The Passion of Sacco and Vanzetti: A New England Legend

by Howard Fast

  Word of it went to Boston. The New York Defense Committee for Sacco and Vanzetti was only a few blocks from Union Square. The people who worked there had worked for days without sleep or rest, and now, in their agonizing weariness, they took excitement and comfort from the masses of people in the square, and sent word of it to Boston. “Tens of thousands,” they cried over the telephone, “are pouring into Union Square. There never has been a protest like this. Surely it will be understood there.”

  They were not alone in thinking that there had never been such a protest as this. Through a window that over-looked one part of Union Square, a man had watched the people come, and he too had the strange feeling that he was witnessing something new and terrible and wonderful—something never quite equaled before in all the mighty demonstrations of American working, people. This man was able to watch the square from his own office, and he had spent the afternoon in his office waiting for a number of others who were to come and meet with him. Like himself, they were trade unionists. He was at the window looking down at Union Square at half past three, when the first one of the group scheduled to meet in his office that day, a leader in the organized needle trades in the city, joined him.

  The man at the window—whom we can call the Chairman—turned around, smiled with immediate pleasure, and offered him his hand. They were old friends. Since his childhood, the Chairman had worked in his own industry, first at the most menial type of work as floorboy and delivery boy, and then as an operater and cutter as he learned the trade. Now he was a leader in his union, a man of growing influence and importance in organized labor in the city of New York. He had a comfortable office and he could look forward to a pay check more often than not. In spite of these fortunate circumstances that had come so lately, he remained very much as his friends had known him, simple, direct, and filled with eager and unabating enthusiasm. He was not tall, but gave the impression of height, and was solidly built, with a square and pleasant face; and in the warmth of his movements and the directness of his gestures, there was something so amazingly simple that most people found it quite irresistible. Now the Chairman took the needle trades leader by the shoulders and steered him to the window, pointing out over the square.

  “Look at that! Isn’t it something to see!” he cried.

  “Yes—I suppose so,” the needle trades leader answered. “It’s also August 22nd.”

  “That doesn’t mean the fight is over.”

  “No? What then? What do we do with a few hours left?”

  “Delay the execution somehow. Get twenty-four hours—that’s enough. With that much time, we make our plea again to the Federation leaders. There’s only one thing that will save Sacco and Vanzetti, but it will also save us—and the American labor movement.”

  “And what is that?”

  “A general strike.”

  “You are dreaming,” the needle trades leader said, almost angrily.

  “Am I? Then this is one dream that will come true.”

  “And suppose there is no delay in the execution?”

  “There must be,” the Chairman insisted.

  “I would not talk to the others about a general strike—because it’s a dream. It can’t be done, and if we should call for it, we cut ourselves off.”

  “Then you would let them die?”

  “Am I killing them? But our dreams won’t save them.” He pointed to Union Square. “There we are—all that we can do now. Pick up the phone and plead with the Governor of Massachusetts, but don’t dream about general strikes. The men who can make such things have sold out, five times over, sold themselves and their workers, and the unions that would lead a general strike have been smashed and washed clean in blood. Don’t dream any more.”

  “I’ll still dream,” the Chairman answered, and with that he fell silent, apparently immersed in his own thoughts.

  For a while now the two of them stood watching the demonstration below in wordless attention. Presently they were joined by a rank and file leader of the Italian construction workers in the city. A steel worker who had been fighting ten years to organize the union in Gary, Indiana, and who had come into the city only this morning, also joined them, as did two copper miners from Montana. The two copper miners had arrived in New York a couple of hours before. They were both fairly young men, with dry skin and long, hard faces, pocked all over with cinder specks. All the distance from Butte they had come by rail, riding in box cars, in gondola cars, and sometimes on the rods underneath the cars; and in this fashion they beat their way into New York, perhaps not completely on schedule, but not too long after they had promised the Chairman that they would be there. They shook hands with him warmly, studying him all the while with frank curiosity, for they had heard much of him, yet had never seen him before. The Chairman, however, knew, them well by reputation, and knew the story of how for five years they had been trying to organize the copper and silver miners of the mountain states. They had learned in a hard school, and had emerged from it, as needs be, hard men.

  As time went on, still other trade union leaders joined the group, and by now there were more than twelve people seated in the office of the Chairman. A shoe worker was there, a Negro from the Railroad Brotherhood, and another Negro from the laundry workers’ union. There were people from the jewelry workers, the hat makers, and bakers—altogether, as the Chairman thought, as good and representative a group of trade unionists as one could hope to bring together on such very short notice on this August 22nd of 1927.

  The Chairman called the meeting to order, but even while he spoke, he could not keep his eyes from turning toward the window. His words were as restless as his motions, and he paced back and forth uneasily, referring again and again to the lateness of the hour.

  “So it would seem,” he said, “that we should have met a week or a month ago—as some of us did, and we did whatever we could do.” He struggled with the language. His voice had an accent out of another place and time—but the others in the room also had the mark of their wandering and seeking on their tongues.

