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FACING THE CHAIR
STORY OF THE AMERICANIZATION OF TWO FOREIGNBORN WORKMEN

by

JOHN DOS PASSOS

Published by

SACCO-VANZETTI DEFENSE COMMITTEE

BOSTON, MASS.

1927

“AND I WILL SAY TO YOUR HONOR THAT A GOVERNMENT THAT HAS COME TO HONOR ITS OWN SECRETS MORE THAN THE LIVES OF ITS CITIZENS HAS BECOME A TYRANNY WHETHER YOU CALL IT A REPUBLIC, A MONARCHY OR ANYTHING ELSE.”

—from Atty. William G. Thompson’s argument before Judge Thayer, pleading for a new trial.

ANATOLE FRANCE’S APPEAL TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE

October 31, 1921

People of United States of America,

Listen to the appeal of an old man of the old world who is not a foreigner, for he is the fellow citizen of all mankind.

In one of your states two men, Sacco and Vanzetti, have been convicted for a crime of opinion.

It is horrible to think that human beings should pay with their lives for the exercise of that most sacred right which, no matter what party we belong to, we must all defend.

Don’t let this most iniquitous sentence be carried out.

The death of Sacco and Vanzetti will make martyrs of them and cover you with shame.

You are a great people. You ought to be a just people. There are crowds of intelligent men among you, men who think. I prefer to appeal to them. I say to them beware of making martyrs. That is the unforgivable crime that nothing can wipe out and that weighs on generation after generation.

Save Sacco and Vanzetti.

Save them for your honor, for the honor of your children, and for the generations yet unborn.

Anatole France.

EUGENE V. DEBS TO THE WORKERS OF AMERICA

Gene Debs is dead. Gene Debs lives in the hearts and minds of millions of Americans. This is his last appeal for justice.

The supreme court of Massachusetts has spoken at last and Bartolomeo Vanzetti and Nicola Sacco, two of the bravest and best scouts that ever served the labor movement, must go to the electric chair.

The decision of this capitalist judicial tribunal is not surprising. It accords perfectly with the tragical farce and the farcical tragedy of the entire trial of these two absolutely innocent and shamefully persecuted working men.

The evidence at the trial in which they were charged with a murder they had no more to do with committing than I had, would have convicted no one but a “foreign labor agitator” in the hydrophobic madness of the world war. In any other case the perjured and flagrantly made-to-order testimony, repeatedly exposed and well known to the court, would have resulted in instantaneous acquittal. Not even a sheep-killing dog but only a “vicious foreign-radical” could have been convicted under such shameless evidence.

Sacco and Vanzetti were framed and doomed from the start. Not all the testimony that could have been piled up to establish their innocence beyond a question of doubt could have saved them in that court. The trial judge was set and immovable. There must be a conviction. It was so ordained by the capitalist powers that be, and it had to come. And there must be no new trial granted lest the satanic perjury of the testimony and the utter rottenness of the proceedings appear too notoriously rank and revolting in spite of the conspiracy of the press to keep the public in ignorance of the disgraceful and damaging facts.

Aside from the disgustingly farcical nature of the trial which could and should have ended in fifteen minutes in that masterclass court, the refined malice and barbaric cruelty of these capitalist tribunals, high and low, may be read in the insufferable torture inflicted thru six long, agonizing years upon their imprisoned and helpless victims.

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.

Now is the time for all labor to be aroused and to rally as one vast host to vindicate its assailed honor, to assert its self-respect, and to issue its demand that in spite of the capitalist-controlled courts of Massachusetts honest and innocent workingmen whose only crime is their innocence of crime and their loyalty to labor, shall not be murdered by the official hirelings of the corporate powers that rule and tyrannize over the state.

It does not matter what the occupation of the worker may be, what he is in theory of belief, what union or party he belongs to, this is the supreme cause of us all and the call comes to each of us and to all of us to unite from coast to coast in every state and thruout the whole country to protest in thunder tones against the consummation of that foul and damning crime against labor in the once proud state of Massachusetts.

A thousand protest meetings should be called at once and ring with denunciation of the impending crime.

A million letters of indignant resentment should roll in on the governor of Massachusetts and upon members of the house of representatives and the senate of the United States.

It is this, and this alone, that will save Sacco and Vanzetti. We cannot ignore this duty to ourselves, to our martyr comrades, to our cause, to justice and humanity without being guilty of treason to our own manhood and outraging our own souls.

Arouse ye toiling millions of the nation and swear by all you hold sacred in the cause of labor and in the cause of truth and justice and all things of good report, that Sacco and Vanzetti, your brothers and mine, innocent as we are, shall not be foully murdered to glut the vengeance of a gang of plutocratic slave drivers!

“WHEN KATZMANN ASKED ME WHAT I THOUGHT OF SACCO AS A PARTICIPANT IN THE BRAINTREE HOLDUP, I EXPLAINED TO HIM THAT ANARCHISTS DO NOT COMMIT CRIMES FOR MONEY BUT FOR A PRINCIPLE, AND THAT BANDITRY WAS NOT IN THEIR CODE”.

—from a letter dated Chicago, Ill. September 29th written by Feri Felix Weiss to the editor of the Boston Globe, published with an accompanying affidavit in the New York World, October 13, 1926.

AMERICAN FEDERATION OF LABOR DEMANDS INVESTIGATION

On October 11th, 1926, the American Federation of Labor Convention in Detroit, representing millions of working men passed the following resolution proposing that the American Federation of Labor demand an investigation of the activities of agents of the Department of Justice in the Sacco-Vanzetti case.

Resolution No. 74.—By Delegate Samuel Squibb, International Granite Cutters’ Union.

WHEREAS, The case of Sacco and Vanzetti has again come before the public; and

WHEREAS, After six years of imprisonment those who take an interest in this case are now more convinced than ever that Sacco and Vanzetti are not guilty of the crime they were charged with and convicted for; and

WHEREAS, The motion for a new trial based on newly discovered evidence, primarily on the confession of Celestino F. Madeiros, is now before the court of Massachusetts; and

WHEREAS, On this motion for a new trial, affidavits of former agents of the Department of Justice of the United States have been produced that show that there are records on file in the office of the Department of Justice, establishing the fact that there was collaboration between the Department of Justice and the District Attorney of Norfolk County to convict Sacco and Vanzetti on charges of a crime, of which the Department of Justice did not believe them guilty; and

WHEREAS, The Attorney General has refused access to the records in the case to the Counsel for the Defense, in spite of his urgent request for the same; and

WHEREAS, A large number of the International Unions affiliated with the American Federation of Labor are deeply interested in the case of Sacco and Vanzetti and have by resolutions adopted at their conventions, expressed the sentiment of their members on this matter; be it, therefore

RESOLVED, That the American Federation of Labor in convention assembled demand an immediate investigation by the Congress of the United States of the actions of the agents of the Department of Justice; the connection of Department of Justice with the conviction of Sacco and Vanzetti; and the refusal of the Department of Justice to disclose its files on the Sacco and Vanzetti case; be it further

RESOLVED, That copies of this resolution be sent to the President and Congress of the United States.

The convention of the American Federation of Labor of last year and of several years prior thereto have repeatedly declared that Sacco and Vanzetti should be accorded a new trial in order that no man’s life may be placed in jeopardy without a just and fair trial and be found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. This insistence for a new trial was predicated on the doubt of many as to the guilt of these men and because of the belief that the enforcement of this decision without a retrial and a full and complete opportunity to present all possible evidence having come to light either as to the guilt or innocence of these men would be a miscarriage of justice.

The resolution presented indicates or at least raises a doubt that evidence has been or is being withheld by the Department of Justice relating to the guilt or innocence of these men. This in itself places the Department of Justice into serious question. It adds further doubt as to the guilt or innocence of the men charged and found guilty of crime. Regardless of the character or attitude of mind of these men toward our government or its institutions as a people we are deeply concerned that the power of government, or that of any of its departments shall at no time be used unconstitutionally to jeopardize the life and liberty of any person. And because of the serious charge thus made we recommend reaffirmation of our former demand for a retrial and reference of this resolution to the Executive Council, with directions that it proceed immediately to inquire into the charge made and to have determined the truth or falsity of this charge by Congressional investigation, if that be necessary.

The report of the committee was adopted by unanimous vote.

“The department of Justice in Boston was anxious to get sufficient evidence against Sacco and Vanzetti to deport them but never succeeded in getting the kind and amount of evidence required for that purpose. It was the opinion of the department agents here that a conviction of Sacco and Vanzetti for murder would be one way of disposing of the two men. It was also the general opinion of such of the agents in Boston as had any actual knowledge of the Sacco-Vanzetti case; that Sacco and Vanzetti, although anarchists and agitators, were not highway robbers and had nothing to do with the South Braintree crime. My opinion and the opinion of most of the older men in the government service, has always been that the South Braintree crime was the work of professionals.”

