RADICALS: Fuller Decides

Twelve leading Paris newspapers last week devoted four times as much space to two remote Italians as to the break-up of the Geneva Naval Conference. Why? The French, as lovers of liberty, were interested in whether these two Italians were to be killed by a democracy for a crime of which they were innocent or whether they were actually guilty and had been responsible for an international campaign to defeat justice.

One of these two Italians, Nicola Sacco, had worked in a shoe factory and cultivated a garden in Stoughton, Mass., before he was sent to jail for murder, seven years ago. He had a wife named Rose, a son named Dante, a little daughter named Inez. He was inclined to be moody, introspective, with occasional outburst of fumbled yet eloquent English. He detested capitalistic society, as did his comrade in life and in jail, Bartolomeo Vanzetti, bachelor, onetime fish peddler and ditchdigger, whose mustache used to be neatly curled. Mr. Vanzetti, an outspoken emotionalist, was the acknowledged orator of the pair.

In their cells in the death house of the Massachusetts State Prison, Messrs. Sacco & Vanzetti heard last week that they were to die. Mrs. Sacco and two advisers brought the news. For an hour and a half, they talked together, while prison guards listened and looked. Mr. Sacco (then on the 19th day of a hunger strike) mumbled over and over: “I told you so, I told you so,” as if in rhythm with his throbbing, withered arteries. Said Mr. Vanzetti: “I don’t believe it.”

Warm Letters. In that hour and a half, Messrs. Sacco & Vanzetti each found time to write a letter to friends. Mr. Vanzetti’s: “Governor Alvan T. Fuller is a murderer. . . . He shakes hands with me like a brother, makes me believe he was honest-intentioned…. Now, ignoring and denying all proofs of our innocence, he insults us and murders us. … We die for anarchy. Long life to anarchy.” Mr. Sacco’s: “. . . . We are not surprised by this news, because we know the capitalist class is hard, without any mercy to the good soldiers of the revolution. . . . We have always known that Governor Fuller, Thayer and Katzmann are the murderers. With warm fraternal regards to all.”

Fuller’s Decision. On July 14, 1921, a jury found Messrs. Sacco & Vanzetti guilty of the murder on April 15, 1920, of a paymaster and guard on the streets of South Braintree, Mass. Repeated motions for a new trial were denied. Because of the international furor aroused by the case, Governor Alvan Tufts Fuller of Massachusetts decided, last June, to investigate. He appointed a committee of three —President Abbott Lawrence Lowell of Harvard University; President Samuel Wesley Stratton of Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Robert Grant, lawyer-judge-novelist—to make a thorough study of the case independent of the Governor’s own investigation and to report to him. Last week, Governor Fuller announced that the committee had unanimously agreed with him that Messrs. Sacco & Vanzetti were guilty of murder and had been given a fair trial. Hence, he would not intervene to prevent the passage of electricity through their bodies. The official decision of Governor Fuller dwelt on such points as the “brutality” of the South Braintree crime and the “inexcusable” dragging out of the case. However, on the important question of radicalism, Governor Fuller said: “Complaint has been made that the defendants were prosecuted and convicted because they were anarchists. As a matter of fact, the issue of anarchy was brought in by them as an explanation of their suspicious conduct.”

The Committee’s Report was more out-of-the-courtroom conduct of Judge Webster Thayer—an item which the Governor neglected to mention. Said the committee: “From all that has come to us, we are forced to conclude that the Judge was indiscreet in conversation with outsiders during the trial. He ought not to have talked about the case off the bench, and doing so was a grave breach of official decorum. But we do not believe that he used some of the expressions attributed to him, and we think that there is exaggeration in what the persons to whom he spoke remember. Furthermore, we believe that such indiscretion in conversation did not affect his conduct at the trial or the opinions of the jury, who, indeed, so stated to the committee.”

Thayer Silent. When informed of Governor Fuller’s decision, Judge Thayer at his summer home in Ogunquit, Me., said: “Following my invariable practice, I decline to make any public statement.”

Courage. Most of the newspapers in the U. S. congratulated Governor Fuller for conducting a thorough investigation, for courageously publishing a decision that endangered his life. The congratulations, however, had varied qualifications. Take two examples. The New York World respectfully petitioned Governor Fuller to commute the sentences of Messrs. Sacco & Vanzetti to life imprisonment, on the ground of mercy “with the same courage that he has shown in the face of worldwide threats.” The Chicago Tribune said: “The nation has reason to be grateful that the most elaborately organized movement to defeat justice in the history of our courts has not prevailed and that a cruel, sordid and atrocious crime will be punished. This is a victory for justice, for order and for humanity.”

William Lawrence, onetime (1893-1927) Protestant Episcopal Bishop of Massachusetts, wrote to Governor Fuller: “You will, I am sure, allow me to express to you my admiration of the way in which you have done your duty in the Sacco-Vanzetti case. You have been wise, patient, dignified and courageous—worthy of the best traditions of, the Commonwealth.” Novelists & Columnists who lifted their voices last week, were nearly unanimous in proclaiming Messrs. Sacco & Vanzetti the victims of injustice. In England, John Galsworthy, H. G. Wells and Arnold Bennett implored Massachusetts not to stain her name. Heywood Broun, a Harvard man, wrote in his syndicated column: “It is not every prisoner who has a President of Harvard throw on the switch for him. And Robert Grant is not only a former judge but one of the most popular dinner guests in Boston. If this is a lynching, at least the fish peddler and his friend, the factory-hand, may take unction to their souls that they will die at the hands of men in dinner coats or academic gowns.”

Bombs, Threats. Fanatics the world over seemed to think that last week was an opportune time to explode bombs. Whether all these dynamiters were Sacco-Vanzetti sympathizers is not known. At any rate, in the next three days two Manhattan subway stations, a West Philadelphia Presbyterian Church and the home of popular Mayor William F. Broening of Baltimore were partially wrecked by bomb explosions. Governor Fuller and others connected with the Sacco-Vanzetti case had their homes protected by armed guards. Their mail was choked with threats. Even the U. S. Supreme Court received a postcard: “If there is any more trouble in our ranks, we’re going to blow up some of you big boys.”

Eleventh Hour. These demonstrations did not aid the new Sacco-Vanzetti attorney, Arthur D. Hill, and his associate, Francis B. Sayre, son-in-law of the late Woodrow Wilson, who were making eleventh-hour appeals for a new trial in Massachusetts or Federal courts. But hope for Messrs. Sacco & Vanzetti was scant. Death loomed.