judicial machinery of the Norfolk-Plymouth district of Massachusetts to clear itself of the definite charge now made by Vanzetti and his counsel that his trial at Plymouth was a deliberate attempt to injure him and Sacco in the murder case then pending. Let it be recalled that Sacco and Vanzetti were arrested in May, 1920, for a payroll robbery and murder at South Braintree. Between then and their trial in the summer of 1921 Vanzetti was accused, tried, and convicted of an attempted payroll robbery which had taken place in December, 1919, in Bridgewater. The New York World pointed out in its recent series of articles on the Sacco-Vanzetti case that it is contrary to judicial procedure in Massachusetts and elsewhere to try a man for a lesser offense when capital charges are pending against him. It is also to be recalled that the judge and the prosecuting attorney were the same men who later acted those roles in the murder trial at Dedham. Without question the police would have tried to pin the Bridgewater crime on Sacco also but for the fact that he was able to show that he had been at work at the time.
A few days after the arrest of Sacco and Vanzetti some friends of the latter visited him one night. With them came John H. Vahey, a lawyer. A Brockton attorney had already been retained, but Vanzetti was induced to make a change and was represented by Mr. Vahey and James H. Graham in his trial on charges of having taken part in the attempted holdup in Bridgewater. The latter crime, it should be remembered, took place more than four months previous to the arrest of Sacco and Vanzetti. The police had not been able to bring anybody to trial for it, but the arrest of the two Italians for a similar offense naturally suggested the possibility of making good by fastening the earlier crime upon one or both of them. Vanzetti wanted to take the stand in his own defense, but was not allowed to do so by his counsel. A foreman of the Plymouth Cordage Company was permitted to serve on the jury, although a few years previous Vanzetti had been the leader of a strike against the firm. He was the only striker, he has said, whom the company refused to reinstate.
Vanzetti's defense was an alibi supported by a score of Italian witnesses who said they had bought eels from him on the day of the crime, Christmas eve, 1919. Conviction was based primarily upon the word of four persons who claimed to identify him as taking part in the attempted robbery in Bridgewater. The paymaster involved did not make a positive identification. He left the employ of the company soon after and the opinion has been expressed among his fellows that his going had something to do with his failure to be more certain. Mrs. Georgina F. Brooks, identifying Vanzetti, said that she saw a man at the wheel of an automobile who looked severely at her. A few minutes later she was at the railroad station, some 200 yards away, and she heard shots. She claimed to have seen the firing. She could not have done so. There are houses in the way. But this impossibility was not explained to the jury. The identification of Vanzetti as the man at the wheel of the automobile was further upset by the prosecuting attorney's later admission that the prisoner did not know how to drive a car.
Maynard Freeman Shaw, fourteen years old, said in describing the criminal whom he identified as Vanzetti: "I knew he was a foreigner because he ran like a foreigner." On cross-examination the following colloquy took place between Vanzetti's counsel and young Shaw:
Q. You could tell he was a foreigner by the way he ran? A. Yes.
Q. What sort of a fellow was he? A. Nation?
Q. Yes. A. He was a European.
Q. What? A. Italy or Russia.
Q. Which was it, Italy or Russia? A. There I can't exactly.
Q. Does an Italian or a Russian run differently from a Swede or a Norweigian? A. Yes.
Q. What is the difference? A. Unsteady.
Q. Both the Italians and Russians run unsteadily? A. As far as that goes, I don't know.
Q. Don't know how a Swede runs, do you? A. No
Q. Does a Swede run cross-legged? A. No.
Q. You don't want to have this jury think, do you, that you can tell what the nationality of this man was by the way he ran? Do you want them to believe that? A. Yes, I do.
Q. Now, what nationality did he belong to? A. I believe the first thing that came into my mind was that he was an Italian or a Russian. I would not say; he might be a Mexican for what I know. I would not say he was an Alaskan or an African.
Q. You eliminate the African? A. Yes.
Q. He was either a Russian or an Italian or a Greek or a Brazilian or Mexican, either one of these? A. Yes.
Q. Or a Jap? A. Might be.
Q. Would you say that he might be a Jap? A. No
Q. You would not say that he was a Jap or a Chinaman or an African—these three are eliminated absolutely, are they? A. Yes; nor an American.
Q. I think four now are eliminated. He might be a member of any other nationality on the face of the globe? A. Yes.
Q. You only got a fleeting glance at him? A. Yes.
Q. You were 150 feet from him all the time? A. I came a little nearer to get behind a tree; about five feet nearer.
The Red Raids
A. Mitchell Palmer—perhaps you have forgotten the name. This man was Attorney-General of the United States under Woodrow Wilson. He was also aspirant for the Democratic nomination for President in 1920. He was smoother, handsomer, but essentially the same type of man as Harry M. Daugherty. Perhaps you have forgotten what Mr. Palmer did to American constitutional liberties. Then consult the "Report Upon the Illegal Practices of the United States Department of Justice" issued by twelve distinguished lawyers in May, 1920. It says of Mr. Palmer:
Wholesale arrests both of aliens and citizens have been made without warrant or any process of law; men and women have been jailed and held incomunicado without access of friends or counsel; homes have been entered without search-warrant and property seized and removed; other property has been wantonly destroyed; workingmen and workingwomen suspected of radical views have been shamefully abused and mistreated.
More than that. The report accuses Mr. Palmer of planting agents provocateur in workingmen's organizations to facilitate his wholesale and merciless raids and arrests. He also flooded the nation with lying propaganda against radicals for the purpose of justifying his illegal acts and inflaming public opinion. He intimidated, terrorized,