—from the affidavit of Lawrence Letherman, July 8, 1926.

“By calling these men anarchists, I do not mean necessarily that they were inclined to violence, nor do I understand all the different meanings different people would attach to the word ‘anarchists.’ What I mean is I think they did not believe in organized government or in private property. But I am also thoroughly convinced and always have been, and I believe that is the opinion and always has been the opinion of such Boston agents of the Department of Justice as had any knowledge on the subject, that these men had nothing whatever to do with the South Braintree murders, and that their conviction was the result of co-operation between the Boston agents of the Department of Justice and the District Attorney. It was the general opinion of the Boston agents of the Department of Justice having knowledge of the affair that the South Braintree crime was committed by a gang of professional highwaymen.”

—from the affidavit of Fred J. Weyand, Boston, July 1, 1926.

FACING THE CHAIR

The evening of May 5th, 1920, Nicola Sacco, an Italian, working as edger in a shoe factory, and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, also an Italian, a fishpeddler, were arrested in a streetcar in Brockton, Massachusetts. The two men were known as radicals and were active in Italian working class organizations in the vicinity of Boston. In Sacco’s pocket at the time of his arrest was a draft of a handbill calling a meeting to protest against the illegal imprisonment and possible murder of Salsedo by agents of the Department of Justice. Salsedo was the anarchist printer whose body was found smashed on the pavement of Park Row under the windows of the New York offices of the Department of Justice, where he and his friend Elia had been held without warrant for eight weeks of the third degree. Sacco and Vanzetti were armed when arrested and lied when questioned about their friends and associates. It came out later that they had been trying to get the Overland car of a man named Boda out of a garage in order to go about the country to their friends’ houses warning them of a new series of red raids they had been tipped off to expect. At the same time they were collecting radical newspapers and any literature that might seem suspicious to the police. They were arrested, because the garage-owner phoned the police, having been warned to notify them of the movements of any Italians who owned automobiles.

A couple of weeks before, the afternoon of April 15, a peculiarly impudent and brutal crime had been committed in South Braintree, a nearby town, the climax of a long series of holdups and burglaries. Bandits after shooting down a paymaster and his guard in the center of the town had escaped in a Buick touring car with over fifteen thousand dollars in cash. It was generally rumored that the bandits were most of them Italians. The police had made a great fuss but found no clue to the identity of the murderers. Public feeling was bitter and critical. A victim had to be found. To prove the murderers to have been reds would please everybody. So first Vanzetti was taken over to Plymouth and tried as one of the men who had attempted to hold up a paytruck in Bridgewater early in the morning of the previous Christmas Eve. He was convicted and sentenced to fifteen years imprisonment. Plymouth is owned by the largest cordage works in the world. Several years before Vanzetti had been active in a successful strike against the Cordage. Then he was taken to Dedham and tried with Sacco for the murder of the paymaster and his guard killed in South Braintree. After a stormy trial they were convicted of murder in the first degree. Since then sentence has been stayed by a series of motions for a new trial. One appeal to the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts has been refused and another is pending.

The most important evidence that has come up in the course of the motions is the series of affidavits procured by the defense, proving, as the labor press has always claimed, that operatives of the Department of Justice were active in the trial, and lacking evidence on which to deport Sacco and Vanzetti as radicals, helped in the frameup by which they were convicted as murderers.

“They were bad actors anyway and got what was coming to them,” one detective is quoted as saying. That means that any man who gives up his life to the hope of humanizing the treadmill of industry is a bad actor in the minds of the governing class and governing class police. Sacco and Vanzetti are not the only men who have been framed, but they have become symbols. All over the world people are hopefully, heartbrokenly watching the Sacco-Vanzetti Case as a focus in the unending fight for human rights of oppressed individuals and masses against oppressing individuals and masses.

I
WHERE THE CASE STANDS TODAY

On October 23rd 1926 Judge Webster Thayer handed down his decision on the latest motions for a new trial, argued by the defense during the week of September 13th. The decision is a document of something more than thirty thousand words in length. A reader unskilled in the technique of legal judgment gets the impression that the document is more of a personal apologium and defense on the part of the court than the impartial decision of a judge. Not a spark of scientific spirit, or of the consciousness of the infinite possibilities of human error has edged its way into those long involved sentences.

The confession of Madeiros and the elaborate circumstantial case evolved from it by the defense, tending to prove that the South Braintree holdup was committed by members of the Morelli gang of Providence, is dismissed with the following statement:

In conclusion, in so far as the Madeiros affidavit is concerned, it would have been an easy task for this court to transfer the responsibility upon another jury, but if this were done it would be the shirking of a solemn duty that the law places upon the trial court. Guided by this solemn duty I have examined and studied for several weeks without interruption, the record of the testimony upon this motion and upon the Madeiros deposition; and being controlled only by judgment, reason, and conscience, and after giving as favorable consideration to these defendants as may be consistent with a due regard for the rights of the public and sound principles of law, I am forced to the conclusion that the affidavit of Madeiros is unreliable, untrustworthy and untrue. To set aside the verdict of a jury affirmed by the Supreme Judicial Court of this commonwealth on such an affidavit would be a mockery upon truth and justice. Therefore, exercising every right vested in this court in the granting of motions for new trials by the law of this commonwealth, the motion for a new trial is hereby denied.

Further on in this comment upon the plea that Department of Justice agents worked with the prosecution to obtain conviction for murder against Sacco and Vanzetti although they considered them to be innocent (based on the now famous affidavits of Letherman and Weyand):

Cases cannot be decided on the ground of public opinion, but upon reason, judgment, and in accordance with law; for cases cannot be decided on mystery, suspicion or propaganda but upon the actual evidence that is introduced at the trial. If this were otherwise God help the poor defendants in criminal cases, if they are to be acquitted and convicted, not upon evidence and the law, but upon public opinion, which might be formed as the result of an unwarranted public opinion or propaganda.

This might seem to the unlegal mind of a man smoking a cigar at a street corner, a knife that cuts two ways. To continue further on:

Have Attorney General Sargent of the United States and his subordinates and former Attorney General Palmer under the administration of President Wilson (for most of the correspondence took place under President Wilson’s administration) stooped so low and are they so degraded that they were willing, by the concealment of evidence to enter into a fraudulent conspiracy with the government of Massachusetts to send two men to the electric chair, not because they were murderers, but because they were radicals?

Judge Thayer answers, No. But will that be the verdict of fairminded men and women when the full truth of this case is known? Will that be the verdict of workingmen the world over who see their own image in Sacco and Vanzetti? In the face of the evidence as it stands would a plain mind, free from legal technicalities and sectional bitterness answer No?

This decision leaves one more chance of appeal to the Supreme Judicial Court before sentence, but as that court makes decisions only on points of law and not on the human merits of a case, the hope of reversal is slim. After that the only appeal is to executive clemency, or to the Supreme Court of the United States on the plea that the defendants were convicted without due process of law. A pretty forlorn hope.

Sacco and Vanzetti are not asking for pardon, they are asking for justice. Remember that when it became evident that Tom Mooney was innocent of the Preparedness Parade bombing for which he had been convicted in California, instead of his being freed, his sentence was commuted to life. He is still in jail a victim of executive clemency.

Sacco and Vanzetti want justice, not clemency.

Only an immense surge of protest from all classes and conditions of men can save them from the Chair.

II
THE HEARING OF THE SEVENTH MOTION

Another hearing of a motion for a new trial. Six have been denied so far. Sacco and Vanzetti have been six years in jail. This time there are no guards with riotguns, no state troopers riding round the courthouse. No excitement of any sort. Everyone has forgotten the great days of the Red Conspiracy, the passion to sustain law and order against the wave of radicalism, against foreigners, and the ‘moral rats gnawing at the foundations of the commonwealth’ that Attorney General Palmer spoke of so eloquently. In this court there are no prisoners in a cage, no hysterical witnesses, no credulous jury under the sign of the screaming eagle. Quiet, dignity; almost like a class in a lawschool. The case has been abstracted into a sort of mathematics. Only the lawyers for the defense and for the prosecution, Ranney from the District Attorney’s office, Thompson and Ehrmann for the defense, two small tables of newspaper men, on the benches a few Italians, some professional liberals and radicals, plainclothes men with rumpsteak faces occupying the end seats.

