosecute her. The trial lasted a week. Then Municipal Judge Mur ray acquitted Mrs. De Falco. There was considerable question as to why Benny was not tried too; it was because no one would make a complaint. The committee, Fred Moore and I all believed he had act ed in good faith trying to help his comrades. Later he cried, telling me “You were all wrong about Angelina. She could have saved them!” The lawyers insisted that their procedure was imperative, as they were fearful of charges of trying to bribe public officials against Feli cani and others who had talked to the woman. But the issue rankled BEFORE THE TRIAL 311 for a long time. Did they do right not to deal with her, since Sacco and Vanzetti were still obscure unknown prisoners? Was it a bona fide of fer or a trap for the committee? Some of the extreme anarchists were critical of using government agencies to arrest and prosecute Mrs. De Falco. There was an undertone of criticism among them that Fred Moore wanted to make this the biggest labor case in history, regard less of the two men involved. It started friction that grew and festered throughout the case. But the De Falco story made the Sacco-Vanzetti case front-page news in every Boston paper and elsewhere. Some pa pers reviewed the connection of the case with the Salsadeo tragedy. Speculations as to the role of Mrs. De Falco as a possible entrapper of the committee were widespread. The trial came within a few weeks after this. Before the Trial The trial of Sacco and Vanzetti for murder was set for March 7,1921. In preparation for it, Fred Moore had sent a man to Italy in Novem ber 1920 to search for four essential defense witnesses and to secure depositions from them. The man sent on this mission was Morris Ge- below, who wrote under the pen name of Eugene Lyons (and still does.) He had been introduced to me first by one of our Workers De fense Union delegates. They had been fellow students in college. A thin pale young man, he was in uniform at our first meeting in 1918. He had been drafted, but the Armistice had saved him from active service and he was seeking a job. He became the publicity man for the Workers Defense Union, although he told me frankly that his sole in terest and ambition was to become a writer and he wanted the experi ence. He went to Tulsa, Oklahoma, with Fred Moore to do publicity on the case of Charles Kreiger, an IWW charged with dynamiting. Kreig- er was acquitted and when Fred Moore moved into Boston, he took Lyons there to help him. From Rome, Italy, Lyons sent a story dated December 27, 1920, in which he said: “There is scarcely a Socialist or labor paper in this country that has not lifted its voice for the two im prisoned men.” He reported that Deputy Maililasso, spokesman for the Socialist group in the Chamber of Deputies, demanded “that the government intervene.” Under-Secretary De Saluzzo, replying for the government, assured the deputies that “the Ministry of Foreign Af 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. 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