It would have been merciful to the last degree in comparison had they been boiled in oil, burned at the stake, or had every joint torn from their bodies on the wheel when they were first seized as prey to glut the vengeance of slave drivers, who wax fat and savage in child labor and who never forgive an “agitator” who is too rigidly honest to be bribed, too courageous to be intimidated, and too defiant to be suppressed.
And that is precisely why the mill-owning, labor-sweating malefactors of Massachusetts had Sacco and Vanzetti framed, pounced upon, thrown into a dungeon, and sentenced to be murdered by their judicial and other official underlings.
I appeal to the working men and women of America to think of these two loyal comrades, these two honest, clean-hearted brothers of ours, in this fateful hour in which they stand face to face with their bitter and ignominious doom.
The capitalist courts of Massachusetts have had them on the rack day and night, devouring the flesh of their bodies and torturing their souls for six long years to finally deal the last vicious, heartless blow, aimed to send them to their graves as red-handed felons and murderers.
Would that it were in my power to make that trial judge and those cold-blooded gowns in the higher court suffer for just one day the agonizing torture, the pitiless misery, the relentless cruelty they have inflicted in their stony-hearted “judicial calmness and serenity” upon Sacco and Vanzetti thru six endless years!
Perhaps some day these solemn and begowned servants of the ruling powers may have to atone for their revolting crime against innocence in the name of justice!
They have pronounced the doom of their long suffering victims and the press declares that the last word has been spoken. I deny it.
There is another voice yet to be heard and that is the voice of an outraged working class. It is for labor now to speak and for the labor movement to announce its decision, and that decision is and must be, SACCO AND VANZETTI ARE INNOCENT AND SHALL NOT DIE!
To allow these two intrepid proletarian leaders to perish as red-handed criminals would forever disgrace the cause of labor in the United States. The countless children of generations yet to come would blush for their sires and grand sires and never forgive their cowardice and poltroonery.
It cannot be possible, and I shall not think it possible, that the American workers will desert, betray and deliver to their executioner two men who have stood as staunchly true, as unflinchingly loyal in the cause of labor as have Sacco and Vanzetti, whose doom has been pronounced by the implacable enemies of the working class.