The court attendants make everybody get up. The Judge comes in on the heels of a man in a blue uniform. Judge Thayer is a very small man with a little grey lined shingle face, nose glasses tilting out at the top across a sudden little hawknose. He walks with a firm bustling tread. The black gown that gives him the power of life and death (the gown of majesty of the blind goddess the law) sticks out a little behind. Another attendant walks after him. The judge climbs up to his high square desk. The judge speaks. His voice crackles dryly as old papers.

Affidavits, affidavits read alternately by counsel in the stillness of the yellowvarnished courtroom. Gradually as the reading goes on the courtroom shrinks. Tragic figures of men and women grow huge like shadows cast by a lantern on a wall; the courtroom becomes a tiny pinhole through which to see a world of huge trampling forces in conflict.

First it’s the story of the life of Celestino Madeiros, a poor Portuguese boy brought up in New Bedford. He learned Americanism all right, he suffered from no encumbering ideas of social progress; the law of dawg eat dawg was morbidly vivid in his mind from the first. Hardly out of school he was up in court for ‘breaking and entering’. No protests from him about the war. He and his sister and another man dressed up in uniform and collected money for some vaguely phoney patriotic society, The American Rescue League. By the spring of 1920 he was deep in the criminal world that is such an apt cartoon of the world of legitimate business. He was making good. He was in with the Morelli brothers of Providence, a gang of freight-car robbers, bootleggers, pimps, hijackers and miscellaneous thugs. The great wave of highway robbery that followed the war was at its height. For three years the leaders of society had been proclaiming the worthlessness of human life. Is it surprising that criminals should begin to take them at their word?

Scared to death, blind drunk, Madeiros, an overgrown boy of eighteen, was in the back seat of the Buick touring car that carried off the tragic holdup outside the Rice and Hutchins shoefactory at South Braintree. Probably on his share of the payroll he went south, once he got out of the Rhode Island jail where another episode of breaking and entering had landed him. He came back north with his money spent and worked as a bouncer at the Bluebird Inn, a ‘disorderly’ road house at Seekonk, Mass. and fell at last into the clutches of the Massachusetts law through a miserable failure to duplicate the daring South Braintree holdup at Wrentham, where he shot an aged bank cashier and ran without trying to get any loot. At his trial he sat so hunched and motionless that he seemed an imbecile. Not even when his mother threw an epileptic fit in the courtroom and was carried out rigid and foaming did he look up. At the Dedham jail he was put in the cell next to Sacco. He could see Sacco going out to meet his wife and kids when they came to see him. The idea of an innocent man going to the chair worried him. For him everything had crashed. It had been on his own confession that he had been convicted of the Wrentham murder. He seems to have puzzled for a long time to find some way of clearing Sacco and Vanzetti without inculpating his old associates, even though he had fallen out with them long ago. He tried to tell Sacco about it in the jail bathroom, but Sacco, seeing Department of Justice spies everywhere—and with good reason—wouldn’t listen to him. So at last he sent the warden a written confession asking him to forward it to the Boston American. Nothing happened. The warden kept his mouth shut. Eventually he sent a new confession to Sacco enclosed in a magazine, begging him to let his lawyer see it. “I hereby confess to being in the South Braintree Shoe Company crime and Sacco and Vanzetti were not in said crime.—Celestino F. Madeiros”.

Here is Madeiros’s own account of the crime:

On April 15, 1920, I was picked up about 4 A. M. at my boarding house, 181 North Main St., Providence, by four Italians who came in a Hudson five-passenger open touring car. My sister’s landlord lived at the same place. She was then a widow and her name was Mary Bover. She has since been married, and now lives at 735 Bellville Avenue, New Bedford. There was also living there at the same time a man named Arthur Tatro, who afterwards committed suicide in the house of Correction of New Bedford. He was Captain and I was Lieutenant in the American Rescue League at that time. Two or three privates in the league also lived there, whose names I do not remember.

We went from Providence to Randolph, where we changed to a Buick car brought there by another Italian. We left the Hudson car in the woods and took it again after we did the job, leaving the Buick in the woods in charge of one man, who drove it off to another part of the woods, as I understood.

After we did the job at South Braintree and changed back into the Hudson car at Randolph, we drove very fast through Randolph, and were seen by a boy named Thomas and his sister. His father lives on a street that I think is called Prang Street, and is in the window metal business or something of that kind. I became acquainted with him four years later when I went to live in Randolph with Weeks on the same street. Thomas told me one day in conversation that he saw the car that did the South Braintree job going through Randolph very fast.

When we started we went from Providence first to Boston and then back to Providence, and then back to South Braintree, getting there about noon. We spent some time in a “speak easy” in South Braintree two or three miles from the place of the crime, leaving the car in the yard of the house.

When we went to Boston we went to South Boston and stopped in Andrews Square. I stayed in the car. The others went in a saloon to get information, as they told me, about the money that was to be sent to South Braintree.

I had never been to South Braintree before. These four men persuaded me to go with them two or three nights before when I was talking with them in a saloon in Providence. The saloon was also a poolroom, near my boarding house. They talked like professionals. They said they had done lots of jobs of this kind. They had been engaged in robbing freight cars in Providence. Two were young men from 20 to 25 years old, one was about 40, the other about 35. All wore caps. I then was 18 years old. I do not remember whether they were shaved or not. Two of them did the shooting—the oldest one and another. They were left on the street. The arrangement was that they should meet me in a Providence saloon the next night to divide the money. I went there but they did not come.

I sat on the back seat of the automobile. I had a Colt 38 calibre automatic but did not use it. I was told that I was there to help hold back the crowd in case they made a rush. The curtains on the car were flapping. I do not remember whether there was any shotgun or rifle in the car or not.

These men talked a lot of New York. As soon as I got enough money I went to New York and also Chicago hoping to find them in cabarets spending the money, but I never found them.

They had been stealing silk, shoes, cotton, etc., from freight cars sending it to New York. Two of them lived on South Main Street and two on North Main Street, in lodging houses. I had known them three months or four.

The old man was called Mike. Another one was called William or Bill. I don’t remember what the others were called.

The money that they took from the men in South Braintree was in a black bag, I think.

I was scared to death when I heard the shooting begin.

Both cars had Massachusetts numbers.

The names of these men don’t amount to anything. They change them whenever they want to. When they are driven out of New York they come to Providence. I haven’t any idea where they are now. I have never seen any of them since.

Sacco and Vanzetti had nothing to do with this job, and neither did Gerald Chapman. It was entirely put up by the oldest of the Italians in Providence.

Then there are the corroborating stories of Weeks, Madeiros’ associate now a lifer in the Charlestown Penitentiary, of the owners of the Blue Bird Inn, of various Providence lawyers and policemen as to the activities of the Morelli gang.

Out of this comparatively understandable world of thieves and murderers, the affidavits lead us into the underground passages of the Department of Justice, into a world of dicks and stoolpigeons.

Here are the three main affidavits. They speak for themselves.

AFFIDAVIT OF LAWRENCE LETHERMAN

My name is Lawrence Letherman. I live in Malden, and am in the employ of the Beacon Trust Company. I was in the Federal service for thirty-six years, first in the railway mail service for nine years; then as Post Office Inspector for twenty five years; then three years as local agent of the Department of Justice in Boston in charge of the Bureau of Investigation. I began the last named duties in September, 1921.

While I was Post Office Inspector I co-operated to a considerable extent with the agents of the Department of Justice in Boston in matters of joint concern, including the Sacco-Vanzetti case. The man under me in direct charge of matters relating to that case was Mr. William West, who is still attached to the Department of Justice in Boston. I know that Mr. West co-operated with Mr. Katzmann, the District Attorney, during the trial of the case, and later with Mr. Williams. I know that before, during, and after the trial of Sacco and Vanzetti Mr. West had a number of so-called “under cover” men assigned to this case, including one Ruzzamenti and one Carbone. I know that by an arrangement with the Department of Justice, Carbone was placed in a cell next to the cell of Sacco for the purpose of obtaining whatever incriminating information he could obtain from Sacco, after winning his confidence. Nothing, however, was obtained in that way. One Weiss, formerly an agent of the Department, was involved in this plan. He was running a private office at that time on the seventh floor of the building at 7 Water Street under the offices of the Department, and remained in touch with the Department agents. Efforts were made by Mr. West to put other men in the Dedham Jail as spies, but the men whom he desired to use for that purpose objected.