  “Anyway, today here we are,” the Chairman said. “And as far as I can see, it is the last day. That’s the way it is with these things. It doesn’t seem possible that there can be a finish, but the finish comes and there we are. All morning I was thinking of what we can do, and still I’m not sure. Our people are out, and most of them are down there in Union Square. In the same way, many of the dress makers and cloak makers are out—but it won’t be enough or change anything. So I lay awake all last night thinking about what we could do;”

  “What can we do?” the steel worker asked. “There are a few hours left. You can’t turn the world over in a few hours. It’s not like we had a movement like they have in some places in Europe. In steel, our heads have been beaten until they’re bloody, and we talk in whispers. What can we do now?”

  “Maybe you been whispering too long,” the man from the bakers’ union answered. “Jesus Christ! Will there never come an end to the way we walk around with our heads down, whispering?”

  “Maybe,” the Chairman said, “if we think of it in a certain way. I keep asking myself why these two men go to die tonight. So what can I answer myself except one thing—they die for us, for you and me, for fur workers, needle workers and steel workers. I put it plain and straight-forward. The bosses are afraid—not of you and me. I wish to God they were afraid of you and me! No, not that. They are afraid of what they see moving and stirring and turning over everywhere in the world. They are afraid of what the people did in Russia. A red sound comes out of Russia, and they don’t like that sound. So this time they made their demonstration to us. They are saying to us, we have Sacco and Vanzetti, and you—you who talk so much about organized labor and the strength of organized labor, you can scream and shout and protest and squirm and cry and whimper, and not one God-damned bit of good is it going to do. Yell as you please! Tonight Sacco and Vanzetti will die, and a lesson will be driven home. Plain. Unvarnished. That’s how I see it.�
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  “That’s the way it is,” one of the copper miners said. “Brothers, that’s the way it has always been. They take off their gloves and they show it to us plain.”

  The Italian, who was one of a group trying to organize the construction workers, and who had suffered a fractured skull two months before because he would not be bought off, seemed about to say something; but when the Chairman nodded at him, he shook his head and remained silent. The leader from the needle trades said slowly and carefully,

  “Brothers; today is a lesson in the expensive luxury of talk. We have fallen into a habit of talking, and now each minute we talk away has no replacement. We come to the end, and I think we must do something. I don’t know how. I don’t know what. I look to you to tell me. We have brothers here who came from far, far places of the country, where there are millions of workers like themselves. How do these workers feel about Sacco and Vanzetti, and what will they do?”

  “What can they do now?” the steel worker wanted to know. “It’s easy to talk about the workers and what the workers should know. But the worker has had his head beaten in and his belly shrunken, and then he reads in the paper that he is a Russian spy if he opens his yap. We called out our people two weeks ago, and some of them went out and some of them didn’t. But those who laid down their tools and struck for Sacco and Vanzetti paid a price, and today they are sitting, many of them, and looking at their wives and listening to what a kid sounds like when he is hungry. And tonight Sacco and Vanzetti are going to die. How many hours are left? If we had unions, great, powerful organizations like they got in France, we could move in with them, but we haven’t got that and there’s no use fooling ourselves. And where the Federation has got a good union and a strong union, they laugh at us and say that these God-damned Italians deserve what’s coming to them. So there it is.”

  One of the copper miners asked desperately, hungrily, “What about the longshoremen here in New York? If they would go off even now, it might help a little bit. Anyway, it is too quiet here. The city is standing still. Even down there in the square the people are standing still. Nothing is going to happen while they are standing still. You can pull out a half-million workers, but until they start to march, the world won’t turn over. I can’t understand it. Why are they standing still like that? Can’t you get them marching? You talked about these two men going to die tonight for us. I would put it a little more flatly, my friends. I don’t know this city. I don’t know how it is here. But out where we are, we see it plain and clear. So it was our decision to drop everything and head into New York, and maybe argue and plead and stand up and say this is the way it’s got to be. You can’t stand still when you can count the hours and the minutes that are left.”

  “I have counted them,” the Chairman said sadly. “I feel the way you do, my friend. We got a little experience in how to struggle ourselves here, but we don’t know how to walk down there and start ten thousand people marching. They have to want to march, and there has to be a situation which tells them that when they begin to march, those machine guns on top of the buildings all around the square won’t open up and chew them up. You learn slow, so slow it’s enough to make you want to put your head down and cry, but you learn a little, and it does no good to scream that something you can’t stop must be stopped. I think maybe we can do something, but only if the execution is delayed.”

  Now the Italian spoke. He agreed that no one knew whether much could be done in the little time that was left. Like the Chairman, he spoke slowly, organizing his words and his thoughts out of another tongue and another culture. Of course, he said, they would do what they could do, send telegrams to the Governor of Massachusetts and to the President of the United States, use the telephone where the telephone might be effective, and even now, go to the workers in the few hours that were left. “But,” he went on, “suppose everything we try, it fails, and then Sacco and Vanzetti die? My heart will hurt, I think. Maybe not so much as the suffering of Sacco’s wife, of his children, but still you can be sure I suffer. Then is it the end of the world? Do they die for nothing? Is it defeat, and we are smashed down, and spit on us for nothing, for no reason? No. I say the fight goes on, and maybe we meet again tomorrow, and we will talk about this tomorrow, and if the men are dead, then we will make a warm spot among us for their memory. This I say. Yes?”