Before, during, and after the trial, the Department of Justice had a number of men assigned to watch the activities of the Sacco-Vanzetti Defense Committee. No evidence warranting prosecution of anybody was obtained by these men. They were all “under cover” men, and one or two of them obtained employment by the Committee in some capacity or other. I think one of them was a collector. The Department of Justice in Boston was anxious to get sufficient evidence against Sacco and Vanzetti to deport them, but never succeeded in getting the kind and amount of evidence required for that purpose. It was the opinion of the Department agents here that a conviction of Sacco and Vanzetti for murder would be one way of disposing of these two men. It was also the general opinion of such agents in Boston as had any actual knowledge of the Sacco-Vanzetti case; that Sacco and Vanzetti, although anarchists and agitators, were not highway robbers, and had nothing to do with the South Braintree crime. My opinion, and the opinion of most of the older men in the Government service, has always been that the South Braintree crime was the work of professionals.

The Boston agents of the Department of Justice assigned certain men to attend the trial of Sacco and Vanzetti, including Mr. Weyand. Mr. West also attended the trial. There is or was a great deal of correspondence on file in the Boston office between Mr. West and Mr. Katzmann, the District Attorney, and there are also copies of reports sent to Washington about the case. Letters and reports were made in triplicate; two copies were sent to Washington and one retained in Boston. The letters and documents on file in the Boston office would throw a great deal of light upon the preparation of the Sacco-Vanzetti case for trial, and upon the real opinion of the Boston office of the Department of Justice as to the guilt of Sacco and Vanzetti of the particular crime with which they were charged.

I know that at one time Mr. West placed an Italian printer or linotyper in the office of some Italian newspaper in Boston for the purpose of obtaining information. One of the men employed by West at one stage of the Sacco-Vanzetti case was named Shaughnessy. He was subsequently convicted of highway robbery and is now serving a term in the Massachusetts State Prison. One of the “under cover” men employed by Mr. West was an Armenian named Harold Zorian. While being paid $7.00 a day by the Government he became Secretary of some Communist or Radical organization in the vicinity of Boston, the proceedings of which he reported to the Department.

(So the government was interested in the conviction of Sacco and Vanzetti? Provocative agents were used to gain the confidence of the Defense Committee? The Department of Justice is in possession of evidence and information about the case?

“Have Attorney General Sargent and his subordinates ... stooped so low and are they so degraded that they are willing by the concealment of evidence to enter into a fraudulent conspiracy with the government of Massachusetts to send two men to the electric chair, not because they were murderers but because they were radicals?” asks Judge Thayer in his decision).

AFFIDAVIT OF FRED J. WEYAND

My name is Fred J. Weyand. I reside in Portland, Maine. I am a Special Agent of the Attorney General’s office of the State of Maine, and have been since I resigned as an agent of the Department of Justice about a year and a half ago.

I became connected with the Department of Justice in the year 1916, and shortly afterwards became a Special Agent with an office first at 24 Milk Street, Boston, later at 45 Milk Street and later at 7 Water Street, where the Department had offices on the eighth floor, and later at the Post Office Building. My duties as Special Agent were in general to investigate and report upon any and all violations of the penal code which I might be assigned to investigate by my superiors, who were first Frederick Smith, next George E. Kelliher, next John Hannahan, next Charles Bancroft and last Lawrence Letherman. These were my superiors while I was working from the Boston office. I occasionally worked in other parts of the country and then came under other superiors temporarily. I was a Special Agent during the entire administration of Mitchell Palmer, Attorney General of the United States, and was concerned in the activities against the so-called Reds or Radicals, including arrests and deportations which were instigated by Mr. Palmer, and which included the wholesale raids made in the month of January 1920, in some of which I participated.

Sometime before the arrest of Sacco and Vanzetti on May 5, 1920—just how long before I do not remember—the names of both of them had got in the files of the Department of Justice as Radicals to be watched. The Boston files of the Department, including correspondence, would show the date when the names of these men were first brought to the attention of the Department. Both these men were listed as followers or associates of an educated Italian editor named Galleani. Galleani was the publisher of an anarchistic paper. He lived in Wrentham and published his paper, I think, in Lynn. Among other persons associated with Galleani were Carlo Tresca, Carlo Valdinoci and David Tedesco. The suspicion entertained by the Department of Justice against Sacco and Vanzetti was that they had violated the Selective Service Act, and also that they were anarchists or held Radical opinions of some sort or other.

A man named Feri Felix Weiss was transferred from the Immigration Bureau to the Department of Justice in Boston in the year 1917, and remained a Special Agent of that Department in Boston until 1919, I think. He then travelled abroad and returned in 1920 and opened an office as a scientific detective and lecturer at 7 Water Street, Boston, with an office on the floor below occupied by the Department of Justice. In 1925, Weiss returned to the Immigration Department at Boston, where he is at the present time.

William J. West, who is now a Special Agent of the Department of Justice, became such in July or August 1917. Prior to that he was an Immigration Inspector with Feri Weiss. Since his appointment as a Special Agent he has spent most of his time in the Boston office of the Department of Justice, having in charge during the past seven years the so-called Radical Division of the Department of Justice, which has been in operation since about 1917.

During the year 1920 I did a good deal of work in the State of Maine, but was in Boston for several days at least once every two weeks. I have knowledge that the result of the trial before Judge Anderson of the Radicals or Communists, as we called them, arrested at the time of the raids above referred to, and of the decision of Judge Anderson freeing many of them and of his criticisms of the Department of Justice, was to make all agents of the Department of Justice in Boston more cautious afterwards in proceeding against suspected Radicals.

Shortly after the arrest of Sacco and Vanzetti on the charge of the South Braintree murders, meetings began to be held by sympathizers, and I was assigned to attend these meetings and report to the Department the speeches made. We also assigned a certain “under cover” man, as we called him, to win the confidence of the Sacco-Vanzetti Defense Committee, and to become one of the collectors. This man used to report the proceedings of the Committee to the Department agents in Boston, and has said to me he was in the habit of taking as much money collected for his own use as he saw fit. So far as I know, no evidence was obtained of utterances at any of these meetings which warranted proceedings against anybody. Mr. West was also attending meetings of Sacco-Vanzetti sympathizers during the same period. The original reports thus obtained were sent to the Washington office of the Department of Justice and duplicates kept in the Boston office, where I believe they now are. I know that at one time as many as twelve agents of the Department of Justice located in Boston were assigned to cover Sacco-Vanzetti meetings and other Radical activities connected with the Sacco-Vanzetti case. No evidence was discovered warranting the institution of proceedings against anybody. I have no present recollection of the trial of Vanzetti for the alleged Bridgewater robbery; but when the joint trial of Sacco and Vanzetti for the South Braintree murders began in the summer of 1921, the Department of Justice at Boston took an active interest in the matter. I was assigned to cover the trial for the purpose of reporting the proceedings and picking up any information that I could in regard to the Radical activities of Sacco and Vanzetti, or of any of their friends. Mr. West also attended the trial for the same purpose. I was not personally in touch with Mr. Katzmann, the District Attorney, or his office, but Mr. West was in touch with them and was giving and obtaining information in regard to the case.

Going back now before the trial, a certain John Ruzzamenti had been informally employed by special agents of the Department of Justice from some time in the year 1917, to furnish information concerning Radical activities and evasion of the draft by Italians, and in this connection had made an investigation of Tedesco, above referred to, who was once arrested in consequence of information furnished by Ruzzamenti, but was never tried. During this time Ruzzamenti also worked occasionally for detective agencies. He was well known to Weiss.

I have been informed by Mr. West and believe, and therefore allege, that there was another Italian whom the Department occasionally used for similar purposes, named Carbone and that he, under an arrangement with the District Attorney, the Sheriff, and Mr. Weiss, was placed in the cell next to the cell of Sacco sometime during the year 1920 for the purpose of winning the confidence of Sacco, and thus of obtaining, if he could, incriminating evidence against him, but no evidence of the sort was obtained by Carbone. The primary purpose of the Department in putting Carbone there was to obtain evidence, if possible, concerning the so-called Wall Street explosion; but it was also hoped that other incriminating evidence might be obtained.

Sometime in the early part of the year 1921, I was informed by Ruzzamenti that he had been sent for by Weiss, who was then out of Government service, to come on here to help convict Sacco and Vanzetti; that he had seen Katzmann, and that an arrangement had been made by which he was to secure board in the house of Mrs. Sacco and obtain her confidence, and thus obtain information; but that arrangement had never been carried out, and he had not been paid. I annex to this affidavit photostatic copies of parts of a letter which I identify as in the handwriting of Weiss.

Shortly after the trial of Sacco and Vanzetti was concluded I said to Weiss that I did not believe they were the right men, meaning the men who shot the paymaster, and he replied that that might be so, but that they were bad actors and would get what they deserved anyway.

Instructions were received from the Chief of the Bureau of the Department of Justice in Washington from time to time in reference to the Sacco-Vanzetti case. They are on file or should be on file in the Boston office.

The understanding in this case between the agents of the Department of Justice in Boston and the District Attorney followed the usual custom, that the Department of Justice would help the District Attorney to secure a conviction, and that he in turn would help the agents of the Department of Justice to secure information that they might desire. This would include the turning over of any pertinent information by the Department of Justice to the District Attorney. Sacco and Vanzetti were, at least in the opinion of the Boston agents of the Department of Justice, not liable to deportation as draft dodgers, but only as anarchists, and could not be deported as anarchists unless it could be shown that they were believers in anarchy, which is always a difficult thing to show. It usually can only be shown by self-incrimination. The Boston agents believed that these men were anarchists, and hoped to be able to secure the necessary evidence against them from their testimony at their trial for murder, to be used in case they were not convicted for murder. There is correspondence between Mr. Katzmann and Mr. West on file in the Boston office of the Department. Mr. West furnished Mr. Katzmann information about the Radical activities of Sacco and Vanzetti to be used in their cross-examination.

In the years 1922–1924 Mr. West had working for him as “under cover” or secret operators an Italian and a Syrian or Armenian. The Italian worked as a printer. I do not remember the names of either of them; but I know that he put the Italian in as a linotyper in the office of an Italian newspaper in Boston as a spy. The Syrian or Armenian is the man to whom I have referred above as having become a collector for the Committee.

From my investigation, combined with the investigation made by the other agents of the Department in Boston, I am convinced not only that these men had violated the Selective Service rules and regulations and evaded the draft, but that they were anarchists, and that they ought to have been deported. By calling these men anarchists, I do not mean necessarily that they were inclined to violence, nor do I understand all the different meanings that different people would attach to the word “anarchists”. What I mean is that I think they did not believe in organized government or in private property. But I am also thoroughly convinced and always have been, and I believe that is and always has been the opinion of such Boston agents of the Department of Justice as had any knowledge on the subject, that these men had nothing whatever to do with the South Braintree murders, and that their conviction was the result of co-operation between the Boston agents of the Department of Justice and the District Attorney. It was the general opinion of the Boston agents of the Department of Justice having knowledge of the affair that the South Braintree crime was committed by a gang of professional highwaymen.

I annex hereto a picture of Mr. Feri Felix Weiss printed on the outside of one of his advertisements.

So ends as fine a picture of the inner workings of the Spanish Inquisition as has seen the light in many a day. I can’t help quoting again Judge Thayer’s very pertinent question:

“Have Attorney General Sargent and his subordinates ... stooped so low and are they so degraded that they are willing by the concealment of evidence to enter into a fraudulent conspiracy with the government of Massachusetts to send two men to the electric chair, not because they were murderers but because they were radicals?”

AFFIDAVIT OF JOHN RUZZAMENTI

John Ruzzamenti being first duly sworn, on oath deposes and says that he is now and has been for upwards of thirty days last past a resident of the City of Boston, County of Suffolk and Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

That in the month of December 1920 the affiant resided in the town of Reddington, State of Pennsylvania, and was employed in the capacity of brass melter in the Reddington Standard Fitting Corporation, a subsidiary of the Bethlehem Steel Corporation.

That sometime in December 1920 and to the affiant’s best knowledge, information and belief, about December 18th or 19th, he, the affiant, received through the United States Post Office an envelope bearing Boston post-mark and stamped with special delivery stamp and containing the name and address of affiant. That inside of said envelope was another sealed envelope bearing on the outside the notation “burn this after you have read”. That inside of said sealed envelope was a letter purporting to come from one Feri Felix Weiss. That affiant well knew said Weiss having worked with and been employed by said Weiss when said Weiss was employed by the United States Department of Justice at Boston specially assigned to so-called Red or Radical cases. That the affiant then had in his possession a card of said Weiss reading as follows, to-wit:

AMERICAN AND FOREIGN CONNECTIONS

Cable Address Feriweiss P. O. Box 2107 Boston

FERI FELIX WEISS

Scientific-Secret-Service

Licensed and Bonded—Modern Scientific Methods

Formerly With

Bureau of Investigation, U. S. Department of Justice

Immigration Service, U. S. Department of Labor

Translation Section; Military Intelligence

Branch U. S. War Department.

That the said letter contained in said envelope read as follows, to-wit:

December 17, 1920

My dear John:

Just returned from a trip I found your two letters, and answer them by return mail.

Would you like to help me on a case which I may clinch here? It is the case of Sacco and Vanzetti, who are in jail awaiting trial for having shot the paymaster of the South Braintree shoefactory.

Do you know these fellows? They are members of the Galleani gang, and Sacco used to work in the Cordage works in Plymouth.

He also worked in the Plant shoe factory.

It is a very important case, and I need a clever Italian who would mix with the gang, and if necessary even stay in jail for a few days just to find out what they say.

How much pay would you want?

You would have to come right away.

Do you think you could work amongst them?

I am not sure whether they might know you from Milford, though I don’t think that Sacco was ever there.

If we are successful in this venture, we might tackle the big Wall Street affair in New York, as all the other agencies are up against a wall in that matter.

Let me know by the return envelope which I herewith enclose.

I must give my friends an answer not later than Monday, so you must mail your answer to me immediately. Don’t write me a long letter, just say “yes, I’ll work for $8” a day, or whatever you want, so I can put it up to my friend.

In case you get my letter only Sunday, better telegraph me your answer, P. O. Box 2107. Just say “Yes, $8” “John”.

I am afraid they won’t pay $8, so make it less if you can.

Of course any expenses would be extra.

If we deliver the goods they will probably give us the reward.

I think there is $2,000 written out.

You would have to start as soon as possible, probably after Christmas, if you care to stay with your folks over the holidays.

Best regards to Mrs. R. and the children.

With best of wishes, believe me,

Your friend

F—i

That immediately upon receipt of said letter the affiant well knowing from past experience with said Weiss the need of expedition and secrecy, instructed his wife, Laura Ruzzamenti, to telegraph to said Feri Felix Weiss, P. O. Box 2107, Boston Mass. in substance and effect that he, the affiant would come to Boston immediately after the Christmas holidays, and said telegram as outlined above was sent.

That between the said date of sending of said telegram to said Feri Felix Weiss and the morning of December 27th, 1920 when the affiant secured leave of absence from said Reddington Standard Fitting Corporation, and left Reddington, Pennsylvania to come to the City of Boston, no letter or telegram or communication of any character was received by the affiant from the said Feri Felix Weiss.

That upon arrival in the City of Boston, Commonwealth of Massachusetts, on the evening of December 27th, 1920, at or about the hour of ten p. m., the affiant went to the office of said Feri Felix Weiss at 7 Water Street in the City of Boston and made inquiry for said Weiss, but found that he was out for the evening. Whereupon the affiant went to the American House in said City of Boston and there registered.

That following morning, December 28th, 1920, the affiant went to the office of said Feri Felix Weiss at 7 Water Street in said City of Boston and interviewed the said Weiss.

That the said Weiss then admitted receipt of affiant’s telegram but expressed some surprise that the affiant had come to the City of Boston in view of the fact that the said Weiss had sent to him, the affiant, a telegram stating that he should not come.

That the affiant has since made inquiry and to the best of his knowledge, information and belief the said Weiss did not send a telegram to the affiant, but did send a letter stating in effect that he, the affiant, was not to come to Boston until further word was received from the said Weiss, but that said letter was not received in Reddington, Pennsylvania, until December 28th, 1920, the day after the affiant left Reddington, Pennsylvania.

That after some discussion the said Weiss stated to the affiant in substance and effect that however it was all right: that he, the affiant, was here in Boston and that he, the said Weiss, would immediately get in touch with Mr. Frederick G. Katzmann, the District Attorney for Norfolk and Plymouth Counties, Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and would arrange for an interview between the said Katzmann and the affiant.

That the said Weiss in the presence of affiant attempted to telephone the said Frederick G. Katzmann, but was unable at that time to secure a connection at the office of said Katzmann at Hyde Park, Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

That thereafter, to-wit, December 28th and December 29th 1920, the affiant remained in and about the office of said Weiss discussing with said Weiss and receiving from said Weiss the details of the plan purporting to be the product of the minds of said Weiss and said Katzmann and mutually agreed upon between said Weiss and said Katzmann, the details of which plan are hereinafter set forth, and also awaiting instructions from said Weiss as to when he, the affiant, should see the said Katzmann; that sometime in the afternoon of December 29th, 1920 the affiant received instructions from said Weiss to be at the office of said Katzmann at said Hyde Park the morning of December 30th, 1920 at nine a. m.