  The others looked at him. There was a small work-worn woman from the needle trades, and as she looked at him, her pale blue eyes filled with tears, and the tears trickled down her cheeks.

  “You are right, brother,” she said. “You are right.”

  They sat for a while in silence, and then the two representatives of the copper miners got up and walked to the window and looked down at Union Square. A great mass of people now filled the square, and the two copper miners watched them in the manner of a silent salute. As they watched, they listened to the recommendation of the Chairman that all of them join together immediately in calling for a general strike of city workers, a protest nationally and a great march from Union Square to City Hall, providing the execution could be delayed. So it was put into words, their plans, their dreams and their hopes. To some extent it excluded their own strength, and the two copper miners were tired with all the long distance they had come and all the struggles behind them in which they had been beaten back and smashed down. Yet as they stood there and watched the mass of people in Union Square, strength and comfort seemed to flow back into them, and they began to see a glimmer of hope in the course of action the Chairman was spelling out. It was their own strength and the strength of others like them that was flowing back into their veins. And now, in their thoughts at least, they imagined a stirring, a motion in the great mass of people, a movement which, if executed and completed, would be irresistible.

  Chapter 12

  AT FIVE O’CLOCK, the Judge demanded fretfully of his wife, “Well, isn’t he here yet? I don’t know why he isn’t here. He said that he would be here by five o’clock.”

  “I don’t know why you should be so upset about it,” she answered him. “Just suppose he is a few minutes late—any number of things could have delayed him.”

  “That’s just it. When we need him, any number of things can delay him When we don’t need him, he’s here. Nothing delays him then. Oh yes, you can be sure of that; if there’s no need of him, then he is here.”

  “Of course this is a most trying day,” she said. “And it’s so hot here! Why don’t you go out on the porch? Then you will see him as soon as he comes. He’s sure to be here any moment now.”

  The Judge thought that he would. It was an excellent idea, because it would be cool and pleasant out on the porch. His wife said she would bring some cold lemonade out, and some of her nut cookies of which the Pastor was very fond; and then when the Pastor came, she would leave the two of them alone to chat with each other.

  The Judge went out on the wide, old fashioned porch and seated himself in a wicker chair. The porch was cool and shaded and offered a maximum of privacy; for it was closed in with long blinds of split bamboo, which allowed a trickle of daylight and sunlight to seep through, but made it impossible for anyone outside to look in. The Judge leaned back in his wicker chair and attempted manfully to compose himself. Earlier on this same day, he had experienced an abrupt and sudden spasm of pain under his left breast—and his first thought has been, “Well, here it is finally, with all that I have been through and all that I have suffered.” They had called the doctor immediately, and the doctor came and examined him very carefully and reassured him that it was no more than a little gas, the result of something he had eaten for breakfast which did not agree with him.

  Then he had said to the doctor, “Well, you know what kind of a day this is going to be.”

  “A very trying day, I should imagine,” the doctor had replied.

  “Most trying, most trying,” the Judge said. “I am no longer a young man. You see now the rewards thrown to virtue, like a dry bone to an old dog. You shoul
d be grateful that you are a physician and not a jurist.”

  “Each to his own trade,” the doctor had answered. “Mine is not without its problems.”

  “Now, sitting in the wicker chair, the Judge reflected with some relief that the best part of the day had already passed by, and that in only a few hours more, August 22nd would be over. When all was said and done, he was calmer about this difficult period than most people would have been. Of course it helped to have the two policemen stationed out front at the entrance to his place; but the upsetting threats which he had faced today were psychological rather than physical. The several hundred letters that had come in the morning mail were more of a menace to his peace of mind than to his physical welfare. He had only read a handful of these letters, yet he noted with a certain amount of self-justification the remarkable similarity of each to the others. They might have been written by a group of consultants, if you considered the uniformity of the manner in which they denounced him and pleaded for the lives of these two incredible men. Of more concern than letters, were some of the periodicals that had anonymously been sent to him. A periodical with an article about the case, which contained a reference to him, would be opened and refolded, so that the reference was on the outside. Invariably, this reference would be encircled by a heavy crayon line, or perhaps a stubby, garish red arrow would be drawn on the page, pointing to the reference. One such periodical with both the circle and the red arrow, printed on what the Judge commonly referred to as “butcher store paper,” had arrived that morning and had captured his attention to a point where, in spite of himself, he read on, fascinated, until he had completed the entire passage. It read as follows:

  “One cannot help but wonder how the Judge will pass the day of August 22nd. Will he celebrate? Will he invite in a few of his very best and closest friends, open a bottle of old New England port brought over to this sacred soil a hundred years before, and drink a benevolent toast to the death of a shoemaker and a fish peddler? Or will the Judge spend the day alone in quiet contemplation of the singular rewards for a man who does his duty as he sees it and as his conscience leads him to it? Or perhaps the Judge will continue in his hour-to-hour routine, armed with the stern righteousness of an upright man, and admitting in no way that this day is different from any other.