That in accordance with said instructions the affiant at nine a. m. on December 30th, 1920 was at the office of said Frederick G. Katzmann, District Attorney of Norfolk and Plymouth Counties, Commonwealth of Massachusetts, at Hyde Park, Massachusetts, and there awaited the coming of said Katzmann, that shortly after nine a. m. the affiant saw a gentleman enter the said building and go upstairs; that thereupon the affiant followed the said party and saw him turn to the door marked with the name of said Katzmann and insert a key; that the affiant then stepped up to said party, whereupon the said party turned and said to him, the affiant, “Is that you John?” whereupon the affiant admitted his identity and was welcomed into the office by said Katzmann, the said Katzmann helping the affiant to remove his overcoat; that the affiant then explained to said Katzmann that he had been sent there by said Weiss and presented as evidence of his identity the card of said Weiss with the name of the affiant written in the handwriting of said Weiss on the back of said card.

That immediately after the identity of the affiant was established to the satisfaction of said Katzmann, the said Katzmann asked the affiant in substance and effect what he had to say of importance; whereupon the affiant outlined to the said Katzmann the proposition, or plan that had been proposed to the affiant by said Weiss, and which the affiant had been told was the product of the minds of Weiss and said Katzmann, which was in substance and effect that he, the affiant, was by prearranged plan and in concert with police officers to break and enter some dwelling house for the ostensible purpose of committing the crime of burglary, and that by prearranged plan with said police officers the affiant was to be apparently caught in the act of committing the crime of burglary; that then the affiant would be duly and regularly arrested, complaint issued, committment papers executed and the affiant confined under the terms of said committment in the Dedham County Jail in Norfolk County, Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the said jail being the jail where Nicola Sacco, named in the title herein, was then confined and awaiting trial on the charge of murder.

That then by prearranged plan and in concert and with the understanding of one Samuel Capen, High Sheriff of Norfolk County, Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the affiant would be placed in a cell next to and adjoining to the one occupied by said Sacco, and that the affiant would then, by preconceived plan and by special arrangement with said High Sheriff of Norfolk County, be given special privileges and special opportunity to establish the confidence of and to act as a stool pigeon on said Nicola Sacco. That in this connection the said Weiss had instructed the affiant that he, the affiant, was upon his incarceration to appear to be very much depressed and melancholy by reason of his arrest and was to make no attempt to talk with said Sacco for at least three days after his arrest. That the affiant outlining the said plan to the said Katzmann as same had been outlined to the affiant by said Weiss, stated to the said Katzmann that he, the affiant, had never been arrested and was not agreeable to this plan of arrest; that while he, the affiant, had been previously engaged by the said Weiss as an operative while the said Weiss was in the United States Department of Justice, nevertheless the affiant had never up to that time ever gone so far as to commit a crime in the furtherance of any end, and that he, the affiant, could not and would not agree to the said plan of said Weiss, but was willing to listen to any counter suggestion or other proposition that might be made by the said Katzmann.

That thereupon the said Katzmann said to the affiant in substance and effect that he, the said Katzmann, was right hard up against it; that he, the said Katzmann, had no evidence as against the said Nicola Sacco or as against the said Bartolomeo Vanzetti, that they, the said Sacco and said Vanzetti, had not talked and would not talk; that he had been unable to get anything out of them or out of any other person, that said Katzmann named in this connection some man that he had arrested in connection with a motorcycle, and stated that he had grilled this man but had been unable to learn anything, and that it was necessary that he secure other and additional testimony to that which he already had. Whereupon with this preliminary explanation, the said Katzmann made the following proposition, to-wit:

That Rosina Sacco or Rose Sacco, the wife of said Nicola Sacco, resided in the town of Stoughton, Commonwealth of Massachusetts and there had a small home and had an extra and unused room in said house by reason of the arrest and incarceration of her husband, and he, the said Katzmann, then proposed to the affiant that he, the affiant, should undertake to secure employment in said town of Stoughton or some place adjacent thereto and should as an Italian and a member of the same race as the said Rosina or Rose Sacco, secure a room in her home, and that for and by reason of the fact that the said Rosina or Rose Sacco was undergoing great physical, mental and spiritual suffering by reason of the incarceration of her husband, it should be easy for the affiant to establish friendly relations with her, and said relations once established, it would then be easy for the affiant to secure confidential communications from her as to any criminal activities of her husband, the said Nicola Sacco. That the affiant agreed to undertake this plan.

That thereupon the said Katzmann stated to the affiant that it would be some few days before he, the said Katzmann, was ready to go ahead, that meanwhile he, the affiant, was to “send me” (Katzmann) “your expense bill and I will see that it goes through the County and you will get your money.” That the affiant then left the said Katzmann’s office, the said Katzmann courteously helping the affiant to put on his overcoat and following him to the door and shaking hands in parting.

That the affiant then returned to Boston and reported to said Feri Felix Weiss. That the day following the affiant sent his statement to said Katzmann. That meanwhile it was arranged between the affiant and said Weiss that he, the affiant, would be employed by said Weiss pending word from said Katzmann on a job down on Cape Cod; that thereupon he, the affiant, went to Cape Cod on said investigation for said Weiss and was employed for a period of approximately two weeks; that nothing developing and the affiant receiving no word from said Weiss, he, the affiant, returned to Pennsylvania sometime about the middle of January 1921.

That after the affiant returned to Pennsylvania he received a letter from said Weiss, only a part of said letter being now in the possession of the affiant; the part which he now has reading on the face thereof as follows, to-wit:

“Dear John:

I just returned from my trip and found your letters. As soon as Mr. Katzmann sends me your check I’ll mail it to you.”

and on the back thereof as follows, to-wit:

“was a big trial of Mrs. De Falco. I’ll remind him by and by of your bill.

I am sorry I could not see you before you went home.

With kindest regards to you and your family, believe me

Your friend,

Feri”

That after a number of letters written by the affiant to the said Weiss and to the said Katzmann, the affiant received another letter from said Weiss reading as follows, to-wit:

“My dear John:

I got your letters about collecting money from District Attorney Katzmann.

As much as I regret that you have such a hard time with your children being out of work, I am not blind to facts, and feel I must enlighten you.

First of all you must remember that you came here of your own will. Nobody told you to come to Boston. I telegraphed clearly that you should only come when I write you. You did not wait for my letter. I then did the next best thing for you, and employed you on the Cape.

Then Katzmann said he might pay you. So put in your bill, as promised, but have not heard from him. It will be a good thing if you write to him personally about it; he probably will hurry it along.

But remember, that you can force neither him nor me to pay your expenses, as there was absolutely no agreement to that effect between him, me and you. Keep this clearly in your mind.

It is foolish to send your wife here, as that only makes additional expense, without any result. A letter to Katzmann will do just as well.

If I was fixed better financially, I would gladly send you the money, as I regarded you always as my friend, and am always sorry for anybody with a large family to support at the present time. But I have a hard pull myself.

That is all I can say today. Hoping to hear from Katzmann soon, or that you hear from him if you write, believe me,

Sincerely yours,

Feri.

Let me know if he sends you a check, so that I should not bother him afterwards thinking that you did not get it.”

That the wife of the affiant, Laura Ruzzamenti, sometime in the spring of 1921, to-wit in the month of April, called on the said Katzmann and presented the claim of her husband and asked that same be paid.

That said claim for transportation, time and expenses has not been paid by said Katzmann or said Weiss or by any person notwithstanding the fact that the affiant has made many and divers efforts to secure said pay, same consisting of the sending of the statement of transportation, time and expenses in accordance with request of said Katzmann on the day following the interview of December 30th, 1920; and the sending of a great number of letters written by the affiant to the said Katzmann. That said statement has not been paid and said letters have not been answered.

Signed John Ruzzamenti

(In this connection we must insert the letter of Feri Felix Weiss that did not come into Mr. Thompson’s hands until several weeks after the hearing. Here are his affidavit and Weiss’s letter that completes the picture.)

AFFIDAVIT OF WILLIAM G. THOMPSON

My name is William G. Thompson. I am counsel for the defendants in the above entitled case. On or about Sept. 21 last I learned from Mr. Frank P. Sibley, a reporter on the Boston Globe, that that newspaper had just received a letter from Feri Felix Weiss, with a request that it be published, but that the Globe did not intend to publish the letter. Shortly afterward I began efforts to obtain this letter, and succeeded in doing so today, Oct. 7, with it was the envelope in which it was received at the Globe office. I annex said original letter and said envelope hereto, and make them part of this affidavit.

As I remember it, there is a fac-simile of the signature of Weiss on the picture of him annexed to the affidavit of Fred J. Weyand. I also call attention to the fact that this letter is written upon a letterhead stamped with the name of said Weiss, and was received in an envelope also stamped with his name in the upper left hand corner.

In connection with this letter I call attention to the contents of the letter of said Weiss to John Ruzzamenti on file in the case, a fac-simile of a part of which is also annexed to the affidavit of said Weyand, and of the following statements therein—namely, letter dated Dec. 17, 1920:

“Would you like to help me on a case which I may clinch here? It is the case of Sacco and Vanzetti, who are in jail awaiting trial for having shot the paymaster of the South Braintree shoe factory. * * * It is a very important case, and I need a clever Italian who would mix with the gang, and, if necessary, even stay in jail for a few days just to find out what they say. * * * I am afraid they won’t pay $8, so make it less if you can. Of course any expenses would be extra. If we deliver the goods they will probably give us the reward. I think there is $2,000 written out.”

In connection with this letter I also call attention to the parts of the affidavits of Weyand and Letherman relating to the activities and purposes of said Weiss in connection with the prosecution of Sacco and Vanzetti. I also, in connection with this letter, call attention to the affidavit of Mr. Katzmann on file in this case. I especially desire to call attention to the following sentences in this letter, namely:

“I explained to him (Katzmann) that anarchists do not commit crimes for money, but for a principle, and that banditry was not in their code”, and

“The truth in the “framing” was that we intended to put Ruzzamenti in with Sacco as much to clear Sacco of any guilt in the Braintree affair as to find him guilty.”

Signed William G. Thompson

LETTER OF FERI FELIX WEISS

The letter annexed to the affidavit follows:

Chicago, Ill., Sept. 19, 1926

Editor, Boston Globe,

Boston, Mass.

Dear Sir:—

It has just come to my attention—stationed as I am in the Government service in the West—that my name has been mentioned in your account of the “Sacco and Vanzetti” affair through an affidavit by former District Attorney Katzmann on one hand, and the connection of Ruzzamenti on the other.

The facts, as far as I am concerned with this case, are as follows:

Katzmann sent for me at the time to learn what I knew about Sacco, having been Special Agent of the United States Department of Justice in charge of investigations covering anarchists and similar criminals whose aim was the forceful overthrow of the Government of the United States. I told Katzmann that I knew that Sacco was an active anarchist, connected with the famous or notorious Galleani group of Lynn, Mass., who had bomb-outrages on the brain. When Katzmann asked me what I thought of Sacco as a participant in the Braintree holdup, I explained to him that anarchists do not commit crimes for money but for a principle, and that banditry was not in their code.

It was at the suggestion of Katzmann that I wrote the undercover informant Ruzzamenti whether he was willing to go to jail and share the cell with Sacco to find out what Sacco had to tell about his connection with the Braintree affair. Ruzzamenti did not answer this letter by a letter, but took the first train from Pennsylvania to Boston. Though this was against my arrangement with him, I faced the situation, and sent him to Katzmann, who had agreed over the phone to talk to Ruzzamenti regarding the plan we had in mind. Katzmann then decided, after a talk with Ruzzamenti, that he better drop the matter.

Ruzzamenti tried to collect expenses from Katzmann, but failed. Then Ruzzamenti turned around and sold out to the defense. He used my letter to him as evidence. The first I knew of Ruzzamenti’s treachery was when I received a warning from a friendly source in Spain to the effect that my letter had been broadcasted in mimeograph form to aid in the collection of funds for the Sacco and Vanzetti defense. My friend sent me warning lest the rabid Latin anarchists should take it into their heads to “get square” with me for trying to “frame Sacco.”

The truth in the “framing” was that we intended to put Ruzzamenti in with Sacco as much to clear Sacco of any guilt in the Braintree affair as to find him guilty! I had no interest whatsoever in railroading an innocent man to the electric chair, and Lawyer Thompson’s reference to me as “being heartless” is absurd, if not ridiculous. My entire connection with this case was outlined here, and my only motive in trying to clear up the mystery was to aid justice.

That I should be abused and besmirched with mud by both sides, the defense as well as the District Attorney, when I acted as any patriotic citizen would to protect the life and property of all, is a sad reflection upon legal ethics in Massachusetts. I leave it to the public to pass judgment in view of the above cited facts. That Katzmann is trying to wash his hands of the Ruzzamenti fiasco, putting the blame on me; that Ruzzamenti delivered my life into the hands of the international Reds the world over by his treachery, reminds me of the two characters in the New Testament who always seem to enjoy a resurrection: Pontius Pilate and Judas Iscariot.

Respectfully,

Feri Felix Weiss

“Have Attorney General Sargent and his subordinates ... stooped so low, and are they so degraded that they are willing by the concealment of evidence to enter into a fraudulent conspiracy with the government of Massachusetts to send two men to the electric chair, not because they were murderers but because they were radicals?”

(All attempts on the part of the defense to secure information from the Department of Justice files on the case have so far proved fruitless. Chief Counsel Thompson has written the Attorney General of the United States on the subject and in spite of the intercession of Senator Butler of Massachusetts, received no satisfactory reply. The Department of Justice refuses to give up its secrets.)

Where are Sacco and Vanzetti in all this? A broken man in Charlestown, a broken man in a grey birdcage in Dedham, struggling to keep some shreds of human dignity in face of the Chair? Not at all.

Circumstances sometimes force men into situations so dramatic, thrust their puny frames so far into the burning bright searchlights of history that they or their shadows on men’s minds become enormous symbols. Sacco and Vanzetti are all the immigrants who have built this nation’s industries with their sweat and their blood and have gotten for it nothing but the smallest wage it was possible to give them and a helot’s position under the bootheels of the Arrow Collar social order. They are all the wops, hunkies, bohunks, factory fodder that hunger drives into the American mills through the painful sieve of Ellis Island. They are the dreams of a saner social order of those who can’t stand the law of dawg eat dawg. This tiny courtroom is a focus of the turmoil of an age of tradition, the center of eyes all over the world. Sacco and Vanzetti throw enormous shadows on the courthouse walls.

William G. Thompson feels all this dimly when, the last affidavit read, he pauses to begin his argument. But mostly he feels that as a citizen it is his duty to protect the laws and liberties of his state and as a man to try to save two innocent men from being murdered by a machine set going in a moment of hatred and panic. He is a broadshouldered man with steely white hair and a broad forehead and broad cheek-bones. He doesn’t mince words. He feels things intensely. The case is no legal game of chess for him.

“I rest my case on these affidavits, on the other five propositions that I have argued, but if they all fail, and I cannot see how they can, I rest my case on that rock alone, on the sixth proposition in my brief—innocent or guilty, right or wrong, foolish or wise men—these men ought not now to be sentenced to death for this crime so long as they have the right to say, “The government of this great country put spies in my cell, planned to put spies in my wife’s house, they put spies on my friends, took money that they were collecting to defend me, put it in their own pocket and joked about it and said they don’t believe I am guilty but will help convict me, because they could not get enough evidence to deport me under the laws of Congress, and were willing as one of them continually said to adopt the method of killing me for murder as one way to get rid of me.””

Ranney’s handling of the case has been pretty perfunctory throughout, he has contented himself with trying to destroy the Court’s opinion of Madeiros’ veracity. A criminal is only to be believed when he speaks to his own detriment. He presents affidavits of the Morelli’s and their friends denying that they had ever heard of Madeiros, tries to imply that Letherman and Weyand were fired from the government employ and had no right to betray the secrets of their department. He knows that he does not need to make much effort. He is strong in the inertia of the courts. The defence will have to exert six times the energy of the prosecution to overturn the dead weighty block of six other motions denied.

Thompson comes back at him with a phrase worthy of Patrick Henry.

... “And I will say to your honor that a government that has come to honor its own secrets more than the lives of its citizens has become a tyranny whether you call it a republic or monarchy or anything else.”

Then the dry, crackling, careful voice of Judge Thayer and the hearing is adjourned.

Hear ye, hear ye, hear ye, all who have had business before the honorable the justice of the superior court of the southeastern district of Massachusetts will now disperse. The court is adjourned without day.

God Save the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

The Court refused to grant a new trial. The Court has decided that Sacco and Vanzetti must die.

God Save the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

III
THE RED DELIRIUM

How is all this possible? Why were these men ever convicted in the first place? From the calm of the year of our Lord 1926 it’s pretty hard to remember the delirious year 1920.

On June 3rd 1919 a bomb exploded outside the Washington house of Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer. In the previous months various people had received bombs through the mail, one of them blowing off the two hands of the unfortunate housemaid who undid the package. No one, and least of all the federal detectives ever seems to have discovered who committed these outrages or why they were committed. But their result was to put a scare into every public official in the country, and particularly into Attorney General Palmer. No one knew where the lightning would strike next. The signing of peace had left the carefully stirred up hatred of the war years unsatisfied. It was easy for people who knew what they were doing to turn the terrors of government officials and the unanalyzed feeling of distrust of foreigners of the average man into a great crusade of hate against reds, radicals, dissenters of all sorts. The Department of Justice, backed by the press, frenziedly acclaimed by the man on the street, invented an immanent revolution. All the horrors of Russian Bolshevism were about to be enacted on our peaceful shores. That fall the roundup began. Every man had his ear to his neighbor’s keyhole. This first crusade culminated in the sailing of the Buford, the “soviet ark” loaded with alien “anarchists” and in the preparation of the famous list of eighty thousand radicals who were to be gotten out of the way.

But that was not enough to satisfy the desire for victims of the country at large, and the greed of the detectives and anti-labor operatives of different sorts who were making a fat living off the Department of Justice. So the January raids were planned.

The following paragraph from Louis F. Post’s book shows that he, seeing the thing from the inside as Assistant Secretary of Labor, felt that the hysteria was being pretty consciously directed:

“The whole red crusade seems to have been saturated with ‘labor spy’ interests—the interests, that is, of private detective agencies which, in the secret service of masterful corporations, were engaged in generating and intensifying industrial suspicions and hatreds. It was under these influences, apparently, that the appropriations authorized by Congress “for the detection and prosecution of crimes” exclusively, were in part diverted to the rounding-up of aliens, not as criminals but as the possible subjects for administrative deportation.”

The January raids were aimed at the “Communists.”

“Hardly had the year nineteen-twenty opened” says the former Assistant Secretary of Labor, “when the Department of Justice entered upon the red crusade for which its raiding of the preceding November had been a tryout. Numerously recruited for the occasion from roughneck groups of the strikebreaking variety and actively supported by local police authorities, the detective auxiliary of the Department of Justice spent the night of the second day in January at raiding lawful assemblages in more than thirty cities and towns of the United States—thirty-three being the number officially reported. Their object was wholesale arrests in furtherance of the plans already outlined for mass deportations of alien members of the Communist and the Communist-Labor parties. The approximate number of arrests officially reported was 2,500.”

The details can be read in the pamphlet on Illegal Practices of the Department of Justice prepared in May of the same year by a committee of twelve well-known lawyers.

Here is the preface to that pamphlet:

TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE:

For more than six months we, the undersigned lawyers, whose sworn duty it is to uphold the Constitution and Laws of the United States, have seen with growing apprehension the continued violation of that Constitution and breaking of those Laws by the Department of Justice of the United States government.

Under the guise of a campaign for the suppression of radical activities, the office of the Attorney General, acting by its local agents throughout the country, and giving express instructions from Washington, has committed continual illegal acts. 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 maltreated. Agents of the Department of Justice have been introduced into radical organizations for the purpose of informing upon their members or inciting them to activities; these agents have even been instructed from Washington to arrange meetings upon certain dates for the express object of facilitating wholesale raids and arrests. In support of these illegal acts, and to create sentiment in its favor, the Department of Justice has also constituted itself a propaganda bureau, and has sent to newspapers and magazines of this country quantities of material designed to excite public opinion against radicals, all at the expense of the government and outside the scope of the Attorney General’s duties.

We make no argument in favor of any radical doctrine as such, whether Socialist, Communist or Anarchist. No one of us belongs to any of these schools of thought. Nor do we now raise any question as to the Constitutional protection of free speech and a free press. We are concerned solely with bringing to the attention of the American people the utterly illegal acts which have been committed by those charged with the highest duty of enforcing the laws—acts which have caused widespread suffering and unrest, have struck at the foundation of American free institutions, and have brought the name of our country into disrepute.

These acts may be grouped under the following heads:

(1) Cruel and Unusual Punishments:

The Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution provides:

“Excessive bail shall not be required nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.”

Punishments of the utmost cruelty, and therefore unthinkable in America, have become usual. Great numbers of persons arrested, both aliens and citizens, have been threatened, beaten with blackjacks, or actually tortured * * *

(2) Arrests without Warrant:

The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution provides:

“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

Many hundreds of citizens and aliens alike have been arrested in wholesale raids, without warrants or pretense of warrants. They have then either been released, or have been detained in police stations or jails for indefinite lengths of time while warrants were being applied for. This practice of making mass raids and mass arrests without warrant has resulted directly from the instructions, both written and oral, issued by the Department of Justice at Washington.

(3) Unreasonable Searches and Seizures:

The Fourth Amendment has been quoted above.

In countless cases agents of the Department of Justice have entered the homes, offices, or gathering places of persons suspected of radical affiliations, and, without pretense of any search warrant, have seized and removed property belonging to them for use by the Department of Justice. In many of these raids property which could not be removed or was not useful to the Department, was intentionally smashed and destroyed.

(4) Provocative Agents:

We do not question the right of the Department of Justice to use its agents in the Bureau of Investigation to ascertain when the law is being violated. But the American people have never tolerated the use of undercover provocative agents or “agents provocateurs,” such as have been familiar in old Russia or Spain. Such agents have been introduced by the Department of Justice into the radical movements, have reached positions of influence therein, have occupied themselves with informing upon or instigating acts which might be declared criminal, and at the express direction of Washington have brought about meetings of radicals in order to make possible wholesale arrests at such meetings.

(5) Compelling Persons to be Witnesses against Themselves:

The Fifth Amendment provides as follows:

“No person * * * shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.”

It has been the practice of the Department of Justice and its agents, after making illegal arrests without warrant, to question and to force admission from him by terrorism, which admissions were subsequently to be used against him in deportation proceedings.

(6) Propaganda by the Department of Justice:

The legal functions of the Attorney General are: to advise the Government on questions of law, and to prosecute persons who have violated federal statutes. For the Attorney General to go into the field of propaganda against radicals is a deliberate misuse of his office and a deliberate squandering of funds entrusted to him by Congress. * * *

Since these illegal acts have been committed by the highest legal powers in the United States, there is no final appeal from them except to the conscience and condemnation of the American people. American institutions have not in fact been protected by the Attorney General’s ruthless suppression. On the contrary these institutions have been seriously undermined, and revolutionary unrest has been vastly intensified. No organizations of radicals acting through propaganda over the last six months could have created as much revolutionary sentiment in America as has been created by the acts of the Department of Justice itself.

Even were one to admit that there existed any serious “Red menace” before the Attorney General started his “unflinching war” against it, his campaign has been singularly fruitless. Out of the many thousands suspected by the Attorney General (he had already listed 60,000 by name and history on November 14, 1919, aliens and citizens) what do the figures show of net results? Prior to January 1, 1920, there were actually deported 263 persons. Since January 1 there have been actually deported 18 persons. Since January 1 there have been ordered deported an additional 529 persons and warrants for 1,547 have been cancelled (after full hearings and consideration of the evidence) by Assistant Secretary of Labor Louis F. Post, to whose courageous re-establishment of American Constitutional Law in deportation proceedings are due the attacks that have been made upon him. The Attorney General has consequently got rid of 810 alien suspects, which, on his own showing, leaves him at least 59,160 persons (aliens and citizens) still to cope with.

It has always been the proud boast of America that this is a government of laws and not of men. Our Constitution and laws have been based on the simple elements of human nature. Free men cannot be driven and repressed; they must be led. Free men respect justice and follow truth, but arbitrary power they will oppose until the end of time. There is no danger of revolution so great as that created by suppression, by ruthlessness, and by deliberate violation of the simple rules of American law and American decency.

It is a fallacy to suppose that, any more than in the past, any servant of the people can safely arrogate to himself unlimited authority. To proceed upon such a supposition is to deny the fundamental American theory of the consent of the governed. Here is no question of a vague and threatened menace, but a present assault upon the most sacred principles of our Constitutional liberty.

The foregoing report has been prepared May, 1920, under the auspices of the National Popular Government League, Washington, D. C.

R. G. Brown, Memphis, Tenn.

Zecheriah Chafee, Jr., Cambridge, Mass.

Felix Frankfurter, Cambridge, Mass.

Ernst Freund, Chicago, Ill.

Swinburne Hale, New York City

Francis Fisher Kane, Philadelphia, Pa.